Nature Bulletin No. 55   March 2, 1946
Forest Preserve District of Cook County
Clayton F. Smith, President
Roberts Mann, Superintendent of Conservation

****:ROTTING LOGS

There is drama in a rotting log. Apparently lifeless and useless there on 
the ground, it harbors thousands of living things within and beneath it. 
Feeding on the wood of the log, living and dying, generation after 
generation of them, they convert it back into minerals which a fertile 
healthy forest soil must have. They also add the humus which not only 
helps the soil to hold its moisture but also aids in making the soil 
minerals usable as food by plants, including trees. Finally there is 
nothing left but crumbling punk shot through and through with the 
hyphae, or roots, of molds and mushrooms. Some of the common lower 
plant and animal forms found in a rotting log in our forest preserves are 
these:

bacteria                protozoa                  millipedes
molds                   round worms (nematodes)   roaches
fungi (mushrooms)       land snails and slugs     crickets
lichens                 earthworms                fly larvae (maggots)
mosses                  bugs                      beetle larvae
centipedes              beetles

There is an interesting story in the way each of these plants and animals 
attacks the rotting log. The boring beetles, for instance, chew up the 
wood but the digestion is done by hosts of microscopic animals 
(protozoa) packed in their intestines. Earthworms have ferments in their 
saliva which convert the woody substances into sugar.

Dead and dying trees, while they stand, furnish homes for many 
mammals and birds such as bats, squirrels, raccoons, possums, wrens, 
bluebirds, woodpeckers, wood ducks and owls. They furnish food for 
many of these. When they fall and lie there rotting they furnish homes 
and food for many other mammals, snakes and insects -- winter and 
summer.

They play a vital part in encriching the soil, keeping it fertile and 
maintaining the abundant variety of life to be found in our natural 
forest.

Woodsman, spare that dead tree !