A sub-department of the Lone Tree Hill group Members of this group include: Kappes Emmons, Lisa Fontes, Kelsey Frost, and Hannah Polow

During our week at the Governor's Institute of Science and Technology, the Lone Tree Hill group spent lots of time walking around the grounds of Shelburne Farms. Within the Lone Tree Hill group, we spilt into smaller sub-groups. Our group decided to look at the way Whimsey Meadow, a location at Shelburne Farms, has changed over the years. We wanted to find out about the transition that Whimsey Meadow made from field to forest. This process from field to forest is known as succession. We knew that the field had been mowed at some point because the meadow was not all forested. The change from field to forest is a gradual one. This process includes different levels of vegetation.

The first group of vegetation to start growing in an un-mowed field includes different types of grasses. Raspberry bushes and milkweed (Asclepias syiaca) plants grow in the first stage of succession. In the second stage of succession, shrubs start growing. A specific species that grows at this stage is Staghorn Sumac (Rhus typhina). The third stage of the process of field to forest involves bigger trees growing, including the White Pine(Pinus strobus).

Above is a picture of Whimsey Meadow. This is where our group spent most of our time. Whimsey Meadow is full of winding paths and different levels of vegatation. The paths wind around all over Whimsey Meadow and converge and diverge and different spots, like shown here in this picture.

We recorded the ages of the trees along with the averages, which are included in the chart below.

	Pine	Summac
	20	12
	19	11
	15	10
Average	18	11

Here is Kelsey coring a tree in order to find the age of it. We wanted to find the ages of certain trees in order to find how long Whimsey Meadow has been in the process of turning from a field to a forest. We cored pine and sumac trees. After we had cored several different trees and recorded their ages, we decided to take the averages of all the trees we had cored. This table is shown at the left.