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?