Quiet Botanical Battles Staged at Princeton Battlefield

July 19, and it's a quiet scene at the Princeton Battlefield on a weekday afternoon. The Mercer Oak is looking robust in its corral of sacred ground. The immense lawn is getting mowed.

The flag in the distance is at half mast, but I don't suppose it has anything to do with the quiet botanical battles going on.

American chestnut, sacked by an imported sac fungus 100 years ago, has been making a slow comeback thanks to breeders who have been patiently breeding native trees with resistance. Four of these hybrids (15/16th native, 1/16 Japanese chestnut) were planted at the Battlefield two years ago by local nut tree specialist Bill Sachs.

He said their chances of being resistant to the fungus are about 50/50, and as it turns out two of the trees have developed the symptoms of chestnut blight.

Here's what the stem with the canker looks like. (Thanks to Bill for these two photos.)

The two others continue to prosper, and have grown to 12 feet tall. That they are growing near infected trees gives some hope that they will prove to have inherited resistance.

Several mature non-native chestnuts grow near the Clark House. The shiny leaf on the right is likely a Chinese chestnut, compared to the duller surface of the native species.

Flipped over, the Chinese chestnut leaf has a silvery tinge.

Another battle is going on where two flowering dogwood trees grow along woods' edge to the left of the pillars. If they haven't flowered as profusely in recent years, it may be because they are being completely overwhelmed by what I call "the kudzu of the north", porcelain berry.

Judging from this one small branch reaching out from the thronging vines, like a hand pleading for help, the dogwoods are not far from a full surrender.

Another dogwood close by is getting overwhelmed by wild grape.

Three beautiful dogwoods could be saved by five minutes of horticultural heroism with a pair of loppers, but I doubt anyone has even noticed this botanical battle in full swing. We see here a theme reenacted endlessly on our public lands. The voluminous grass gets mowed, some weeds get whipped, but any maintenance task requiring plant knowledge is left to chance.

A fuller story of chestnuts in Princeton can be found by searching this blog for "chestnut", or clicking on this: http://princetonnaturenotes.blogspot.com/search?q=chestnut.

Joe-Pye at Princeton High

On lazy summer days, music wafting out of the Princeton high school's music rooms mixes with the plunky sound of green frogs in the wetland ecolab. With a science wing on one side and the performing arts center on the other, the flower-packed wetland serves as translator of biology into music.

Joe Pye Weed is looking highly floristic right now, and if you look closely at the shapes of the flower heads you'll see two kinds. The more flat-topped is probably spotted Joe Pye Weed (Eupatorium maculatum).

The more rounded, graceful flower head is hollow-stemmed Joe Pye Weed.

Here are the contrasting stems, with the hollow stem on the left.

Also in bloom now are a native sunflower (photo), swamp milkweed, cardinal flower, cutleaf coneflower, rose mallow hibiscus, wild senna,

 wild rice,

 water plantain, whose flower heads are so diffuse they seem impossible to photograph,

and boneset.

Two Less Lindens On Linden Lane

Linden-lined Linden Lane
Found its lindens in retreat.
Tagged and trimmed
Of life and limb,
Now two less to stem the heat.

Kentucky Coffee Tree Leaf

The size of Kentucky Coffee Tree leaves continues to amaze. Dog, looking unexpectedly Einsteinian, added for scale, next to a single leaf.

Here's another way of getting a sense for the size of the leaf, which is bipinnately compound.

Woolly Camouflage

If a leaf takes on a cottony appearance,

it might be a colony of woolly aphids, spinning a rough and ready camouflage. These are on a Tree of Heaven leaf.

Third Black Bear Sighted Last Week

A black bear was seen near this corner of Linden and Nassau last Tuesday evening, according to a "reverse 911" call we received. That's the third black bear to come through Princeton in the last couple months.

A relevant post from last month can be found at PrincetonPrimer that includes this: In spring, the one and a half year olds head out to seek new territory. Bears are highly territorial, and the young bears much prefer to seek new territories than to risk what can be very violent and debilitating battles with already established bears. Princeton's recent visits by bears are of this nature.

There's also a whimsical but useful letter about how to react in the extremely rare case of a bear attack, to be found in the Town Topics and reposted below:

In the description of what to do if you see a black bear, I was astonished to learn that, in the very rare case that a black bear attacks, the best tactic is to fight back. Princetonians have not been called upon to display such courage since 1777, when we all could conveniently claim we had yet to be born.

To bridge this gap between experience and expectation, I herein provide a translation of the wildlife officials’ instructions, customized to fit the Princetonian lifestyle:

Black bears are near-sighted, so make noise to avoid surprising it. If the bear stands up on its hind legs, don’t worry. It’s just trying to see you better. Make sure the bear has an escape route. For instance, if it is following you out of the public library, hold the door open and give it plenty of room. If you encounter the bear in the woods, or on Nassau Street, you can back away slowly, but don't turn your back to the bear. In a calm, assertive voice, put the bear on notice that you are a Princetonian fully armed with opinions, and will not hesitate to express them.

Avoid eye contact. If it doesn't run away right off, bang the pot you happen to be carrying with you, or download a "kitchenware noise" app on your iphone. Bears hate to cook, which explains their interest in garbage. Otherwise, clap your hands, raise your arms over your head, wave a jacket, all of which should make you look large and impressive.
 
On rare occasions, the bear will do a bluff charge, at speeds up to 35 mph. If a cafe is close by, this is a good time to duck in for a double latte. If that option is not available, then you'll need to dig deep. Fleeing will only make you appear weak. Perhaps the stirring words of a high school football coach will come to mind. In any case, stand your ground, wave your arms and shout. Pretend you're in front of town council, venting your outrage over moving the Dinky. The bear should veer away from you at the last moment, providing a bigger thrill than any 3D movie at the mall.

If the bear actually attacks, which is extremely rare, it's time to drop all remaining pretense of civility. Fight back. Don't worry about the bear's lack of access to dental care. Without asking permission, bop it on the nose. Bears' noses are 100 times more sensitive than ours. Use this sensitivity to your advantage, all the while reveling in what a great story this will make to tell the grandkids.

In case you surf the internet for more info, don't be confused by accounts of how to behave when encountering a grizzly bear out west, where the protocol is completely different and not nearly so gallant.

Update: A friend just back from the Boundary Waters area of northern Minnesota told me that a woman was attacked by a black bear up there, and had successfully gotten it to go away by punching it in the nose.

Distinguished Backyard Guests

Several distinguished pollinators paid visits recently, not least among them a monarch drawn to the golfball-sized blooms of buttonbush. Seems I started seeing monarchs a month ago, as opposed to August in previous years, which could have to do with the unusually warm winter.

The banner beebalm crop, in addition to drawing the bumbly crowd (the shiny abdomen suggests a carpenter bee rather than a bumble bee), was also graced by hummingbirds and another precision flyer, the syrinx moth, which can easily be mistaken for a small hummingbird. The syrinx, too, seems early. I found one trapped in a storm window in the middle of May.

Yesterday, a tiger swallowtail came by, lingering long on the latest buttonbush blooms to mature.

Each "ball" has hundreds of tiny flowers. The butterfly would make its way slowly back and forth around the flower, sampling each flower in turn.

Artillery Fungus

A morning dog walk provided a chance to do some garden detective work. I was talking to a neighbor when I noticed tiny black spots on her car. She had been wondering how they got there.

Closer up, they look like tiny specs of tar.

A few years back another neighbor, after finding tiny black spots accumulating on house siding, traced the culprit back to something growing in the woodchip mulch used around foundation plantings.

I checked the other side of the car. Almost no spots at all.

The side with the spots is always parked next to a flower bed mulched with woodchip mulch, which makes good habitat for artillery fungus, so-called because it can shoot spore sacs more than 15 feet. In areas of the garden close to houses or parking, it may help to use bark mulch rather than woodchips, or use the well-composted woodchip mulch available to Princeton residents at the Lawrenceville Ecological Center. Below is one of many sources of more information.
http://plantclinic.cornell.edu/factsheets/artilleryfungus.pdf

The Walk That Saved a Canal

On this July 4, when independence from oil is as patriotic a goal as any, a story of how a shaded walkway in our nation's capital was saved. We got a chance to witness this greenway running through Georgetown on a recent visit.

In 1954, the Washington Post ran an editorial calling for the Connecticut and Ohio Canal to be turned into a roadway. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas responded with a letter to the editor, calling for preservation of the canal as a national park. 

He invited the editors and other reporters to walk the canal, along with authorities who could speak to the natural and cultural beauty at stake. The editors changed their minds, wrote in support of preservation, and the public response was such that in 1961 the canal was preserved as a national monument. 

A bust of Douglas stands next to the canal in the shade of an American basswood tree, from where he's able to gaze out upon a part of his environmental legacy in perpetuity.

Highschool Wetland in Full Flower

It's a good time of year for an evening walk along Walnut Street. The sunsets can put on a show across the sports fields, and the high school ecolab wetland is having one of its finer moments. These elderberry blooms are past, replaced by a good-looking crop of berries, but there's a resplendent wave of wildflower blooms coming on.

This is the view from the sidewalk. Music may be wafting out of the practice room to the right, mixing with the loose banjo string call of the green frogs.

The blue irises made quite a splash a month ago, and the soft rush (left) was looking stately.

But a larger ensemble is just warming up: wild senna, black-eyed susan, hundreds of joe-pye-weed, swamp rose, sunflower, and cut-leaf coneflower. What's particularly auspicious about this wetland's setup is that it is essentially surrounded by an observation walkway, perfect for viewing the wildflowers rising ten feet up from the wetland below.

Walk around the back of the wetland to get a look at the crayfish living in the small pool where the sump pump feeds the wetland with fresh water from the high school basement.

Chainsaw Gardening

Planting gardens in public spaces, like this raingarden at the Senior Center on Harrison Street, has its risks. With the surrounding ground maintained by crews familiar only with mowing grass and trimming shrubs, you never know when some new crew member might unknowingly unleash his weapons of vegetative suppression on the comparatively rambunctious wildflowers.

 Years back, one of the wetland gardens I was nurturing in a park in Durham, NC, had reached a fine stage of spring splendor when I arrived on the scene to find it had been completely mowed down by a clueless city employee. The first time this happened, it was like a punch to the gut--a labor of love destroyed. The garden grew back, however, and the next year when yet another new worker accidentally mowed it, my skin was a little thicker. 

This conditioning prepared me well for a sight this past May, as I came strolling down Harrison Street to see how my raingarden grew.

Not so great, as the blueberry bushes, Joe-Pye-Weed and other wildflowers were at that very moment falling victim to a chainsaw massacre.

It's always smart to be diplomatic when approaching people with chainsaws in their hands, even when they're decimating your garden. And so I walked up calmly and we discussed the situation. He was under orders from his boss, but we came to an understanding that the plants in that special spot were to be left to grow.

The next time I saw him, we laughed about it, but I know that somewhere deep down, the guts still churned.

Islands of White Clover

White clover is quickly colonizing the sports fields installed a year or two ago at Princeton's JW Middle School, making for a nice visual effect.

Distinguishing Porcelain Berry and Grape

One invasive exotic vine that is exploding in its prevalence around Princeton is the porcelain berry. It does an all too convincing imitation of kudzu's growth pattern, smothering other vegetation. Porcelain berry is an Asian species and its leaves can easily be confused with our native grapes. In this photo, the deeply lobed leaf of porcelain berry is above the grape leaf.

From top to bottom in this photo, Virginia creeper (a native vine with five leaflets), porcelain berry in the middle, and a grape leaf below. I've heard that the pith of the porcelain berry's stem is white, while that of grape is brown.

The berries of porcelain berry are bright shades of blue, red and white. Cutting the stems at the ground, before the seeds mature, is one way to keep this species from taking over. It really helps to catch this species early, before it has become established and spread into nearby areas.

Sustainable Jazz Ensemble, Lunchtime Performance Thursday

The Sustainable Jazz Ensemble will B there at P Square in Princeton as part of Palmer Square's Lunchtime Music on the Green series, with performances of Greening the Blues, Scrambled Eggs, Lemon Merengue and other sustaining fare.

Music runs from 12-2pm. Last year, we sprinkled chairs across the lawn, but some bring a favorite lawn chair or a blanket for a picnic.

Bottlebrush Buckeye

Buckeye species come in varied sizes. This one, bottlebrush buckeye (Aesculus parviflora), has a growth pattern similar to sumac, forming a low clone over time. Having overgrown its narrow space between a path and the low carport roof, this specimen should have been moved in early spring, but to catch this year's flowers, I moved a portion early and left the rest until after it finishes blooming.

Native to the deep south (Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina), the USDA range map (click here and scroll down) unexpectedly shows disjunct wild populations in Pennsylvania and Somerset County, just to our north. I wouldn't be surprised if these northern populations are escapes from cultivation.

The tubular flowers attract some enthusiastic pollinators, including this moth that imitates the flight of a hummingbird.

Type "buckeye" in the search box at the upper left of this website for previous posts about bottlebrush and red buckeyes.

A Fertile Oasis on John Street

Can you find the stealth township service in this photograph? In the distance are the basketball and tennis courts of Community Park, but I had heard rumors of community gardens somewhere along John Street, for heavily shaded residents to grow vegetables. This desolate corner with parking lots and weedy lawns didn't look promising,

but a peek over the fence reveals another world.

Looks like a good year for local food production.

A parallel scene at the Smoyer Park garden plots can be found in a post at princetonprimer.org.

Phantoms at Mountain Lakes

A close look reveals a Phantom Crane Fly (Bittacomorpha clavipes), clinging to a tiny bit of dead grass above a rivulet of water. In preparation for my nature walk tomorrow, I was exploring the backside of the lower dam at Mountain Lakes today, hoping that the renovation of the dam hadn't blocked a seepage that in years past had fed a wetland just below the dam.

Sure enough, the spring still flows, and above its steady trickle of water hovered magical-looking creatures the size of a silver dollar. When they fly, their legs remain extended, on a plane perpendicular to the ground. The effect is not unlike a sideways version of the woodsprites in Avatar, the "Atokirinas".