Aggressive invasive plants have established at the entrance to the mature forest: 

Spring beauty (white) - mixed in with false mermaid

Mature and sapling/seedling sugar maples and American beech

An intact mature forest, with full canopy, resists invasions. In the foreground, where the canopy is open at the entrance to the site, the green patch of invasives is established.  That "green line" stops at the mature forest tree line, thick with trees and full canopy.

  Intact mature forests naturally repel nonnative 

  invasions. The pilot site appears to have no invasives. This      is unusual. Two aggressive invaders are established at      the pilot's entrance, where there is little forest canopy. 

Garlic mustard and multiflora rose - raindrops on camera lens

Dryopteris intermedia

Carex plantaginea - in flower

Spring ephemerals at the LaDue pilot - that usually only occur in a mature forest:

The mature forests at the LaDue pilot site house multiple key indicator species for a mature forest - taking many years to establish

Two-leaved toothwort - host plant of  the declining West Virginia White  butterfly

Squirrelcorn or Dutchman's breeches