Several times a year, the question of "How are the monarchs doing?" rises in my mind. An internet search typically ends up at Chip Taylor's blog on Monarch Watch. There you will find thoughtful commentary and deep analyses, a mixture of good news and bad news, as this extraordinarily resilient species faces ever greater challenges. In 2024, overwintering numbers in Mexico were the second lowest ever recorded, with 2013 having been the lowest. Chip's more recent posts tell of a rebound this summer, as this robust and prolific species has increased its numbers during its migration, following the growth of milkweed north in a tagteam of successional generations, spreading into all corners of the eastern U.S..
I've had maybe five sightings of monarch butterflies this summer--a typical number. One appeared frantic, as if it had been searching the great outdoors in vain for a partner. Another was laying eggs on a patch of common milkweed at Mercer Meadows--a beautiful and hopeful sight. Another, pictured, was in my front yard on busy Harrison Street in Princeton, gathering nectar on a swamp milkweed.News from the preserves, parks and backyards of Princeton, NJ. The website aims to acquaint Princetonians with our shared natural heritage and the benefits of restoring native diversity and beauty to the many preserved lands in and around Princeton.
Saturday, July 20, 2024
How Are Monarchs Doing in 2024?
Wednesday, July 17, 2024
The Wineberry Tease
Wineberry (Rubus phoenicolasius) is a non-native bramble common along woodland edges.
Because its berries are tasty, I have in the past hesitated to remove it from our various wild garden areas. But this year, the hesitation is fading fast. One reason wineberry is getting cut down and pulled out is the cumulative impact of thorns on my sympathies. Repeated prickling sensations from running up against a wineberry or even a native blackberry gets old.Another reason is that the dreamed of harvest of delicious wineberries is very nearly all intercepted by the birds, particularly catbirds. The early bird gets the wineberry. leaving us a disappointing display of "too late" and "too soon."
Even wineberry will lose out to the mobbing behavior of the uber invasive porcelainberry vine. You can see wineberry's last gasp at the bottom of the photo.
Friday, July 12, 2024
A Followup on Beech and other Threatened Native Trees
Having grown despondent about the devastating toll beech leaf disease will likely take on Princeton's beech trees, I was surprised and somewhat heartened by what I found on the Princeton University campus.
A friend from childhood was visiting me for the first time, and as I showed him and his wife around campus, I began to feel as if we had somehow been transported back to an era before introduced pathogens and insects had marginalized many of our native trees.Unlike the ailing beech trees up along the Princeton ridge, the beeches on campus appeared unfazed by beech leaf disease.
I looked for signs that these trees had been injected with chemicals to ward off invasion, but found none. Surely, though, this improbable survival depends heavily on medicinal intervention.
Since I first alerting the community to the presence of beech leaf disease in Princeton in a blog post and letter to the editor, some articles have been written in the local press--one in TapInto Princeton and one in Town Topics.
Both mention phosphites as the primary treatment available thus far. Applied to the soil, phosphites are a biostimulant that improves the tree's immune system response. I was skeptical that this could make much of a difference, but the University appears to be having good results. Grounds supervisor EJ May said they started seeing signs of beech leaf disease two years ago. Speaking generally about efforts to save native trees, he acknowledged some losses but some success as well.
There remains, too, an uncertainty as to the origin of the nematode that causes beech leaf disease. It is most similar to a species found in Japan, but differs in some ways.
Maintenance Will Determine the Fate of the Betsey Stockton Garden
When I look at a plant, a garden, a meadow, a forest, I can see the future. It's a form of extrapolation, defined in the Oxford Dictionary as "the action of estimating or concluding something by assuming that existing trends will continue." I only realize now, writing this, that not everyone exercises such powers. Not everyone has been a gardener of landscapes for fifty some years, accumulating memories of myriad plant species and observing their behaviors. I've seen thriving raingardens and neglected ones, healthy meadows and forests, and degraded ones. I've observed how various invasive weeds spread and come to dominate, each in its own manner and at its own pace. These are the accumulated data points used to predict the future.
One very satisfying thing about extrapolation is that I can see, in my mind, the flower a bud will become. But with that same power to see a garden blooming while still in bud, I can look at a garden in what for others is glorious bloom and see the "seeds" of ruin--the scattered pockets of invasive mugwort, nutsedge, stiltgrass or lesser celandine, crown vetch or Chinese bushclover that without early intervention will quickly expand and ultimately prevail.
My interventions--a broad mix of successes and failures--have taught me above all that early intervention can make the difference between hope and despair.
One special garden in town that I stop by to check up on, like an old friend, is the Betsey Stockton Garden planted atop the Firestone Library at Princeton University. This is a complex native planting, containing 35 native grassland species. The person or crew maintaining the garden needs to be able to recognize and identify all 35 intended species, plus all the weeds that could potentially cause problems, not only when they're blooming but at all stages of development.New to me is a weed called rabbits foot clover, which may have hitchhiked in from whatever distant nursery the intended plants came from. This, too, was not caught early, and now poses a significant challenge.
Native Plants Featured in the Betsey Stockton Garden
(Some are used on the High Line as well.)
Grasses: Carex comosa, Appalachian Sedge Carex pensylvanica, Pennsylvania Sedge Festuca ovina, Sheep’s Fescue Festuca rubra, Creeping Red Fescue Sporobolus heterolepis, Prarie Dropseed Elymus virginicus, Virginia Wild Rye Schizachyrium scoparium, Little Bluestem Tridens flavus, Purple Top Shade Plants: | Full-Sun Plants: Asclepias tuberosa, Butterfly Milkweed Aster laevis, Smooth Blue Aster Aster pilosus, Heath Aster Baptisia alba, White Wild Indigo Baptisia perfoliata, Catbells Centaurea cyanus, Cornflower Chamacaesta fasciculata, Partridge Pea Coreopsis lancelota, Lanceleaf CoreopsisEchinacea pallida, Pale Purple Coneflower Echinacea purpurea, Purple Coneflower Monarda fistulosa, Wild Bergamot Penstemon digitalis, Beard Tongue Rudbeckia hirta, Blackeyed Susan Solidago juncea, Early Goldenrod |
Thursday, July 04, 2024
Mixing Real and Unreal in a Hidden Garden on Vandeventer Avenue
Along Vandeventer Avenue, hidden behind a hedge and shaded by this most glorious of all river birches, lies a little garden that combines the real and the unreal in delightful ways.
What looks like a congregation of daylilies is actually a mix. The bloom in the foreground is real, while those in the background are silk flowers bought at the Dollar Store.
Nearby, a real daylily mixes it up with faux irises.
Outside the hedge, seen but not really seen by passersby heading down from Nassau Street, a morning glory rises improbably out of the concrete every year. It looks like it's blooming, but ...