Researchers study plants sprouting from century-old seeds uncovered during Toronto Port Lands excavation

Forestry PhD candidate Melanie Sifton examines soil recovered from the Port Lands construction site - At a Toronto Port Lands construction site on the city's waterfront, keen-eyed workers recently spotted plants that had sprouted from soil recently exposed by the removal of tonnes of earth. The plants were hard stem bulrush and cattails, which are commonly found in freshwater marshes. Because the plants grew from a patch of ground that had been seven metres below the surface for a century, conservationists concluded that they had grown from seeds buried when Ashbridges Bay Marsh at the mouth of the Don River was covered with landfill in the early 1900s. Now, a team of University of Toronto researchers including Sarah Finkelstein and Shelby Riskin is studying the soil removed from the site for a better understanding of the long-lost natural habitat. Finkelstein, a paleontologist and associate professor who is chair of the Faculty of Arts & Science's department of Earth sciences, studies paleoenvironmental records to better understand past climates and how ecosystems respond to environmental change. Mrinmayee Sengupta , an undergraduate geography student and University College member, will be helping her analyze the Port Lands soil. "Our first goal is to understand what the marsh looked like back then," Finkelstein says.