A great way to plant perennials “en masse”

North Creek Nurseries in Landenberg, PA is a marvelous, native-centric (but not exclusively native) nursery.  North Creek is a wholesale propagator (sells liners
to other nurseries for finishing).  But if you can meet the $300 minimum, they’d probably be happy to fill your order.  They have, among the usual liner sizes, a very neat product – "Landscape Plugs." I’ve been wanting to try them for a while – our work with the backhoe this past summer cleared some nice large swathes of the cursed autumn olive, and made room for perennials.  I selected a number of locally-native species from North Creek’s extensive listings, with the plan to scatter them along the creek sides and sunny spots of our 4-acre field/meadow/thingy.

Primarily marketed for restoration and conservation projects, these"landscape plugs" are simply huge liners – great for anyone who wants a large number of a certain species without paying an arm and a leg.  Each 5" deep tray holds 32 plugs.  North Creek carries a wide array of Eastern N. American natives perennials, grasses, and ferns – mostly straight species with a few named cultivars.  I ordered eight different species for a total of 256 plants (and 256 holes to dig). The species I picked out ran from $1.08 to $1.40 per plug. They arrived within a few days via UPS, packed two trays per box, and all were intact and in good shape.  All were well-rooted, having been "stuck" the previous season and then overwintered/vernalized. I expect most will bloom this year. Will report back!

North Creek Nurseries landscape plug of Solidago shortii ‘Solar Cascade.’ Nice roots, no?

The new American chestnut tree: resistant survivor or Frankentree?

Recently ScienceDaily.com posted an article about American chestnut trees due to be planted in New York City. Researchers hope that these trees will be resistant to chestnut blight, an introduced fungal disease that pretty much wiped out mature specimens over the last 100 years.

When I lived in Buffalo, I was a member of the American Chestnut Foundation and every spring I helped with efforts to replant chestnuts in the hopes that resistant individuals might be found.  The problem is that the disease doesn’t kill young trees: it can take many years to find out whether a particular tree is resistant or not.


Chestnut suckers from live roots of blight-killed tree. I saw these a lot in western NY forests in the 1990’s.

Part of the earlier research efforts involved crossing resistant European chestnut with American chestnut in hopes of creating resistant hybrids.  The downside, of course, is that such offspring would not be “pure” American chestnuts.  More importantly to many people, these hybrids might not produce the same quality of nuts.

The research mentioned in the Science Daily article involves creating transgenic plants: a wheat gene resistant to the fungus was inserted into the chestnut genome with the hopes that the resulting trees would be immune to blight.  These trees are genetically modified organisms, or GMOs.

It’s worth noting that it’s this kind of work that has been branded as “Frankentree” research, which incites a lot of fear and hysteria.  It’s what caused ecoterrorists to mistakenly firebomb the UW Center for Urban Horticulture in 2001 when I was faculty there.  It’s what causes people to freak out about eating GMO foods.

So my question for you – does the fact that transgenic chestnut trees will be “on the loose” fill you with fear?  Or does it make you hopeful that we’ve possibly found a way to overcome an introduced disease?  (As I just noticed in reading this over before posting that I used some form of the word “hope” in nearly every paragraph.  I guess it shows where I stand.)

Cypress mulch re-visited

After Jeff’s recent eclectic musical selection of Rasputina’s 1816, I thought I’d go a little more mainstream with Lynard Skynard’s ‘Swamp music’.  Turn it up and remember; if it’s too loud, you’re too old. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wJWBcj7lsY

So, what got me thinking about the swampy backwoods down South and the late, great Ronnie Van Zant?  The arrival of pallet after pallet of bagged cypress mulch at every gas station/convenience store in the area.  Like the first robin, the annual appearance of bagged cypress mulch is another harbinger of spring.  Awhile back (Oct 2009 to be exact) I commented on efforts by some environmentalists to boycott cypress mulch.  The rationale behind the boycott is that cypress mulch is harvested from wetlands in Louisiana and Florida.  Many of these areas are environmentally sensitive and it is difficult to regenerate new stands after harvest because of frequent inundation.

In response to the calls for a boycott, the Louisiana Forestry Association countered with a series of Cypress FAQ’s. http://www.laforestry.com/site/ForestFacts/Cypress/FAQ.aspx The Forestry Association, not surprisingly, deems the proposed boycott an overreaction, noting that cypress makes up only a small proportion of all timber harvested and that only about one-fifth of cypress harvested goes into mulch.  While it’s true that cypress is a comparatively minor species in terms of acres logged, much of this area includes some of the most sensitive ecosystems in the country.  And I was actually surprised to learn that the proportion of cypress that went into mulch was that high (20%).  Cypress timber is extremely valuable for decking and other high-end uses; I had always assumed mulch was a fairly minor component of the overall market.  But clearly, diverting a portion of the harvest to mulch could tip the balance and make some marginal logging operations profitable.

So, where do I come down on the boycott issue?  I suppose in a sense I boycott cypress mulch because I’ve never bought any and never intend to buy any.  Bob Schutzki and I conducted a study several years ago that showed that landscape shrubs grew as well or better when mulched with locally produced ground pine bark or ground hardwood bark than with cypress mulch.  Even mulch from ground recycled pallets (yes, that stuff dyed a red color not found in nature) did better than cypress.  So for me the issue has been moot.  Buy a local product and support your local forest products industry.

Quiz answer – difference between spores and pollen

You got it!  Horsetails don’t produce pollen, and those airborne particles are spores.  Primitive plants such as mosses, ferns, and horsetails don’t have the same reproductive structures as flowering plants and conifers. Instead of producing seeds, they form tiny, windborne spores that can be mistaken for pollen.

(To its credit, the Seattle Times corrected this error the next day.)

Rotenone in Dog Medication

Rotenone is an organic insecticide that has been voluntarily withdrawn by its manufacturer because it’s quite toxic, it’s dangerous to the environment, and there is some evidence that it causes Parkinson’s disease.  And there are safer choices.  For my post today I was thinking of posting about all of the places I could still buy rotenone, but after doing a web search I couldn’t find many – and most of the places I found to purchase it don’t really have it (I don’t think) – they’re just old pages that weren’t taken down.

But in my string of results I kept getting this one weird hit – something called Goodwinol ointment for dogs.  So I looked into it, and sure enough, there’s an ointment you can buy for your dog that contains    1.25 % Rotenone.  It’s supposed to be for mange, but no prescription is necessary, so anyone could buy it.  To me this is a little concerning.  Rotenone is some nasty stuff, 1.25% is a relatively large dose, and I’m not sure that most people using it would be careful to use gloves.  So I’m wondering, should this stuff really be out there?   

Bees bees bees!

With 60+ newbies in our local beginner beekeeping class, we can safely say that beekeeping is enjoying a surge of popularity.  The president of our area beekeeping association is bringing 150 packages of bees up from Georgia next Thursday; all are pre-sold to members.  That’s about 1.8 million honeybees (includes one queen per package).  An additional 50 packages will arrive the following week for close to 3 million bees. Wow.

I’ve planned to take the afternoon off (Beefest!) from work to pick my two packages up and promptly introduce them to their new homes.  The official term is to "install" a package but that sounds kind of clinical to me. One installs carpet and mufflers, not  honeybees. Anyhoo,  I’ll have six hives total!

I rarely remember to take my camera with me when working with the bees, but managed a couple of pics last week.

White tube socks serve a number of purposes. Pull them up over pant legs to keep wandering bees out (a very exciting situation indeed).  Also, white’s good – bees seem much less concerned with light colors than dark (a good guideline in beekeeping apparel: try to not look like a bear).  Bonus: they’re super sexy. 

 

"Where did you get that pollen?"  No, really, that’s what’s going on here.  Check out the "Waggle Dance" video (perfectly safe for work).
Other possibility:  "Does this pollen make my butt look big?"

WOW returns! (Why oh why?)

It’s spring, and everyone is itching to buy stuff at the nursery.  I’m there too, with my camera as well as my wallet.  I thought you might enjoy some of my “Things to avoid when you are plant shopping” collection:


These are called “Serpentine.”  I call them unnatural.  Like foot-binding.

Rootstock revolt.  The surest way to kill off your grafted scion.

A botanical bow?  Or a horticultural harp?

And check out the pot!  If there’s enough root mass in there to crack the pot, you can bet it’s long past its potting up date.

Love broccoli?  Then why not have a broccoli tree???

Looking for a maintenance nightmare?  Then this beheaded beauty is for you!

Don’t ever unwrap this plant.  It will immediately fall over and/or break.  Just keep it as is – call it your turtleneck tree.

Here we go again…

Despite Linda’s assertion to the contrary, I was not cow-tipping nor was I sampling micro-brews last week when I missed my regular post.  As usual, the beginning of spring is a busy time on the research side of my appointment.  This past week we began setting up for a major new project.  The goal of our newest study is to look at physiological traits of street trees that may enable them to better withstand future climate change. 

If you think about it, trees that are planted today may experience future climates in their lifetimes that will be different than the climates under which they were selected.  So how do we ensure that trees that are planted today can withstand a potentially different environment in 50 or 75 years?  It’s a very complex question.  An easy response would be to plant species or seed sources that have evolved in warmer, southern locations.  The problem is climate change is predicted to occur gradually so southern trees moved northward today will be subject to increased frost and freeze damage in the interim.


Grad student Dana Ellison (L) and undergrad research aide Aniko Gaal (R) pot up shade tree liners for a new project.

Another approach, and the one we are investigating, is that trees that are best suited for the future may be those that have a high degree of phenotypic plasticity.  What is phenotypic plasticity?  Simply stated is the relative ability of a species or genotype to acclimate to changes in their environment.  In our case we are going to look at the photosynthetic response of a range of street tree cultivars in order to identify their optimum temperature for photosynthesis or Topt.  But we know from other studies that Topt can vary depending on the environment to which trees are acclimated.  So we will acclimate our trees to a range of temperatures in a greenhouse study and determine which species or cultivars are best able adjust their physiology to changing environmental conditions.  In addition to the greenhouse study we will out-plant trees from the same cultivars in a parallel field study with the Greening of Detroit.  Working with the Greening we will identify sites around Detroit with contrasting temperature regimes and plant trees at these locations.  We will follow up with a similar suite of measurements as our greenhouse trial.

Will one study tell us everything we need to know about selecting street trees for a changing climate?  Of course not.  But it provides some important base line information and insights on approaching the problem.  Trees in urban and community forests are already operating at the margins and subject to myriad of stresses.  The argument can be made that urban ecosystems are among those most at risk under climate change.  Trees are an important component of many climate change mitigation strategies but they must be able to survive and grow in order to contribute this function.

The study “Urban tree selection in a changing climate” is funded by Michigan State University Project GREEEN, with material and in-kind support from J. Frank Schmidt and Sons Nursery, Nursery Supplies, Inc., Renewed Earth, Inc., and the Greening of Detroit.