The good people at Greenbelt Biota have been trying to take me on a tour of Greenbriar Park, at the corner of Mandan Road and Hanover Parkway, for nearly a year now, but for one reason or another we haven’t quite managed to put it together. I finally met Kevin Carpenter-Driscoll, environmental coordinator for the City of Greenbelt, there on Friday for this story for the News Review.
Greenbriar Park was recently added to the Greenbelt Forest Preserve (see the September 23, 2021 issue of this paper for more information on the council vote on that). Members of the Forest Preserve Advisory Board are hosting a walking tour of the park on Sunday, April 10 and, as I am not free that day, Carpenter-Driscoll agreed to meet me in advance to provide a preview for News Review readers.
I’ve been to the park before, as part of a park tour I did for the paper, but it was entirely different to go through it with a guide than it was to go through it with Dan last year, when we pretty much just whacked each other in the face with branches and got tangled in the many thorned vines that abound and from which, it turns out, the park got its name. “Watch out for the greenbriers,” Carpenter-Driscoll said, holding a long vine out of my way.
“That’s what they’re called?”
“Smilax rotundifolia, right?” said my friend, Amy, looking at Carpenter-Driscoll, who nodded. That probably meant something but it was all Latin to me, but I covered it up by nodding sagely and congratulating Amy for being right.
Greenbriar Park, at a petite seven acres, is particularly interesting. It remains as it was when Greenbelt was first developed in 1937, by which I mean it is a tiny portion of the city that has never been developed, or at least not developed during contemporary times. It has, therefore, unusual biodiversity, some of which Carpenter-Driscoll pointed out as we walked. There was a rare sweet birch tree, flowering cherries, fiddlehead ferns, crows chasing a raven, a nesting pair of red-shouldered hawks, mountain laurel, a lone swamp cabbage poking up its head and native sweetbay magnolia trees, among many other delights.
To walk through any of the woods around Greenbelt with someone who knows the flora and fauna is to be transported into a far richer world than the one I experience alone. Alone I walk through the woods and think “plant, plant, that’s a tree, green, don’t trip, more green, different color green, eek that’s a spider web in the face.” But with a guide I am shown differently, made to see the vibrant lushness that surrounds us. With a guide, I get excited about fungi. So it was with Carpenter-Driscoll on Friday.
You can learn all about the unique space that is Greenbriar Park on Sunday, April 10 at 1 p.m. on a guided tour provided by members of the Forest Preserve Advisory Board. To learn more, email Carpenter-Driscoll at kdriscoll@greenbeltmd.gov.