Exhibit Details
This Exhibit provides information about the three main types of forest in Sunfish Lake Park. The forest type location map is from the City’s 2015 Forest Management Plan, that document is linked below. The forest is a living ecosystem, so any detailed map is soon outdated. This exhibit was originally prepared in 2018 by Ian Dorney, one of our first Board members, who was a college student at the time. Additional items have been added.
At one time it was thought that part of the and now occupied by Sunfish Lake Park had been “Oak Savannah”, which is a description of an area mid-way between prairie and oak forest with a cover canopy of 10-50% oak. No real evidence has been found to substantiate that supposition. Current classification of much of Sunfish Lake Park is now FS-37 or “oak maple upland forest which depends on an occasional fire to maintain its nature”
If you were directed to this page by the QR code for the bittersweet cutting, here is the detailed information: Celastrus Orbiculatus (“Oriental” / Round Leaf Bittersweet) is an invasive, nonnative multi-stem woody vine that can grow over 60 feet long and gain over 8 inches in diameter at its base. The weight of these vines can strangle a trunk, break off upper canopy branches, topple and kill a tree, or smother a shrub. Round Leaf Bittersweet, native to China, Korea and Japan, crossbreeds with native Celastrus Scandens (American Bittersweet) so successfully that our American vines are disappearing. Nurseries still sell cultivars they claim are American Bittersweet, but we have no evidence that what they sell will not continue to crossbreed, to be invasive and to compound the existing problem.
2025 MN LEGAL STATUS: Prohibited Control Noxious Weed
The diorama showing the Carpenter Ants (3D printed by intern Lucas Shriver) digging into a log (papier-mache model by Board member John Neitge) is representative of the breakdown mechanism of dead trees in the the forest. The ants tunnel through the wood, and then woodpeckers make holes to try to catch the ants. In Sunfish Lake Park, the big squarish holes are made by the Pileated Woodpecker.
What good are invasive species? One use for buckthorn wood is for woodturning and carving craftwork, as shown here. The vase is by Todd Williams, the spoon by John Neitge
