Successional Vegetation on Abandoned Cultivated and Pastured Land in Tompkins County, New York

Abstract

STOVER, MARIAN E. AND P L. MARKS (Section of Ecology and Systematics, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853). Successional vegetation on abandoned cultivated and pastured land in Tompkins County, New York. J. Torrey Bot. Soc. 125:150-164. 1998-To investigate influences of land use on old field successional vegetation, we sampled twenty-one old fields with agricultural histories of either cultivation or pasturing in Tompkins County, New York. A TWINSPAN classification showed a major division corresponding to field history, with apple-dominated old pastures clustered together. Analyses of ground-layer vegetation did not show the same division. Common and important woody plants included Acer rubrum, Cornus racemosa, Crataegus spp., Fraxinus americana, Malus spp., Pinus strobus, Prunus serotina, Rhamnus cathartica, and Viburnum dentatum. Formerly pastured old fields more frequently contained apple, pear, buckthorn, and hawthorn, which were sometimes the dominant trees. These taxa were infrequent and never dominant in formerly cultivated old fields, which more commonly contained red maple and white pine. Exotic plants were a major part of the successional vegetation, comprising over one quarter of the woody and one third of the herbaceous taxa identified. Most of the exotic woody taxa were early successional species, however. A number of herbaceous forest understory species appeared in formerly cultivated old fields. One formerly pastured site that had never been plowed contained 13 such taxa, which apparently persisted through fifty years of pasturing.