Hammond Woods: A Pocket Wilderness in the City
by Joel Gerwein

My friends and I stumbled through the dark woods. A crescent moon and a sprinkling of stars helped us pick our way between branches and around rocks. We passed the hemlocks that towered over us like bushy-haired giants and clambered up the slope, slipping and sliding in the thick carpet of leaves. As we emerged at the top of the hill, we were rewarded for our efforts by a bright show in the night sky. Comet Hale-Bopp shone above us, its glorious tail seeming to tremble and flicker. We leaned on the scrubby trees and marveled at the spectacle for a good hour. When the chill air had frozen our toes, we turned and slid down the other side of the hill, past outcrops of Roxbury Puddingstone and cliffs of granite. In five minutes we were back in the parking lot of Bloomingdales.

Hammond Woods, where my friends and I had our low-key comet watching session, is located in the middle of Newton, next to the Chestnut Hill Mall. This may seem like an unlikely place for a conservation area. Likely or not, Hammond Woods, over 100 acres of woods, wetlands and dramatic rock outcrops, sits across Hammond's Pond from Bloomies. You can wander through this pocket of wilderness for hours, scrambling over ridges and up rock formations, following the streams that wend through the low spots and gazing up at the towering old hemlocks. You might forget that the T tracks run through the woods and that highways and malls are never far away.

The Woods are full of surprises. The hemlocks are one of the most striking. Few old hemlocks are found near human settlements; most were felled in the nineteenth century by the tanning industry for the tannins in their barks. These are big enough that they take two or three people to encircle their trunk.

An old cranberry bog still floods and preserves many wetlands plants, including highbush blueberry. The shore of Hammond Pond is another good spot for these plants, with populations of Coast Pepperbush and Spicebush. Big spreading "wolf trees" stand out in the middle of the smaller trees surrounding them, a remnant of the days when most of these woods were cleared and these trees stood alone on in pasture or on wealthy estates. Some patches of scrubby thin growth, stone walls and an irrigation canal testify to early attempts to farm this poor rocky soil. The dramatic rock outcrops offer a challenge for rock climbers. If you spend an afternoon in these woods, you may run into a biology class from Boston College or Boston University. Hammond Woods has served as a classroom for area schools for many years.

But all is not well in Hammond Woods. Situated in the midst of densely settled Newton and next to a shopping center, the woods and pond are feeling the impact of development. Hammond Pond, which is a kettlehole pond formed by the glaciers about 11,000 years ago, is suffering from eutrophication, or high nutrient loading. The huge parking lot of the adjoining shopping center drains all of its oil and gasoline residue and sediment directly into the pond. Because about two thirds of the pond's perimeter is paved, there is little vegetation and soil to absorb nutrients and sediment before they reach the pond. Pet waste and wildlife waste also enters the pond directly because of the parking lots. All these added nutrients leads to a greatly increased rate of plant growth. Together with the influx of sediments, decayed plant matter is filling in the pond at many times the natural rate. Unless something is done, the pond will be a marsh within our lifetime. Special drains could divert water draining off the parking lot away from the pond and into the storm drain system. Neither the shopping mall owners nor the wealthy homeowners are willing to foot the bill, so the shoreline of the pond creeps inward year after year.

Another danger to Hammond Woods is the spread of invasive exotic plants from Europe and Asia. While some of these imports are benign, others spread rapidly, crowding out endangered native plants while offering few resources to native animals. Since they are foreigners, they tend to have fewer parasites and grazers and thus may have an edge over native plants. Purple loosestrife and Giant Reeds (also known as Phragmites) are spreading in the wetlands, and garlic mustard may soon spread through the woods. Dr. Richard Primack and Brian Drayton of Boston University are attempting to re-establish some of the native forest plants that have disappeared, such as the cardinal flower.

Primack is also exploring the effects of another impact of development on the woods: fragmentation. Several roads cut through the woods, fragmenting what would otherwise be a large continuous stretch of woods and wetlands into smaller patches. The roads increase human impact on the woods, such as littering and trampling, by providing easier access to more of its interior. Woods along the road edge are also drier, sunnier and windier than the forest interior. Plants and animals adapted to the dark, moist forest interior cannot survive on the edges. The roads also reduce movement of plants and animals from one patch to the other. This results in effectively smaller, more isolated populations, which are more vulnerable to disease, bad years or other problems. Plant and animal populations in these patches are less likely to be re-established after a crash because seeds and animals from neighboring populations have a harder time crossing the road. Primack and his students will be exploring one of the effects of this fragmentation, following the movements of pollinators such as bumblebees to see how often they, like the proverbial chicken, will cross the road.

Hammond Woods, administered by the MDC, is located just north of Rt. 9 behind the Chestnut Hill Mall (to the right if you are heading west on Rt. 9.) It is less than three miles from Jamaica Plain, an easy bike ride for hardy EarthWorkers. Continue on Rt. 9 past Bloomingdales and take the right-hand exit just before the overpass. Follow the road around to the right and pull into the small parking lot with the "Hammond Woods Conservation Area" sign. Discover this hidden jewel of wildness right near the city. See you in the woods!