Thursday, March 31, 2016

Alert: Monitoring for Lesser Celandine

Memory was finally jogged that this is the time of year to be scouting Princeton's natural areas for the dreaded Ficaria verna, a.k.a. fig buttercup, or lesser celandine. Dreaded because it has an alluring yellow flower that makes one want to leave it be when it starts showing up in the yard or local preserves, but then quietly takes over, paving whole valleys. Pettoranello Gardens is carpeted with the plant. In Durham, NC, I once tracked an infestation upstream to a homeowner's yard. He was greatly relieved to find out what plant had taken over his garden, and proceeded over the next several years to completely eliminate it. Unfortunately, by then the plant had spread far downstream and would transform a whole watershed, from one small infestation in someone's yard. He was, however, able to remove some he had put in his son's yard elsewhere in town, before it had a chance to spread downstream. This is why it's so important to get the word out about these highly deceptive species.

When I was working at Mountain Lakes, I'd walk the valley leading down from Stuart School, searching for any small patches that could be eradicated before they expanded beyond remedy. It's satisfying to be able to nip invasions in the bud. Now that my focus is Herrontown Woods, the spring ritual is playing out there. Yesterday's walk yielded no sightings until the very end, when I checked the pawpaw patch we planted New Year's weekend, and headed back through the woods towards the parking lot. There, right where the groundwater seeps out of the ground in what originally may have been a primitive septic system, was a patch of lesser celandine. Already, it has spread down the ditch about fifty feet, but is still of a size that we can eradicate it before it spreads down the valley, beyond control.


Control options can be found at this link. A comparison of lesser celandine with other yellow spring flowers, such as marsh marigold and celandine poppy, can be found here. If possible, avoid hiking through an area with lesser celandine--there's a risk of inadvertently spreading it into new areas in the treads of your shoes.

Friday, March 18, 2016

Princeton Bamboo Battle Re-enactment Saturday


This Saturday afternoon, March 19, 1-4pm, the Princeton Battlefield Society will host its annual workday. Each year they do battle with the various invasive species on the property. In recent years, a big bamboo clone has expanded across a trail. Kudzu-like porcelainberry has been mobbing trees, large and small, bringing some of them down.

It's a worthy battle, and last year I made a suggestion about how to avoid having their hard work in the spring undone by the invasives' knack for rebounding through the summer. This past June, several of us returned to cut down the new bamboo shoots that had sprouted up since the spring workday. By timing our cutting so that the massive roots had invested heavily in new shoots without yet getting any return, we were able to deprive the root system of any replenishment. Tomorrow, they should see a much-weakened bamboo clone, and be able to divert some volunteers to some of the other infestations that are blocking trails elsewhere.

Other projects at the Princeton Battlefield that I've helped with are the native chestnuts planted by Bill Sachs, and an effort to save the dogwoods lining the north field from a host of aggressive vine species. Of course, it's not exactly a walk in the park to do battle with the vines, but the work is made rewarding by the thought of the people who took the time to plant them decades ago, the beauty they have to offer, and the berries the migratory birds won't find if the dogwoods have no sunlight to power their production.

It's notable that all of these motivations are driven by imagination: the people long gone, flowers yet to bloom and berries yet to be borne. It's an imagination honed by long experience and observation (helped by some digging to find the newspaper article that told of the bicentenial planting of dogwoods). The past and the future inform our sense of place. The present, with its dull winter mix of grays and browns, is deceiving. Taken at face value, the present offers little to inspire action. In that sense, a well-tempered imagination is as important for seeing reality as our eyes. It allows us to see the past and the future embedded in the present, and offers us reason to act.



Tuesday, March 15, 2016

Repeated Misrepresentation of Native Plant Advocates in NY Times

There's a narrative being pushed in books, on websites, and periodically in the NY Times, that attacks people who are concerned about invasive species. Are we all xenophobic, militaristic, hateful members of a religious cult? Who knew. I've written a couple detailed critiques of these misrepresentations, dissecting their tactics. The narrative about nature is being kidnapped by people who lack basic training in the natural sciences, and the results are deeply skewed. Below is a link, and an excerpt.

Skewed Logic Thrives in NY Times Article on Invasive Species

One expects quality from the NY Times, but for some reason it periodically weakens its standards to publish an oped or article attacking native plant advocates and biologists who study biological invasions. (See list and previous detailed critiques here.) The tactics are always the same: a blurring of important distinctions, a failure to explain to readers the basic concepts of invasive behavior in plants and animals, the creation and tearing apart of strawmen, an embedding of bias in word choice and sentence structure, and a lot of mean-spirited pejoratives. This curious, recurrent smearing of those who seek to understand and tend nature's garden is fueled, as best I can tell, by a never-ending stream of resentment emanating most stridently from a couple California-based websites, then given undeserved validation by journalists who lack training and field experience in biology and ecology.

The latest, by veteran science writer Erica Goode, is a polemic loosely disguised as an article in the Science section. Entitled "Invasive Species Aren’t Always Unwanted", it portrays invasion biology as a xenophobic, militaristic, quasi-religious cult that has invented a false enemy and caused people and governments to behave in violent ways. We are asked to accept this dark psychological portrait largely on faith.

Like attacks on climate science, the article claims to shake the foundations of a major area of scientific study while offering barely enough cherry-picked evidence to nibble around the edges.

Though readers are starved of information and distinctions basic to understanding the issue of invasive behavior, the article provides significant psychological payoffs. For the critics the article quotes, there's the pleasure of projecting onto others the negative qualities they themselves exemplify. Readers, in turn, are supplied a menacing "Other" to look down upon (invasion biologists), and the relief that comes from being told that a big problem our culture and global trade have created may not be so big after all. The vast unintentional damage we do to nature is viewed as largely inevitable, while the intentional efforts to mend the damage are attacked. (rest of post)

Friday, March 11, 2016

Sunday Tour/Workday at Veblen House Grounds


Stop by the Veblen House this Sunday, March 13, 2-5pm, where we'll be having a work day and can give you a tour of the grounds. The tour consists of telling stories about the many features of the grounds, and the remarkable people who lived there. Some projects are putting protective cages around the pawpaw seedlings in the pawpaw patch, clearing sticks and brush from ditches, and digging shallow diversions to divert runoff from the trails.

We'll provide cider and cookies, and I'll have "live stakes" of native elderberry, buttonbush and silky dogwood for anyone wishing to take one home to grow in the yard. Kids welcome.

Directions: Reach the Veblen House by entering the gravel driveway across from 443 Herrontown Road in Princeton (look for Rotary sign wrapped around a tree), or by taking the trail from the Herrontown Woods parking lot up to the farm cottage (cedar shingle siding) and taking a right through the fence. Veblen House appears as a small white square on this map, north of the parking lot.

Thursday, March 03, 2016

I Like Ice


This being an election year, I'm going to resurrect the "I Like Ike" campaign slogan from the Dwight Eisenhower 50's, with a slight twist to make it relevant to climate change.

One of the most expressive features of our backyard, in addition to the duck, the four chickens, and all the native wildflowers, is the collection of miniponds that capture runoff coming in from the neighbors up the hill. One pond in particular, eight feet wide, a foot deep, changes almost daily as temperatures range above and below freezing. Thaw serves as the eraser, and each freeze brings a new creation.

On Feb. 18th and 19th, the pond became a canvas for some particularly unusual patterns. Because the pond is unlined, water can slowly seep down through the semi-permeable clay underneath, creating stresses in the ice as it loses the support of the water beneath it. In one of these photos, one can see how on these particular days the ice actually had two layers, one a couple inches below the other, with ribs creating chambers between them.

The photos should expand for a better view if you click on them.


There were swirls and dots,

feathered edges and interactions between plants and ice,

bearded stars, and lines radiating out from a central point.

This breakaway shows the double deck ice, suspended over the slowly falling water level.

Some patterns were like suture lines in a stitched wound,

ice like sinews, or sinew-like ice,

more swirls and stars,


and a bending 'round the remains of sensitive fern.


From a distance, it looks far less impressive, and would have been missed altogether if I hadn't needed to make the daily morning jaunt to the coop to let the birds out.

Wednesday, March 02, 2016

When Sticks Were Antlers and Kids were Moose


Sometimes, as someone devoted to preserving and restoring nature, I wonder why so much of the rest of the world isn't hardwired with the same sentiments. Why do I see a stick as highly useful, while others see them as litter? Our woodstove is one answer. Not everyone needs kindling.

But there's something deeper than that: an instinct to find value in nature's offerings, no matter how humble, a habit of thinking in which matter triggers imagination. Holding this stick today  brought back a memory of being maybe five years old. It was summer, I suppose, and a group of us neighborhood kids had formed a moose club. Not a fraternal organization that meets in a lodge every month and does good deeds in the community. We were playing as if we were actual moose, living in a tiny woodlot at the edge of the Yerkes Observatory grounds. Our clubhouse was a tree trunk bent close to the ground, making a sort of shelter. Periodically, we'd burst out of the woods and charge out across the lawn, screaming with such fierceness that the gophers living beneath our feet must surely have trembled in their burrows. On our heads would be a pair of sticks, propped up with our hands as makeshift antlers. I somehow gained the status of grandfather moose, so had the largest sticks. I remember those brave charges out across the green, roaring at the top of our lungs. We were no longer diminutive five year olds but transformed into ferocious giants by our imaginations and whatever we could glean from a tiny woodlot.

Maybe that's how nature gets hardwired into one's heart and soul, a lifelong legacy of child's play, when a stick was not just a stick but an extension of our bodies.


Monday, February 29, 2016

Albino Pumpkin to the Rescue


(Alternative title: "Hubcap Theft Leaves Leaf Corral Topless.)

Princeton, a theft has occurred. Anyone who knows what a "Wishing (the earth) Well" leaf corral should look like will immediately notice that the hubcap that adorned the central cylinder, where the food scraps are placed, is now missing. I mean, what has civilization come to, that stray plastic hubcaps are now being stolen from frontyard leaf corrals in our fair town.

Fortunately, a neighbor around the block had left an albino pumpkin out on the curb, apparently not needing its services any longer but not wishing to consign it to the trashcan. I had passed it by several times, not knowing what possible use an albino plastic pumpkin could be put to in the middle of winter. Finally, an answer came.

My sense is that the pumpkin will not disappear, protected by it's lack of any other apparent use, and also by its albino nature, which like a white buffalo radiates a spirituality sufficient to spook any would-be predator.

Tuesday, February 23, 2016

Asphalt, Tree Roots, and Leaf Piles


If you encourage people with large wooded lots to simply pile their leaves in the woods, rather than piling them in the street where they become a nuisance, a seemingly simple solution becomes complicated by people's fears that the leaf pile will smother the tree roots beneath it. It does seem logical that a thick layer of matted leaves would prevent water and air from reaching the soil.

But if that's so, then why are tree roots perfectly content to grow underneath bikeways and sidewalks? And why have I found tree roots invading the leaf piles I've made over the years?


There are a number of answers. One is that water in soil doesn't alway obey gravity. It wicks upwards from below, and seeps sideways. And a wet leaf will transfer moisture to the leaf just beneath it, and so on down through the pile. Worms feasting on the leaves will create passages for water to penetrate more quickly. So the ground under a thick leaf pile will be supplied with water from the sides, below, and even from the top. A leaf pile, by this logic, would actually serve as a feeding station for the trees, rather than a threat.



If this makes the survival of tree roots under asphalt and leaf piles more comprehensible, there remains a greater mystery, namely, what impedes the movement of warning signals through the human brain? The asphalt at Pettoranello Gardens has been showing signs of heaving for years, and yet no one thought to cut the roots at the edges, so that they wouldn't continue to push upwards. Incremental, silent change seems to activate the "procrastination ... oops, too late" response. A beautiful path along Pettoranello Pond has been rendered hazardous to the bikes it was built for.

Maybe if people piled their leaves on their own properties, town staff would have more time and funding to maintain our bikeways. Just a thought.

Sunday, February 21, 2016

Red Cedar Sculpture


Kurt Tazelaar and I were out exploring a part of Herrontown Woods we hadn't been in before, and found a remarkable bit of sculpture--the still standing legacy of an eastern red cedar.

The shape is likely due to it having once stood out in a field, where its lateral branches would have spread wide, feeding on the strong light coming from all directions.

The cedar's long since been overshadowed by larger, deciduous trees, but its decay resistant wood still testifies to its former dominant standing in the landscape.

Friday, February 12, 2016

Teaching an Old Chicken Old Tricks


After a few years, chickens and ducks stop laying eggs. Our peking duck laid one egg per day like clockwork for several years, but stopped suddenly this past fall, even though she still waddles about the yard as robustly as ever. Our one hen remaining from the first batch, bought about four years ago, also stopped laying around the same time.

There followed then a lull of about a month, when we finally gave in and bought a dozen eggs at the grocery. Strange feeling after several years of home grown. Then, just as days were narrowing down to winter solstice, the three chickens we bought this past May came online, began their tour of beneficence, or however you'd like to describe the remarkable generosity that is a hen's nature. Though all are araucanas, one lays brown eggs, while the others lay variations on green and blue.

Then one day in late December a tiny egg appeared, as if a quail had happened by for a brief visit. Sometimes that can mean a chicken has just started laying. I wanted to believe the older white hen had found new inspiration. Hard to say, but if one looks closely enough at the greenish eggs, one can see three different shades, with one grayer, one bluer, and one just possibly from an old hen made newer.

Araucanas are sometimes called "easter egg" chickens, because of the varied colors of their eggs, and sometimes when the eggs aren't showing up in the usual spot in or near the coop, we do a good imitation of an Easter egg hunt searching for their new nest. I hear that Araucanas are also particularly resilient in cold weather. That will be tested this weekend, when temperatures are predicted to dip nearly to 0.



Sunday, February 07, 2016

When Snow Snazzed Up the Morning


Winter's second snow caught us by surprise. I had just put the shovels away, but they were hardly needed, as this snowstorm snazzed up the landscape without snarling traffic, beautifying the morning before fading away in the afternoon sun. The snow added definition to the landscape, revealing the outline of the ephemeral stream that flows from the neighbor's yard down into ours.



making clear the boundaries between aqueous and terrestrial.

Even in a freeze, the chickens can still find water where our tiny stream, a thin blue line on old maps of Princeton, trickles past the sedges.

The fillable, spillable ponds, fed by snowmelt from the roof, received a cheery rim of snow,

and an idea for leaf corral as scroll-shaped sculpture sprang from a shape unseen until the snow gave it a defining presence.

The snow made this fence into an optical illusion (doesn't it look like the photo isn't quite rectangular?),

and even turned unsplit wood into an artful assemblage. If all unfinished work received such ornament, what a beautiful world it would be.

Thursday, February 04, 2016

Princeton Ridge Land Preservation Up for Vote

The Friends of Princeton Open Space, my former employer, has sent out the following call for action. Please send emails to the council members below to express your support for preserving 20 acres along the Princeton Ridge.

From FOPOS:

URGENT CALL TO ACTION: PROTECT THE PRINCETON RIDGE!!

The acquisition of 20+ acres on the Princeton Ridge, designated in our Master Plan for decades as a critical area to protect, is threatened with defeat on Monday, February 8th. That is when Council votes on a bond ordinance to finance the purchase, the principal of which will be fully reimbursed from the State/Green Acres, County, and Friends of Princeton Open Space with a small amount of remediation funds from the TRANSCO pipeline. Two members of Council would not vote for the ordinance on January 25th because of the governor’s pocket veto of legislation concerning the division of future Green Acres funds among various purposes – an issue that affects only 9% of the funding(about $400,000). A third member believes Princeton already has “enough” open space.

Princeton citizens voted for a dedicated open space tax that can be used for bond financing costs, and to cover the 9% if need be. But there is every reason to believe that these outlays will be reimbursed by Green Acres, even if on a delayed timetable due to the governor’s action. The funds for future open space purchases were constitutionally dedicated by the voters last November.

This property is a critical link between preserved lands on the Ridge to the west and east. It is mature forest, traversed by a stream, with a large beautiful boulder field. It is immediately adjacent to 35 acres of other preserved public and private open space, and accessible from the Mt. Lucas pedestrian/bike path. It provides habitat for threatened and endangered species, and is part of the beautiful forest corridor by which one enters Princeton from Montgomery. IT DESERVES PROTECTION!

Please contact these Council members and tell them you want them to protect our forests, water, wildlife and quality of life by voting for the bond issue:

psimon@princetonnj.gov

jbutler@princetonnj.gov

bmiller@princetonnj.gov

PLEASE COME TO THE COUNCIL MEETING AT 7 P.M. ON MONDAY FEBRUARY 8TH and express your support. PLEASE FORWARD THIS MESSAGE TO YOUR FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS. We need you to stand up for the Princeton Ridge!

For more information, call the FOPOS office at 609-921-2772

Wednesday, February 03, 2016

Small Aquatic Invasion in Pettoranello Gardens


Walk along the edge of Pettoranello Pond, over near Mountain Lakes in Princeton, and you'll see a band of green slowly expanding along the banks. Five years ago, when I first noticed it, my immediate thought was that a new invasive species had arrived. Even though there was only one small patch, about a yard across, it was easy to extrapolate from the present into a future where the pond water's pleasing reflections would disappear beneath a dense mat of green.




It had stems, so couldn't be duckweed, and was much too small for water lettuce. Google searches yielded nothing similar, which could at least be taken as reassuring that it isn't a widespread menace. With help from Chris Doyle, via Mike Van Clef, we determined that it was water starwort (Callitriche sp.). Seeds would need to be collected later this year to identify the species. Vernal water starwort (C. palustris) is a native species. Pond water starwort (C. stagnalis) was introduced from its native Europe and Africa back in the 19th century, and has been slowly spreading in the U.S.


Though it hasn't spread aggressively across the pond, here's an example of where it has moved beyond the edge into more open waters.


In this photo, you can see the water starwort and, popping up on dry ground, small roundish leaves of the much more aggressive lesser celandine (Ranunculus ficaria) that has become ubiquitous in Pettoranello Gardens and has spread downstream into Mountain Lakes and beyond.

Thursday, January 28, 2016

Snowbound Landscapes and Language

Five days after the big snowstorm, and memory finally returns of the comic "Snowbound Language" piece posted two years ago, in which the language becomes as snowbound as the landscape. In the story, Snaddy, his snife, snaughter and snarking snog deal as best they can with the deluge of snow that has laid siege to their snouse. A lexicon for snowbound language can be found in a post called Principitation, which provides names for all the sorts of precipitation that is made special by having fallen on Princeton. There's snuff, snirt, snapples, snazzycakes and snight (snow that falls at night), snizzle and snool. The inspiration was a mix of the extraordinary variety of snow we got in early 2014, which made clear how the Eskimos could develop so many different words for snow, and Victor Borge's classic Inflationary Language, which allows language to inflate along with the economy. Create becomes "crenine", wonderful becomes "twoderful", and sofifth.


The storm this past weekend brought a whole lot of one kind of snow, rather than the crazy variety of formulations that fell two winters ago.

This year's storm made it hard to compost the food scraps in the frontyard Wishing (the earth) Well,


made it look like our house is balding,


made our roofs into glacier-capped mountains,

collaborated with the sun to fashion a shadowy snow angel with the head of hosta seeds,

served up a birdbath snowcone,

fashioned a leaf corral snowman who looks like he should have Pinocchio nose,

and availed itself of the comfort of our lawn furniture. A little sculpting and we'd have a pair of very content snowmen.

Saturday, January 23, 2016

Carnegie Ice Before the Snow


Though there are cross-over recreationists who love both skating and skiing, you know you're in the skating camp if an approaching snowstorm brings wistful thoughts of all that gorgeous Carnegie Lake ice about to get covered up.

It wasn't thick enough to skate on, but most of the lake was covered with a glistening smooth initial layer. The winter's brief history, about to be buried under two feet of snow, could be read in the rough ice that got blown into a southeast corner, on the left in the photo.

It told stories of how frozen waves formed, seeming to lap at the hibiscus-lined shore, like a Seward Johnson sculpture,

and of water's restless shifting from solid to liquid and back again, that gathered these chunks together for one in winter's long progression of still-lifes.


Our backyard minipond caught some runoff to make a miniature version of Carnegie Lake, with similar patterns of dark and light ice.

Nice to have H2O as the artist-in-residence in the backyard, with a new snow exhibit about to open, up and down the east coast.


Friday, January 22, 2016

The Vine That Bushed the Bush


It looks like a bush,

but it's really a vine.

And this one, too,

is only a vine,
that borrowed the bush, until the bush
was bushed,
and left its structure behind
to be used by the vine.

Whatever it was,
it's Japanese honeysuckle now.