The New York Botanical Garden contains not just an amazing array of flora, it is also home to an amazing diversity of fauna.  There are hawks and owls, Jose the beaver, squirrels of many colors, bunnies, tiny mice, various migrating birds, and I hear tell of a duet of turkeys (though I haven’t yet seen them for myself). But it is one of the Gardens smallest animals that was our attention a few weeks ago: salamanders.

The Garden’s native Forest is home to two distinct populations of these small amphibians: Plethodon cinereus, the terrestrial Redback Salamander and Eurycea bislineata, the aquatic Northern Two-Lined Salamander.

Learn more about what salamander can teach us about the environment below.

Jane Dorfman was Reference Librarian/Exhibitions Coordinator in the LuEsther T. Mertz Library.

In recognition of the newly renovated and rededicated Lillian and Amy Goldman Stone Mill, the LuEsther T. Mertz Library has installed a display in the Rare Book and Folio Room window that details the evolution of the building.

The display includes historic images of the dam and the two mills built by the Lorillards, the family who purchased the site in 1792 on the property that would become The New York Botanical Garden. The family built a major tobacco manufacturing company, one that rivaled those in Virginia. The top image pictured is circa 1936 and the other is from 1967.

Originally built in 1840, the current structure was the third mill on the site. The mill used the Bronx River to power the waterwheels that produced tobacco and snuff. The mill was abandoned in 1870 when the company moved to New Jersey and was later purchased by the City of New York for parkland. It wasn’t until 1937 that the mill was officially transferred to the Garden.

The display will run through January and is available for viewing during Library hours: Tuesday through Thursday, 12–6 p.m., and Friday and Saturday, 12–5 p.m.

Click here to view a video of the opening of the Stone Mill in September.

How do you move a tree from point A to point B? Very carefully (and with a really big crane).

The root ball tied up (Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen).

The Katsura tree goes up (Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen).

Look who popped out of the root ball! (Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen)