Grow Like Wild #5

Wolf Moon Newsletter

Hi Plant People,

Happy Wolf Moon and MLK Day. I hope you are spending this day creating a more just world. If you’d like to support voting rights today, some incredible organizations doing the work are UN-PAC, Poor People’s Campaign, and Movement Voter Project. The movements for social justice and ecological health are fundamentally linked: we can’t create the thriving planet of our dreams while people are being oppressed.

Last winter, I was thrilled to lecture about Brooklyn Bridge Park for the folks at Grow Native Mass. They just posted my lecture online and you can watch it here. There are many other fantastic lectures on their website, which is a marvelous free resource.

GARDEN NOTES

Many moths and butterflies feed on the leaves of trees during their caterpillar phase. When they’re ready to pupate, most of them will drop down into the leaf litter to snuggle into the duff for protection during that vulnerable part of their lifecycle. This cycle is interrupted when we clean the leaves under trees away or maintain a barren mulch ring. Even worse, in cities, those caterpillars might be dropping onto the sidewalk! You can support these animals by creating “soft landings” of plants and leaves under trees, especially keystone trees like oaks which support an outsized number of animals. Heather Holm and other awesome folks created this excellent (and so sharable!) guide for soft landings and why they’re important. As we plan our spring garden work, perhaps there are trees in your landscape that you might consider creating a soft landing beneath?

RESOURCE SPOTLIGHT

Here is a truly incredible online tool that tells you what birds eat, as well an an article explaining how it works. But why is it important to know what birds eat? If you’re trying to support certain species on your land, it’s helpful to know what they’re looking for: seeds? bugs? This could be a useful tool for landscape design and management, especially the references that give more detailed info about species diet.

Xerces society just came out with a new online tool and guide to the nearly 40 systemic insecticides currently in use in the USA. As you know, these pernicious insecticides persist in plant tissue, for years in trees, and can move into the soil. Beneficial insects can ingest them once planted so it is imperative to insure that native plants especially are not treated. Of course, we also use these insecticides in food crops. And a new Swiss study found neonicotinoids in the blood, urine, and spinal fluid of all but 1 of the 14 children they tested. Clearly this is utter madness. We simply must eat and grow organically.

IN THE NEWS

A new Swedish study found that native trees in urban areas supported two to three times as many flying invertebrates than exotic species. BUT, most interestingly, they also found that the same trees in rural areas hosted nearly identical numbers of invertebrates. Meaning, as we’ve seen in other studies, that cities are NOT actually bad for invertebrates overall. Lack of suitable habitat is bad, but inverts are happy to live in cities if we give them the native plants and soils they need. From the study: “…the impact of non-native vegetation may be a stronger driver of invertebrate declines in urban areas than other factors.”
Similarly, a new Australian study found that remnant bushlands in cities supported more and more diverse native bee species than residential gardens. In all landscapes, “native bee abundance and richness increased with abundance of native plant species, but decreased with total flower species richness.” They speculated that more native flowers don’t equal more native bees because some flowers, of course, are not bee pollinated. But the overall finding was clear: protect natural habitat that exists, but where it does not, plant native plants.
Evidence of the benefits of green space continues to roll in: Finnish daycares that created “forests” for the kids to play in, saw the immune systems of the children improve drastically within a month!
Years ago, many of us learned to plant flowers in large groups. The thinking was that bees in particular were more attracted to blocks of flowers. But recent research shows that is not always the case. Big, powerful bumble bees prefer groups of flowers but some smaller bees prefer flowers that are more isolated from a large groups. More than anything, it really depends on which bees are present and the dynamics among them. Have you ever watched a honey bee kick a smaller bee off a flower? Those smaller bees might appreciate some distance. Additionally, Rattlesnake Master was found to have better seed-set when off by itself, suggesting that certain flowers are best pollinated when relatively isolated. Here is an article that explains it well. My plan after all of this is to stick to what I usually do, which is follow the advice of Darrel Morrison, and plant initially in drifts, letting the plants sort out placement over time.
New word alert! “Marcescence” is the tendency of trees to hold onto their leaves even after they’re desiccated. Here is a wonderful piece on how trees do this but it doesn’t get much into the why. I like this explanation, “According to Seneca legend, oak trees hang onto their leaves in defiance of winter, and the pine trees stand in alliance with them. The tamaracks, however, drop their needles in resignation.”

UPCOMING EVENTS

New Directions in the American Landscape
January 20-21 & 27-28, 2022
1:00PM - 4:30PM
Virtual.
Arguably the best conference for ecological horticulture professionals, NDAL this year will host: Sara Zewde, Gena Wirth, Robin Veder, W. Gary Smith, Raymond Jungles.
Plant-o-Rama
January 24 - 25, 2022
24th: 6:00PM - 8:00PM
25th: 9:00AM - 4:00PM
Now entirely virtual!
NYC’s best hort party is back! P-o-R this year will have 2 virtual keynote speakers, Abra Lee and and Jimi Blake, followed the next day by a dazzling assortment of breakout session speakers: Uli Lorimer, Wambui Ippolito, Tom Christopher, Adam Dooling, Gwen Schantz, Will Axelrod, and Bob Hyland.
Lexington's Living Landscapes
January 26, 2022
7:00 PM - 8:30 PM
Free, virtual, and open to the public.
Rebecca will lecture on pollination ecology! Lexington’s Living Landscapes is a collaboration of groups who organized “to promote, encourage, and support sustainable landscaping on private and public lands in Lexington.” I will speak on The Language of Flowers. An Introduction to Pollination Ecology.
Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden Winter Symposium
February 9, 2022
9:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Virtual.
Rebecca will speak on Brooklyn Bridge Park at this 2-day symposium. The event’s theme is rethinking urban landscapes with a focus on biodiversity.
Wild Ones
February 16, 2022
7:00PM - 8:30 PM
Free, virtual, and open to the public.
Rebecca is excited to speak about Brooklyn Bridge Park’s ecological work to Wild Ones, an organization that provides resources and lectures to garden for biodiversity.
Native Plant Society of New Jersey Conference
March 5, 2022
9:00AM - 4:00PM
Free, virtual, and open to the public.
Rebecca will speak about Brooklyn Bridge Park and urban biodiversity alongside lectures by Doug Tallamy, Jay Kelly, and Don Torino at this conference for the NPSNY.