The Unbearable Whiteness of Being in June

Note: The memorable title "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" may not be as fresh in people's minds as it was in the 1980s when the novel and subsequent movie came out. There's nothing unbearable about white flowers, but there sure are a lot of them this time of year.

It was on a recent walk along the green trail at Autumn Hill Reservation that I suddenly noticed I was surrounded by white. 

Mostly, it was invasive species: the white of multiflora rose

and Linden Viburnum. The prompt for the walk was to check the trails. The Friends of Herrontown Woods takes care of the trails at the adjacent Autumn Hill, and this spring's intervention was a boardwalk spanning a section that for years had been chronically muddy. The town's open space manager, Cindy Taylor, got the town crew to help out by removing some fallen trees, and I was checking to see if anything else was needed.

Though the nonnative shrubs were the dominant flowers, a few natives could be found, also with white flowers. A cluster of partridgeberry hugged the ground. The "repens" in its latin name, Mitchella ripens, refers to its crawling habit.

The mapleleaved Viburnums usually don't grow beyond a few feet. Their latin name is Viburnum acerifolium. The latin name for maples is Acer, so acerifolium is the latin way of saying maple foliage, or mapleleaved. 

Almost missed among all the whiteness was a beautiful specimen of Styrax, probably American snowbell, S. americanus. It's on the left as one pulls into the Autumn Hill parking lot. My guess is that it was planted. I've walked by it dozens of times, but only when it flowered did I take note. That makes a grand total of two of this species seen thus far in Princeton.

Back home, there was the mock orange-a once commonly planted landscape shrub that survives in my neighbor's yard, peeking over the fenceline.

More whiteness comes from the native elderberry, whose berries make delicious pies if you can beat the catbirds,

and the abundant spires of Virginia sweetspire.

The mountain laurel

and the Deutzia in our yard are refusing to grow beyond one foot high for some reason.

White clover can be benign in a lawn but mischievous if it invades a flowerbed.

Update: Ten days after initially posting about white flowers, and feeling like the title of the post, though playful, sounds more judgemental than it would have ten years ago, I've noticed a few more. The Korean dogwood, for instance.

and catalpas, whose flowers reward a closer look.

Japanese honeysuckle, which yield a drop of sweet liquid if pulled apart in the right way.

Some sort of hydrangia vine on our patio.

The flowers of a native swamp azalea. They look to be keeping their flowers downcast, as if to avoid eye contact. Too many zoom meetings.

A small patch of daisies in a preserved pasture near Veblen House.

A white cloud of daisy fleabanes in the foreground, with an oak-leaved hydrangia in the background. 

This oak-leaved hydrangia, native though I've never seen it growing in the wild, started as one plant, but over time it produced stems that could be dug without disturbing the original plant. We now have a whole grove of them.

The oak-leaved hydrangia is one of three classic native shrubs that sustain white in the garden through June, as Virginia sweetspire (above) segues into oak-leaved hydrangia,

which segues into the bottlebrush-shaped spires of bottlebrush buckeye. 

Why so much white? My curiosity did not sustain me very far into an internet search. Perhaps white takes less energy for plants to produce than other colors. White reflects the most light, which could help insects find it. And then there's the research that shows that pollinators don't actually see the flowers as white, and are picking up on aspects of the flower beyond human perception. 

Below is beardtongue having a good year in the Veblen Circle of wildflowers at the Barden in Herrontown Woods. 

Related post: The Unbearable Whiteness of Being in May

Shrubs and Vines to Cut Back Along Nature Trails

Without volunteers wielding clippers and loppers, most trails in Princeton would quickly become overgrown. Some preserves, like Mountain Lakes, Herrontown Woods and Autumn Hill Reservation, have more organized maintenance, but in some others it's catch as catch can. In May and June, that first flush of growth begins reaching out over trails, and so a pair of clippers is handy to keep in the back pocket during a hike. Cutting back anything that overhangs a trail is useful, but as a botanist I'm also identifying as I go along. Most of the shrubs that grow out into trails are invasive species that we'd want to cut wherever they are growing, but especially along trails. There are also some natives, but I'll start with the non-natives, which are so numerous mostly because the deer won't eat them. 

Privet -- A shrub that people plant as hedges, but which has spread into nature preserves, establishing dense stands. In low, wet, shaded areas, there can be thousands and thousands of these, claiming all the space. Most don't bloom because they are too shaded.

Here's a typical branch of privet growing out over a trail. 

Linden Viburnum has become highly invasive, forming dense stands. It has attractive flowers and fall color, but is just way too aggressive. It looks a lot like the native arrowwood Viburnum (V. dentatum), which is relatively rare and has more deeply toothed leaves. 

We commonly call this shrub Photinia, after its latin name. You can identify it by its distinctive obovate leaves, meaning the leaf is wider towards the tip. Names can get complicated in botany. The common name, which I just learned, is Christmas berry. The latin name was Photinia villosa, but that got changed to Pourthiaea villosa. Can you say "Pourthiaea"? Neither can I. In any case, it is another way-too aggressive nonnative shrub that we cut back or down.

This shrub, winged Euonymus, is super easy to identify. Just look for the "wings" on the stem (those brown ribs that run along the stem). It, too, is a nonnative that forms dense stands and often obscures what would otherwise be lovely vistas from the trail. If you see a nice vista from the trail, oftentimes it's because we've been cutting these shrubs down to open up the view. 

A common story about native plants in the wild: there's a native Euonymus, called Hearts-a-Bustin', but it's rarely seen because the deer love to eat it. We've nurtured a few specimens of it to show off at the Barden.

Bush honeysuckle -- Honeysuckle comes in the form of a vine (Japanese honeysuckle) and several species of shrub. it is frequently found along the edges of people's backyards--a sort of default vegetation that moves in on its own. It can also be numerous in some of Princeton's preserves.

Wineberry is an asian species of bramble with distinctively hairy reddish stems. It has tasty berries, but we often cut or pull it, given its lanky, thorny growth.

Autumn olive has a distinctive silver sheen on the underside of the leaves. While many invasive shrubs thrive in shade, autumn olive prefers sun, and so is infrequently encountered along our wooded trails.

Multiflora rose is an introduced species that has made many a forest impenetrable with its curved "fishhook" thorns. Multiflora means many flowers clustered together, as opposed to the single flowers that many roses have. We definitely cut this one back, or down to the ground, to keep hikers from getting snagged. 

Our native roses--at Herrontown Woods, that would be the very rarely encountered swamp rose--have single pink flowers, as opposed to the multiflora's clusters of white.

If you forgot your clippers, it's possible to avoid the thorns while carefully bending a young sprig like this one back on itself with your fingers until it snaps.

Two nonnative vines we pull out along trails are the Japanese honeysuckle 

and oriental bittersweet. Both are easily pulled out. For more success in pulling them out, grab low and pull slow. 

There are native versions of vine honeysuckle and bittersweet, but never encountered, as far as I know, in Herrontown Woods.

A common native along trails is sweetgum, which can grow into a statuesque tree but which we tend to cut or pull along trails, since its seedlings are so numerous.

The most common native shrub is blackhaw Viburnum, which has tasty berries in the fall. Sometimes it can be distinguished from other shrubs by its pairs of tiny leaves tucked in among the larger leaves, growing tight against the stems.

Another common native shrub is the spicebush, which has very fragrant, citrony leaves. 

Hickories are common as well. This is a photo of one leaf with five leaflets. 

I always feel some remorse while cutting native species back, but it has to be done if the trails are to remain clear.

Related post: Portrait of Sidewalk Neglect -- A post about plants that are growing over a neglected sidewalk.

Gently Enforcing the Gas Leafblower Ordinance

A couple days ago, I was doing some outdoor work when a landscape crew nearby revved up their gas-powered leafblowers. I put up with the din for about five minutes before finally heading over to tell them, in a nice way, that the town ordinance forbids the use of gas-powered leafblowers between May 16 and Sept. 30.

I got the crew's attention, then since they didn't speak english I explained in my broken spanish that "Hay una regla contra estas machinas hasta Octubre."

He nodded that he understood. I walked away only to hear them start back up a few minutes later. The situation was all the more frustrating because they were blowing leaves not off of a lawn but out of the woods, and because the leaves were soaking wet, it was going to take them forever to do what there was no rational reason to do in the first place. 

This time, I returned, didn't say a word, and photographed the machine and the address and the truck. He stopped again and got on his phone. 

I know the homeowners, and texted them about the situation. I could also have reported it to Access Princeton, but figured the problem was already solved.

You could hear that most wonderful silence as the birds continued to sing through the afternoon. My hat is off to the folks (Quiet Princeton?) who navigated the local political waters with a mixture of flattery and resolve to save us from these soul-sucking machines. (More info in the comment section about those who worked particularly hard to get the ordinance written and passed.)

Update, 6/15: Quiet Princeton informed me that a compliance officer has been hired by Princeton, so it is helpful to report violations to Access Princeton. Even if the non-compliance has been resolved at a particular residence, landscapers might try to continue using gas leafblowers elsewhere on their routes.

Happened to see a backpack electric leafblower at a nearby hardware store the other day. They at least exist.

Weeds that Launch an Underground Insurgency

More discussion of weeds here, after happening to see a great example of a particular category of weed--three different ones afflicting three gardens all in a row. It's important to know your weeds, because as soon as you find a plant that you like enough to put in your garden, there will be weeds ready to grow up it and over it and all around it. Catch them early and they won't be a problem.

A point that cannot be overstated is that a garden designer need only know the intended plants. A gardener--the one who gets dirty day to day realizing and maintaining some vision--must know not only the intended plants but all the other ones that pop up. To leave or to pull, that is the question. Being able to identify weeds empowers the gardener to take action. 

Many weeds will trick the inexperienced gardener. When first encountered, they may look pretty good, and seem pretty harmless, and so they get left to spread. Having gained advantage from our generosity, some of these deceptive weeds can become particularly tough customers, so that before you know it what could have been a small proactive pulling becomes a formidable task. 

 

Take this scene on Wiggins--one of my favorite streets because the houses are close to the street, encouraging gardening rather than a large, and largely useless, lawn. (Doesn't it seem like, starting with suburbanization in the 1950s, yards got bigger as people's knowledge of plants got smaller?) There are at least four of these gardens that caught my eye as I was riding by on my bike. One of the gardens is essentially weed-free, but I could see that the others, though they look okay right now, are each plagued by an underground insurgency.

Star of Bethlehem -- This first example of a weed's takeover will be least convincing for the reader. The white flowers of Star of Bethlehem set off the red tulips nicely. But despite its pretty name and pretty flowers, Star of Bethlehem's capacity to spread through a garden and pop up in the lawn (along with wild garlic, it springs up early in the spring to form something I call "lawn blotch") has made it less than loved. 

Bindweed -- Another garden has some standard ornamentals--iris, purple coneflowers--and what at first glance appears to be a nice groundcover. 

But that groundcover turns out to be bindweed. Firmly entrenched underground, it is just starting its quiet insurrection that will smother the garden as the season progresses.

Canada thistle -- One side of the third garden has been completely taken over by Canada thistle, which might better be called spreading thistle, since it's from Europe rather than Canada. Many a garden and field has been invaded by this plant. 

Here, for instance, is a garden where the landscapers spread that pretty black mulch that has become popular, but underground was a whole network of Canada thistle roots from which has sprung this year's crop. It will be impossible to garden this area.

Both bindweed and Canada thistle pull easily when the soil is moist, but that easy pulling is deceptive, as the underground root system remains undisturbed and ready to send up new shoots as soon as the gardener's attention turns elsewhere. A grasslike weed called nutsedge is also deceptively easy to pull. (Searching this blog for the word "nutsedge" pulls up some additional posts on weeds.)

Among the less common underground spreaders, in my own garden, I added two native vines--groundnut and Virgin's Bower (Clematis virginiana)--that have some wonderful qualities but turn out to be aggressive underground spreaders under sunny conditions. Autumn clematis--a nonnative very similar to Virgin's Bower--also can be super aggressive underground. And then there are the perennial sunflowers, and many kinds of mint. Native or not, they too establish large sprawling underground root systems that send up lots of new shoots the next year in places you really don't want them. 

A satisfying garden, just like a satisfying habitat, is a conversation among many species of plants. I like to think of myself as a moderator, and though I have a general vision for how the "discussion" will go, I don't have the time or inclination to exert strict control. When one species of plant takes over, the feeling is much like someone who takes over a conversation. There's a narcissistic quality to an aggressive plant, a Me, Me, Me indifference to what other species have to contribute. Dominance by one species has ecological impacts as well. Loss of plant diversity strips a habitat of the progression of blooms that might otherwise sustain pollinators through the summer and feed a diversity of herbivores. 

What to do about aggressive underground spreaders? One can play a war of attrition, in which the vigilant gardener deprives the underground root system of energy by pulling all shoots as soon as they emerge. Over time, the root system, needing to continually burn energy in order to survive, exhausts itself for lack of energy inputs from above. Since vigilance is hard to maintain, a more sure approach is to lay cardboard over the whole thing, cover the cardboard with mulch, and wait a year. 

Both of these approaches can help, but neither is very practical in most situations. For our own bodies, we sometimes need to take medicine to knock out a pathogen. The same holds true in a garden, where some careful spot-spraying with a systemic herbicide can kill the entrenched root systems of these underground insurgencies. Again, this is a minimalist, medicinal use of herbicide, not the chemical treadmill often aimed at asserting total control over nature.

The work involved in countering the aggressive spreaders makes the gardener really appreciate all the wildflowers that stay where you plant them. The aim is to get back to a garden where many kinds of plants coexist in relative harmony and balance. Catch the aggressive spreaders early, and gardening becomes much easier.

Mother's Day's Complicated History With Flowers

I was thinking, enough with the blog posts about invasive plants and weeds. Time again for some pretty flowers, especially since it's May, and Mother's Day is today. Wondering if flowers had long been part of the Mother's Day tradition, I looked up Mother's Day on wikipedia, and things got complicated fast. Though elsewhere in the world there had been Mothering Days when people were supposed to visit the Mother Church where they had been baptized, Mother's Day in the U.S. finally came into being through the initiative and persistence of Anna Jarvis. 

Following the carnage of the Civil War, and before Anna Jarvis entered the scene, there had been efforts to celebrate mothers as a force in the world for peaceful settlement of differences, but none of the events had evolved into a tradition. 

The death of Anna Jarvis's mother on the second Sunday in May, 1905, spurred Anna into action. Nine years of advocacy ultimately led to Woodrow Wilson's signature proclaiming an official Mother's Day in 1914, just in time for the outbreak of WWI several months later. Note the placement of the apostrophe. Rather than a celebration of mothers in general, Anna's vision was a very personal affair, in which people would give handwritten notes expressing gratitude for all that their own mothers had done for them. Anna distributed white carnations at the first formal Mother's Day event in 1908, but ultimately would spend the rest of her life fighting the commercialization of the day by the florist, card, and candy industries.

To honor the brave founder of the holiday, therefore, it looks like the best course of action would be to write a note of personal gratitude on something other than a Mother's Day gift card, perhaps accompanied by some flowers cut from the backyard. Lilacs, anyone? That could be followed by a stroll past some gardens with flowers in bloom.

Below are a random assortment of flowers that you might encounter, though the reader is to be discouraged from picking unless they are growing in your own yard.

A few from my own yard. This is Siberian bugloss, which is often confused with

forget-me-nots, which are paler, less robust, and have much smaller leaves.

Witch Alder (Fothergilla) is an attractive native shrub that I haven't seen growing naturally in our area but is available in nurseries.

At Herrontown Woods and other local preserves, you'll see lots of blackhaw Viburnums with lots of small disks of flowers. "Blackhaw" means black berry, which makes for a tasty treat in the fall. Flowering dogwoods, not shown, are also blooming in the woods and in people's yards now, with much larger, single flowers.

These native azaleas, nurtured in the Barden at Herrontown Woods, have probably popped open by now. An experienced gardener sees the full bloom even in partially opened flowers.

Up at the Veblen House, where the flora shift from native towards English garden, people ask what these pretty white or blue flowers are that spread across the lawn. Ajuga--a member of the mint family. Some people call it bugleweed.

Ever seen these and wondered what they were? So have I. Fritillarias have persisted in the Veblen garden from at least the 1970s, 

along with a few primrose. 

Some of these flowers may extend back to when Elizabeth Veblen was living there, pretty much on her own after Oswald died in 1960. 

In fact, there's no need for guesswork. Here's the same flower from a photo Oswald Veblen took in the 1950s.

Elizabeth had no children, but is best known for giving birth to the tradition of tea at the Institute for Advanced Study, and left her house and garden to the public trust. Her nickname was May. She and her husband gave us the month of May in Herrontown Woods--a beautiful thing--and all the other months as well. Our letters of thanks take many forms, including cutting back invasive shrubs and pulling weeds so these flowers can flourish once again.