Redbuds can't survive in the deep shade of the forest, but they proliferate on the more open Veblen House grounds.
News from the preserves, parks and backyards of Princeton, NJ. The website aims to acquaint Princetonians with our shared natural heritage and the benefits of restoring native diversity and beauty to the many preserved lands in and around Princeton.
Saturday, May 04, 2024
Helping Herrontown's Beauty Express Itself
Redbuds can't survive in the deep shade of the forest, but they proliferate on the more open Veblen House grounds.
Tent Caterpillars and the History of Black Cherry Trees in Herrontown Woods
Black cherry trees draw attention in early spring because of the "tents" that tent caterpillars weave on them. I was surprised to find out that these tents are sometimes mistaken for gypsy moth infestations. There's also some disagreement as to how damaging tent caterpillars are to the trees they feast upon, so I decided to do some investigation.
First, some distinctions between tent caterpillars and gypsy moths. Tent caterpillars are native, feed primarily on cherry trees, build conspicuous tents, and do their feeding on the fresh, tender leaves just beginning to emerge in April. Gypsy moths are a nonnative species imported from Europe, start feeding in May on a very wide spectrum of hardwoods and even some conifers, and do not build tents.
Gypsy Moths"Wild black cherry, which grows to magnificent size in the Allegheny Mountains, is a poorly formed tree in Herrontown Woods, occurring mostly in areas which were recently open fields. Its best growth has been in the pine plantation, where specimens are 30 to 40 feet tall and possibly may develop into good-sized trees. Apparently these black cherries were able to develop along with the young pines after these were planted in the open field. Although the birds do bring seeds of the cherry into the forest, the many seedlings and the few saplings that occur there grow poorly and remain shrub-like."
Monday, April 29, 2024
Persistence Furthers With Garlic Mustard
Another weed that is risky to let get established in your yard is garlic mustard. The plant shoots up 1-3 feet high during its second year, and is easy to spot right now with its cluster of little white flowers. The flowers look decent enough, but a laissez faire approach will lead to this weed taking over, altering soil chemistry and crowding out other flowers. The garlicky smelling leaves are edible, especially when young, but you'll never eat enough to control it.
The strategy for combatting aggressive plants in the garden is different for each species. Garlic mustard is a biennial, meaning it gathers energy the first year, then blooms and dies the second year. If you leave it while it's flowering, chances are you'll forget to pull it later, after it has blended back into the green of the garden. By the time the plant dies and turns brown later in the summer, marring your garden with its skeletal remains, the seeds will have matured and dispersed, creating an even bigger problem next year.
But foil its attempt to make and spread new seed, and the soil will eventually run out of seed to make new plants. Best to pull now, while in bloom, though it can be pulled any time before the seeds mature. "Grab low and pull slow" is a good motto for getting as much of the root as possible. Don't put the pulled plants in your compost pile. Even when pulled while young, there's still a chance that the flowers will mature into viable seed.
To avoid having to stuff the pulled plants in trash bags to send to the landfill, what we've done at Herrontown Woods is pull every last one we can find, then pile them in an out of the way spot, so that any seeds that mature on the pulled plants and sprout the next year will be easy to find and pull. Pulling gets easier each year, until what once took hours now takes but a few minutes.All problems should yield so nicely to persistence.
Related posts:
Monday, April 22, 2024
Bringing the Garden Inside
"I asked an elderly woman once what it was like to be old and to know that the majority of her life was now behind her.
She told me that she has been the same age her entire life. She said the voice inside of her head had never aged. She has always just been the same girl. Her mother's daughter. She had always wondered when she would grow up and be an old woman.
She said she watched her body age and her faculties dull but the person she is inside never got tired. She never aged. She never changed.
Remember, our spirits are eternal. Our souls are forever. The next time you encounter an elderly person, look at them and know they are still a child, just as you are still a child and children will always need love, attention and purpose."
~ Author Unknown
illustration by Tasha Tudor
Thursday, April 18, 2024
Lawn Blotch 2024
Maybe people have another name for it, but every April there is a condition of some lawns that catches the eye. I call it "lawn blotch," which develops early in spring when the grass has yet to grow but other plants have.
Those other plants that spring forth here and there in a lawn might be Star of Bethlehem, which will later have pretty white flowers but spreads underground, popping up all over the place in your yard. Or they might be the pretty but terribly invasive lesser celandine, which will become a nuisance for you, your neighbors, and your local nature preserve if you don't spray it or dig it up.Or they could be a weedy allium that I call wild garlic.
None of these plant species are native. Lesser celandine is poisonous.
Lawn blotch has at least one positive, though. I've frequently seen the wild garlic being gratefully harvested by people of Asian heritage, to use in cooking like chives or onions.Friday, April 05, 2024
Lesser Celandine Spreading Into Local Parks
Poisonous to wildlife, crowding out other plants, be they native wildflowers or turfgrass, lesser celandine spreads across sunny lawns and shady forests alike, forming dense, exclusionary mats that can extend far into the distance.
I've written many posts about this highly invasive plant, and how it can be controlled with targeted, minimalist use of herbicide if one catches it early in one's yard or in a local park or preserve. Invasions start with one isolated plant like this, which can be easily sprayed with systemic herbicide without damaging nearby vegetation. (Or dug up and thrown in the trash, not the compost.) Of course, one plant looks harmless enough, but its rapid spread will change your view from "Gee, that's pretty" to "Help!!"Wednesday, March 06, 2024
Princeton Salamander Crossing Brigade
Their objects of affection and devotion are frogs like this one,
and salamanders like this. Due to land preservation efforts that began with the donation of Herrontown Woods nearly 70 years ago and continue to this day with a critical initiative to save the 90 acre Lanwin tract, there is still enough forest and clean water along the ridge to sustain these charismatic and ecologically important creatures. After long winter dormancy, it's these first warm, rainy nights that stir wood frogs, spring peepers, and spotted salamanders to action.
Herrontown Road dates back to the early days of Princeton. It rides the top of the ridge, winding around the back side of Herrontown Woods. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of amphibians, seeking the vernal pools in which they were born, unknowingly risk being crushed when they cross this strip of pavement. A spotted salamander can live more than 20 years, so that each loss has consequences for decades to come.
Monday, March 04, 2024
Are Bubbles Trouble for a Tree?
One of the students in a class I was teaching about rocks at Herrontown Woods noticed something decidedly un-rocklike on a black oak we were passing by.
Foam was collecting at the base of the tree. Might it indicate some malady like decay or disease?Saturday, February 17, 2024
Coming in March: Three Princeton Adult School Classes at Herrontown Woods
Through the Princeton Adult School, I will be leading or co-leading three classes at Herrontown Woods this March. Classes meet on Saturdays, 10-12.
To sign up, scroll down through the list of Tours and Nature Walks being offered this spring by the Princeton Adult School. Discount available if you sign up for all three.
Class Descriptions
March 2: The Herrontown Woods Experience: Hiking and Exploration (Princeton Ridge Geology and Magnetic Rocks) - Why do magnets stick to some of the rocks in Herrontown Woods?Hydrogeologist Jon Johnson discovered magnetic rocks in Herrontown Woods and tracked them back to the mother lode. We will retrace his journey, learning about the Princeton ridge's surprising geology and ecology along the way.March 9: The Herrontown Woods Experience: Hiking and Exploration (Signs of Early Princeton Along the Ridge: Quarries, Smallholder Farms, Timber Harvest) - The mix of nature and culture at Herrontown Woods provides a window into the past. Hidden in what today is a forest are clues to a time, a century ago, when Princeton's ridge was a patchwork of small farms, woodlots and quarries. Participants will learn to recognize these clues, and the history behind them.March 16: The Herrontown Woods Experience: Hiking and Exploration (Salamanders and Frogs in Herrontown) - Herrontown Woods is a center of amphibian life along the Princeton ridge. We'll visit some of the vernal pools where frogs and salamanders gather in the spring to lay their eggs, and learn about their varied life cycles, as well as efforts to help them survive road crossings during spring migration.
Encountering Old (Plant) Friends at Fairchild Tropical Botanical Garden
Along the winding paths, there were old friends, like this thriving ombu. Lacking true wood, it is really an overgrown forb masquerading as a tree. I first encountered it in Argentina, where stories tell of it giving shelter to gauchos out on the pampas. Its latin name, Phytolacca dioica, shows it to be in the same genus as our pokeweed. If you saw it blooming, as I did once in a park in the Recoleta neighborhood of Buenos Aires, you might think you're looking at a pokeweed 50 feet high.
How often do we get to see a baobab tree, and a massive one at that?
Petrified wood triggered memories of visiting a petrified forest during a long drive through Argentine Patagonia.
And this swollen trunk brought the name "palo borracho" to mind, a name that translates to "drunken stick", in reference to the bottle-shape of the trunk. They are common along the streets of Buenos Aires. I think this one is Ceibe speciosa, the silk floss tree, closely related to the kapok tree.
The National Tropical Botanical Garden goes even farther in describing Fairchild's legacy:
"Avocado, mango, kale, quinoa, dates, hops, pistachios, nectarines, pomegranates, myriad citrus, Egyptian cotton, soybeans, and bamboo are just a few of the thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of plants Fairchild introduced to the United States."The desire to import plants that could prove useful for food, fiber, and other uses dates at least back to George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, but gained intensity during the golden age of travel--the late 19th century when Fairchild began his career. Plants were considered so important to the economy and security of the nation that the U.S. Botanic Garden--a particular passion of George Washington's--was placed next door to the Capitol building. That's it down in the lower left of this map.
To 21st or even 20th century eyes, the proximity of a botanical garden to the nation's center of legislative power feels odd in the extreme. Plants are more likely now to be viewed as quaint decoration to soften the edges of our hardened world. When I visited the U.S. Botanic Garden, probably in the 1990s, the conservatory looked a bit down in the mouth, largely serving as a refuge for the homeless. More respect for George Washington's dream has been shown since then.
Those must have been heady times, early in the 20th century, when Fairchild oversaw the import of more than 100,000 species of plants from around the world. Their utility and beauty promised to enrich our country by diversifying our farms, gardens and kitchens. Few, including Fairchild, wanted to think about the downside, as some of these imports escaped gardens and ran wild over the landscape, displacing native species. A botanical enrichment has contributed over time to an ecological degradation.
I looked into whether David Fairchild ever came to terms with the potential for introduced species to run amok, and plan to write about it in a separate post. He was aware that some nonnatives like kudzu and lebbek were spreading aggressively, but there is no verifiable evidence as yet that he sounded a warning.
It's heartening to see that the Fairchild Tropical Botanical Garden itself has evolved to take the threat of invasive species very seriously. According to multiple sources, it monitors closely its collection of exotic plants and takes action to prevent spread beyond the Garden's borders. I want very much to believe all this is true and will continue to be true, the better to enjoy the memory of my visit there, encountering so many old (plant) friends from my earlier travels around the world.