Conquering Backyard Ivy in an Ivy League Town

After weeks of inaction, paralyzed by inertia and wondering if once again the garden would bowl me over with its growing power, I finally ventured out with gloves, dirt-friendly clothing, and some clippers to take on some of the backyard's longstanding "issues". To my surprise, there was satisfying progress to be made, that actually built on progress past.

Many gardeners have "border issues", that is, plants invading their yards from their neighbors', or vice versa. A friend recently showed me how lesser celandine was continually spreading into his yard from his uphill neighbor, and there are many stories of bamboo's indifference to society's artificial boundaries.

For years, my yard had waves of english ivy coming in from three sides, but two of my neighbors, without my saying a word, got rid of all of theirs. And where my yard abuts the park in back, I was able to get rid of the parkside ivy by taking the liberty of mowing it, after which the parks crews apparently have been weedwhipping any resprouts.

Taking advantage of the soft soil after yesterday's rain, I finally took on the legacy of ivy on my side of the fence, using physical means. The first phase was an on-hands-and-knees approach, pulling and cutting off any ivy growing on the fence.

Ivy heading up a tree got cut at the bottom. No need to pull it down. Cutting at the base is enough, though some people find it more satisfying to pull it all off.

For phase two, large pieces of cardboard were placed along the fence, overlapping, and any ivy still exposed further in was pulled out and thrown on top of the cardboard, where it will dry out. Some native vines--virginia creeper, wild grape, and poison ivy--were pulled as well, though the main goal was to eliminate english ivy. Gloves, long sleeves, and periodic washing of any potentially exposed skin with water should be enough to avoid poison ivy's effects, but we'll see.

The chickens came over to inspect my work, and seemed satisfied. Phase three would be to cover up the cardboard with chips or some other organic material that will hide the cardboard and keep it from getting blown by the wind. But the cardboard will quickly disappear behind a screen of growth in the yard, and some exposed cardboard may prove instructive to park users, who may decide to try using cardboard to deal with their own border issues.

Elsewhere in the yard was additional proof of how even intimidating weeds can be controlled by timely intervention. Only a few garlic mustards came up this year, because they've been getting pulled each spring before they go to seed.

And the big bamboo patch that once was advancing across the fence on the north side is down to a few weak sprouts easily cut. Other weeds--the Canada thistle and the dandelions--got the undercut treatment with a shovel.

There is, of course, the option of eating the young leaves of garlic mustard, and I saw a chinese woman inspecting some bamboo clones across the street, in search of bamboo shoots.

Some of the more aggressive native species got a rebalancing. A native floodplain species of goldenrod that spreads via underground rhizomes got pulled out in places. In the photo is the base of a bottlebrush buckeye--a beautiful native shrub that can start grabbing territory once established. It was a relief to discover that its expansionist ambitions are realized via above ground stolons that can be easily cut.

Mixed with the pulling and digging and rebalancing was some appreciating, of the subtle pendulant blooms of a Bladdernut, a native shrub found in only a few isolated spots in Princeton.

Native Plant Event at Whole Earth Center

On Sunday, May 1, 11-2pm, the Whole Earth Center in Princeton will have a native plant shindig. That's what Alex Levine, Whole Earth's master artisan of deli cuisine calls it. The official title is "Landscaping With Native Plants", and will feature native plants for sale and free advice from some of us landscaper, native plant seller, naturalist types. There's more info and a pretty photo of Alex's wildflower garden at this link.

Unrelated to the sale, some flowers to be enjoyed this time of year, native species occurring in gardens but not in the wilds of Princeton, is this Fothergilla I planted in the raingarden in front of the Whole Earth Center,

and, if I can get the chicken out of the way,

some celandine poppy. Unrelated to the lesser celandine that's radically spreading through gardens, parks and natural areas of Princeton, the celandine poppy is in the poppy family, makes small mounds that look good even when they aren't blooming. New ones pop up nearby, but not in a way that threatens to take over or spread unwanted into the neighbor's.

Some Spring Views at Herrontown Woods

The unfolding of spring, slowed by cool weather, can be viewed within a short walk of the Veblen House at Herrontown Woods. There's the grand view from the cliff (careful, folks!),

and the domesticated view in front of the corncrib. Sally Tazelaar, of our Friends of Herrontown Woods nonprofit, cleared the multiflora rose that had obscured the daffodils for years.

One of my favorite views is very small and mundane-looking, belying its ecologically significance. Here's evidence that deer are browsing on the smaller shoots of winged euonymus, an all too dominating, nonnative species in some areas of the park. The winged euonymus has been outcompeting native shrubs in part because the wildlife tend not to eat it, but we've noticed that if we play the role of extinct megafauna, by cutting down the winged euonymus too big for the less-mega deer to reach, the deer will browse the resprouts and thus reduce the nonnative's unnatural competitive advantage. There's a good feeling in this collaboration with deer, though they don't seem to have developed a taste for privet or Asian photinia. For those, it's completely up to humans to do the browsing, if some semblance of ecological balance is to be restored.

Another quiet, welcome sight is water trickling out of a long-abandoned drainage pipe. It's a spring of sorts, fed by seepage from the ridge.

Typically one finds more native plant diversity in the vicinity of a spring, because it provides the stable soil moisture of a pre-drained America, where wetlands and all the native species adapted to them once prospered. Mosses, Equisetum, jewelweed, and even what looks like an iris, which would not be found in the more drought-prone, altered terrain elsewhere.

Sustainable Jazz at Communiversity and DR Greenway

We grow all sorts of things here at Princeton Nature Notes, including melodies. Here are some upcoming performances. Click on the links for more info.

COMMUNIVERSITY--Sunday, April 17, 2-2:30pm, Paul Robeson Stage
              Pianist Phil Orr and I will be dropped by solar powered helicopter into the midst of the Princeton Arts Council's Communiversity, for a half hour of locally sourced jazz. The stage is on Witherspoon Street, close to the Princeton Public Library and the Arts Council.

DR GREENWAY'S MAY DAY PICNIC FOR PRESERVATION--Sunday, May 1, 4-6pm, Johnson Education Center, 1 Preservation Place, Princeton
           Sustainable Jazz returns to DR Greenway's mission central to play as part of a gala event celebrating the preservation work of Wade R. Martin. Tickets available at this link.

Upcoming Events at Princeton's Rogers Refuge

Most people don't think of Princeton as having a large marsh to look out upon, but you can find such a view by taking Alexander Rd and West Drive to Rogers Refuge, down from Institute Woods. Though owned by the American Water Company, it is open to the public, with trails, a small parking lot, and observation towers.

This Sunday, April 10 at 10am, the group that cares for the marsh, the Friends of Rogers Refuge, will host a dedication to honor Louis Beck, "who, in his passion and enthusiasm for birds, inspired many to cherish birds and work for their preservation."

The dedication, like the marsh itself, is open to the public. Here's the announcement sent out by FORR president Fred Spar:

"As Bluebirds and Red-winged Blackbirds stake out nesting territory, and leaves begin to emerge on our row of willows, we are getting ready for spring migration at the Rogers Refuge. Thanks to the support of the Washington Crossing Audubon Society, we will soon be installing new informational signage and, in memory of our dear friend Lou Beck, setting up an extensive series of nesting sites for Purple Martins, Bluebirds, Wood Ducks, Tree Swallows and other cavity nesters.  

Please join us as we dedicate a memorial to Lou Beck and celebrate the coming of spring. On Sunday, April 10th at 10:00 A.M. we will convene at the main platform at the Refuge for a dedication ceremony, refreshments, and a walk around the marsh."

On May 8 at 8am, the Washington Crossing Audubon's Brad Merritt and Mark Witmer will lead the annual bird walk at Rogers Refuge. Details at this link.

The marsh is kept wet in the summer with the help of a pump that feeds the marsh extra water from the Stony Brook. It's a good example of how a volunteer Friends group can collaborate with town government and the private land owner, American Water, to sustain one of the finest birding spots in the area. The town maintains the pump, and its long-running deer management program has allowed spicebush and other native flora to rebound, greatly improving the nesting habitat for birds.

Take West Drive off of Alexander Road near the StonyBrook bridge, and keep left at the fork in the gravel road.

Kids and Chickens

There's a special transaction happening across this chain link fence that separates Potts Park from our backyard. The kids in the park have discovered our chickens. Maybe they heard the plaintive call of our duck, and came over to take a look. Though the park has some nice play equipment, a sandbox, ballcourt and a couple picnic tables, one parent told me the main attraction is now our four chickens.

I like to think that the chickens are teaching the kids to regard their surroundings with a keen eye, because a chicken is constantly scrutinizing the ground and plants around it, scratching the earth to see what's there. Are farms, gardens and chickens a gateway into the natural world? Follow an environmentalist's genealogy back a generation or two and you'll often find a farm.

Our chickens and duck have the run of the place all day, returning dutifully to the coop at dusk. I put some feed out, but mostly they forage for themselves, and so in a sense occupy a spot along the continuum between tame and wild. Such animals can serve as intermediaries, ambassadors, allowing a connection to that living world beyond neat yards and indoor pets, a bridge to the wild that the heart can traverse.

Princeton Environmental Film Festival--April 2-10

Check out the tenth annual environmental film festival at the Princeton Public Library. The festival begins today, then continues Tuesday through next Sunday. Films day and evening. Many of the films include discussions afterwards with makers of the films. Trailer for the festival below.


 
Princeton Environmental Film Festival 2016 Trailer from Princeton Public Library on Vimeo.

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.

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.

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)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.