Green Girl Abroad: Site classification and plant taxonomy practice in Soini's conservation areas

To top off a busy week the exchange students were driven to Soini on Friday morning by Juho Lahti to see four types of nature conservation areas in Finland; mesic herb-rich forests, moist herb-rich forests, eutrophic pine fens and fuscom bogs. These are sites that allow very limited recreation and are closed to commercial use. We met with the students from the Tuomarniemi campus and hiked to these four different locations seeking plant species found commonly at each site type.

Amio Kaarlo Cajander, a Finnish prime minister as well as professor of Forestry, developed the forest site type theory to classify natural areas by ground vegetation. This system is specific to Finland, telling about the biological value of a site, succession series and biodiversity giving a better ecological perspective than simply measuring of timber volume. The categories can vary across the country as climate and soils are not uniform but for the educational purposes for Friday’s lesson, they worked very well.

We have made some progress in dendrology (woody plant identification) but this was our first brush with herbaceous plant taxonomy in Finland, and a difficult one at that. The exchange students were split into groups with the Tuomarniemi students to try and find listed plant species at each site using only pictures in a packet that ranged widely in quality. I felt very lucky that my group was not only friendly but also intelligent, resourceful and helpful in identifying these species I’m not at all familiar with. Though Finnish botany is new to me, I was determined to contribute to our group and separate myself from the negative American stereotypes commonly held by Europeans (as we were told by some students). I successfully found a whopping two out of the forty or so listed plants and felt quite accomplished.

The mesic and moist herb rich forests were green with vegetation thriving beneath the tall spruces, separated mainly by moisture (go figure). The moist forest area was more heavily covered with ferns and other shrubs while the mesic sites contained more broad-leaved herbs and grasses. Moving to the eutrophic pine fen, the landscape changes greatly. On these flat, low-lying sites the water accumulation inhibits the oxygen flow to the soil, severely limiting the type of vegetation that can thrive there and affecting the pH as well as nutrient balance (a process called eutrophication). At this soggy site the lack of phosphorous and potassium restrict plant cover to few small Scots pine that can tolerate poor soil conditions, wetland grasses like sedges, tiny vines of cranberry, and an abundant carpet of various mosses. After breaking for lunch we walked, squashed, then sloshed out to a fuscum bog, more barren than the pine fen. Imagine your great-grandmother started growing her own shag carpet out of moss long ago and when it got deep enough to steal the slippers off her feet she said forget it and moved away. That’s basically a fuscum bog for you. Juho said there was probably at least three meters of dead rooted moss beneath us supporting few wetland sedges, grasses (including a dense, Finnish-style rabbitsfoot grass), some more cranberry, lichen and no trees to speak of. Valerie took an unfortunate step into a less mossy puddle and ended up having to dump water out of her mid-calf boots. The ironic part is her boots were of the brand ‘Bog’!

Considering how much of the natural landscape in middle and southern Finland is used for the Agriculture or Timber production, it was an eye-opening experience to see land protected from these industries but still highly valued by the population, decision-makers, and our educators.