Learn Your Land

This Forest Disease Is Spreading in a Strange Way

Adam Haritan — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 19:37:48 +0000

These days, it seems there are just as many tree diseases as there are trees in a forest. Who knows where they’re all coming from, or why they keep showing up, but there’s one thing we can say for sure: they can drastically alter the way a forest looks and feels. Right now, I’m thinking […]

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Why the Southeast Has America’s Greatest Tree Diversity

Adam Haritan — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 16:03:17 +0000

I recently took a last-minute trip to the southeastern United States. In addition to surprising my uncle for his 65th birthday, I admired all the trees I don’t usually see back home in Pennsylvania: water tupelo, willow oak, southern red oak, loblolly pine, shortleaf pine, sugarberry, and dozens of others. I eventually lost count of […]

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Eastern Forests Are Changing — And Pawpaw Is Winning

Adam Haritan — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 15:00:15 +0000

In my neck of the woods, there’s a particular tree that grows in the understory. It’s not a very big tree, but it’s doing something that has recently caught my attention: It’s becoming much more abundant. On the surface, this looks like a wonderful thing. Known as pawpaw (Asimina triloba), this native species produces a […]

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I Never Expected To See This Oak

Adam Haritan — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 16:45:13 +0000

Imagine spending over a decade with the same group of friends, only to discover a stranger had been among you the entire time. This recently happened to me, but it didn’t involve humans. It involved oaks. For more than a decade, I’d been visiting the same patch of woods near my home. I thought I […]

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No, This Is Not Wild Ginseng

Adam Haritan — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 13:33:25 +0000

*Not American ginseng. This is Virginia creeper (Parthenocissus quinquefolia). Recently, I thought about a forest I visited 8 years ago, and I wondered if two American ginseng plants were still growing there. To get an answer, I decided to visit the forest and see for myself. The only problem was that I never dropped a […]

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Why This Shrub Is A Tick Paradise

Adam Haritan — Thu, 28 May 2026 19:56:02 +0000

In my neck of the woods, some places are absolute tick hot spots. If I need to photograph ticks or study their habits, I know exactly where to go. But until last week, I didn’t know that a particular shrub was strongly associated with tick abundance. A new study found this to be true, and […]

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The Great Tick Illusion — Rethinking Where They Come From

Adam Haritan — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 13:00:44 +0000

So far this year, I’ve had more than two dozen ticks crawling on my body. [Fun fact: Not all these ticks surprised me. To capture video footage of ticks, I often have to intentionally walk through shrubs and tall grasses to find them.] No matter how they end up on my body, I’m always left […]

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Why Eastern Forests Don’t Grow 300-Foot Trees

Adam Haritan — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 13:39:35 +0000

I’ve spent a lot of time in wild places over the years. Something I’ve noticed is this: Humans are place-based creatures. We thrive when we feel connected to certain landscapes. I’ve also noticed that one of the best ways to develop this connection is to learn what makes each place unique. Lately, I’ve been exploring […]

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The Forest We Lost — And The One That Came Back

Adam Haritan — Tue, 09 Dec 2025 17:24:55 +0000

Years ago, I started reading books on Taoism. One Taoist concept I learned early on was the inevitability of change. Nothing stays the same, Taoists tell us. Things move, shift, grow, and fade, whether we’re paying attention or not. Years later, I became interested in ecology, and I began to wonder: how do forests change? […]

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Humans Don’t Consciously Need Nature

Adam Haritan — Tue, 18 Nov 2025 14:45:11 +0000

There’s a question that runs through my mind almost every single day: Why do things look the way that they do? Of course, I’m mostly referring to why things in nature objectively look a certain way — why a particular forest is coniferous, or why calcium-loving plants grow in certain wetlands. I think a lot […]

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Old-Growth Forests: Myths vs Reality

Adam Haritan — Thu, 30 Oct 2025 17:09:51 +0000

I really enjoy spending time in old-growth forests. I admire the sights, I love the sounds, and I like that old-growth forests can make a human feel small, yet still important. Old-growth forests once covered large areas of land in North America, but these forests are far less common today. As a result, we might […]

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Why Are Tick Populations Exploding?

Adam Haritan — Thu, 02 Oct 2025 17:26:28 +0000

Lyme disease. Anaplasmosis. Babesiosis. Alpha-gal syndrome. These are only a few of the many illnesses associated with tick bites. Interestingly, these illnesses are much more common today than they were even just a few decades ago. Why is that? One way to get some answers is to figure out why tick populations are increasing. According […]

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