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“Prairies are sometimes called ‘upside-down forests,’ because so much life is below the ground,” says narrator Penny Preston in the new documentary “The Last Prairie,” about the Jennings Prairie in Slippery Rock.
It’s a beautiful image that implies there’s often more than meets the eye in the natural world. At 20 acres, the Jennings Prairie is just a tiny sliver of land. It seems like a picturesque meadow tucked inside the Jennings Environmental Education Center but it’s actually a small but complete prairie ecosystem. It is the only public and protected prairie in Pennsylvania.
From “The Last Prairie” by Wild Excellence Films.
Several new scientific discoveries give hope that eastern hemlocks will not go the way of chestnut, elm and ash trees and largely disappear from forests in the Chesapeake Bay watershed.
Hemlocks are one of the most prevalent, longest-living, beautiful and ecologically vital trees in Appalachian forests. Sometimes called the redwoods of the East, they can take 250â300 years to mature and live more than 800 years.
They also have a long history with humans. Native Americans used hemlocks for medicines. Settlers used the tips of branches for tea and as a dye for wool and cotton. The mountains of Pennsylvania have ghost towns where leather factories sprung up to receive the tannin from hemlock bark to turn animal skins into leather. The treesâ intense shade cools streams and supports fish habitat. And many homeowners still want hemlocks in their landscaping tableaux.