A word about tent caterpillars

Forest Tent Caterpillars are unsightly but they are native and therefore have natural enemies here so the worst thing to do is to use insecticides (which would also kill their natural enemies directly or indirectly). While they can cause partial defoliation of some trees (cherries seem to be among their favorites) the trees are not permanently affected and indeed have evolved along with this mild defoliation pressure from these caterpillars. They really should be left alone. They have many natural enemies in the insect world. Caterpillars are frequently parasitized by various tiny braconid, ichneumonid, and chalcid wasps. Several predators and a few diseases also help to regulate their populations. This, in part, accounts for the fluctuating population levels from year to year. Birds and small mammals are known to eat them as well.

If you must get rid of them in your own yard: Remove the egg masses during winter to reduce the problem next spring. In the early spring, small tents can be removed and destroyed by hand. Larger tents may be pruned out and destroyed or removed by winding the nest upon the end of a stick.

For more information

Time to pull the mustard

Garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata), that is. This exotic wildflower, introduced to the U.S. from Europe in the late 1800s, is killing our woodlands.

From the New York Times, May 2, 2006:

Researchers have found that it disrupts a healthy relationship between hardwood tree seedlings and soil fungi, with results that can be disastrous for a forest.

Many plants make use of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, which form an elaborate network of filaments throughout the soil. These fungi are a diverse group, but they all have one thing in common: they help plants take up nutrients from the soil, getting carbon in return.

Garlic mustard is a member of the mustard family, "one of the very few families that do not need to associate with mycorrhizal fungi at all," Dr. Stinson said. These species produce chemicals that have antifungal properties. Native mustards have been around long enough, she suggested, that the mycorrhizal fungi have learned to live with them. But the fungi haven't had time to adapt to garlic mustard. "It basically is killing off the fungi," she said.

It bullies out our native spring ephemerals, it secretes a compound which destroys the soil fungi that is critical to the survival of our trees, and it fools a native butterfly to lay eggs on it that its the caterpillars can't eat. Here's a primer on the proper protocols for pulling it out. It's a prolific seeder, so bagging it is important.

Freaky ramps

Today I was back at Corson's Brook Woods in Staten Island for my Torrey plant walk. I came across this: Ramps (Allium tricoccum) with a spooky white stripe. Prematurely grey from worry over site development? The state did want to build on the site. It's actually probably from a virus. I know some plants in the horticultural trade, such as tulips, have viruses introduced to created patterns on petals or leaves.


Gratuitous wildflower photo of downy yellow violet (Viola pubescens).

Sourland Mountains, NJ

All this rain is ruining my plant walks! I've been looking forward to the Raritain River floodplain walk on Torrey Botanical Society's field trip page. Bluebells, bluebells, and bluebells. They are really just gorgeous. And, for some reason, not in New York. So, I would've gotten my fix if it hadn't rained. And I hadn't gotten lost. Instead, I went to Sourland Mountain Nature Preserve.

Early saxifrage (Saxifraga virginiensis) on a muddy lump. Note the hairy stems. These sticky stalks protect its precious nectar and pollen from maurading non-pollinators such as ants.

Pennywort (Obolaria virginica) is an interesting wildflower with its reduced, scale-like leaves. This species is no longer found in NYC.

Emerging rattlesnake fern (Botrychium virginianum). A persnickety fern, a good indicator of ecological integrity, due to its relationship with mycorrhizal fungi. This species is rare in NYC.
Wild licorice leaves (Galium circaezans)

Jack in the pulpit (Arisaema triphyllum) with deep burgundy stripes on spathe, which acts as an umbrella for the spadix, the actual inflorescence hiding inside which bears tiny blossoms.

The ways of Callery pear

Callery pear (Pyrus calleryana) planted along Rt 440 in Staten Island.

Callery pear (Pyrus calleryana) planted along Rt 440 in Staten Island.

Callery pear (Pyrus calleryana) volunteering along Rt 440 in Staten Island.

Callery pear (Pyrus calleryana) now found in Conference House Park. That was easy math.

Corson's Brook Woods 07

Last year was my first time at Corson's Brook Woods, and it made a big impression on me - such a mecca of spring wildflowers! So, I visited again this year and it did not disappoint.

Blue cohosh (Caulophyllum thalictroides). A striking spring ephemeral, with its unusual flower color and greyish blue glaucous stem. Rare in NYC.

American beech (Fagus grandifolia). I don't know why, but beech trees hold onto their leaves all winter. They are a welcome splash of color in a winter woodland - and even in spring. Rich forest soils.


Bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis). Pure white. Lovely and fleeting. Rare in NYC.

Trout lily (Erythronium americanum). An impressive amount, it just went on and on. These types of shade tolerant species are slow growing, and so such large colonies are very old - the population could've been many decades old.


Virginia waterleaf (Hydrophyllum virginianum). Decorative foliage - the silvery spots that look like water stains. I'm surprised this isn't used more in the hort trade. It's a great groundcover. Found in rich forest soils and floodplains. Rare in NYC.

Plant Blindness

An excellent overview of the phenomenon - how people don't see plants - from Tuesday's Science Times.

We barely notice plants, can rarely identify them and find them incomparably inert. “Animals are much more vivid to the average person than plants are,” Dr. Raven said, “and some people aren’t even sure that plants are alive.”

*sigh* sadly, it's true. Although, in my experience, people do notice trees, and care a heck of a lot about garden flora.

Destruction at Split Rock Golf Course

Parks does it again. Now the issue is natural areas within golf courses (that were originally carved out of...natural areas). Split Rock Golf Course in Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx is now under new management. It seems there was nothing in the contract about leaving things as is . These folks want every blessed inch within the fence to be golf turf. Arck! And we had just gotten the other company to stop mowing the rare purple milkweed!
Surveying the damage...


Persimmons - a state listed rare tree. Now you see them...



Now you don't! Chipped into a woody pulp. It goes on...I just don't have the stomach for this anymore.

Magnolias face perilous future

The spectacular bloom of a magnolia may be a very common sight in gardens, but in the wild it is a different story.

A new report has found that over half the world's magnolia species are
facing extinction in their forest habitats. To wit, the sweetbay magnolia pictured here

Blue wood sedge in flower

This is my northfacing windowbox. It contains maidenhair fern, wild columbine, wood poppy, common blue violet, and blue wood sedge (Carex flaccosperma). It's bluish-green leaves overwintered (evergreen), but are tender, so they do get brown.

This plant shouldn't be in flower until the end of April, but I guess no one told it that. You can clearly see the male flowers - the lemon yellow anthers - at the top of the inflorescence. The female flowers - clear stigmas - have yet to emerge below.

Laurel wilt disease

Boy, we keep rolling out the good news here.

Laurel wilt disease is the newest problem that may soon reach our area. It is a rapidly spreading non-native fungus spread by the Asian ambrosia beetle that is killing sassafras, laurel, and spicebush (members of the laurel family) in the Southeast. The outlook is not encouraging. This would also be bad news for various swallowtail butterflies adapted to them. This is a very good example of why we need to regulate the provenance of plant material. Tree nurseries have spread many diseases in the past, and it seems, will continue to do so.

Asian Longhorn Beetle infestation

The Asian Longhorn Beetle has found its way to a natural area on Staten Island. ALB was first discovered in the US in street trees in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. The insect is thought to have arrived here from woody packing materials from China. ALB has proved to be persistent and able to spread from infestations when eradication has not been completed.

Now it looks like half the trees on the island will need to be cut down and chipped (which is how USDA treats this infestation). It should be interesting to see what comes back - on the Brunswick shale dreg island that is Pralls. Let's just hope this is the first and last natural area where we find these beetles.

Update:
Video of ALB on Pralls Island from the Staten Island Advance.

Drosera in Treehugger!

Our herbarium sheets get a shout out in Treehugger! We are so excited!

Beavers in the Bronx

Of course, this is not the Bronx, it's the Catskills, but you get the idea.

After decades of absence, a male beaver and lodge seen in the Bronx River...amazing!

Biophilia at Work in NYC

What characteristic of park space do New Yorkers value most?

The overwhelming majority say "landscape", which I will liberally interpret as natural area.

(results from 2/09/07 poll)

Laugh, Cry, and a Flora

I think I'm going to present this botanical news in an order other than presented in the title - so as to be more "uplifting", like a Frank Capra film.

First, the flora.

CHECKLIST AND ATLAS OF THE VASCULAR FLORA OF WEST VIRGINIA

This 381-page printed document includes a series of completely revised lists of the vascular plants known to occur outside of cultivation in West Virginia and a dot map indicating from which counties each of the 2503 taxa is recorded.

But wait, there's more! You'll also get -

* a reference to names and classification of all the ferns, trees,wildflowers and other vascular plants and the counties in the state in which they occur;
* which species are native, introduced, adventive, or exotic;
* which are classified as wetland species, which may be invasive to natural areas;
* those needing further field work,
* those needing systematic study, and
* those tracked by the West Virginia Natural Heritage program as state rare.

Here's how to get yours!

Now, for the infuriating...

Again, US Fish and Wildlife does the bidding of their boss, the most unenvironmentally savvy President to ever walk the earth. May his days be filled with his own, personal global warming.

Fury sprouts over agency's failure to protect rare, local plant
from The Daily Sentinel

Raising the ire of conservationists, a rare plant that exists almost
entirely within areas that have been leased for oil and gas development in Mesa and Garfield counties will not be protected under the Endangered Species Act in the foreseeable future, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Wednesday...

And a feel good story if there ever was one - how botany brings the people of the world together (see photo).

from The Berkleyan

A plant-based diet for small-planet diplomats
Can botanical exchanges between the U.S. and Iran play the peacemaking role that ping-pong did 30 years ago?

As measured by international time zones or teenage girls' hemlines, the Islamic Republic of Iran and the American West are worlds apart. Yet as viewed through the lens of geography, geology, or climate, the nation- state and western United States have worlds in common . sharing not only the same northern latitudes but, in significant measure, important topographical features (large central plateaus, with interior-draining basins, lying between mountain ranges), Mediterranean climates, active earthquake faults, and (due in large part to these other similarities) a notably rich flora, with hundreds of plant species in common...

Can't you just feel the love?

Backyard Invasions

The curator holds an herbarium sheet. These are invaluable for determining historical floristic compositions of an area, among other things.

(For more about herbarium sheets and their botanical role - click on "store")
The article "New exhibit focuses on invasive plants," is about a new exhibit at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, features images of invasive and endangered Pennsylvania plants. The display — both informative and elegant — is a combination of drawings, paintings, etchings, and giclées (digital prints).

Overall the article does a good job of framing the issues, with the exception of the author's final comment about cultivars that "are native plants" that "can satisfy a consumer's wants without harming the environment." This is not entirely true, but that discussion is a post in and of itself.

Educating the public about the ecological costs of invasives is important, as they continue to devastate our systems. Case in point, newly published research shows how a honeysuckle shrub (Lonicera mackii) used in gardens and landscapes harms forests by disturbing the understory layer, tree reproduction and mature tree productivity.

Hardwood stands from southwestern Ohio had noticeably lower species diversity and vegetation cover below the shrubs to detect growth changes 25 years prior to and 25 years following invasion. The growth rates of overstory trees was reduced significantly. The effect of this slowdown were first observed about 6 yrs after invasion with the greatest frequency of negative growth changes occurring 20 yrs after invasion.

The abstract - Hardwood forest invasion by a non-indigenous shrub (Amur honeysuckle) negatively affects overstory productivity (a pdf)
More on the invasiveness of shrub honeysuckles

Arverne by the Sea, Queens

I had heard a lot of hoopla about Arverne by the Sea, we got there and it was a pretty big letdown. The neighborhood itself is really depressing, very impoverished. I've been all over the city, but I've never seen anything like it. It was like being in a desolate Rust Belt town.

A view down the boardwalk. Bayberry in foreground, lots of shore little bluestem in background.


Northern bayberry (Myrica (Morella) pensylvanica) holds onto some of it's leaves through winter, although you can see quite a few on the ground. Lovely russet color. The fruits are harder to see but they are there. They have a high lipid content - excellent nourishment for migrating birds. Arverne, Queens.

A view towards the A train tracks


Golden hues of shore little bluestem (Schizachyrium littorale)


Northern bayberry (Myrica pensylvanica) leaves blanket the ground, shading out grass seedlings. The shrubs are also colonial, meaning they reproduce vegetatively. These strategies enable bayberry to succeed switchgrass, little bluestem et al in maritime/coastal grassland communities. It's also a great wintry color palette: gold, russet, gray.

Urban Blight Botanizing at Dubos Point

Salt marsh cordgrass (Spartina alterniflora) culms with sea lavender stems (Limonium carolinianum).

Poor Dubos Point. I found a reference to it as a site for "Urban Blight Birding" . This is too bad, since the 33-acre site is named in honor of Dr. Rene Dubos, he of the great phrase, “Think globally, act locally.” And while the spirit of this sentiment seems to have been lost on the NYC parks dept, that is probably a good thing. Their neglect often leads to more natural area. Parks targeted for "improvements" get excessive amounts of the built - boardwalk, trail, birdblinds while simultaneously diminishing the natural - incursion of invasive plants from disturbance and construction vehicles, loss of rare plants due to uninformed site design.

I should do more yoga - this frustration has to seep out somehow.


Just across from JFK...

Back to my site visit. Dubos Point was a saltwater marsh until 1912, at which point it was filled with dredged materials for real estate development. The project failed to materialize. Today, it is the largest salt marsh on the north shore of the Rockaway peninsula east of Rockaway Point.


High tide line with felled Spartina alterniflora, groundsel bush (Baccharis halimfolia) and marsh-elder (Iva fructescens). And, of course, detritus. This is urban blight botanizing, after all.


More floatsam. The most interesting thing is the coconut. I wonder if that came from nearby garbage, or instead from some tropical paradise. It's not unheard of, those suckers travel far. They've been found off the coast of Ireland. Today I counted 5 coconuts!

Some of the plants seen in the salt marsh areas:

Graminoids - salt grass (Distichlis spicata), blackgrass (Juncus gerardii), common reed (Phragmites australis), salt marsh cordgrass (Spartina alterniflora), salt meadow cordgrass (Spartina patens).
Shrubs - groundsel bush (Baccharis halimfolia) and marsh-elder (Iva fructescens).
Forbs - sea rocket (Cakile edentula), sea lavender (Limonium carolinianum), glasswort (Salicornia europaea), seaside goldenrod (Solidago sempervirens).

In addition to salt marsh, we also saw maritime grasslands. Both of these vegetative communities are rare in NYC.

Frozen toes in PBP

Today I visited The Meadow in Pelham Bay Park. I dressed so warmly, but instead of wearing my insulated boots I wore my summer field shoes - aka my old running sneakers. With only one pair of socks, I was dancing up and down to keep my toes limber. Hard to do when the high is only 25 F.

Anyway, this area became a meadow when the area was scraped for fill soil to create Orchard Beach - another of Robert Moses' handiworks. This time, though, the results aren't all that bad. It created a wet depression that is home to quite a nice assortment of plants, especially those that are rare in the city and the state. The clusters of staghorn sumac (Rhus typhina) are such a treat in the winter.
I found several of the hard empty shells before I saw the walnut tree (Juglans nigra). It is pretty easy to id in winter. It has big, stout, sparse branches and dark deeply furrowed bark. Hundreds of Canada goldenrod (Solidago canadensis) stems surrounded its base.

This little bluestem (Schizachyrium sp.) turned out to be the coastal species (littorale) - shore little bluestem. Pelham is outer coastal plain. The "interior" species (S. scoparium) is found across the borough in western Bronx in Van Cortlandt Park.

Lots of pasture rose (Rosa carolina) where we entered (see first photo) but this is multiflora rose (R. multiflora), one of the worst invasive plants in the state. Looks pretty here though, no?

Anthropologie & moss loss

Anthropologie's store windows and displays have me upset. They feature a lot of moss - wait, let me rephrase that - A LOT OF MOSS (and liverworts in there too) and fungi, mostly shelf fungi. I wish I had a picture...

Anyway, far too much, in just the one store. And how many other stores have the same displays? Why worry, you ask? Because, where do they get these biological elements? They are harvested from the wild. Probably with permits, but still, what is the ecological repercussion(s) of this? {My concerns also apply to mining peat moss for orchids and garden beds - bad, bad, bad).

This study, sadly, supports my sadness.

Yearly revenues from sales of commercial moss harvest permits were reported to be US$19,650. In contrast, estimates of total harvests based on export data and assumptions about those data suggest that the mean yearly harvest for the years 1998–2003 was between 4.6 and 18.4 million air-dry kg (yearly minimum and maximum estimated at 0.9 and 37.4 million air-dry kg, respectively). Moss sales (domestic plus exports) are estimated to total between US$˜6 million and 165 million per year. The wide ranges in these estimates illustrate how little is known about the moss harvest trade. In combination with lack of information about the size of the moss inventory, reaccumulation rates, and species and ecosystem functions potentially affected by harvest, results indicate that policy makers and land managers lack critical information on which to base harvest regulations.

When helping is hurting

Preserving endangered plant populations can be very straight forward. Save a site from development, save the plants. Other times it is complicated. This story is the latter, and why gardening and restoration, albeit noble and important, are no substitute for conservation.

This story is about the Presidio clarkia (Clarkia franciscana) pictured above and two gardeners who thought they were "helping".

Horticultural 'bad guys' meant well

NO MATTER HOW you look at it, Concord resident Bob Case is an unlikely villain in a recent kerfuffle over the Presidio clarkia, a delicate little blossom that grows in only two places in the world -- San Francisco's Presidio and on a small patch of the Oakland hills.

Read more of the story
Learn more about Presidio clarkia

Soundview Park, BX

Today I visited Soundview Park, targeting specific sections to see if there was any vegetation of interest. Most of the sections I looked at were fill soils with mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris) as the dominant species - exotic, invasive, nada.

The area that had the most interesting vegetation was the jetty. My presumption is that the jetty is similar to high quality (clean) sandy fill - no nutrients, no weeds.
Soundview Park is in the south Bronx, where the Bronx River opens into the East River. This sections is estuarine, meaning the water is brackish. The salinity levels of the Bronx River diminish (becomes freshwater) a little further north, near the Bronx Zoo. So, as expected, much of the vegetation I saw was typical of salt marsh/maritime areas. The grounsel bush (Baccharis halimifolia) and marsh elder (Iva fructens) seen above are testament to the presence of saltwater. It was a rather nice saltmarsh, small, and no botanical surprises.
Seaside goldenrod (Solidago sempervirens)


The park has been derelict for so long the the locals feel comfortable squatting on city land, whether for boats...


Or the dead. Dead what? I don't know. I don't think I want to know. After we passed the memorial, there was a wretched smell - a giant, rotting dead dog. People, I don't make this stuff up.

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Now you can coordinate your wildflower walk with a Greenmarket visit!

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