The good news about being a landscape extension specialist is you get to comment on a variety of landscape tree problems. The bad news? You get to comment on a variety of landscape tree problems. In an average week I probably get 10-15 tree-related calls or e-mails from homeowners, landscapers, growers, extension educators, lawyers, newspapers, and on and on. Sometimes the problem is routine and obvious like tar spot on maples; “I have these spots that look like tar on my maple leaves…” Sometimes the problem looks routine and turns into something else entirely different like the Imprelis herbicide debacle. … Continue reading this article “Going off half-cocked”
Month: June 2013
Sheep-eating flowers?!
I was planning to follow up on Jeff’s phosphorus post with a bit more “phun with phosphorous.” However, I was completely derailed by Ray Eckhart’s message and link left for me on our GP facebook page with this headline:
RHS ‘sheep-eating’ plant about to bloom in Surrey
“The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) at Wisley said the Puya
chilensis, a native of Chile, would bloom in the next few days and last
about a week.
In the Andes it uses its sharp spines to snare and trap sheep and other animals, which slowly starve to death.”… Continue reading this article “Sheep-eating flowers?!”
Phosphorus and Big Macs
Minnesota, and I were cruising through old pictures and files and getting all sentimental about the cool stuff we used to do. A lot of it was never published just because after we were done with one thing we were just too damn excited to move on to the next. Anyway, one of the neatest experiments that we never wrote up was a phosphorus experiment. Here’s what it looked like to the casual observer.
Now let me explain the neat part to you a little. … Continue reading this article “Phosphorus and Big Macs”
Label GMO foods? Sure, why not?
Lots of coverage in the mainstream media these days over various initiatives to label GMO foods. I think GMO foods should be labeled; but not for the reasons you might think.
My personal opinion on GMO foods is that their benefits outweigh the potential downsides. I think GMO foods should be labeled to make the public aware of how much of our food supply depends on GMO’s and the cost of not using GMO’s. Obviously this will raise some social justice issues since wealthy people will have more opportunity to opt out of buying non-GMO products than the poor but it’s the same problem we have with organic already and it doesn’t seem to cause much of a stir.… Continue reading this article “Label GMO foods? Sure, why not?”
Moss-tacular!
Mosses are soft, green, and tough as nails, as shown in a recent article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (prestigious, high impact journal with a rather unfortunate acronym).
Dr. Catherine La Farge and associates, from the University of Alberta, visited a remote glacier on Ellesmere Island, Nunavut while studying the wild, wide world of arctic bryophyte systematics. Bryophytes are ancient, non-vascular, non-flowering plants – mosses and liverworts, mostly.
Long story short, they harvested bits of moss that had been trapped in ice for about 400 years and were now exposed.… Continue reading this article “Moss-tacular!”
Lights!
Today I want to share something that I’ve been working on recently with Fine Gardening that is really cool! So you know all of those lights you can buy to get your plants started over the winter? Did you ever wonder which of those lights really work? I’m going to leave the final answer for my article, but let me tell you, there’s a world of differences between the lights. The best seem to be some LED lights that aren’t available yet, but are made by a company called Heliospectra. … Continue reading this article “Lights!”
The Canary in the Coal Mine
Three weekends ago marked a milestone of sorts as mean daily CO2 levels at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration observatory at Mauna Loa, Hawaii topped 400 ppm for the first time ever. Rising levels of CO2 and other greenhouse gases could result in significant increases in temperature in the Upper Midwest over the next century. When we think about trees in cities the scenario is even worse since not only will urban trees have to deal with overall temperature increases but they must also contend with urban heat island effects, which can add another 8 deg.… Continue reading this article “The Canary in the Coal Mine”