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| Sugar maples grow across woodlands on the Ridge Trail. |
The 1.6-mile Ridge and Oak Trails Loop runs through woodlands at the 1100-acre arboretum. While the University of Minnesota facility is known for its gardens and award-winning tree collection, it also boasts a large natural areas, which the loop takes you through.
To reach the trailhead, in Chanhassen, head west on Minn. Hwy. 5. Enter the Arb by turning left/south onto Arboretum Drive. After passing through the gatehouse, turn left/south when the road splits and park in the lot at the road’s end. The trailhead is on the park’s south side.
Sugar maple
The trail immediately enters a woodlands. Throughout the walk, sugar maple, sumac, birch and oak dominate.
Sugar maple is among the few plants whose leaves turn different colors from tree to tree, so there will be rounded dense crowns of yellow, orange and red throughout the woods. The tree usually grows between 80-115 feet high, though some have been known to reach 148 feet. The younger trees have smooth bark, but as the trunk ages, it turns shaggy. They can live up to 400 years.
The tree thrives in the Midwest’s and New England’s colder climates. It needs a hard freeze to enter winter dormancy, and seed germination only occurs when the thermometer registers just above freezing. Sugar maples rarely are found any further south than Tennessee, and even there the temperature isn’t cold enough to produce the sap used to make maple syrup.
Global warming is pushing the sugar maple’s range north. It’s disappearing from its southern edges while starting to appear in Minnesota’s Northwoods. Acid rain and the ensuing soil acidification also has led to the maple’s decline in some regions. Meanwhile, the logging off of woodlands allows other tree species to take hold, limiting the maple’s ability to expand. The tree doesn’t do as well in urban areas either, where the Norway maple is displacing it.
Sugar maples usually reach their peak color the last week of September across the arboretum.
Smooth sumac
At the next two splits in the trail, go left/east to stay in the woods. As the forest thins a bit, at 0.12 miles, the trail heads through a small meadow. It quickly re-enters the woods, where it divides again at 0.17 miles. Turn left/north, where the trail skirts the meadow and woods.
Woodland edges are an ideal place for the smooth sumac. Though actually a shrub rather than a tree, its brilliant red to burgundy leaves make it a popular autumn sight.
Sumac grows up to 18 feet tall. Its leaves often stretch 14 inches long with up to 23 leaflets on a stem.
You’re likely to see a lot of sumac bunched together. It can expand quickly by forming a colony as clones sprout from its roots. It also isn’t picky about where it lives, liking both part shade and sun, both dry soils and those with average moisture, and both woodland edges and prairies, as well as roadsides and shorelines.
At 0.42 miles, the trail curves through the woods.
Paper birch
Even in autumn, a variety of birds make the woods their home. In the forested sections of the loop, watch for blue jays, chickadees, golden-crowned kinglets, hermit thrush, and the red-bellied woodpecker.
The trail re-enters a meadow area at 0.59 miles, offering a chance to see the harvest-hued trees on the horizon.
Upon reaching another woodland edge, a paper birch grove flourishes on the trail’s left/east. The striking white bark of paper birch with its yellow autumn leaves is truly an impressive sight.
Native Americans used the paper-like bark to make everything from canoes and wigwams to baskets and cups. Today, the birch still is useful in making a variety of products, whether it be spools and toothpicks, snowshoe frames or flooring, paper pulp or interior finish.
Paper birch doesn’t much like shade, so it must grow fast to outcompete other trees for canopy space. They typically rise 66 feet high, but some have reached double that height. The sugar maple still beats it out, though, usually growing higher, so birch often sticks to wetter soil, which maples don’t like.
As the trail enters another woods on the loop’s southeast corner, the Spring Peep Trail branches off at 0.81 miles. Continue straight/south. In about 50 feet is the Oak Trail junction (some maps refer to this as the western half of the Spring Peeper Trail). Go right/west onto it.
Red oak
The Oak Trail skirts a woods and savanna then runs through the forest.
Red oak is common in the arboretum. It often appears in northern mesic forests common in eastern Minnesota and neighboring Wisconsin. During autumn, their leaves turn brown, another nice accent to the oranges, reds and yellows of the arboretum’s other trees.
The tree is enormous. Growing quite straight and very tall, the red oak can reach up to 92 feet high with a trunk diameter of 39 inches. In old growth forests, the red oak soars even taller, and some even have been measured at 141 feet high. Red oaks grown in open areas, such as lawns, tend to be stouter, though, but can have a trunk diameter of up to 6.6 feet.
A XXL tree like the red oak also produces big acorns, which measure 1-1/8 inches long. With acorns that size, the tree is fairly easy to spot in autumn. The thoroughly fissured bark on mature red oaks is another giveaway.
Home stretch
When the trail comes to a four-way junction at 1.3 miles, continue straight/west. The trail soon becomes paved and enters a more open area.
At the next junction, go right/north. Stay on the paved path (which some maps refer to as the northeast portion of the Green Heron Trail), and ignore the next two junctions, one of which is a side trail and the other a connector to the Ridge Trail.
After entering the woods again at 1.5 miles, the path turns back to dirt, as it crosses the Great Heron Trail. Go straight/northwest.
At the next junction, you’ve come full circle. Head left/west onto the Ridge Trail. Ignore the next trail intersection and return to the parking lot.
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| Ridge and Oak Trails Loop map. Click for larger version. |
