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Pretty pathway

Marquette’s Trestle Corridor maintained weekly

Katie Holm, left, a technician with the Marquette County Conservation District, and Kirsten Wynne, MCCD crew leader, pull invasive plants from the Trestle Corridor Thursday morning. The district maintains the native plant demonstration garden, which is located by Fourth Street along the multi-use path in the city of Marquette. (Journal photo by Christie Bleck)

MARQUETTE — Like any home, the Trestle Corridor has to be constantly maintained.

A crew from the Marquette County Conservation District gathered Thursday morning to pull invasive weeds from the demonstration garden the district tends.

Anyone who regularly walks down Fourth Street just south from Washington Street in the city of Marquette, or travels on the multi-use path in that area, should be familiar with the Trestle Corridor.

For a scenic section along that path, native wildflowers like blue flag iris and lupine grow alongside grasses like little and big bluestem.

A butterfly nest box also can be seen among the plants.

The Trestle Corridor, located in the city of Marquette, is a Monarch Waystation. These sites provide habitat to help monarch butterfly populations. (Journal photo by Christie Bleck)

A bit later in the season, common milkweed and joe-pye-weed should be in bloom. But for now, the yellow flower heads of lance-leaved coreopsis, for example, are starting to blossom.

The MCCD’s Elise Desjarlais, coordinator of the Central Upper Peninsula Cooperative Weed Management Area, oversaw district interns and paid field crew who pulled out non-native plants like burdock, a large plant whose leaves resemble rhubarb.

The workers typically are at the site Wednesdays during the growing season.

“We usually try to get out here once a week, just kind of tend to the garden, pull out the couple little invasives that are here, or this big one,” said Desjarlais, pointing to the big burdock.

She said the city owns the property, which she estimated to be between a quarter- and a half-acre, but the MCCD has an agreement to tend to the area.

Are there plans to expand?

“We have definitely all we can handle, but I would love to see it be this whole corridor right here, but it’s so much work, and the city kind of wants their nicer area over that way too,” Desjarlais said.

She was referring to the mowed area beyond the Trestle Corridor’s boundary.

However, that mowed area probably doesn’t attract the wildlife the more “unkempt” but more diverse Trestle Corridor attracts. A cottontail rabbit, for example, would have an easier time finding cover from predators among the thick stands of lupine than in a wide open spot.

It’s a basic ecological concept, one that has an easier time coming to fruition in habitat created — and maintained — to be environmentally friendly.

Desjarlais agreed, noting the corridor is a “nice little sanctuary” for pollinators.

“We have tons of different pollinator species in there that are good, and it provides a food source all throughout the season, and especially having it clumped in a patch like this is really nice because they can just come, land here and everything is here that they need, instead of having to travel really far distances,” Desjarlais said.

For instance, a pollinator might come upon a single bloom at one person’s house and then have to travel a mile before it finds more blooms, she said.

To keep the Trestle Corridor full of the desired native plants, crews have to pull things like common tansy, bladder campion and spotted knapweed.

You never know what you’ll notice at the Trestle Corridor.

District technician Katie Holm and crew leader Kirsten Wynne took part in Thursday’s work session in which they marveled at a fuzzy lupine pod, wondering if they should open one since it resembled “a little present.”

Holm said: “We’re just pulling out any of the invasive, non-native species in this garden — not garden, I guess native plants area — just trying to restore it.”

The two focused on removing species like tansy and St. John’s wort.

Desjarlais said the small trees that grow at the corridor will not be removed.

“They’re good for wildlife shelter,” Desjarlais said. “Butterflies will actually use them to use them as resting zones to fan out their wings on. They’re going to take a while to get any bigger than they are.”

Apart from providing good wildlife habitat and a place for passersby to admire, Desjarlais said the Trestle Corridor acts as a seed bank for the MCCD.

“For the last couple years, this is a really good source of native seed collection for us, to keep continuing other restoration projects for us, and that’s so important because native seed is so hard to source anymore,” Desjarlais said.

This year, though, she expects the district will conduct just a light seed collection — if any at all — and allow the plants to reseed themselves.

“It’s doing fantastic,” Desjarlais said of the Trestle Corridor. “It is totally doing its own thing, and we’re just here to kind of make sure it can keep doing that.”

Christie Bleck can be reached at 906-228-2500, ext. 250. Her email address is cbleck@miningjournal.net.

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