Christy Woods, a 17-acre property located on the southwest corner of the campus, is a resource and learning tool featuring tours unknown to many Ball State students.
For a number of years, one-hour tree walks have been given every Saturday at 2 p.m. during September and October. Free tours provided to the public focus on the colorful fall leaves, tree identification methods and the natural history of Indiana, John Taylor, Land Manager of Christy Woods and the Ball State University Field Station and Environmental Education Center, said.
The woods began as an area for hogs to graze, but when O.B. Christy was hired as a professor, he took his biology classes to the woods to transplant wild flowers from around the state. Fenced off until the 1940s, Christy Woods and the wildlife within it were allowed to grow and serve as a laboratory. It was later opened to the public and became not only a laboratory for educational purposes but also a park for nature lovers to explore. Now, thousands of students come to the woods throughout each year to experience the vast culture of Indiana wildlife, Taylor said.
Christy Woods is an outdoor classroom for exploring Indiana's natural diversity as well as the cultural history of our region.
"As part of my Ecology Methods course, I am measuring honeysuckle and its yearlings and saplings and how they effect the trees in general," Ebonee Cooper, a senior majoring in pre-med and biology, said.
Honeysuckle was removed from Christy Woods about 80 years ago, but at Miller Woods, it has not yet been removed, Scott Johnson, a senior majoring in biology and medical technology said.
"We are measuring whether or not the abundance of tree growth is different here in Christy Woods, where there is hardly any honeysuckle, compared to the abundance of tree growth in Miller Woods, where there is still honeysuckle," Johnson said.
While each tour varies depending upon the questions asked, a wide variety of information can be obtained.
"It is an opportunity for people to feel reconnected with the land that is home to all of us," Taylor said. "Our hope is that people who attend these walks come away with a greater appreciation for the value of places like Christy Woods."
During these walks, people can learn interesting information - such as the fact that deer and birds are able to eat poison ivy, a member of the cashew family, Taylor said. Cashew nuts are poisonous and can only be eaten when roasted. Walkers on the tour are also informed that a natural antidote to poison ivy can be found in the stems of the Jewel Weed or Touch Me Nots. If infected with a rash from the ivy, people can take the stem of the plant and squeeze the sap contained in the seeds on the rash. The rash will disappear within a matter of days.
Christy Woods provides much more than just trees. Two greenhouses on the property are filled with orchids and tropical plants from around the world. Visitors can also find a grassland prairie, a bog, a pond, a sedge meadow, an assortment of birds, raccoons, chipmunks, squirrels, frogs and turtles.
Exotic plants coming from various locations around the planet and rare trees such as the Ginkgo Tree and the Chinese-Dawn Redwood, which are both classified as "Reliced" or "Living Fossil" trees because they were only known to be in existence after they were discovered in China - before that, they were only known to exist through fossils collected. The rarity of the Chinese-Dawn Redwood comes from a single tree where the original seeds were rumored to have been dispersed across the globe with one of the seeds being planted in Christy Woods, Taylor said.
Other material covered in the walks includes the difference between a leaf and a leaflet, various species of trees, a brief history of the prairie grass found in northwest Indiana and other plain states and the uses of certain trees and plants in everyday life.
The woods are available for anybody to explore with the tours intended specifically for the public.
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