Kids Discover "Secret" Pettoranello Gardens

Hidden in full view in the middle of Princeton Township is Pettoranello Gardens, where there's a pond, walking trails and a stage for summer concerts.

Last week, Robert Olszewski, youth director for nearby Westerly Road Church, brought his summer camp kids over for a little introduction to the park and its resident plants and animals. I served as tour guide.

We started with sassafras, a fragrant native tree once used to make root beer. They then got an introduction to jewelweed, with its spring-loaded seed hurling mechanism and the metallic sheen its leaves acquire when put underwater. Though there was a very enthusiastic, cacophonous response to my offer of ten dollars to anyone who could spell "Pettoranello", the greatest attention was paid to twenty turtles clustered on what looked like a hay bale on the far side of the pond (photo).


Before they headed back, I left them with a "don't forget to smell the spicebush" moment. Hopefully, the kids will serve as tour guides to their parents, and a few more families will get acquainted with this pretty spot in the middle of town.


Photos by Henry Loevner, Princeton University PEI summer intern for the Friends of Princeton Open Space

High School Ecolab Wetland--Early Summer Edition

Planted two years ago, the Princeton High School wetland is coming along. We've been nurturing the natives, pulling out the weeds or covering them with black plastic. Each year, a few new species get added. Here's what's blooming:

Pickerelweed blooms all summer long, and likes its feet in water.

Black-eyed Susans were bought from Pinelands Nursery and planted in drier areas of the wetland several years ago. It grows naturally in the meadows at Tusculum in Princeton.

Sweet Bergamot, rather than its red-flowered relative Beebalm, is native to the Princeton area.

Daisy Fleabane, a weedy but attractive native that shows up of its own accord.

Red Clover, though not native, is not invasive.

Native Flower Arrangement

This arrangement showed up on our dining room table a few days back, and is as good a way as any to sum up what's blooming right now. Tall Meadow Rue is the white background. Beebalm in red. The daisy shaped flowers are purple coneflower (though a native, I've never seen it growing wild). And then there's some Queen of the Meadow (Filipendula rubra) washed out by the flash down at the bottom.

Of these, only the Meadow Rue would be encountered growing naturally in Princeton's nature preserves.

Manhattan's High Line a Ribbon of Native Plants

Native plant lovers have long faced a conundrum. If urban and suburban landscapes are so dominated by exotic flowers, grasses and shrubs, how will Americans ever encounter America's glorious natural heritage on a regular basis?

One spectacular way just became available in New York as of June 8. A section of the old, abandoned rail line on the west side of Manhattan has been refashioned as a pedestrian way planted with a rich variety of native flora.




The irony is pretty rich, too. You'd think that these native plants would need some sort of "natural" habitat to survive, but many of our natural areas aren't really natural anymore. Most of these plants would quickly die if planted in a typical nature preserve, where they'd wither in the dense shade or be eaten to the ground by overabundant deer. Trees and deer are natural, but we've banished the fires and predators that once held their density in check and allowed sunlight to reach the ground here and there.

The low-growing native species in these photos need sun, and they get it here, thirty feet above the streets of New York. In Princeton, the story is very similar. The native species that need sun are thriving in places highly altered by humans--along the canal and at Princeton high school's ecolab wetland.

Plants to Interact With at Community Park North

Here are some plants to seek out for good smells, food and entertainment in Community Park North. The first one, Spicebush, is Princeton's most common native shrub. It has thick, dark green leaves, and if you pick a leaf and crumple it up, you will be rewarded by a wonderful citrony smell. The shrub's berries, hidden along the stem and still green this time of year, will help with identification.

Spicebush is related to sassafras, a tree whose roots were originally used to make root beer. It also grows in the park, and has fragrant leaves that come in three shapes, one of which looks like a mitten.

Along the nature paths, you'll likely see a brambly plant with a whitish bloom to the stem and clusters of green, pink, red and black berries. This is the native black raspberry. The berries are pretty tasty after they turn black. Watch out for the thorns, and be sure of identification before eating anything, of course.

One of the funnest plants in the woods is the jewelweed. Try picking one of its swollen seed pods (just above the orange flower in the photo) and see what happens. Also, try putting one of the leaves underwater and check out what happens to its color. Jewelweed is a wildflower that grows in low wet areas, which is often where poison ivy grows. Conveniently, the juice of the jewelweed stem can be rubbed on skin to treat poison ivy.

One plant that you may want to avoid interacting with, but which definitely wants to interact with you, is the stickseed. Later in the season, it grows green seed burs that will coat your pants if you happen to brush against a plant. It's clever "schtick" is to use you to spread its seeds.

Lookalike Flowers of Meadow Rue and Basswood

One of my favorite NJ native wildflowers is in full bloom now. Meadow Rue is a very large plant (up to ten feet) with a very small flower. To the left is a closeup, in the early stages, when only a few of the plant's thousands of flowers have opened. They are like tiny starbursts,

which en masse create a cloud of white in a garden that is otherwise caught in the lull between spring and summer flowerings. The photo shows a ten foot high Meadow Rue draping itself over an Ironweed (foreground), which is tall in its own right.

In this photo, the Meadow Rue flowers look like sparklers, or a mob of fireflies, surrounding the Ironweed.

I add this photo to show the remarkable similarity between the Meadow Rue flowers and those of American Basswood (Tilia americana), which is also blooming now.

Politicians' Tendency to Pick On Plants

Though no one else in my home is enthusiastic about the newspapers that get delivered to our door, I continue to find little gems in them that I would otherwise never encounter.

In a 6/19 Trenton Times article on Chris Christie's opinion of New Jersey's state budget, Mr. Christie reportedly singled out for ridicule expenditures for research on plants in space. When politicians or pundits are searching for some small budget item that exemplifies governmental waste, they often choose money being spent on plants or protecting biodiversity. Though the reason for this is clear--plants and animals don't vote--it gives evidence of a widespread ignorance about plants and biodiversity, and their role in sustaining our civilization.

Past examples include Bill Clinton, who in his 1995 State of the Union address criticized spending $1 million to research "stress in plants." The long-running columnist David Broder once criticized spending money to guard Hawaii from the accidental introduction of the brown snake--a species that has wiped out bird populations on other Pacific islands.

Spotting a Spotted Beetle

One day at the FOPOS office in Mountain Lakes House, I looked out the window to see a couple hikers scrutinizing something on the driveway. A little later, I was passing by them in my truck and stopped to ask them what they had seen. "A big black bug with white spots," they reported.

Alarms went off in my mind, as this accurately describes the Asian Longhorned Beetle (see first photo, taken from the internet), an exotic insect with the potential to wipe out our forests and street trees. The A.L.B., as it is commonly called, was accidentally introduced into the U.S. when it hitchhiked over from China in wooden shipping crates. Government agencies have been fighting to extirpate populations found in New York city, Chicago, Toronto and most recently in Worcester, MA.

I immediately turned around and headed back up the driveway to search for the bug. I was elated to find that the bug was not the dreaded A.L.B. but instead an Eyed Elator (2nd photo), which has two large black spots on top that must do a good job of intimidating potential predators. The driveway provided a less than safe place for the beetle to blend in.

(Thanks to Nancy, office manager for Friends of Princeton Open Space, for the identification.)

What's in bloom

Here are a few natives in bloom right now. Virginia Sweetspire (Itea virginica) is a small, very ornamental shrub whose graceful appearance disguises an impressive capacity to endure both wet and dry conditions. When rarely encountered in the wild, it typically grows along streams, but is becoming common in the nursery trade.

Indigo Bush (Amorpha fruticosa) is a lovely shrub in the pea family. It grows along lake and river banks in Princeton. Benefiting from the cool, wet spring, it has bloomed profusely this year, drawing a great commotion of pollinating insects with its unusual color combination of purple and orange.

Other notes: Catalpa came into bloom a couple days ago. Kousa dogwoods (an exotic but non-invasive small tree that blooms later than our native dogwood) have been blooming for about a week.

Among exotic invasive shrubs, there's a useful progression of blooms in the spring that can be used for surveying populations in the field. Asian photinia is followed in blooming by Multiflora rose (just finishing up), which is followed by Privet (just about to open).

Saw my first firefly tonight.

Princeton Trails Presentation June 7th, 3pm

As many already know, there's a wonderful new pocket-sized guide to nature trails in and around Princeton available at various bookstores, and also on the web at http://www.walkthetrails.org/index.html. Even long-time residents of Princeton are often unaware of the many natural wonders to be explored hereabouts. This guide can help change that. The creators of the book will be making a presentation at Labyrinth Books this coming Sunday. Profits from the book go to preserving open space. Sophie is on the board of Friends of Princeton Open Space. See more info below:

Sophie Glovier and Bentley Drezner —

Walk the Trails in and around Princeton
Sunday, June 7th, 2009 at 3PM

Labyrinth Books, Princeton

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Join Bentley Drezner and Sophie Glovier, creators of Walk The Trails In and Around Princeton. Enjoy a virtual tour of the 16 walks on preserved land featured in this unique guidebook. Sized to fit in your pocket, it includes detailed parking and walking directions and effective maps, as well as beautiful photographs and 16 postcards of local trails. Their talk and slide show will introduce you to the more than 1,000 acres of preserved open space and 25 miles of trails open to the public in and near Princeton. Hidden in plain sight, most of us drive by this open space every day without realizing its natural wonders - waterfalls, secret caves, fields of wildflowers and ponds full of aquatic life.

Profits from sales of Walk The Trails In and Around Princeton are being shared with local land trusts devoted to saving open space in our region.

Labyrinth Books

122 Nassau Street

Princeton, NJ 08542

609.497.1600

A Garden Grows in Harrison Street Park

This wildflower garden in Harrison Street Park was full of flowers last summer, and is off to a good start this spring. The photo shows five things that are helping this garden thrive in a town park.

The stakes and string clearly mark its boundaries, so the mowing crew knows to steer clear. The mulch, which the borough supplied and neighbors distributed, suppresses weeds.

In the distance, up the slope, is a parking lot, from which flows runoff during rains, providing the garden with additional water that it can absorb and use during droughts. The lack of trees growing near the garden, combined with the runoff, provides the wet-sunny conditions that are optimal for the success of a showy native wildflower garden.

Most important, and key to any garden, is the gardener, in this case Clifford Zink, who lives next to the park and has brought community resources together--plants from friends, mulch from the borough, and particularly his time and interest--to make these plantings an aesthetic and ecological asset for the park.

There is even an educational dimension--perhaps we should call it passive education, in the same way we refer to passive recreation. Investing in passive outdoor education means creating places like this where, if parents and children happen to wander over, they can discover the great variety of plants native to our area, and can scrutinize all the winged and webbing creatures that find sustenance there.

A Giant in the Backyard

There are a number of very tall wildflowers that thrive in sunny, wet ground. Cutleaf coneflower can grow to ten feet. Joe-pye-weed, late-flowering thoroughwort and native sunflowers can reach impressive heights in late summer. But one plant is already towering over me in the backyard.

In the photo is the growing tip of Tall Meadow Rue (Thalictrum pubescens), which, growing at the rate of 2 inches a day this spring, has now reached a height of seven feet, with no sign of stopping.

Tall meadow rue plays a role that is complementary to the boneset described in detail last July. Both grow into vegetative high-rises topped by masses of white flowers that attract a surprising diversity of insect life, with meadow rue doing its work early in the season, and boneset reaching maturity in mid-summer.

Even before flowering, the meadow rue is serving as substrate for the life cycles of the local insect community.

Maple Seed Sprouting

These seeds were trying to sprout in a planting tray. Maples manufacture an elegant device for propagating themselves--a so-called "samara" that is part seed, part wing. The wings catch the air in such a way as to rotate like a helicopter, slowing their fall and allowing the wind to carry them some distance away from the parent tree.

The photo shows three stages, progressing from left to right. The seed sends out a root, then its first leaves--cotyledons--expand and turn green, then it forms its first pair of "true leaves", which have the classic maple leaf shape.

Snowbells in May

Spring flowers have faded, summer has yet to begin, but one small tree on Snowden Lane is filling the void. Japanese Snowbell (Styrax japonica) is showy in a private way, aiming its blooms downward. The second photo was taken looking up from underneath the tree.

There's a native Styrax that grows in the southeast U.S.

Tulips from a Tree

If you're having trouble getting water from a stone, try getting tulips from a tree. It's a lot easier, in fact hard to avoid if you have a tulip poplar growing nearby. Among all the maple seeds spinning to earth these days are a few tulip-shaped flowers from what scientists affectionately call Liriodendron tulipifera, a native closely related to magnolias. It's usually so tall that you only see the flowers after they've fallen from the vaulted canopy, but I noticed a specimen on Maple Street with some low branches laden with flowers.

Other trees blooming are the red buckeye,

the horsechestnut (the photo shows a large specimen on Ewing), and black locusts. You may also see some fringe trees in bloom, a beautiful native that's more like a large shrub.

How To Recycle a Snapping Turtle

Will they take this curbside? Saturday, a few hours before the baby owl plopped down into our garden from above, our dog was heard barking persistently near the neighbor's fence. I thought it must be someone's cat or dog that had roused Leo to such passion, but no. The snapping turtle that had been showing up in our minipond periodically over the last couple years (see April 22 post) had apparently decided to move on up the valley and got stymied by the fence.

We decided to help it on its way, and so coaxed it into a recycling bin. Mr. Turtle headed first to the science teacher at Little Brook, who promised to release it the next day into a local waterway after a day's service in show and tell.

This here's turtle country! The view is downstream, where once a tributary of Harry's Brook flowed, before it got buried beneath houses. The largish snapping turtle had been making do with a pond that could get as small as three feet across and two feet deep in a summer drought.

A Baby Screech Owl in the Garden

Update, July 28, 2020, 5am: The lovely, trilling call of a screech owl is coming from the same tree from which the baby fell eleven years ago. If screech owls live on average 14 years, the screech owl singing in the predawn could be this baby taken to the Wildlife Center in 2009.

Saturday evening, just before dark, my daughter was amazed to find a baby owl in the garden. I had installed miniponds and native plant habitat in the backyard in part to attract wildlife, but this was totally unexpected. Not knowing what else to do, we put it in a shoe box with some mulch for bedding and brought it inside where it would at least be warm for the night. I did some internet research, and also put a call in to the Mercer County Wildlife Center. Internet sources suggested putting it back in the nest, or at least putting it back where we'd found it and waiting to see if the parent comes to retrieve it. Neither of these seemed practical in the dark.

The next morning, a woman named Nicole at the Wildlife Center called back, and recommended taking it in to see if it had gotten injured by the fall.

At this point, I went outside to see where it might have fallen from. Sure enough, the big silver maple in the backyard had a roomy hole about 25 feet up, directly above where my daughter had found the baby.

Wishing to confirm that the hole had a nest, I raised a long bamboo pole up and gave the hole a tap. Out sprung an adult owl, surprisingly small, with two tufts of feathers on its head. It perched briefly on a limb before flying off. In its place came a raucous gathering of birds--a catbird, a robin, a bluejay, and some others--all with strong opinions about there being an owl in "my" backyard.

Later in the morning, while at Mountain Lakes Preserve, I ran into the Princeton professor Stephen Pacala, who said it was likely a screech owl. While he was at it, being an international authority on climate change, he answered a few of my lingering questions about that issue.

Later in the day, hopefully not having taken too much of our sweet time about it, we delivered the baby owl to the Wildlife Center, down along the Delaware River, not far from Lambertville. Nicole, reporting that the owl was cold and had a minor injury below its wing, immediately put it in an incubator. They would feed it "pinkies", which are baby mice, and if it survived and grew it would be put with an adult screech owl--essentially a foster parent from which it could learn how to call and how to eat. They would then release it in Princeton when it was strong enough to survive in the urban wilds.

Though my daughters had given it names--Owlie and Bobo--the Wildlife Center gave it a new designation, Case #2009-327 . We are welcome to call and ask how it's doing.

Www.owlpages.com says that screech owls like riparian woods along streams and wetlands .... and woodlands near marshes, meadows, and fields. A tree overlooking a series of backyard miniponds must have made the screech owl pair feel right at home.

Workdays this Weekend, and Thanks

Forgot to post this earlier:

Workday at Mountain Lake, this coming Sunday, May 10, at 10am. We'll be giving Mother Earth a brunch of her favorite wildflowers. This may conflict with some annual rituals, but it's what my schedule allows. There are more plants to get in the ground, and it's also a good time to be pulling garlic mustard. Shovels, trowels, gloves, boots, loppers--all useful. Meet at Mountain Lakes House, 57 Mountain Ave. You can drive up the driveway and park in the lot just before the house.

Workday at Little Brook Elementary School, Saturday, May 9, 10am. This is part of the school's annual cleanup of the grounds. There's a nice creek-fed wetland area that needs some removal of exotics and planting of natives. Same tools as above, if you have them.

Projects for individuals: If you'd like to help out whenever you have some free time, there are some individual or small group projects that are timely at Mountain Lakes. One is pulling garlic mustard along the driveway. It's blooming now, so is easy to identify. Another is pulling the small bush honeysuckles in the WHIP restoration area, just upstream of the lakes. These are the legacy of some very large invasive honeysuckles that were cut down last year but had seeded hither and yon. They pull very easily in this wet weather. Contact me if you have an hour or two over the next two weeks.

THANKS! to Brownlee, Steve Carson, Jamie and her children Anthony and Elizabeth, Christine Zeppenfeld and her son and daughter, and Annarie and her son, for all their help this past Saturday planting natives we grew in the FOPOS greenhouse. Christine teaches science at Princeton Junior School, and Steve C. teaches science at JW Middle School. The weather was misty moisty--perfect for planting--and the kids had a good time helping out, chasing frogs, and exploring.

Princeton Cares Helps Restore Habitat

A group of Princeton Cares volunteers--this time 9th grade boys from Princeton Day School and Hun School--returned to Mountain Lakes Preserve to do more removal of invasives and planting of natives. Last year, they planted bottlebrush grass. This year, they pulled out some honeysuckle shrubs, then planted mayapples in an area close to the house. Their morning work done, the kids then headed off to do other good deeds in the community.

The mayapples looked droopy in the sun, and the boys had wondered if the plants would survive. But they recovered over the next couple days, helped by all the rain, and should spread like a groundcover in coming years, helping to fill the void in native herbaceous species that still remains, more than a half century after this farmland was left to grow up in trees.

High School Ecolab Wetland--Spring Edition

A detention basin is a dug out area designed to collect rainwater from roofs and parking lots and hold it for awhile after storms. Usually they are designed without thought to their potential as wildlife habitat, and are planted with high-maintenance turf. When located at a high school, it sounds like a place where water is told to go when it's been bad.

This basin was converted to a wetland, planted with native species and informally stocked with native frogs, fish and possibly a turtle. It is fed by an eternal spring, which is the romantic name I'm giving to the sump pump that sends groundwater from the school basement into the wetland every twenty minutes or so, year-round, rain or shine. The steady water supply allows a greater variety of native wetland species to prosper.

After two years and some t.l.c. from teacher Tim Anderson, his students, myself and others, the native plants have become well established. An early bloomer is the marsh marigold. This showy native species is difficult or impossible to find growing in the wild in Princeton, but flourishes in this constructed wetland. (Frequently mistaken for marsh marigold is the bright yellow flower that has colonized many local floodplains--an invasive exotic plant called Lesser Celandine--see April 27, 2007 post.)

The blooms of a species of willow planted in the ecolab wetland were a pleasant surprise. Though native, willow tends to be an aggressive grower that may need to be controlled to allow other species to coexist.

This spring, a pair of mallards showed up, and seemed to give serious consideration to breeding there.

Rogers Refuge Dedication

The new and newish bird observation platforms were dedicated last weekend. Fred Spar, on the right, is president of the Friends of Rogers Refuge (FORR) and gave a short speech thanking all those responsible for helping sustain the refuge. Tom Southerland, further back and to the left, told of the three Toms who were involved with saving the marsh back in the 60s and starting the Friends organization. Tom Poole, Winnie Spar, Laurie Larson, representatives of the American Water Company and Princeton Township--many who have worked to save and restore this jewel and birding mecca were on hand.

Afterwards, we took a walk around the perimeter of the refuge. Here's a shot of violets mixing with spring beauties. The scene is so "clean" because periodic floods clear the forest floor of debris from the previous year, creating an effect that rivals any meticulously cared for garden.

Skunk cabbage and spring beauty made another fine combination. The oak leaves on the ground show that this area didn't flood over the winter.

A solitary Virginia Bluebell was a very pleasing find. Though some of its stems had been browsed, presumably by deer, it was still able to flower. Without the township's program to bring the local deer population into ecological balance, flowers like this wouldn't have a chance.

Nature's garden isn't complete without some sculpture, in this case rendered by a local beaver.

Riding the Wave of Inchworms

I never gave these critters much thought. They appear this time of year, hanging from invisible threads on the eaves, or suspended from low tree limbs in the backyard.

They land on the car, or on a sweater.

You'll likely find their sudden appearance in spring coinciding with the emergence of tree leaves, which they like to eat. Right about this time, migrating warblers show up in Princeton to feast on the inchworms high in the trees.

As spring moves northward, awakening forests as it goes, the warblers follow the wave of new growth, powered by solar energy transferred from tree leaf to inchworm to beating wing.