Friday, May 17, 2013

A Walk Around Rogers Refuge


Note: Washington Crossing Audubon will be leading two bird walks here and in the adjoining Institute Woods this weekend, each starting at 8am. Follow the link for more info.

As part of a "water in the landscape" course I taught at the Princeton Adult School, I led a walk around Princeton's premier wetland, tucked away at the end of a gravel road behind the Institute, at Rogers Refuge. The wetland is fed by periodic runoff from the Institute Woods, along with steady input from water pumped from the Stony Brook during the growing season. I think of it not as artificial but as "enhanced".

Here's an update from Fred Spar, president of the Friends of Rogers Refuge, on the latest bird sightings: "we’ve had plenty of Wood Ducks on the water, some Mallards, Canada Geese and, briefly, a pair of Green-Winged Teal. And along the edges we’ve had a Bittern, a Sora, some Snipe, a Great Egret, lots of GBHs, and at least one Solitary Sandpiper. This weekend we also had a Little Blue Heron."

Paying more attention to plants than birds, my first sighting upon arriving there was a bit dismaying. Fiveleaf Akebia (chocolate vine, Akebia quinata), which I had noticed crawling on a bush a few years back,

is now taking to the trees next to the parking lot. It's an exotic ornamental vine that is proving invasive in some locations.

Heading around the marsh to the right, we encountered the fresh new leaves of beech trees in a mature grove

that included a shagbark hickory (with beech trees to left and right in this photo).

Some trees are so big in the Refuge/Institute Woods that their lower bark takes on a completely different pattern from the standard bark further up.


Further on, a Jack in the Pulpit rising above a bed of jewelweeds and violets.

A Mayapple with its shy flower shielded by the leaf.

One thing I had forgotten to mention in the course description is that he final exam involves crossing a bridge suspended over the StonyBrook. Everyone passed with flying colors.

The speckled bark of spicebush (Lindera benzoin) is a common sight now that the deer population is more in balance.

This cluster of spicebush trunks did not exist ten years ago, when browsing pressure from deer was so intense that spicebushes had only one stem. All new shoots from the base would be eaten by the deer. The shrub survived only by having one stem too high for the deer to browse. You can see that one stem in this photo, now dead, due to the shrub having invested its energy in all the new shoots that finally got a chance to grow to mature height. Having a healthy shrub layer in the woods has greatly increased nesting by birds.

Wild leek (Allium tricoccum) grows in some of the higher quality areas of the woodland. (Please, no harvesting.)


We encountered evidence of the work of Clark Lennon and Eric Tazelaar, Friends of Princeton Open Space board members who have been keeping the trails clear.

Virginia bluebells (Mertensia virginica), once surely common around Princeton, now are hard to find. This is the only one I know of.

And its future, as well as its authenticity as a wild specimen, was brought into question when I noticed a patch of goutweed growing within a few feet of it. Goutweed is an aggressive spreader, introduced to the U.S. from Europe and Asia. Since it doesn't typically spread by seed, its presence suggests that the area had been planted at one time, perhaps as a garden for a dwelling long gone.

This property, though open to the public, is owned by the American Water Company, which draws some high quality water from the wells there, does some light disinfection and sends it off to add to the water supplies of Princeton and West Windsor. Well water is tastier and much less expensive to treat than the Millstone/Raritan river water that comprises most of Princeton's tapwater. The "enhanced" wetland, in fact, began as an attempt by the water company to feed the aquifer with water pumped from the river. Instead of percolating into the aquifer, the water stayed on top. The birds came, followed by the birders, who then worked with the water company to maintain the auspicious arrangement.

Here's one of my favorite spots--a sort of wetland savanna of stunted ash trees lightly shading a rich understory of sedges and ferns. Cattails, normally aggressive and domineering, "play well with others" here, probably due to the shady conditions.

Tussock sedges make tussocks, with irises in the background. As the tussocks get higher year to year, they sometimes provide a dry enough spot for a tree to germinate and grow.

A Question Mark demonstrates the interest butterflies take in bare dirt. Gotta love the latin name, Polygonia interrogationus. Butterflies don't seem the sort to be interrogating anyone.

Viburnum dentatum, an uncommon shrub, grows well here with the steady soil moisture.

We returned to the parking lot, where the students volunteered to help me cut the chocolate vine off the trees. Rogers Refuge is a special place, and a good example of how the right kind of human intervention can make a positive difference.

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Garden Weeds Spreading Underground


Most yards have some spot where you'll look down and see something like this. English ivy and Japanese honeysuckle spread above ground. But also in this photo, poking its head through the prostrate vines, is Canada thistle, an exotic weed that spreads underground, gradually becoming a many-headed, prickly monster.

Mugwort is another example of this, though it was featured in an edible plants walk I went on recently. Picking its tips for mugwort soup in the spring may slow it down a bit, but probably not enough to make a difference.

Most of my backyard garden work in the spring consists of pulling out plants that spread underground via rhizomes. Some, like various species of perennial sunflower, put on enough of a show in late summer that I get lazy and charitable, and leave a few in, then feel regret the next spring when hundreds of new plants rise from last year's adventurous roots. Several native floodplain species of goldenrod can seed in and also prove to be very aggressive spreaders underground, as is the so-called obedient plant.

How much easier gardening would be if one could resist the temptation of spreaders and strictly limit the species to those content to form a clump and go no further. In a raingarden, many plants fit this description, like bonesets, cutleaf coneflower, Lobelias, soft rush and most sedges, Culver's Root, Indian grass, blue-eyed grass, Joe-Pye-Weed, Helenium, wild senna, and many others.

Night Crawling for Night Crawlers

A few days ago, having delayed a dog walk until night-time, I came around a corner to find two men with flashlights scrutinizing the pavement in front of a house. They were looking for a couple screws that had somehow gotten dropped next to the curb. The screws were black, the flashlights were dim; they'd have to wait for daylight to find them.

That was about as much life on a suburban street as I had seen in a long time, and was of no account other than it reminded me of how, as a kid looking for fish bait, I would take a flashlight out at night and crawl across our lawn, hunting for night crawlers. Catching big fish in the nearby lake, largely imagined but occasionally real, meant first catching big worms that would venture partway out of their holes at night. It worked best to point the flashlight down and angled towards me, then focus on the leading edge of the circle of light it cast upon the ground. 

The worms, thick, long and sure to lure a big fish if only I could catch them, were lightning quick and easily spooked by vibration, light or movement. Most of the time, they would slip instantly back down their holes before I could grab them. But if everything went right, if I was stealthy and soft in my approach, sharp enough to see their shapes in the dim leading edge of light, and quick and accurate as my hand shot forward, I could grab the end of the worm and pull the rest of it out of its hole. 

In retrospect, it's the closest I'll ever get to thinking and acting like a cat, and often proved as memorable as the subsequent fishing expedition.

Monday, May 13, 2013

Then Came the Duck Eggs


More eggs began showing up in the nest lately, signalling that the ducks had "come on line" after six months in our backyard. Before, with just two Araucana chickens laying, it was easy to tell which eggs were whose. Now, with about four eggs of subtly different shapes and colors showing up every day, it's a bit of a guessing game.

Chances are, these three eggs correspond to the three types of ducks in this photo, with the outsized egg being the work of the big white Pekin, the more numerous mid-sized eggs being the Runner Duck's, and the miniature variety being an early effort by the mate of the male mallard in the photo.

The two eggs on the right in this photo have no shells, but instead are more like water balloons that slowly deflate as they dry out. Sometimes, the presence of these shell-less eggs means the birds aren't getting enough calcium, but they're getting the standard feed for egg-layers, plus whatever they forage for in the garden. More likely, it's taking each bird a few egg-laying tries before they get it right.

Here, the deflating of a shell-less egg is more obvious. A similar process of drying out occurs within a normal egg, though much more slowly because the eggshell has an outer coating, or "bloom", that keeps the egg inside fresh. It's recommended to delay washing of a homegrown egg until just prior to using, so that the coating can help protect it during storage. In fact, refrigeration is not necessary for unwashed eggs if they'll be used within a week, or so I've heard and read. Store-bought eggs tend to have been washed.

Related to this, you may have noticed that some hard-boiled eggs are easier to peel than others. As an uncooked egg sits around, the membranes between shell and eggwhite loosen. Using older eggs for hard-boiling will increase the chance of the shell easily coming loose from the eggwhite during peeling.

This "deflation" of the egg inside the shell also makes it possible to tell whether an egg is fresh or older. As my neighbor Pat pointed out, a fresh egg lays flat at the bottom of a bowl of water, while an older egg will tilt upward at one end because air has gotten trapped inside where the egg has slightly deflated.

Saturday, May 11, 2013

Dandelion Free, or Pesticide Full?


A lawn free of dandelions is restful to look at, but implies a use of broadleaf herbicides, which pollute the restfulness and maybe the local waterways as well. Always expressive, a dandelion reacts to herbicide as if in paroxysms--a frozen dance of death.



There are less toxic approaches for anyone with time and patience--a weeding knife, shown in a post from last year called "The Dandelion's Roar", or this curious implement called a "Weed Hound", demonstrated by a neighbor on Valley Road. It has a lever at the top and a cluster of squidlike metal spikes at the bottom that close around the dandelion's crown and pull it out, taproot and all.



The implement's length allows the gardener to adopt a relatively civilized upright stance while waging combat, rather than sacrifice knees and dignity by getting down and duking it out at ground level with a weeding knife. One could even pretend to be leaning on a racket, awaiting one's turn in a match of croquet while actually skewering a hapless weed. The neighbor allowed me to give it a try. The dandelion was unmoved by my efforts. Clearly, civilized weeding takes practice.

Friday, May 10, 2013

Backyard Habitat Recipe


For a thriving backyard, first add rainwater. It can be from the roof, the driveway, or runoff entering from the neighbor's. Play with its descent, as a mountain does with water cascading down its sides. Steer it away from the house and into swales and depressions,

where it can slow down and collect into miniponds. Rocks can be a nice addition, if you can figure out how to get them there, and some sort of sculpture adds a sense of place.



Add native plants that love being in or near water, like this royal fern just unfolding, and the fringed sedges in the background, and then let the rains come.

Add hens, who will love your yard even more than you do, turn dandelion seeds, ticks and worms into delicious eggs, and provide companionship as you pull a weed or two or three from the soft earth.

And finally, or at least finally thus far, add ducks, who will love your ponds even more than you do. Some will ask, as I did, "Why a duck?" But the next generation, which will inherit this world of habitats large and small, may counter bravely, and with the internet research to back it up, "Why not a duck?" The answer to that, if there is one, has yet to be found.

Thursday, May 09, 2013

Fothergilla gardenii


The Princeton Shopping Center isn't as colorful as it was during a gardener's long tenure, when love, experience and work ethic dependably combined for a glorious show of annuals and perennials year after year. The re-landscaping features low-maintenance masses of mostly native shrubs.

Here's one that's attractive and easy to grow, but rare in the wild. Dwarf witch-alder (Fothergilla gardenii)--now in bloom at such places as the Princeton Shopping Center, in Marquand Park along Lovers' Lane, on the Princeton University campus, and my front yard--is native to the southeastern U.S., where it is said to grow on high ground in swampy areas of the coastal plain.

A taller version, the Mountain Witch-Alder (Fothergilla major), grows in mountain ravines and along streambanks in the southeastern U.S.

The green on the right, contrasting with the Fothergilla blooms, is inkberry (Ilex glabra), a native evergreen holly that, like the Fothergillas, I've never seen growing in the wild.

Walking Through Mountain Lakes Preserve in Late April


As part of a course on utilizing water in the landscape that I taught this spring at the Princeton Adult School, I led several field trips to show off Princeton's more dramatic examples of manipulating the flow of water across the land. The dams at Mountain Lakes Preserve are a prime example.

The recent restoration of the 1900 era dams has been winning awards, the latest detailed at PlanetPrinceton.com.

The signs, recently reinstalled, tell the story of how the dams were built in order to provide a safe source of ice for Princeton's ice boxes for the first few decades of the 20th Century. In the background, you can see the web of rope that does a good job of keeping geese off the grass.

At Mountain Lakes House, the Friends of Princeton Open Space are growing native wildflowers to restore habitat in the preserve, where much of the native herbaceous flora was erased by plowing long ago.

The swale designed to channel runoff away from the house and into a raingarden looks to be working well. If one's trying to manipulate where runoff goes, a swale is cheaper and more dependable than any buried pipe.

Across the lake, one of the fallen trees along the trail looks to have been modified to serve as a gravestone for an ancestor.

Rose Rosette Disease is having its way with the invasive multi-flora roses that have long dominated the lowlands. Though the disease is unfortunately impacting some planted roses in people's gardens, in the wild it is heartening to watch particular specimens of multi-flora rose slowly succumb to the disease, their thorny frames serving as deer-proof nurseries for native spicebush and silky dogwood. Not all multi-flora appear to be affected, but hopefully the disease's presence will help natives make a comeback in the shrub layer of the woods.

Heading back towards the Community Park North parking lot through a grove of black walnuts, you can see how the non-native shrubs (mostly honeysuckle) have leafed out much earlier than the native walnuts, which are very conservative about committing their foliage in the spring.

American basswoods (Tilia americana), are related to the lindens found along Linden Lane and in front of town hall. We encountered one of the few specimens of native basswood in the park, its fresh new leaves glowing in the spring light.

Tuesday, May 07, 2013

Miniponds as Mosquito Traps


If you happen to have a small pond in your yard, without any fish to gobble up the mosquito larvae, it's time to do some low-calorie dunking of donuts. The active ingredient in these "mosquito dunks" is BTI, short for Bacillus thuringiensis israelensis, a natural bacteria that kills mosquito larvae that ingest it. You break off a chunk of the donut, according to the size of the pond, and the donut slowly releases the biological control into the standing water. They are available at local hardware stores, and are best applied to water before the mosquitoes show up, so the active ingredient has time to disperse into the water.

Though people tend to think any standing water breeds mosquitoes, a backyard minipond with this BTI applied essentially becomes a mosquito "trap", sabotaging the breeding efforts of whatever female mosquitoes visit the pond to lay eggs. This occurred to me about fifteen years ago, and I heard a similar contention expressed when I happened upon the radio program "You Bet Your Garden" a few weeks back.

There are other natural predators of mosquito larvae, such as predatory dragonfly larvae, water striders, and a couple types of soil fungi. These various controls may or may not be present, making for a lot of variation in which ponds will breed mosquitos.

The package gives the green light for putting these in animal watering troughs, which I'm taking to mean they're okay for our ducks' habitat. Dunking is recommended once every month or so during the growing season.

Saturday, May 04, 2013

Lonely Chicken in Kingston


My younger daughter and I went to visit a lonely chicken in Kingston. Where once there had been six, a combination of coyotes, raccoons and a hawk had reduced their numbers to one--a Barred Rock named Queenie that finds solace in the company of humans, the neighbor's goats,

and an old horse whose messy eating habits leave lots of grain for the chicken to pick up afterwards.

According to the caretakers, the chicken produces 2 eggs a day, which sounds extraordinarily high. Our Aracanas each take three days to lay that number. I'm reminded of how stress in plants can trigger a surge in seed production, as if the plant is in a hurry to produce progeny in anticipation of its demise. Perhaps the combination of good care in a dangerous environment has stirred this Barred Rock to great feats.

The caretakers also said that before the attrition, the chickens would shift in pecking order, with rank often depending on which chicken was laying the most eggs. During molting, a chicken would lay fewer eggs and drop in the pecking order accordingly. I had thought that the pecking order was worked out quickly, after which chickens would live in peace.

The subject of pecking order came up because we were considering adopting the chicken, and were concerned that it would disrupt the harmonious chemistry of our current miniature flock of two. I'm told that the best way to add a new adult to a chicken coop is to wait until the resident chickens are roosting in the evening, and then add the newcomer. In the morning, the chickens will wake up the best of chums. We'll see if we get a chance to test this.

Soaking up the farm ambiance on the outskirts of Kingston, I heard tell of another wild visitor. The caretakers had seen wild pigs come out of the forest one day. Whether they were truly wild or simply escapees from a nearby farm is open to speculation. Wild pigs (not native) have been in the national news lately, for the ecological havoc they wreak, and also in the context of edible invasives, as in this "Malicious but Delicious" piece by NY Times columnist Frank Bruni, who was part of a food panel at the university recently.

Of course, it would have been nice to get a photo of the chicken itself, for this post, but the goats will have to do.

Friday, May 03, 2013

Blooming Barberry Bush Bops Bees


It's bee-bopping time, as barberry bushes present their trigger-happy stamens to the insect world. Find something narrow, like a blade of grass, and tickle the base of the stamen to see how the flower delivers a dollop of pollen with a tiny wallop to any visiting pollinator.




Past posts can be found here and here.

Thursday, May 02, 2013

Lesser Celandine On the March


I thought my photo here of Lesser Celandine at Pettoranello Gardens demonstrated the plant's capacity to completely "pave" lowland areas.


But Pat Palmer sent me some even more demonstrative photos, taken April 16, showing its rapid spread through the lower portion of Institute Woods close to Rogers Refuge.

If one's looking for good news, one could point to the multi-stemmed shrubs, which are likely spicebush that have grown back since deer culling has reduced browsing pressure. Birders link increased nesting activity in Rogers Refuge in recent years to the resurgence of spicebush.