Walking by the NYBGLibrary Building yesterday, we spotted a huge Red-tailed Hawk as it swooped across the trees and sailed to the top of a giant oak. During the daytime, these hawks are the top avian predators in our area and very impressive to behold (at night, the Great-horned Owls reign supreme). A group of bird watchers on the path gazed upward with large binoculars and telescopes.
Maybe this bird is a distant cousin of Pale Male, the famous Red-tailed Hawk who settled in Manhattan in the 1990s, defying hazardous urban living conditions and continuing to produce young hawks to this day. Or it could be a cousin of last year’s celebrity Red-tailed Hawk, Violet, who enchanted the residents of Washington Square Park in Manhattan before succumbing to a heart condition. Or perhaps it is one of the Garden’s own celebrity hawks, Rose and Vince, or one of their many, many offspring.
Doug Tallamy (Photo courtesy of the University of Delaware)
Doug Tallamy’s lecture started from a basic and logical premise: if you take away the places for wildlife to live and feed, you will lose your wildlife. We are all aware that habitat destruction leads to a loss of species, but very few of us believe that we can make a difference or that we are directly linked to the process. I mean this in a non-judgmental way and from a place of empowerment.
Some of you may think that this is an early case of ‘election fever,’ but alas it is not. Last month I sat in an auditorium and listened to a very convincing and lucid proponent for environmental restoration and species diversity. Regardless of his own political views, with respect to the biome Tallamy is definitely not a democrat. “All plants,” he asserts, “are not created equal in their ability to support wildlife.”
Meet Thomas Christopher, an expert on sustainable gardening practices, who will speak about “The Backyard Revolution” Thursday, March 15, 10 a.m. to 12 p.m.
Thomas Christopher has been covering sustainable gardening practices as a writer and editor for more than 25 years, with articles in nationally-read publications including The New York Times and Martha Stewart Living. He is also a hands-on gardener who has started his own sustainable lawn consulting business, Greener Grasses/Sustainable Lawns, near Middletown, CT.
“I was staggered to learn the area of turf in the United States is as big as Virginia, Connecticut and two-thirds of Rhode Island. Grass is our largest irrigated crop, more than corn,” said Christopher in a recent Chicago Tribune article. “Grasses are a resource-soaking nightmare, but they don’t have to be.”
Look at the maidenhair tree and you’ll see nothing worth taking to the salon. You may see “duck feet” in the leaves, as some Asian cultures have, but certainly no flowing mane of vegetal locks. Botanical nomenclature is a lot like the horse racing circuit in that regard–every so often you stumble over a designation that makes not even a whit of sense. Thus, to explain the common name of Ginkgo biloba, we need to think smaller.
“Fern” small, actually. The humble maidenhair fern (Adiantum aethiopicum happens to be sitting on our window sill), with its cascades of dainty green leaves, is the true point of origin for the towering ginkgo’s street moniker. And if you compare the two, you’ll see what many would call a family resemblance (if the ginkgo were directly related to anything else on this planet; it’s not). Each has leaves resembling the foot of a waterfowl. So why aren’t they named as such? To answer that, we look even further down.
Exploring the Conservatory during Caribbean Garden weekends becomes a study in the music of the islands. While you walk along the paths beneath the palm fronds, see if you can spot the “living instruments” that create the rhythms of salsa, a Caribbean tradition that springs from the very plants growing around you!
Drums, or congas, are traditionally made from the wood of the versatile mahogany tree (Swietenia macrophylla). Be on the look-out for a perfect specimen of this warm climate hardwood as you enter our Tropical Rainforest Gallery on a tour of the exhibition.
While you’re there, perhaps you can also find the gourd-bearing trees known as calabash (Crescentia cujete), the fruit of which was once dried and used to create food and water vessels. But cultivators also use it for other purposes, many of them far more creative.
Meet Doug Tallamy, an expert on the importance of native plants in our landscape and how to care for them — Thursday, February 16, 10 a.m. to 12 p.m.
Photo courtesy of Lisa Mattei.
Doug Tallamy knows how important a diverse native plant community is for other living creatures, especially insects. He has devoted much of his career to understanding the many ways insects interact with plants, creating essential food webs without which our ecosystems would fail.
His award-winning book and website, Bringing Nature Home, is a call to action for gardeners across the country to use native plants to sustain wildlife, promote biodiversity, and protect our ecosystems.
In his book, Tallamy recounts his own “epiphany” when his family moved to 10 acres in southeastern Pennsylvania, an area “farmed for centuries before being subdivided and sold.” He discovered that “at least 35% of the vegetation on our property consisted of aggressive plant species from other continents that were rapidly replacing what native plants we did have.” And he noticed something else: the alien plants on the property, such as the Norway maples and the mile-a-minute weeds, had “very little or no leaf damage from insects.”
We have a strong science department at The New York Botanical Garden. Botanists of all backgrounds come here to work on topics that span each corner of the discipline, from ethnobotany to plant genomics. The scientists host Friday lectures where members of their staff or researchers from the wider community come to give presentations of their work. During the quiet winter months, I sometimes have the luxury of attending these seminars.
A few weeks ago, I attended a seminar on invasive plants. Invasive plants are an important topic for anyone who is interested in the environment and their community. With over $120 billion being spent annually on removal of invasive weeds (whether in the realm of agriculture, roadside maintenance, or habitat restoration), invasive plants are a very real problem. I always hear about it from the standpoint of a gardener and an educator. It was interesting for me to hear it from the perspective of a botanist and an ecologist. Not surprisingly, many of the warnings, lessons and take home messages were the same.
Continuing where we left off, we will now explore several things that home owners can do to combat winter injury. The most effective remedy for winter injury on broad-leaved evergreens is prevention; in other words, the best protection is properly siting the plants.
The mid-winter break is coming up on the calendar for local school kids, leaving us just a bit excited here at The New York Botanical Garden. Not that we’re taking any vacations for ourselves, mind you. For the first time, we’re throwing open our gates as one of the world’s premier centers for botanical science, welcoming curious young minds as we turn the Garden into a 250-acre classroom, laboratory, and learning playground.
Winter Science Camp offers children a “behind the scenes” learning experience under the guidance of the NYBG’s world-renowned plant educators. Kids will investigate plants in the Herbarium unseen by the public, enjoy early-morning exploration in the Forest, and experience a curriculum you just won’t find in the local elementary school schedule. Where else can they try their hand at planting vegetables, or pressing their own botanical specimens?
For the past few weeks we have reflected on the strange weather that we experienced last year, discussing the physical damage to the Garden during the October storm and the identifying characteristics that signal future issues. The erratic behavior of the weather from September onwards reminded me of a time several years ago when an Indian summer lasted well into December. The temperatures crashed in the following January and we experienced winter almost overnight.
Some of you may remember that year. For the broad-leaved evergreens at the Garden, this was the year for winter injury, and there are several reasons why a plant experiences this.
Walking by the NYBG Library Building yesterday, we spotted a huge Red-tailed Hawk as it swooped across the trees and sailed to the top of a giant oak. During the daytime, these hawks are the top avian predators in our area and very impressive to behold (at night, the Great-horned Owls reign supreme). A group of bird watchers on the path gazed upward with large binoculars and telescopes.
