Black Walnut Harvest

A friend is very excited about harvesting black walnuts this year, having heard great things about their health benefits. There's the small matter of reaching the meat, however, well guarded by the green hull and the extremely hard shell.

One technique for removing the hulls is to drive over them with a car. Traffic along Harrison Street was being very cooperative in this regard, but I was a little leery of collecting nuts so close to a busy road.

If you're moved to give black walnut harvesting a try, here's one of many links with instructions.

Most walnuts go begging, like these on the lawn at Brearley House. That leaves an abundance for those willing to give harvesting a try. Best to be armed with a good nutcracker. Below are the results of my research.

Smaller nutcrackers like the Reed get high marks for everything but black walnuts, so you'll need something larger and stronger.

Here's a recommendation from a friend: "I have a Gardner nut cracker which I am very happy with… I think the cost is around $80 and it works very well with thick-shelled nuts like black walnut, butternut, and hickories and hicans. (I am also told there is a Chinese knockoff to be avoided.)" He also mentioned a Kenkel model.

There's also a Hunt nutcracker that came up in an internet search.

Some Kingston Greenways Events

Some good stuff happening just down the road:

Annual Meeting, Kingston Historical Society , Wednesday October 9, at 7:30 pm at the Kingston Fire House on Heathcote Road, Kingston. After a very brief business meeting, William Flemer, IV will give an illustrated talk about the Princeton Nurseries

Fall Foliage Walk, Kingston Greenways Association , Sunday October 20th, 2pm at the Mapleton Preserve/ D&R Canal State Park Headquarters, 145 Mapleton Road, Kingston, New Jersey, Rick Henkel will give guided walk through The Mapleton Preserve and other parts of the former Princeton Nurseries Kingston Site

Check the links for more info and background.

Monitoring the Monarchs

This monarch visited our backyard October 1. Most of its fellow monarchs, what few there have been this year, have long since headed south towards the mountains northwest of Mexico City. A lot of people are worried about their low numbers this year, and are following its fall migration. For periodic updates, there's the monarch monitoring project in Cape May, through which many of New Jersey's monarchs are funneled.

Nationally, the best I have found thus far is the Monarch Butterfly Journey North website, which includes periodic updates and a "Where are the monarchs?" page that details their travails.

As with any complex entity, whether it be a car, the human body, the climate, or an ecosystem, one doesn't need to know how it works unless it starts breaking down. Thus, a lot of attention is being paid to how the monarch migration works, and what is causing it to diminish.

For anyone interested, longtime monarch advocate Chip Taylor offers an indepth look at how migration works, how weather and farming practices are affecting it, and what we can do to help the monarchs prosper. The video's is worth an hour of one's time.

Among my notes from his talk: 

Of the 73 species of milkweed growing in the U.S., common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) supports 90% of the monarch population. It is not found in mature prairie, but rather is adapted to disturbed sites, such as roadsides and farm fields. In the distant past, when prairie covered much of America's heartland, the many species of milkweed that thrived there would have provided the monarch larvae food. But the conversion of nearly all of the original prairie to farms has made the monarchs dependent primarily on the common milkweed that can survive in the farm fields.

Beginning in the 1990s, however, the introduction of "Roundup Ready" GMO corn and soybeans brought about a dramatic transformation in farms across the Midwest. Using Roundup-proof crops allowed the intense spraying of herbicide, which led to the elimination of milkweed from more than 90% of its original farm habitat--about 160 million acres!

Additionally, as government began subsidizing ethanol projection in 2006 or so--an ill-conceived program that speaks more to the political power of sparsely populated cornbelt states and less to common sense--corn demand and prices leaped upwards. Farmers responded by expanding their fields, eliminating fencerows and plowing right up to the road, erasing even more habitat that formerly supported milkweed.

Fire ants, an invasive species introduced from Brazil that preys on butterflies, have also been expanding their range in the south. (For example, I witnessed their mounded nests appearing along right of ways in Durham, NC over the past ten years.)

Though weather has long been variable, global weirding, as it's sometimes called, is making these variations more extreme. A spring that's too warm, a summer that's too cool, a drought that's too deep--all of these can make for low monarch numbers in any given year. One interesting twist is that some drought can actually be a good thing for monarchs, if the dryness reduces the fire ant numbers while not affecting the deep-rooted milkweed.

Conditions in Texas are particularly critical as the monarchs move north from Mexico in the spring. Taylor calls it the "breadbasket" for monarchs, spawning the first new generation that then flies up our way. (Think of the migration as a multi-stage rocket fueled by milkweed, with each generation building on the boost in momentum provided by the previous one, until the season's fourth or fifth generation heads back south in the fall. No fuel, no momentum.) As an example of the impact of extreme weather, he described a phenomenal loss of trees--300 million--across Texas due to the 2011 drought.

Seeking to compensate in some small way for the human folly that's being perpetrated on a grand landscape scale, they have a WayStation program in which people all over the country register their monarch-oriented gardens. This one in the photo, along William Street, looks like a good candidate. It has two key plants for the monarch--for the larvae, the common milkweed with its light green pods in the background, and for the adults, the New England aster whose bloom is well timed with the monarch's fall migration. Princeton needs more family-oriented restaurants like this one.

Previous post on monarchs here.

Deer and Coyote Culling Recommended by Committee

(Update, Oct. 16: The committee reversed its recommendation on coyote management, deciding to forego culling in favor of education.) 

Management of deer, coyotes and fox was the subject of this past week's Princeton Animal Control Committee. Some realities were laid out and some recommendations made. I offered a few remarks during the public comment period, describing the ecological benefits of continued deer culling, questioning the need to manage the fox populations--given that fox numbers tend to be cyclical, tracking the ups and downs of prey species such as rabbits--and expressing interest in hearing why coyote would need to be managed.

COYOTES
Given that the native timber wolf was extirpated from NJ, the spread of coyotes eastward into NJ can be seen as partially filling an important ecological niche. They feed primarily on rabbits and rodents, occasionally taking young or weakened deer. Both field mice and deer carry the deer tick that spreads Lyme.

Animal Control Officer Mark Johnson described recent incidents with coyote, which center around Princeton Community Village up on Bunn Drive. A couple pets that had been left off-leash have been lost, and there was one incident in which someone was followed by a coyote. The Institute Woods is the other location described as a hot spot for coyotes, with numerous neighbors making reports. One committee member said her kids no longer feel comfortable sleeping in the backyard. Mark mentioned an attack on a child elsewhere in NJ, which I traced to reports of two alleged attacks in Middleton back in 2007, in a neighborhood that borders an extensive wooded naval base. The state DEP website lists recommendations to limit human-coyote interactions, including to keep pets indoors at night, and don't leave food outside. Reports of sightings in Milltown and New Brunswick this year included instructions to make lots of noise to scare coyotes away.

One interesting comment, unconnected to management decisions, was that the local coyotes are considerably less attractive than the pictures the DEP has up on its website. Having seen some beautiful coyotes recently in Durham, NC, I asked if there might have been some crossbreeding with dogs in NJ, but Mark was doubtful.

Any management effort would be aimed not at removing all coyotes, but limiting their numbers so as to make encounters with people less likely.

DEER
Deer management was also discussed. Customarily, bow hunting for deer is allowed starting in December in Herrontown Woods and Autumn Hill Reservation, with the professional White Buffalo service beginning its work in Princeton in January. Bow hunters took only ten deer this past year, less than 10% of what the professional service takes. If the professionals are not hired, then deer numbers increase and more deer end up being killed along roadsides. The venison goes to local food kitchens. The latest data on deer killed by vehicles showed an increase of 25 deaths in 2012, following Princeton's one year suspension of its professional deer culling program. This year, following resumption of wintertime deer culling, road kill is down by a similar number.

The consensus of the committee was to recommend continued culling of the deer herd as in previous years, and adding coyote control. The two can be done concurrently.

FOX
Management of fox, however, was not recommended this year, in favor of continued monitoring. According to Mark, though coyote are thus far limited to woodlots, fox have moved into the fabric of neighborhoods, living under porches, usually without the owners being aware. A few people have been followed by foxes, and one reportedly attacked a dog--an encounter that ended with the fox running away. Also unlike coyotes, fox don't form packs, but tend to be seen singly or in pairs.

Mark said the call of the coyote can be heard in Herrontown Woods at dusk, though my visits there recently have been serenaded only by two great horned owls. May have to stop by for another listen.

Late Season Wildflowers

A couple on the street the other day recognized me as a botanist at large, and asked about a flower they'd seen, like boneset but lacking the fused, perfoliate leaves. They summoned a photo on their iPhone. "Late-Flowering Thoroughwort," I announced. Given the length of the name, some people slim it down a bit by replacing "thoroughwort" with "boneset". It's a beautiful, delicate-looking plant, even though it toughs it out along roadsides, and is more common in the wild than boneset. In the garden, it sometimes seems fickle, dying out in one spot then seeding into another. This may have to do with drying out, because the consistent rains this summer have coincided with its most prosperous year in memory. Eupatorium serotinum is the latin name.

Another favorite, one of the few exotics I still like to plant from my less native-oriented days, is showy stonecrop, here shown with the shrub Virginia sweetspire gaining its rich fall color in the background. This kind of stonecrop (Sedum spectabile, unless you really want to learn the new latin genus name, Hylotelephium ) has a flower that gradually shifts color in the fall from light pink to deep red to a chocolate brown.

New England aster can look a little lanky in the garden until it finally blooms, at which point it looks just right. It feeds what few monarchs we've had during their fall migration south to Mexico.

Once again, the sunchokes (Helianthus tuberosa) were allowed to grow, despite vigorous spring pulling of hundreds of shoots. Their splendid flowers this time of year distract from their imperialistic underground spread. What's needed is a human to come along and eat its tubers throughout the winter, so that only a few will be left in the ground to sprout in the spring. Sounds like a win-win, if the resident human will get his act and his appetite together.

The "Fireworks" goldenrod (Solidago rugosa) grows at the Barbara Boggs Sigmund Park on Hamilton Ave. It's a native originally named by a friend from Durham days, Ken Moore of the North Carolina Botanical Garden.

Big Game Before the Big Game

What to make of this headline on the Princeton University website: "Fall football lecture will discuss wildlife conservation". Are mascots threatened? Are football teams finally starting to donate a portion of ticket sales to preservation of the wild animals their mascots are based on? A case could be made that, much as we as a nation have long drawn strength from the majesty of our land, so might football teams draw strength from the wild manifestations of their mascots.

This Saturday, you can segue seamlessly from the big game of the African savannas to the big game to be played on the grasslands of Princeton Stadium, as the fall football lecture series continues with:

 "African Grand Challenges: Can Wildlife Conservation and Human Development be Balanced?" 

a lecture to be "given at 10 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 5 in Lewis Library, Room 120. Dan Rubenstein, Class of 1877 Professor of Zoology and professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, will give the lecture prior to the football game in an event sponsored by the Alumni Association." 

Egg Ideosynchrasies

One year into their residency in our backyard, our ducks and chickens continue an improbable output, with the ducks laying daily and the Aracana chickens somewhat less productive. Most of the duck eggs are only slightly larger than the chicken eggs, but now and then the large Pekin duck lays a double yolk whopper, like the one on the left in the photo. Next to it is a chicken egg (more pointed), and a miniature duck egg perhaps laid by the mother mallard whose chicks are nearly grown. The red oak acorn is included for scale.

The duck eggs have thicker shells, which may owe to the ducks' great interest in filtering through dirt and mud with their beaks, which no doubt increases their consumption of minerals. We try to keep the dirt in the backyard as clean as possible, for their eating pleasure.

The miniature egg laid by the mother mallard--the first since she had ducklings--had no yolk at all.

A friend tells me that duck eggs "taste like other eggs only more." In a frying pan, the duck egg on the right is barely distinguishable, with only a slightly larger yolk than the chicken egg.

Once we found a cache of eggs in a tight spot in the coop that was out of sight. Since eggs slowly dry out over time, with air displacing some of the eggwhite, the older ones will angle up or become completely vertical in water, depending on their age. The eggs we found make a series, with gradations of tilt and, presumably, age, starting at ten o'clock and going counterclockwise.

The large influx of eggs crowding our frig causes us, counterintuitively, to eat fewer of them, much like the spectacular production of sunchoke tubers can reduce the desire to eat them. It's a reflex that has to be consciously countered.

Deer, Coyote and Fox

Tomorrow, Thursday, at 8:30am in Town Hall on Witherspoon St, Princeton's Animal Control Committee will meet to discuss options for controlling the population of deer and, for the first time, coyote and fox as well. Reports at Planet Princeton and the Princeton Packet provide some background, though the reason why fox numbers would need to be controlled remains a mystery. The population of predators like fox tends to be cyclical. As rabbit or other prey numbers increase, the fox population increases, which in time greatly reduces the prey population, which then causes a crash in fox numbers. Low predator numbers then allow the prey population to increase again, and the ten or fifteen year cycle repeats.

Background on the deer control program can be found further down in this post, and also at the "essays" tab of this website.

The photo is of four deer encountered at dusk at Herrontown Woods recently. They had been lying in the field before I came around the corner of the Veblen House. They are beautiful creatures, and encountering them in the woods can be magical. That truth does not erase the other reality, which is that when their numbers grow unrestrained, with none of the predators that historically provided control, their appetites can do tremendous damage to a woodland. Because their tastebuds have not evolved to take more than an occasional nibble out of the abundant non-native species that have invaded woodlands, they feed heavily on what few native shrubs and herbaceous plants can be found in the woods, further shifting the woodlands to inedible exotics.


The two spicebush in the photo tell the story of how native flora have begun to rebound as deer numbers have come more into ecological balance. Spicebush is a native shrub important to wildlife for nesting and food. Because of its strong taste, it's not one of the deer's favorites, but an overabundance of deer forces them to eat it. You can see the main stem and then many new stems growing up from the base. Back in 2000, spicebush were struggling to survive, sustaining themselves with one stem that was too tall for the deer to defoliate, while new shoots would be repeatedly eaten down to stubs by deer. Only after the intense browsing pressure was brought down through professional control could the many new stems grow to maturity, and the shrub once again fill its niche in the forest.

Below is some background on the deer issue that I wrote after Princeton suspended its professional deer control efforts for a year, back in 2011, before resuming funding.

BACKGROUND

Talk to most any land manager in New Jersey about what poses the biggest threat to biodiversity, and they're likely to say deer overpopulation. 


Traditional predators of deer, such as wolves and mountain lions, were long since extirpated from the region, resulting in a highly destructive ecological imbalance. Since the imbalance is human-caused, it's important that deer policy fill the void left by banished predators. For ten years, Princeton Township lived up to that responsibility to compensate for a broken food chain. Since hunters were not proving sufficiently effective in controlling deer numbers, professionals were brought in each year to reduce the deer population to a more ecologically sustainable number. The harvest went to food kitchens to feed the poor. The policy was controversial, particularly in its first few years, but the ecological and public safety benefits were clear. It can also be said that life for the remaining deer was greatly improved, as their preferred foods were given a chance to rebound.

ANALYSIS OF TOWNSHIP DEER DATA

According to data obtained from Princeton Township, roadkill reached a peak in 2000 of  342 deer killed on the roads. In that same year, Princeton township hired professionals (White Buffalo) to reduce the size of the deer herd. White Buffalo took 322 deer that first year. By 2010, the number they were able to cull had dropped to 148. The lower number reflects a successful reduction in the deer herd. Deer killed by amateur hunters went from a high of 255 in 2000 down to 68 in 2010. 

The primary goal of this ten year program was to reduce the number of collisions with deer on the road, and annual roadkill numbers reflect the success of the program, dropping from the high of 342 in 2000 down to 68 in 2010. Also noticeable during this ten year program was a marked rebound in native vegetation in Princeton’s nature preserves, as browsing pressure was reduced.

For the year 2010/2011, the township decided to terminate its contract with White Buffalo, to save money and to see if hunters could provide adequate control of deer numbers. Data for the year has not yet been received, but it can be pointed out that amateur hunters were unable to control the deer population in the 25 years leading up to 2000, when roadkill numbers rose steadily from 68 in 1975 to 342 in 2000.


Even from an animal rights point of view, one could argue that the program has been a success, actually reducing the total number of deer killed annually in Princeton Township over time. In 1999, the year before the professionals were brought in, 555 deer were killed in the township by vehicles and hunters. In 2010, after ten years of professional deer management, the total number killed by vehicles, hunters and professionals had dropped to 286. With the end of professional management, history suggests that that number will begin to rise.

A 2002 NPR piece did a very good job of reporting on Princeton's investment to bring the deer population into greater ecological balance. It reported that 16,000 deer were killed on the roads of NJ back then.

Stiltgrass--Coping With its Copious Growth

With a wetter than usual summer, it's been a good year for growing stiltgrass. Everybody grows stiltgrass, though not intentionally. It can grow four feet high along fencelines and in neglected flowerbeds.

It's easy to pull, but frustrating in its abundance, so most of it survives to set seed on skinny stems with sparse leaves that perhaps explain its name--the leaf being the foothold on the long stilt. In this photo, one of the smartweeds (Polygonum) with similar leaves but small pink flowers can be seen at the bottom.

Stiltgrass also spreads into lawns, particularly in wet years, causing a blotchy appearance. Remarkably, it can still set seed even when kept mowed down. Even someone who doesn't particularly like lawns can grieve at the sight of an old-style soft fescue lawn succumbing to incursions of stiltgrass. Pre-emergent herbicide? Corn gluten? Or else use the infestation as an excuse to dig up the lawn, plant shrubs, perennials or vegetables, and mulch well enough to prevent the annual stiltgrass from growing.

Past posts on stiltgrass (Microstegium vimineum) can be found by typing the word (stiltgrass) into the search box at the top of this page.

When Evergreens Turn Brown

This is the time of year people start wondering if something's wrong with their evergreens. Chances are, nothing at all.

Evergreens like these rhododendrons drop their leaves, too, but only after keeping them in service for multiple years.

This white pine tree along the DR Canal towpath is getting into the act, becoming two-tone as it abandons older needles after their last year of service. It makes sense to drop older leaves rather than sustain them through the rigors and meager light of winter.

You can tell, by the way, that it's a white pine by its clusters of five needles--the same number as letters in "white".

And the age of the pine can be determined by counting the whorls of branches. You can tell which years were good years for growth by the space between whorls. Their lives, their triumphs and setbacks, are open books, ready for the reading.

Announcements: Wildlife Movies, and March for Elephants

Free movies and musical performance tonight at the Garden Theater. March for Elephants is this Friday. Info below.

STUDENT FILMS
Documentary films on a range of wildlife conservation issues produced this summer in Kenya by Princeton students will be screened at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 1, at the Garden Theatre, 160 Nassau St. The evening includes a performance by Umqombothi, Princeton's African a cappella ensemble, a Q&A with the filmmakers and a reception following the screening.

MARCH FOR ELEPHANTS

Princeton NJ will join 39 international  "  MARCH FOR ELEPHANTS   " marches on October 4th to save the African elephant from extinction.

The only NJ march will be in Princeton NJ

WHERE & WHEN:

Gather @ 10:00 am @ monument Hall (nassau St & rte 206) Princeton NJ.

Debra Troy will begin the days events with live music.

Message by: Andy Dobson Princeton University Professor Ecology & Evolutionary Biology
 

@ 11am March, Yoga & Drum Circle begin....

 

March: Marchers will do a 1 mile loop and end back at monument hall where we will have the opportunity to join the yogi's in a silent meditation.

 

Yoga: The yoga community is inviting yogi's to participate in  2 -15 minute blocks of sun salutations while the marchers will be marching. This is to signify that in 2012 every 15 minutes an elephant lost its life due to poaching.  

 

Drum Circle: Participants will form a circle and drum while marchers are marching & Yogis are yogi-ing

 

after the march - 2pm Live music and celebration concert with John Beacher www.johnbeacher.com . 

 

The first 50 preregistered marchers, yogis and drummers will receive a free T-shirt (they are BEAUTIFUL!!)

More info at https://www.facebook.com/march4elephants.nj    

A Good Hornet That's Not a Hornet

Finally, I got a photo of the salt and pepper-colored bee-like thing that was flying around our boneset this summer. Unlike the fifty or so other species of insect and spider that for weeks were visiting or residing on our mini-grove of boneset flowers, this one would never land, but instead patrol the airy avenues, in and around the flowers, as if hunting for prey.

The wonders of the internet led me to a Penn State factsheet on the creature. Turns out it's a baldfaced hornet, although you may know it by its scientific nickname, good old Dolichovespula maculata, in the family Vespidae.

As with many common names, this one's a bald-faced lie, because the insect is not a hornet at all. The only true hornet in North America is an introduced species. What was patrolling my boneset was a kind of yellowjacket. Besides not being yellow, it also varies from other yellowjacket species in building its nests in the air rather than underground. Yellowjacket species can be considered to be beneficial, in that they prey on other insects that could be considered a nuisance, but the baldfaced hornet has the added benefit of preying on other species of yellowjacket. I'm not sure the logic of that sentence would survive scrutiny, but I'll stick with it for now. The notion of beneficence will be lost on anyone who disturbs a nest, but if the nest is out of the way, then the recommendation is to leave it be.

Riding on the DR Canal towpath yesterday, I found this nest suspended on a tree branch over the canal. I didn't have my better camera, but got close enough to give the general idea. One of them flew over to me, but as usual I didn't react, and it flew away. The nest has small vents on top to release hot air but minimize how much rain can get in.

When I was a kid, some sort of wasp built a nest on my bedroom window. I got to watch them applying the paste to build each new layer of walls, and of course had the boyish joy of later poking a hole in the nest with a stick before running back inside. Such is the early training to become a naturalist.

There was even a convenient explanation for why I finally found one sitting still, perched on a flower. Baldfaced hornets prey on other insects in order to feed their young high-protein food, but as summer wanes there are fewer young to feed, and they start shifting over to feeding on nectar.

Going Negative On Natives

There's a movement afoot to blur the distinction between native and non-native species, and to berate, belittle, besmear, besmirch, and otherwise ascribe questionable motives to those of us who seek to restore native diversity. The arguments and accusations put forth are highly flawed, including a recent oped in the New York Times. Below is a rebuttal I originally posted two weeks ago at newscompanion.com. This issue is coming up more frequently, including an NPR Science Friday show today, which I haven't listened to as yet.

The New York Times is one of the bedrocks of news, which makes it hard to understand why its opinion page would show a weakness for ill-informed attacks on native plants and their proponents. The latest is by Verlyn Klinkenborg, a point-by-point rebuttal of which can be found further down in this post, but his is just one in a series.

First in my memory is George Ball, president of Burpee Seed Company and former president of the American Horticultural Society, who despite these distinguished labels launched an error-filled broadside (Border War, 3/19/06) against people who promote the planting of native flora. In his words, people who promote natives are xenophobic, narrowminded, the horticultural equivalent of radical fundamentalists, utopian, elitist snobs, anti-exotic partisans, and (last but not least) dangerous to a free society.

Then there was Sean Wilsey, (High Line, Low Aims, 7/9/08) who spoke disparagingly of the proposal to plant a ribbon of native species on Manhattan's High Line. Apparently lacking any botanical or ecological knowledge that might have heightened his appreciation of the plan, he made it sound like the High Line would be little more than a linear patch of weedy sumac--a species he may have confused with the ubiquitous non-native Tree of Heaven. Time, and the spectacular congregation of native plants that now thrive on the very popular elevated walkway, have proven him wrong.

The latest installment of this attack on native plant advocacy, as mentioned, arrived this past week (Hey, You Calling Me an Invasive Species?, 9/7/13), written by a member of the Times' editorial board, Verlyn Klinkenborg. Avoiding George Ball's name-calling and Sean Wilsey's dismissive tone, his thesis is that the distinction between native and nonnative species is now an arbitrary one, given the passage of centuries and the ever-expanding influence of humans on the natural world.

Klinkenborg's opinion piece was prompted by recent public protests against a plan to thin out a dense forest of non-native eucalyptus trees growing on Mount Sutro in San Francisco. The University of California San Francisco (UCSF) owns the property, which the local fire department has said is in urgent need of thinning in order to protect nearby buildings from the highly combustible eucalyptus. Reducing the dense shade will improve the health of the trees while providing some light for native vegetation to grow beneath them. Sounds benign, yet locals who walk in the forest are calling the proponents of the plan "plant facists" who want to impose the tyranny of nativism on a woods that is perfect just the way it is.

Joining the chorus of protest, Nathan Winograd, an animal rights advocate who blogs on the Huffington Post wrote a post about the Mount Sutro tree-thinning plan entitled "Biological Xenophobia: The Environmental Movement's War on Nature". Adopting the strident tone of George Ball, he has nothing but contempt for the concept of native plants, preferring that "every life that appears on this Earth is welcomed and respected." Apparently, he's never grown any plant he valued enough to save from the weeds.

The most informative report, as opposed to opinion, on the San Francisco controversy that I could find is here. The university describes the plan this way: "Under the guidance of an outside licensed arborist, UCSF will remove approximately 1,250 trees, each less than 6 inches in diameter, while also thinning shrubs and mowing non-woody perennial plants in the 100-foot buffer zone. All told, the work will encompass approximately 15.6 acres of the 61-acre Reserve."

Here is a point by point rebuttal of Mr. Klinkenborg's opinion piece:

"Since the 1880s, there have been blue gum eucalyptus trees growing on San Francisco’s Mount Sutro, which lies just south of Golden Gate Park. Recently, the University of California, San Francisco, which owns most of Mount Sutro, has been trying to thin the dense eucalyptus forest. The reason is fire control — eucalyptus trees are “fire intensive,” shedding a lot of debris and burning with unusual volatility. But the effort to cull the Mount Sutro forest has been met with strident protest by residents who want to see the eucalyptus left untouched."

Mr. Klinkenborg only mentions fire once in the oped, but fire hazard is a big deal in the California landscape, and the planting of Eucalyptus trees close to structures has doomed many a building when the trees' high flammability causes them to explode. The link he offers, another opinion piece in a distinguished scientific journal, Science, actually offers compelling reasons to alter the forest. There's the current fire hazard to reduce, and the opportunity to improve habitat for the resident great horned owls by re-establishing some native flora. 

By the standard of the California Native Plant Society, eucalyptus, which were brought from Australia, are officially nonnative trees because they were introduced after the first European contact with the New World. But the trees on Mount Sutro have been there within the memory of every living San Franciscan, and to the generations who have grown up within view of them, it seems almost perverse to insist that they are aliens.

No science here, just an anthropocentric view that wishes the rest of nature to conform to the human sense of time.

To keep a clear distinction between native and nonnative species requires nearly geologic memory. 

No, one hundred and thirty years, or even three or four hundred, is not even close to a geologic scale.

But humans, like most species, don’t live in the past, where the distinction originates. In the present, the difference is largely immaterial. 

This isn't true. Though wildlife don't literally live in the past, their tastebuds do. Herbivores tend to be extremely conservative in their food preferences. Whether it be deer or the larvae of moths and butterflies, they continue to reject exotic species introduced hundreds of years ago. They still prefer to eat the native species, which gives exotics a competitive advantage, which makes native plants rare, which then limits wildlife's food options. 

Native or nonnative, California’s eucalyptus trees, like the starlings of Central Park, have come to seem original just because they predate us.

Again, he imposes an anthropocentric view on nature.

Of course, the vast majority of nonnative species have not been intentionally introduced, as the Mount Sutro eucalyptus were, but have been distributed accidentally, unnoticed baggage in the wanderings of our species.

Whether a species is introduced intentionally or unintentionally has no bearing on the potential harm the species can do, just as the impact of human-caused global warming will bear no relation to whether we have intended to change the climate or not. 

Some species — invasive ones like kudzu, Japanese knotweed, rabbits and rats — find almost unlimited room for expansion in their new environs, often overwhelming native species. But not all introduced species are invasive, and pose a threat only when they outcompete native species.

Excellent! It's so important to make the distinction between invasive and non-invasive species. 

It’s important to remember that the distinction between native and nonnative depends on an imaginary snapshot of this continent taken just before European contact. 

Not so imaginary, really. Though American Indians transformed the landscape, spreading some plant species along trade routes, favoring some species through cultivation or burning, or denuding the landscape, e.g. around Teotihuacan to heat the plaster for their pyramids, the massive influx of species from other continents did not begin until Western colonization. It's well known which species are or were part of a particular plant community. The bur oak savannas of the midwest, which had disappeared due to the invasion of buckthorn and other exotics, were pieced back together through research and restoration, and now flourish once again. Whole books describe in detail the various plant communities of a given region, such as this onedetailing the plant communities of North Carolina. 

               That distinction is becoming even harder to make as climate change alters the natural world.

A new study from the University of Exeter and Oxford University finds that plant pests and diseases have been migrating northward and southward an average of two miles a year since 1960. This suggests that the plants on which they prey have been moving at similar rates. In places like the Adirondacks, for instance, you can follow the boundary between southern and northern tree species as it shifts northward, year by year. As plants and their pests adjust their range, under the influence of global warming, what becomes of the distinction between native and nonnative? 

Plants and animals have been shifting their regional boundaries throughout the last four hundred thousand years, as glaciers advanced and receded. Human-caused climate change is happening much more rapidly, which is one reason why it is proving so destructive, but most plant species have broad geographic ranges. Climate change doesn't mean that plant communities developed over millenia suddenly have no integrity. 

To any individual species, it doesn’t matter whether it’s native or not. The only thing that matters is whether its habitat is suitable.

 Again, because herbivore food preferences tend to remain unchanged hundreds of years after the introduction of exotic species, suitable habitat tends to equate with native plant species. 

And this is where we come in.
For the most part, we don’t have an immediate impact on the species that surround us. But we do have an immediate impact on their habitat, which determines whether they survive or, in some cases, shift their ground.
Nearly every habitat on this planet has been affected by humans, no matter how remote it is. In the past decade, for instance, the habitats of grizzly bears high in the Rocky Mountains — places most of us never get a chance to visit — have been significantly altered by global warming. As the climate warms, the mountain pine beetle has managed to winter over and destroy vast tracts of whitebark pine trees, which produce pine nuts that bears eat.

When I visited a hillside in Smokey Mountain National Park where hemlock had been wiped out by the exotic wooly adelgid, growing beneath the dead trunks was a riot of native wildflowers and brambles, representing a plant community that deep shade had suppressed. The devastation of whitebark pine trees in the Rockies is tragic, and the loss of that important species may have broad ramifications over time for that ecosystem, but that doesn't mean that native landscapes suddenly lose all meaning and relevance because one species drops out.

CONSIDERED in this light, the natural world as a whole begins to look like Central Park — an ecosystem where human influence is all pervasive. Parts of the park seem almost wild, but every creature in Central Park, native or not, has adapted to a world that is closely bounded by human activity. It is nature bordered by high-rises, intersected by paths and roadways, basking under artificial light at night.

In late August, a group of scientists and students from the City University of New York’s Macaulay Honors College spent the day cataloging all the nondomesticated life forms living in the park. It will take a while to compile and compare the data, but even the anecdotal reports from that single day show how diverse and surprising the park’s ecosystem can be. It isn’t all squirrels and pigeons. The group reported sightings of several unexpected species — a diamondback terrapin in Turtle Pond, a Wilson’s warbler in the North Woods, a bullhead catfish in the Harlem Meer. And though it might seem like a stretch to talk about ecosystems in Central Park, that is exactly what the group found — a healthy mix of species, overlapping generations within many species, and a sense of balance, especially within the aquatic zones.

Actually, a lot of work has been done to restore native species and habitat in Central Park, and it's the only sizable green space for miles for wildlife like birds and insects to gravitate to, so it's not surprising it would exhibit some diversity.

Nature in Central Park can’t be neatly divided into native of nonnative species, and neither can it be on Mount Sutro. The eucalyptus trees that grow there may be naturalized rather than native, but try telling that to all the other creatures that live in those woods or the people who hike there.

 This would be more convincing if it actually described what diversity resides on Mount Sutro. In Princeton, we had a woods that was densely planted in the 1960s with white pine and spruce--species whose native range lies farther north. The woods had considerable charm and a nice mood to it, but it was an ecological desert, with little more than garlic mustard growing in the deep shade and thick mulch of the evergreens, and reportedly an owl or two making use of the dense canopy for protection. (Mount Sutro, from what descriptions I could find, looks to be similarly slim on diversity, dominated by the eucalyptus, with an understory of English ivy and poison ivy, and a stifling and highly flammable thick mulch of eucalyptus litter.) 

Their trunks weak from age and crowding, most of the pines and spruce in the planted woods in Princeton fell during several ice and wind storms, leaving an impenetrable mess that will become a fire trap as the debris dries out. Ash trees, the only seedlings that the too-numerous deer didn't eat, are now taking over, and before long, the introduced Emerald Ash Borer will arrive to kill all the ash.  

A similar fate could await the planted woods on Mount Sutro, in the form of a cataclysmic fire. That, though far more destructive than what the university is trying to do, would not be as controversial, because it would occur due to inaction rather than action. I'm well aware of the capacity for good intentions to go awry, but sometimes inaction can be the most destructive action of all.

And when it comes to the distinction between native and nonnative, we always leave one species out: call us what you will — native, naturalized, alien or invasive.

I don't want to read too much into this, but Mr. Klinkenborg seems to be suggesting here that because we are a species that invaded the American continent, we therefore cannot be judging other invasive species. With such logic, our compromised position brings into question our capacity to understand nature and act upon what we know. 

The attempt to blur the distinction between native and non-native depends on a highly simplified view of nature and evolution. It ignores the deep interconnections species develop while co-evolving over thousands of years.  It sees no symbiotic relationship between soil fungi and plant roots, between an insect and its obligate host plant, between a particular species of ant and the plant that depends upon it to disperse its seeds. Some species, like humans, are highly adaptable to new circumstances. Others are not. Embracing non-native landscapes may give people the comforting illusion of being open-minded, but it closes the door on those more conservative, less adaptable species. 

Related Writings by Verlyn Klinkenborg

It's long been my observation that environmental issues get marginalized on the opinion pages of the news media, likely because columnists and editors tend to lack training in the life sciences. If environmental issues come up, they tend to be treated in isolation rather than seen in the broader context of economics and political concerns. On the New York Times editorial board, Mr. Klinkenborg appears to represent the sum total of biological expertise. His doctoral degree from Princeton University is in english literature. I'm all for self-education, and hopefully he took some biology-related courses along the way. 

Some of his writings for National Geographic appear to contradict his opinion piece dismissing the relevance of native habitats. For instance, an essay on the Endangered Species Act states that people

"discovered, too late, how finely attuned to its home in the cordgrass the dusky seaside sparrow really was. That last bottled sparrow is what a species looks like when its habitat has vanished for good."

In an essay on the tallgrass prairie, rather than downplaying the importance of native plant communities, he seeks a deeper understanding of them:

"The hard part here in the Flint Hills—and in any of the few remaining patches of native prairie—is learning to see the tallgrass ecosystem for itself. It is a study in the power of modesty."

Rather than giving simplified plantings like the eucalyptus on Mount Sutro equal status with native plant communities, he states:

"In most of America, agriculture has meant replacing the incredible complexity of a natural ecosystem with the incredible simplicity of a single crop growing on bare ground."

That incredibly complex prairie ecosystem, however, is threatened by an invasive non-native plant called Sericea lespedeza (Korean bushclover). Rather than showing concern about the impact of that invasion, Mr. Klinkenborg worries about the human intervention to counter the invasion:

"There is also a worrying trend toward ground and aerial spraying to control a highly invasive weed called sericea lespedeza, introduced decades ago to curb erosion around mines and provide forage and cover for wildlife around reservoirs."

Now, I happen to know Sericea lespedeza well. I've seen how it moves in and eventually replaces a richly diverse native meadow with a monoculture. Though originally touted as a good wildlife food, both its seeds and foliage provide little nourishment. Its roots release toxins that discourage other plant species. If you're looking for an example of intolerance, of a refusal to "play well with others", Sericea lespedeza is Exhibit A. When it invades new territory, land managers have a choice--either let the noxious weed continue to degrade native habitat, or attempt to limit the weed's destructive impact by intervening, often with selective herbicides.

The objections of Klinkenborg and others to intervention are in part a failure to make distinctions. They want to blur the distinction between native and non-native species. The toxicity of herbicides varies according to type and method of application, but its easier for protesters to demonize them all. Nathan Winograd, in his broadside against native plant advocates, wishes to obliterate all distinctions and treasure every living thing equally. More broadly in national discourse, we see a trend towards accepting all opinions as worthy, whether they are founded on fact or fancy.

Saying that we don't need to make these distinctions, nor intervene to restore native plant communities, sounds less to me like open mindedness than a convenient way of letting ourselves off the hook.

Lawn Squash

No, lawn squash is not a sport to be played with rackets, but it might help undercut the racket of endless lawns and endless mowing. This lawn in an upscale neighborhood of million dollar homes in western Princeton is the proud mother of hubbard squash, carefully mowed around for maximum ornamental effect.

Across the street, another, less edible approach to reducing front lawnage--a layer cake of english ivy topped with a white frosting of autumn clematis. Both are highly aggressive plants, here contained by surrounding strips of lawn.

Monarchs--A Miracle in Need of a Miracle

As monarch butterflies begin their migration south towards a home they've never seen but somehow know how to get to, in the mountains northwest of Mexico City, the annual miracle we've long taken for granted appears threatened. Overwintering numbers were down by 60% last winter from the year before. The total population of eastern monarchs occupied only three acres in Mexico's 130,000 acre mountain preserve. The word from New Hampshire to Michigan is that sightings are way down this year. I've seen only two of these beautiful creatures in my wildflower-packed backyard this summer, and none laid eggs on the many swamp milkweeds. What a contrast with 2007, when we had great numbers of larvae, some of which we grew in a glass bowl and later released.

Though threats of logging in the overwintering forest have now been greatly reduced, the monarchs face the increasing weather extremes associated with climate change, and the increasingly hostile North American landscape. In other words, the struggle to save the monarchs has shifted from a point source problem (their overwintering habitat) to a nonpoint source problem (the quality of habitat across the eastern U.S. and Canada).

Above all, Monarchs need to encounter milkweed as they head north from Mexico into Texas, then fan out across the midwest and east coast, with one generation giving way to the next. Last year, deep drought in Texas and elsewhere desiccated what milkweed they could find, but the even bigger problem is 100 million or more acres of farmland that once hosted some milkweed, but now have been converted to Roundup Ready corn and soybeans. 90% of corn is now grown in this way, eliminating most weeds. Fields are planted right up to fencelines and roadsides, eliminating even the borders that once were havens for milkweed.

If you drive out Quaker Bridge Road in Princeton, you can see milkweed rising up above the other weeds in a fallow field. Compare this with the picture at this link, of a corn field in Iowa. Corn for as far as the eye can see.

The photo here on the left (closeup below) shows patches of common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca), which spreads underground and is the most common around Princeton. Swamp milkweed blooms later, doesn't spread, and has softer leaves which you'd think the larvae would prefer, but not necessarily. Butterflyweed is a particularly beautiful milkweed with a disk of brilliant orange flowers, occasionally seen in drier meadows. There are additional prairie species of milkweed rarely encountered hereabouts.

With America's heartland becoming so hostile to Monarchs, the question increasingly becomes whether the butterflies will be able to make it to New Jersey in sufficient numbers to take advantage of the milkweed growing here. In the past ten years, acreage of overwintering butterflies in Mexico has dropped from 25 down to 3. The Roundup Ready corn was first sold commercially in 1998. Overuse of Roundup for growing these genetically engineered crops has led some weeds like giant ragweed, pigweed (both of these species grow in Princeton), and many others to gain resistance to glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup. Presumably, milkweed has yet to develop resistance.

On the way out to Route 1, I stopped recently near the canal on Quaker Bridge Road to look out on a field where once I saw many Monarchs feasting on a sea of yellow tickseed sunflower (Bidens) blooms. Almost no Bidens there this year, for whatever reason.

Further down the road, near the canal bridge, there was some Bidens, but no Monarchs. Neither did I see any Monarchs on the ribbon of yellow blooms along the right of way at the Sourlands Mountains Preserve the week before.

I doubt these fishermen at the DR Canal noticed any change in the air.

Certainly drivers navigating narrow Quaker Bridge Road would not take note of any absence in the fields around them. The state of the monarch is but one of the changes quietly happening in the blur of green off to the side as we race forward.

It would be a relief if their numbers rise again, as they did after a very low year in 2004/05, but the trend is towards more agricultural herbicide and unstable climate, not less.

One question at the back of my mind is whether they depend at all on large numbers, to find each other to mate, and to make the long flight back to Mexico. Might large numbers help their momentum as they migrate, much like we are swept along by the momentum of the crowd on an urban sidewalk?

After a long drought in sightings, the visit from this monarch in my backyard a few days ago, feasting for an hour on aster and ironweed nectar, was a real gift. I wish for the past luxury of taking them for granted, though it's hard to think of them with anything but a sense of wonder. Now, this miracle needs another--a nation that cares enough to change its farming practices and the kind of energy it uses, if not for the Monarch, then for ourselves.

There was one day, as a boy walking home across the expansive lawn of Yerkes Observatory in Wisconsin, when I looked up to see the sky completely filled with Monarchs passing through. Such a sight stays with you forever. Though the memory is mine, it is each year's new generations of Monarchs, migrating 2500 miles to New Jersey, that bring it back.

In New Jersey, monarchs migrating south get channeled through Cape May. Here's a blog with daily updates on numbers.

Below are some articles:

One on NPR radio, another in The New York Times,
and a USAtoday article, which may pester you with an ad on an attached video.

An explanation of how they navigate can be found here.

Positive Energy--Open Space and Jazz

The world throws plenty of obstructions in the way of doing the right thing, but sometimes all of those obstructions fade into the background and good things start to happen. For two days, I rode a wave of positive energy, as people expressed a love of inner and outer nature, through tending and attending, spiffing up, getting down, riffing melodies, lopping, chopping and bebopping, blazing trails and just being simply amazing. It all started with the customary Sunday morning gathering of volunteers to spiff up Pettoranello Gardens.

This time, the regulars with the Pettoranello Foundation were helped out by members of the Rotary Club, an organization that does good works here and abroad. Along with the rewards of physical work, these workdays offer a chance to catch up with old friends.

Next stop was the Jazz Feast, featuring five groups, with guitar great Bucky Pizzarelli who's still digging deep into the grooves at 87,

and a very talented group led by British Columbia native Bria Skonberg. Her trumpet style harkens back to Louis Armstrong, with some innovative touches ala Jimi Hendricks thrown in. She mixes mean trumpet with sweet vocals on tunes like Sunny Side of the Street.

Meanwhile, on the post-consumer side of the festival, there was an innovation from the previous year in the fling department, as the organizers demonstrated the benefits of covering the recycling receptacle with a lid with a small hole, so trash would be less likely to mix with the empty bottles and cans.

After being part of the record crowds at Palmer Square, it was back the next morning to Princeton's nature preserves, with 38 Stuart School 7th graders arriving at Mountain Lakes to plant native wildflowers as part of a habitat restoration project. This workday was meaningful on multiple levels. Stuart School shares the same watershed with Mountain Lakes, which is to say the water from the school's roofs, parking lots and athletic fields flows down through the lakes. The kids were discovering, and tending to, the watershed beyond the boundaries of their school.

The plants, meanwhile--all grown from seed collected from local, indigenous populations--were grown in the greenhouse just a few steps away from the restoration site. One thing we've learned the hard way in restoration work is that it's best to start close in and work our way out, rather than choose a remote site that involves a long haul and less convenient follow up.

Aelin Compton (left), who followed me at the Resource Manager position I encouraged Friends of Princeton Open Space to create years back, was happy as could be with all the spirited help. Clark Lennon and Andrew Thornton, frequent volunteers at Mountain Lakes, were on hand to help channel all the energy.

Even a brief rain turned out to be a plus. With the kids gathered under the patio roof, I happened to find a little frog in the grass and set it on a table without saying a word. Instant excitement and fascination. That frog was like a rock star, or a pond star.

We did a Rorschach test with this photo. Is it a crab? The skull of a steer?

One of my favorite sedges, called woolgrass, was growing in the vegetated buffer along the upper lake's edge. Most native sedges start early in the spring and are by now flopped over and looking spent, but woolgrass gets a later start and keeps its form.

Work and discovery went hand in glove. Not sure what the caterpillar is.

Then it was off to the other side of town, heading northeast out Snowden Lane to Herrontown Woods for the afternoon. Deep caring and determination is finding all sorts of expressions out that way, starting with the sign itself, which Kurt Tazelaar has liberated from the enveloping foliage.

Kurt is standing in the initial opening he cut through the one remaining windblown obstruction on some 200 acres of trail he and Sally Curtis cleared in Herrontown Woods and Autumn Hill Reservation over the course of two months. Kurt's brother, John, who back in the 70s at Little Brook Elementary would walk with his classmates to Herrontown Woods for field trips, found himself enlisted in the cause for a couple days while visiting town. Many of the trails had been impassable for years. Volunteer hours, including some of my own, are approaching 400 for this renovation.

A rough count of tree rings on this white oak show that it was growing before the 1870 farm cottage was built nearby.

To learn more about these initiatives, go to Facebook.com/FriendsOfHerrontownWoods, Facebook.com/FOPOS, and http://www.ppscf.org/Thegardens.html.