Townsend Woods Scientific and Natural Area

Townsend Woods was designated an SNA to preserve a high quality remnant of Big Woods sugar maple forest, a native plant community ranked as imperiled in Minnesota.

This small but important site is associated with the Emmons-Faribault moraine: an area of rolling topography formed beneath and at the margins of stagnant glacial ice. Irregular knobs and ridges, dotted by lakes and wetlands, offered a barrier to fire that allowed the forest to develop and persist here. Through the years, the old-growth stand within the SNA also managed to escape the impacts of gravel mining, clear-cut logging and conversion to cropland. Aside from small-scale maple sugaring and some selective cutting of elm, it is essentially undisturbed.

The forest has an open aspect, with young maples in the understory but few shrubs. Large red oak and sugar maple dominate in the canopy, joined by basswood, elm and ironwood. Hollows among the hills host a small pond as well as ephemeral pools found in spring and during periods of above average rainfall. A steep ridge with north/northeast-facing slopes bi-sects the site, below which a small creek runs through a cattail marsh.