Grow Like Wild #11

Margaret Roach wrote an article on turf-grass alternatives for lawns in the NYT with Dan Jaffe Wilder, and it was so incredibly popular that they had to do a followup piece! It’s marvelous how into this people are.
And the AP put out a piece on transitioning gardens from invasives to natives that was picked up by dozens of papers, even the Washington Post. Again, pretty amazing to see Carex pennsylvanica in the national news.
Artist Chris Ware did a cover for the New Yorker that seems to suggest that liberals prefer a more wild garden aesthetic than conservatives. Do you think it holds? I always love these images of GOP yards. To me, it makes a lot of sense that fascists would be into bad topiary.
The world’s largest water-lily was discovered in the wilds of Kew Garden, while an oak species thought to be extinct was re-discovered in Texas! Also a new species of pitcher plant was found in Broneo, who’s pitchers function like pit traps: they’re mostly underground, with the opening flush with the soil surface to trap the insects who fall in.
The long tails of moths and swallowtail butterflies seem to function much like a lizard’s: as an easily-detachable method of deflecting predators from eating more important body parts.

I knew that cats used catnip… “medicinally” but did not realize the complexity of the interplay between species. The substance the cats are after is actually an insecticide that the plant produces in foliage to avoid insect herbivory. When the cats chew on leaves, the plant ramps up production by 20 times, trying to fend off insects. This drives the cats absolutely mad, causing them to roll around in the plant covering themselves in a natural bug spray.
Relatedly, Toronto is moving to enact a “leash law” for cats, effectively banning free-roaming felines and towns in Iceland are creating “cat curfews.” I’m in favor.
In 1901, it was quite fashionable for people to pick massive amounts of wildflowers for center pieces, hat decorations, and bouquets. A group of women saw the threat this posed to the plant populations and organized the Wild Flower Preservation Society. What could go wrong? Well, racism, then a massive amount of sexism. Here’s the story of women organizing around plant preservation in the early 1900s, an excerpt from the new book, Wild by Design: The Rise of Ecological Restoration.
Citizen science has done amazing things to track and encourage urban biodiversity. But that work is only happening in some areas of cities. Redlined neighborhoods have far less bird observations than wealthy and historically white areas. How can we do better? The ASLA interviewed landscape architects about how they might center environmental justice in their work.
Some flowers present pollen and nectar to just about every visitor (generalists like asters) and some hide resources in elaborate containers that only their specialists can access (Aquilegia and legumes). Certainly those animals who put in the effort to specialize have the food all to themselves, but new research indicates that their foraging might also be safer. Flowers with many visitors are like a “dirty doorknob” and can spread disease and parasites. Much of that disease is spread via poop. And new research shows that flowers that are wider and flatter (think Rudbeckia) turn out to be an easier place for pollinator frass to accumulate and pass to others. Paper here.
As xeriscaping grows in popularity, so too does the demand for native desert plants, some of which take decades to grow. Unfortunately the gap between supply and demand is often filled by poaching. This is a really fascinating story about the Yucca trade in Texas, and one man’s quest to grow this difficult plant.
These massive heat waves we’re seeing all over the world pose a threat for important flowers. Pollen for most crops starts to break down over 90 degrees and we’re already seeing failure. Thankfully, breeders are working on it.
Climate change is affecting insects in confusing ways. North American bumblebees seem to be declining as temperatures raise, while a German study found that heat-adapted insects were increasing with rising temperatures, and cold-adapted species were suffering.
Climate change is also affecting tiny soil life forms. “Biocrust” lichens, fungi, mosses, and blue-green algae cover 12% of land on earth and are in big trouble. Researchers estimate that by 2070, 25% to 40% of the biocrusts will be gone.
While I personally have never thought of how the biodiversity collapse might impact credit ratings, apparently it’s a really big deal. When poor countries experience ecosystem function loss, their global credit rating is downgraded, leading to billions in interest.
I just love this story about a renegade gardening movement in Brussels that reclaims parking spaces for gardens. The call them “parklets” and they are lovely.
A handy and exhaustive paper on the state of research for boxwood diseases, pests, and IPM strategies.
We knew that light pollution was bad for birds, monarchs, moths, and fireflies, but it now has been shown to effect plants. Researchers showed that light pollution in cities advanced bud break by 9 days on average and will get worse as more lights are added.
Archaeologists have found evidence of olive and fig tree domestication in the Jordan Valley, dating back more than 7,000 years. That makes this the earliest evidence of fruit cultivation in the world.
While most cities struggle to find green space for residents, Atlanta is busy tearing down an important urban forest to make way for a massive tactical training facility for police. Local people are 98% united against “Cop City” and environmentalists have worked against it, highlighting the importance of the forest and rivers, as well as the environmental damage that comes with lead bullets and flash bangs. But it hasn’t mattered, as the process is undemocratic, and now activists are occupying the forest, attempting to stop construction. If you’d like to help, please call Atlanta City Council Members.
Gardening is good for our mental health! I know, we knew, but now researchers have shown that gardening lowered stress, anxiety and depression in healthy women.
A fantastic interview with Eric Sanderson on the importance of respecting the ecology of cities. He writes, “Those ecosystems are going to restore themselves, whether we like it or not. Once your house starts to flood on every high tide, it is a salt marsh again… we can accelerate that process by choosing to take care of the people who live there, finding a better place for them to live, and then taking out the infrastructure.”
An excerpt from Jessica Hernandez’s book Fresh Banana Leaves discusses an Indigenous perspective on invasive plants. She writes that Indigenous people acknowledge weeds “as displaced relatives rather than invasive species, since at the end of the day, they are also someone's plant relatives.” It’s interesting, as someone with European ancestors, to understand that many invasives are my plant relatives.
What happens when the war in Ukraine creates a shortage of chemical fertilizers? People search for other sources of nitrogen, the best one of course being our very own pee. This is an absolutely wonderful article from Catrin Einhorn on “Peecyclers,” and the completely logical practice of using our pee as crop fertilizer.
We all know that honeybees are managed livestock and that wild bees are more pertinent to our work, but how ARE the honeybees doing these days? Here is an exhaustive report.
Landscape designer Carrie Preston of Studio Toop created a beautiful show garden for the Hampton park flower festival in the UK that pays tribute to those beautiful and resilient elements of the Ukrainian culture that cannot be destroyed by war.
This is a lovely, short video of Apache chefs, cooking and foraging. I was honored to be at the lecture at the start of the film and to taste the cooking of Chef Nephi Craig. I remember him talking about beans, and how they were the way back to lost knowledge if people pay close enough attention.
There is an important movement afoot to give vast swaths of land back to the indigenous peoples who were removed when their land was stolen. There are many ethical and ecological reasons for this so it’s fantastic news that more than 1,000 acres of land in NY state were returned to the Onondaga Nation last month.
Shocker: fungicides are terrible. They were found to harm bumble bees by altering important medicinal and digestive yeasts in the nectar that the bees need to stay healthy. Fungicides also limit the ability of mycorrhizae provide phosphorous to cropland plants by 43%. That’s free fertilizer, just wiped out.
Do you feel like the EPA is well positioned to protect us from toxic herbicides? The ninth circuit court of appeals doesn’t seem to think so, as they ruled the EPA failed to properly consider glyphosate’s effect on environmental and human health. Meanwhile, it was was found in 80% of US urine samples.
The EPA released their first findings on the effects of neonicotinoids on endangered species and found that neonics are likely causing harm to the vast majority of endangered animals: between 2/3rds and 3/4ths. Of course, they only did this because they were sued, lost, and forced to, which personally gives me great pause when people claim any new insecticides are safe.
Relatedly, here is a fantastic and comprehensive look at neonics’ effect on grassland birds and their ecosystems from Cornell. It really illustrates why neonics are a unique threat that should absolutely be banned.
But back to good news, cool new research shows that small, restored habitat in Botanical Gardens can preserve, not only the plants, but the pollinator dynamics they evolved with.
Dan Pearson and Huw Morgan went to Great Dixter to teach and we get a bunch of absolutely stunning photos as a result.
Mycorrhizae make up 50% of the living biomass of soils and the vast majority of plants can’t grow without them. Yet we still know so little about them and have no systems in place for protection. A new non-profit is trying to change that by mapping fungal networks all over the world. Their slogan is “protect the underground” and they have cool jumpsuits.
Every invasive plant is well loved elsewhere. And our natives can be aggressive invaders outside of their ecosystems. Three species of goldenrod are spreading through Europe and Asia (Solidago canadensis, altissima, and gigantia) and are so invasive that birds, ants, and butterflies are declining around their populations.
Ever since Thomas Nagle’s 1974 essay “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” popular science writers have been trying to share the world from the perspective of non-human creatures. Ed Yong has a new book on the topic that I have not yet read but am grateful for this fascinating excerpt in the Times. He introduces the concept of an “Umwelt,” a 1909 term to describe an organism’s sliver of reality. He writes, “A tick’s Umwelt is limited to the touch of hair, the odor that emanates from skin and the heat of warm blood. A human’s Umwelt is far wider but doesn’t include the electric fields that sharks and platypuses are privy to, the infrared radiation that rattlesnakes and vampire bats track or the ultraviolet light that most sighted animals can see. The Umwelt… tells us that the all-encompassing nature of our subjective experience is an illusion, and that we sense just a small fraction of what there is to sense.”
A thrilling story of modern urban falconry in the NYT: Jersey Shore beach gulls are no match for prairie falcons, who manage populations when they steal too much pizza.
And for those who made it to the end: we know about “forest bathing” but did you know we can also “desert bathe”? After a rain, "the fragrant volatile organic compounds from desert plants may contribute to improving sleep patterns, stabilizing emotional hormones, enhancing digestion, heightening mental clarity and reducing depression or anxiety…[they] also reduces exposure to damaging solar radiation in ways that protect the desert plants themselves, the wildlife that use them as food and shelter, and the humans who dwell among them." The plants’ oily compounds are “released into the atmosphere even before the rain actually falls and contribute to that incredible surge of anticipation that you feel right before the first raindrop of a thunderstorm. From there, they travel into our lungs and into our bloodstream within minutes."

Hi Plant People,