Skogssjön area nature reserve

Nature reserve

The Skogssjö areais a heavily hilly landscape shaped by the ice sheet as it melted away 10,000-12,000 years ago. In one of the depressions today lies Skogssjön.

When the inland ice retreated, it left behind a large ice block that remained here. Sand and gravel were deposited around it in the form of eskers and hills. The well-formed esker west of Skogssjön is one of these.

When the ice then melted, a so-called dead ice depression was formed, which filled with water and created a beautiful lake. The reserve also covers part of one of the most well-developed marginal deltas we have in southern Sweden. The marginal delta is a gravel formation that was deposited by the Baltic Sea, which covered large parts of southern Sweden during the melting of the inland ice.

The Skogssjö area mainly consists of sparse coniferous forest with several old pines. In the south, there is some deciduous forest and around the farm Stora Skogssjö, there are more open grazing lands with junipers.

Just north of the lake on a sandy slope, there are several unusual plants that typically occur in the steppes of southeastern Europe. Among these is the yellow pea plant fuzzwood, which is only known from five additional locations on the Swedish mainland, all located in western Östergötland.