Some Autumn Splendor

Time to paint the town red

(with black gum leaves). Probably a sugar maple in orange on the right.

A thornless variety of honey locust keeps yellow in the game.

This brilliant red winged euonymus (burning bush), is the same species that has spread into Princeton's woodlands, where the shade diminishes its color to pink, or even ghostly white, in the fall.

A picturesque patch of poison ivy growing safely away from foot traffic, beneath evergreens where the Westminster Choir College grounds extend down to Hamilton Ave.

Winged euonymus can turn a rich orange or burgundy.

Enjoy the ashes while they're still around. The mix of purple and yellow hues on a whole tree can seem almost to pulsate.

Lots of variety in ash leaf color.

Hard to know why the top half of this maple on Aiken Ave. would turn long before the bottom. A tree across the street may have been shading the lower half, delaying its shift to fall color.

Each leaf on a redbud or spicebush can have its own schedule.

The big bluestem grasses planted at our new native meadow at Smoyer Park look to be a midwestern variety. In the midwest, the prairie grasses can turn such brilliant colors that they appear to be on fire, mimicking the prairie fires that help them to prosper. Local members of the same species are much more muted, for some reason.

Woodgrass, actually a sedge, ornaments a constructed wetland.

Feeding Raingardens: When Disconnection is a Good Thing

This post is about two different kinds of disconnection, one good, the other not so good. Now, every time I start saying what something is "about", I am stopped in my tracks by the memory of an english professor, Russell Fraser, who would say emphatically that a poem is not "about" any one thing, in that a good poem comes from a place so deep and works at so many levels that it's naive for the conscious mind to declare what the poem is actually about.

Take as a for instance this newly constructed raingarden behind the PNC's new bank at Princeton Shopping Center. Not exactly a poem, but what is it about? For the designer, who may not have even visited the site, it was about satisfying regulations, at least on paper--regulations that require that newly paved areas not add runoff to local streams. For the contractor, it was a matter of nominally following the design, installing the called for curbcuts and greenery, and being done with it.

At a deeper level, this raingarden demonstrates what happens when people are disconnected from the underlying meaning of their work. The whole idea here is to direct runoff into the raingarden, where the water can be filtered and seep into the ground, essentially "disconnecting" that portion of pavement from the matrix of stormsewer pipes that would otherwise send untreated runoff pouring directly into nearby Harry's Brook, adding to downstream flooding. Look closely, and you'll see how this good sort of disconnection was foiled by a lack of empathy for the basic processes of nature, one of which is that water flows downhill. The runoff can't reach the raingarden because the turf and stone around it are higher than the pavement.

At another level, then, this raingarden is about how a big investment in regulation, design and installation, well intended on its face, can come to nothing.

A bit shadowy here in the photo, but you can see the surprisingly small amount of pavement uphill of the raingarden. The plants really need what little runoff the pavement can provide.

This second curbcut is the most obviously dysfunctional one. A visit during a rain will show runoff simply flowing past it, as if the curb had no cut at all. I suppose as parents we sometimes expect of kids what their nature does not allow, and this curbcut is expecting water to flow uphill. Not likely. It comes down to empathy for the physical world--being able to imagine the flow of water, and the consequences of gravity.

Meanwhile, up Bunn Drive from the Shopping Center, in the parking lot for Stone Hill Church, the raingardens were designed with much more care. The mounds of green and gold are switchgrass--one of the native prairie grasses that works well as an ornamental.

The long raingarden is lower than the pavement, and the curbcuts actually let the water in.

This last photo, back at the Shopping Center, shows how the best way to disconnect can be simply not to connect in the first place. Where no curb was built, the grass meets the pavement directly and runoff can flow into the turf, then be absorbed into the ground. Where the curb ends, where the informality of curbless streets are allowed, better runoff management begins. A chance configuration, with pavement higher than the lawn next to it, is working better than the fancy design of curbcuts and raingarden just a hundred feet away. Here's to the serendipity that sometimes comes from "not doing", and here's to PNC being required to call the contractor back in to make their raingarden actually work.

This Fall, Corral Those Leaves

I'll never understand why the human race throws certain things away, be it leaves or a hospitable climate. The two seem far different, but it's all one needless and tragic purging, a throwing away of nature's gifts while curiously courting danger, present and future. Some of my most vivid and happy memories from childhood involve leaves. One year I took the white oak leaves in our yard and raked them into rows to make a house, then rode my tricycle through the various rooms. Some leaves we burned, perfuming the autumn air. We'd throw acorns into the embers and wait for them to pop. And there's the memory of the whole family raking leaves down the hill, a row of leaves, dancing before us in bright sunlight, growing in size, to make a big pile at the edge of the woods. With my friends, I'd run down the hill, launch myself into the pile, to be enveloped in its crisp embrace. My walk to school was essentially a nature walk, through woods, down a mix of narrow paved and unpaved roads. One maple tree had particularly bright leaves with orange, yellow and red, to pick up and take to art class.

Now I live in a larger small town, a Little Big Town (like the Dustin Hoffman movie Little Big Man), on a busy street, and though I cannot stem the odd and hazardous tradition of piling leaves in the way of cars, bicyclists and pedestrians, or the stampede of traffic spilling gases into the air, I can toss leaves into a leaf corral, in what seems to me a more sustaining and spiritual approach to the physical world. The leaf corrals are an experiment in no-work, no carbon footprint composting. This fall, the corrals' contents, decomposing passively all summer, were inspected to see the results. This particular corral--called a Wishing the Earth Well because it's a well that works in reverse, giving nutrients back to the earth--includes a central cylinder made of critter-proof hardware cloth, where food scraps can be thrown and allowed to decompose, surrounded and disguised by a donut-shaped column of leaves. Yield of this 3 foot diameter corral was one and a half big tubs of compost, and a retrieved teaspoon from the kitchen that somehow got mixed in with the food scraps. There was also an effort to grow potatoes and nasturiums, which showed some promise. A botanist, by the way, will watch a movie like Young Frankenstein and come away wondering what Gene Wilder meant when he said "Never be nasty to nasturiums." Was he speaking metaphorically, or was it just something that needed to be said?

A larger corral, six feet wide and called the OK Leaf Corral, yielded five big tubs of compost ready for incorporation into the garden beds.

Here's a closeup of the compost, soft and spongy, dark and rich. Ah, the rewards of all that non-labor and non-burning of fossil fuels.

A neighbor who tried this leaf corral approach said his leaves didn't decompose, which probably meant they were dry. I, too, noticed in midsummer some pockets of undecomposed leaves in the piles, and came up with a novel approach to improving decomposition without having to turn the pile. This root feeder, normally used for fertilizing trees, can inject water into the leaf pile while also making channels for rainwater to penetrate. A few minutes of poking around was all it took to get the interior of the pile moist, and enable the decomposition of the red oak leaves by end of summer. Moisture, along with all the decomposing fungi, bacteria and insects, also enter from the ground beneath the pile.

Here's the prettiest leaf corral, which you'll have to take my word for because it's completely disguised by a dogwood tree. In other words, leaf corrals can blend into the yard, disguised by foliage while they quietly work their decomposing magic. A nice surprise last fall and winter was how the leaves would quickly settle in the corrals, after just a few days, allowing more leaves to be added as the trees slowly let them go. A leaf corral performs, then, as a bottomless receptacle for leaves.

In its simplest form, a leaf corral is made of green wire fencing, 3-4 feet high, with a couple stakes to hold it in place. Some folks in town have asked me to make leaf corrals for them, which I'm happy to do at cost, along with a donation to our Friends of Herrontown Woods.

Monarch Meadow and Mating Mantises

Each fall, I help a Princeton homeowner weed her marvelous meadow. It's light work because in past years we nipped a couple invasions in the bud, pulling out small patches of mugwort and Chinese bushclover--species that have taken over long stretches of the gas line right of way nearby--and bagging up the seedheads to prevent spread. We found only a few individual plants this year. I recommended removing some Queen Anne's Lace as well, a lovely flower that, alas, I've seen take over fields in the midwest, where it's more established.

Interestingly, what's causing some imbalance in the meadow are some of the native goldenrods, whose advance across the whole field is cutting back on populations of other wildflowers. This is a common shift in meadows. Many native goldenrods spread via rhizomes--roots that spread laterally and sprout new plants, creating expanding clones. I sought advice on the internet for how to bring the goldenrod back into balance with all the other desired meadow species. Midseason prescribed burns? Spot spraying with herbicide? Pulling individual plants? The online search yielded no clear solutions.

We watched a monarch sampling the meadow's millions of flowers, and then my eye caught something else entirely, a pair of praying mantises preparing to mate.

The male, smaller, clung tightly to the female's back. Weeding gave way to nature study, mixed with voyeurism.

A wasp had been visiting a flower just above them. The next thing we knew, the female was clutching the wasp in her claws and chowing down as if the wasp were a shish kebob or an ear of corn. This casual and timely catch of dinner in the midst of procreation, as we learned later, was really good news for the male.

Nice of them to show us their business ends--male on the right. Had a hard time later on finding any nomenclature or function for the antenna-like structures at the posterior end of both male and female.

Several times, the male curved its abdomen over and under the wings of the female. This capacity to bend around may have something to do with the male's greater number of abdominal segments (8 vs. 6), which along with overall size is useful for distinguishing one from the other.

My friend said she'd read that the females have a habit of eating the males after mating. For some reason, I found this disturbing. Is evolution trending in this direction? All the more reason for the male mantis to think twice about breaking out a cigarette.

There are in fact, for your viewing pleasure, videos that capture this charming behavioral trait, and explain that the female is merely reaching for the nearest high-protein meal she can find, to nurture the next generation. And what sort of life does the male have to look forward to, with frost quick approaching?

One video shows that the female begins by eating the male's head, suggesting little respect for the male's intellect. The beheading can cause the male to mate all the more ardently, as if knowing this is its last chance. Plants can have a similar response to stress, bearing abundant seed when death seems imminent.

At some point, my friend's dog navigated its way past us, plowing its way through the dense wildflowers. It may have been at this juncture, with the female mantis distracted, that the male got going while the going was good. It flew a short distance away, looking a bit like a helicopter, its long body suspended below four wings catching the bright afternoon sunlight. Cockroaches, a close but less beloved relative of praying mantises, fly in the same manner.

The female, perhaps satiated by the little snack of wasp earlier on, didn't react. One bit of advice for any male praying mantises that might be reading: though praying could help, it's best to bring a little snack along for the misses. Small acts of kindness could take the female's mind off of biting your head off. Although, given your imminent demise as winter approaches, giving your body to feed the next generation could improve prospects for your progeny. Tough choice.

Though there are native praying mantises, we mostly encounter the two species introduced from China and Europe. I just hope they stick to wasps, and each other, and don't include monarchs in their diet. A quick googling brings up this post, which suggests that we may want to reassess our view of praying mantises as an unalloyed good.

(Track the Monarchs' progress towards Mexico at this link.)

Event this Sunday: Milkweeds and Meadows

UPDATE: Rain continuing through to noon. The basins are busy doing their good work. Will reschedule.

Let's say the rain will have passed by tomorrow morning, in which case you are welcome, this Sunday, October 9 at 9am, to join us at the Smoyer Park wet meadow. The park's out Snowden Lane in Princeton, just before you reach Herrontown Rd. Drive down to the end of the park's parking lot, where we are converting a large detention basin into a native meadow. After describing the process of converting turf to meadow, we'll plant some milkweed contributed by Don Stryker, property manager at Princeton Friends School. Don has been restoring the woodlands behind the school, and would like to establish more populations of milkweed in town. He found out about our Friends of Herrontown Woods nonprofit during a walk through the preserve, which is just across Snowden Lane from Smoyer Park.

After planting the milkweed, for anyone interested, we'll head around to the other side of Herrontown Woods, park at Hilltop Park, and walk down to the massive detention basin that receives stormwater runoff from the roofs and streets of Community Village and Copperwood. I recently visited the basin with students from Princeton Learning Cooperative. Underneath the masses of late-flowering thoroughwort, which make for a striking effect along the giant berm,

we found small populations of mugwort

and a particularly worrisome invasive called Chinese bushclover. Mugwort forms monocultures along the nearby gas line right of way, and the Chinese bushclover has been showing up in a few places in Princeton, with the same potential to aggressively displace other species.

Recent rains and unripened seedheads make this a perfect time to pull out these two species while they are still few in number along the berm.

If you're at loose ends tomorrow morning and would like to help out, bring work gloves. A spading fork is also useful to lift the roots of the Chinese bushclover. With soft soil, the mugwort is small enough to pull by hand.

There's a sad story of how Chinese bushclover was planted widely by departments of transportation and gameland managers, touted as a wildlife food only to discover that its seeds were too small and tough to digest. Birds then spread it around without gaining any nutrition. Native bushclovers with digestible seeds were displaced, and wildlife ended up worse off. I once tried to manage a right of way in North Carolina for native bushclovers, but it's really tough to remove the nonnative species once it becomes established. Thus, the proactive weeding expedition tomorrow morning.

Some technical info here: A thorough compilation of information on Chinese bushclover (Lespedeza cuneata): http://www.fs.fed.us/database/feis/plants/forb/lescun/all.html#ImportanceToWildlifeAndLivestock.
Surprisingly, the research that questions the habitat value of the species dates to the 1940s and 1960s, so the view that the seeds are too small and tough to digest appears to date back a long ways. This post includes a photo comparing seed size of native bushclovers and L. cuneata.

A Weeding in Time Saves Nine

My daughter and I planted one of the raised beds at Princeton High School with wildflowers. Part of the logic was that attracting pollinators to the area would be beneficial for the vegetables being grown in some of the other raised beds.

Not sure if there's actual data to that effect, but what was clear is how easy it is to make a wildflower in this framed context thrive. Easy does not equate with the "plant and run" approach, which typically involves planting a garden and then assuming nothing more is entailed than patting oneself on the back. Instead, easy means planting wildflowers where they are likely to thrive, and then making brief but strategic follow up visits to water during droughts or weed out any would-be competitors. This planting required two or three follow-ups of a half hour each, until the wildflowers were so well established that nothing else had a chance.

Care of the other beds varied from neat rows of vegetables to a rambunctious weedfest, like this one with pigweed (amaranth) and lambs quarters--the taste of at least the latter when young rivaling any of the greens intentionally being grown.

Horseweed and ragweed, both native, are also quick to populate bare ground.

Here's ragweed closer up, with a foxtail grass. All of this is on the backside of the high school, where plants don't have to conform to cultural norms of beauty.

If ever the school raised the bar for beauty, though, it's good to know that the difference between a weedfest and a "really big show" is just a well-timed half hour here and there.

In the photo: late-flowering thoroughwort (white), New England aster (pink to purple) and cutleaf coneflower (mostly seedheads at this point, rising high in back).

Mushrooming in Nature's Living Room

Our Friends of Herrontown Woods nonprofit hosted a mushroom walk last weekend. Philip Poniz (right), who had offered to co-lead, began by saying he is not an expert, but offered as evidence of his knowledge that he had been foraging for many years and is still alive. In keeping with the egalitarian nature of our walks, others contributed their knowledge as well, including Peter Ihnat (left in the photo).

The weather had been dry, and scouting around a few days before, I had found only one mushroom rising from the ground. It was quickly identified by Philip and others as an "avenging angel", one of the most poisonous mushrooms of all. If the angels are seeking revenge, what hope do we have? This is why, in addition to any laws against foraging on public lands, I encouraged participants to only harvest knowledge and pleasure during the walk.

We headed up the red trail (check out the newly completed, remarkable remarking of trails at Herrontown Woods in our updated brochure), past the Veblen cottage, finding a few fungi here and there, clinging to fallen logs.

I didn't ask what this one was, found during the scouting trip, but it looks reminiscent of a fungus called turkey tail. One participant asked if observing what animals eat can give clues as to which mushrooms are edible. We heard a story of two squirrels being tracked after having eaten a certain mushroom. Both died. Some animals may get more tutelage from their elders than others.

There was another story about the "big laughing Jim" mushroom, which can contain varying amounts of psilosybin.

Though the mushrooms would have preferred rain, we basked in the comfort of dappled shade, heading off trail to see Herrontown Woods' special mix of nature and culture, scrutinizing the fungal legacy on trees toppled by past windstorms.

The beech forest on the far side of the pipeline right of way has a nice open feel. We were happy with our modest findings, the day, the woods, the company, but a surprise awaited that ended the walk with an appropriate exclamation point.

Most of us had already walked by, but filmmaker Andrea Odezynska had the eye to spot this foot-tall mushroom growing on the bare ground where a tree had been uprooted. Books came out, a name was tentatively offered: 

"stalked polypore?", 

the stuff of lore, 

what we'd all been waiting for. 

We pulled out our cameras and surrounded it as if we were the mama-and-paparazzi, and it were a movie star. It seemed unfazed.

Afterwards, many stayed on for refreshments and conversation next to Veblen House, just off the beaten trail. Thanks to all who contribute to our Friends of Herrontown Woods, and our work to maintain the trails, restore habitat and bring the wonderful Veblen legacy to life for the community.

Foraging on the internet, I found this site: The Three Foragers, a family that has delved deep into wild edibles and speaks to the riches nature has to offer, and the importance of foraging carefully and responsibly. Though foraging is highly discouraged at Herrontown Woods and other nature preserves, the walk offered food for thought (a much safer food than wild mushrooms!) on how we can safely and sustainably connect to the nature around us in more than an observational way.

October Workshops at Mountain Lakes Begin Sunday

I'm passing along info about a nature series being hosted by my former employer, the Friends of Princeton Open Space:

Friends of Princeton Open Space is pleased to announce a fall workshop series that brings new voices into the conversation about the value of nature and open space.

Nature as Muse: A Sensory Exploration of One Landscape Through Four Creative Perspectives

4 Sundays in October from 2PM to 3:30PM at the Mountain Lakes Preserve in Princeton

Friends of Princeton Open Space has invited four creative professionals to lead workshops in the Mountain Lakes Preserve that examine how nature inspires fragrances (perfumer), cuisine (chef), poetry (writer), and branding and design (graphic designer). Each workshop includes a woodland walk to explore - and catalog - the sensory landscape, followed by a simple creative exercise that puts the concepts we learn on our walk into practice.

Instructors:  
October 9: Perfumer: Etienne Bouckaert, Firmenich
October 16: Chef: Gab Carbone, the bent spoon
October 23: Graphic Designer: Sarah Smith, Smith + Manning
October 30: Poet: Douglas Piccinnini, writer and poet; chef at Poor Farm Food

Cost: $100 for 4 workshops
Details and registration at: https://nature_as_muse.eventbrite.com

Series only registration until October 1. After October 1, registration for individual workshops will be available, if any openings remain.

Where Have All the Flowers Gone at the Neuroscience Building?

What's wrong with this picture? Something's missing, and that something is all the native grasses and wildflowers planted here just two years prior, as part of a naturalistic landscaping of Princeton University's neuroscience building.

In 2014, it looked like this, with partridge pea showing its stuff and little bluestem grasses waving gracefully in the breeze. In a post, I celebrated the planting, and an accompanying raingarden that catches runoff from the road. It was a wonderful example of how native meadow could be integrated into a peopled landscape.

But sometime between then and now, there was a decision to abort. Everything got mowed down, making the area look like the lawn didn't take.

The partridge pea is hanging low, blooming where it can in midget form.

And the native grasses show as discrete bunches foiled in their rise towards the sun.

We've seen this elsewhere in town, at Harrison Street Park, and at Westminster Choir College's parking lot. A design is developed, often at considerable expense, the native plants are installed, there's congratulations all around on vision and sustainability, and then a few years later the mowers reclaim the area for a default landscaping of trees and turf.

What happened? Well, here's one reason: crown vetch.

And here's another: mugwort. Maybe they hitchhiked in as contaminant in the seed mix, or in the topsoil trucked in for the landscaping, or were already on-site in the resident soil. Whatever the source, they grew up and over the intended plants, and the facilities crew decided they couldn't possibly weed it all out.

With careful maintenance the first couple years, the weeds might have been few enough to remove and the intended plants could have filled in, minimizing maintenance needs in the years that followed. But as we've seen with climate change, it's not human nature to catch problems early, when they hardly seem like problems at all. Though university facilities staff are probably better trained than most, they still may not have been familiar enough with the intended plants and weeds to know which to pull.

Now everything's mixed together. Here's mugwort in the upper left, partridge pea below, and some sort of blue oats-like grass that was clearly intended.

Here's mugwort and crown vetch intermixed with the native grasses.

You could say that the crown vetch has a pretty flower, but what was lost by the dominance of these two invasive species is the way the intended plants, mostly native, grow without displacing what's around them. Little bluestem is a bunch grass that stays in place, at a modest height, and the partridge pea intermingles without smothering. Mugwort, in contrast, grows tall, spreads aggressively, and undoubtedly fell over into the walkway. Crown vetch crawls over the plants around it, tending towards monoculture. The effect of grace, beauty and diversity is lost over time.

So, what's to become of the planting? Will it all be converted to a static planting of liriope?

Or mimic Roberts Stadium, just across the sidewalk?

Or will they find a way to restore some version of the original vision of native meadow, which would take close tending at first but ultimately be lower maintenance than mowing?

Facilities staff are working with their landscape architect to reassess.