Fifteen percent, or nearly 1 million acres, of the Adirondacks are wetlands. Whenever water is stopped, allowed to accumulate or made to move slowly, a wetland forms, and it will influence which trees grow where. It is also important to remember that nature doesn t distinguish habitats the way we do. Within each wetland there might be conditions of every type of wetland. Heron Marsh, at the Adirondack Park Visitor Center in Paul Smiths, is a good example of a wetland with swamp, marsh and bog conditions.
Swamps Looking at the plant life is the simplest way to identify a swamp.
This is especially helpful when the soil conditions are dry and the wetland looks anything but wet. In many swamps, water may be visible only during the spring and after a heavy rain, but because the ground generally remains saturated, the land is still classified as a wetland since only water-tolerant plants grow in these moist soils. Typical swamp trees include red maple, black ash, balsam fir, tamarack and black spruce. Buttonbush, willow, dogwood, speckled alder, winterberry, wild raisin, sweet gale and mountain holly are common shrubs. Because trees cannot root deeply in wet soils, trees are easily uprooted during a wind storm.