A Gift from the Glaciers
Poised between two glacial moraines in Southwest Ohio’s Mad River Valley, Cedar Bog is a relic of the Ice Age when glaciers advanced and retreated in successive waves over present-day Ohio. The massive ice sheets flattened much of the landscape, ground boulders into stones and pushed boreal plants out of northerly latitudes.
“Northern white cedar is our namesake because the trees grew here from seeds deposited by the glaciers,” says Crackel.
Cedar Bog offers a glimpse into what the landscape looked like during the waning Ice Age when it was home to mastodons, giant ground sloths and beavers the size of bears. Learn more about why northern white cedars flourish here inside the Education Center.
The glaciers also buried the ancient and mighty Teays River and filled it with sand and limestone gravel that hold enormous amounts of water. The cool, alkaline groundwater continually rises to the surface, creating a microclimate favorable to the cedars and other Ice Age transplants — including thirsty sedges, dwarf birch and showy lady’s slipper orchids — in Cedar Bog.
“The water is our lifeblood,” notes Site Manager Mike Crackel. “Without that deep, underground aquifer, Cedar Bog would not exist."
At the Education Center, you’ll also learn that Cedar Bog isn’t a bog. It’s actually a fen that was misnamed decades ago. Bogs and fens both contain water, so what’s the difference? Since their distinctions involve geology, hydrology and even botany, the Education Center supplies a catchy phrase to help you understand: bogs clog and fens flush. In a bog, water accumulates, but in a fen, water simply flows through.
Take a Walk on the Wild Side
Cedar Bog’s boardwalk trail is open daily during daylight hours. Flat, straight and ADA accessible, the boardwalk loops through Cedar Bog for 1.2 miles, and takes you through habitats that include a rare sedge meadow, a thick cedar swamp and a hardwood swamp where towering tulip trees reach for the sky.
“I tell people to slow down and take their time on the boardwalk,” Crackel says. “They should look up, down and around and use all their senses except touch, because everything here is protected under state law.”
While you can’t pick flowers or catch butterflies at Cedar Bog, you certainly can hear the gobble of a wild turkey, the flute-like call of a wood thrush, the trills of grey treefrogs looking for a mate and the surprisingly loud chirps of thumbnail-sized spring peeper frogs. Keep a sharp eye out for carnivorous plants like roundleaf sundew, a tiny boreal that traps insects on its sticky leaves. You might even spot an endangered Elfin Skimmer dragonfly darting among the sedges. Only three-fourths of an inch long, it’s the smallest dragonfly in North America but quite colorful, for males are steel blue and females sport yellow and black striped tails.
One creature you’ll have no trouble seeing is the five-lined skink, a short-legged lizard that loves to scurry across the boardwalk all summer long. “They’re very quick but will stop running and wait long enough for you to take a picture,” says Crackel.
