What is it about the sunlight in September that makes everything look so magical?

Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen

Ed. note: Sandy Wolkenberg is a Citizen Scientist who has been working in the Thain Family Forest for three and a half years. Over the course of a week on Plant Talk, Sandy will share a five-part series of posts on The New York Botanical Garden’s Citizen Scientist Tree Phenology Program. If Sandy’s experiences motivate you to want to know more about becoming a Citizen Scientist, check out the Garden’s Volunteer Program page.

The tree is more than first a seed, then a stem, then a living trunk, and then dead timber.
The tree is a slow, enduring force straining to win the sky.

~ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Wisdom of the Sands, (translated from French by Stuart Gilbe.)

Following a major wind storm in the spring of 2010, the volunteers that make up the Citizen Scientist Tree Phenology program walked the trails of the Thain Family Forest scrutinizing each tree. We were mystified by the fact that Tuliptree #93, a giant tulip poplar, appeared to have vanished. We walked back and forth searching for the tree, and then searched again. Where could it be? We noticed a huge root ball attached to a large upended tree that had fallen back into the Forest. We speculated that this fallen giant must be Tuliptree #93. Our suspicion was confirmed during a walk with Jessica Arcate Schuler, Manager of the Thain Family Forest, when she found tag #93 on the reclining giant.  Alas, our first–but not our last–loss.

The circle of life comes full-circle in the Forest.

Ed. note: Sandy Wolkenberg is a Citizen Scientist who has been working in the Thain Family Forest for three and a half years. Over the course of a week on Plant Talk, Sandy will share a five-part series of posts on The New York Botanical Garden’s Citizen Scientist Tree Phenology Program. If Sandy’s experiences motivate you to want to know more about becoming a Citizen Scientist, check out the Garden’s Volunteer Program page.

In the fall of 2008, at the beginning of the Citizen Science Tree Phenology program, the Volunteer Office encouraged those of us participating to find partners to work with. Because of my variable schedule at the Garden, I ended up walking the Spicebush Trail in the Thain Family Forest by myself. These walks often occurred in the early morning when intense sun glare or mist made identification of phenological phases difficult. In retrospect, although I treasured those quiet phenology walks, I had so little history with the program and so very many questions about what I was seeing, or hoped I was seeing, or imagined that I was seeing, that the prospect of walking with other volunteers was compelling. So it was a fortunate time when, in the spring of 2008, phenologists received the following email from Volunteer Services:

The Citizen Scientists band together below.

Ed. note: Sandy Wolkenberg is a Citizen Scientist who has been working in the Thain Family Forest for three and a half years. Over the course of a week on Plant Talk, Sandy will share a five-part series of posts on The New York Botanical Garden’s Citizen Scientist Tree Phenology Program. If Sandy’s experiences motivate you to want to know more about becoming a Citizen Scientist, check out the Garden’s Volunteer Program page.

Now, imagine that it is early to mid-March, the beginning of the spring season. Citizen Scientists excitedly descend upon the Thain Family Forest! We scan the designated trees looking for “emerging leaves.” Protocols describe ”emerging leaves” as follows: ”In at least 3 locations on the plant, an emerging leaf is visible. A leaf is considered emerging once the green tip is visible at the end of the leaf bud, but before it has fully unfolded to expose the leaf stalk (petiole) or leaf base.”

Aching necks and high fives! Learn more about the joys of phenology below.

Ed. note: Sandy Wolkenberg is a Citizen Scientist who has been working in the Thain Family Forest for three and a half years. Over the course of a week on Plant Talk, Sandy will share a five-part series of posts on The New York Botanical Garden’s Citizen Scientist Tree Phenology Program. If Sandy’s experiences motivate you to want to know more about becoming a Citizen Scientist, check out the Garden’s Volunteer Program page.

As volunteer phenologists, we are tasked with observing and entering data on ten different trees in the Thain Family Forest, usually two or three trees on each of the three Forest trails: The Spicebush, Ridge, and Bridge Trails. We monitor these trees weekly for three seasons, winter being the exception. It was all very new and a little intimidating. Sometimes even finding the trees can be daunting after spring leaves reach full size and each tree’s marker becomes obscured. Each tree in the Citizen Scientist Tree Phenology program is marked with a tag about 6 feet from the ground–these tags correspond to the tree’s numbers on the data entry sheets.

So here, come and meet tree #95, Acer rubrum, the Red Maple:

Garden arborists cut down a tree acutely damaged by Irene.

Hurricane Irene came to New York City over the weekend. She blew through the Garden, and thankfully left very little trace of her visit behind; just a handful of the Garden’s thousands of trees were damaged, and of those, only two were judged to be a danger to Garden visitors and beyond salvaging.

This morning we were able to do a survey of the farmers who bring their produce and baked goods to the Garden’s weekly Greenmarket, and were relieved to hear from them that they also weathered the storm.

Given what could have happened, we’re very happy to be able to issue this report, and our thoughts are with those suffering from the catastrophic flooding upstate and throughout New England.

The seed of the London plane tree is anything but plain.

Platanus x acerifolia ‘Pyramidalis’ (photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen)

In the heat of the summer (and this one has especially been hot!), there are some beautiful blossoms to behold. From daylilies, hibiscus, waterlilies and of course roses, summer gardens everywhere are swelling with colorful buds. But the same just can’t be said for most woody plants.

That’s what makes the subject of this week’s video plant profile so special. In the summer heat, most woody plants have no showy flowers, but the genus Aesculus, more commonly known as buckeye, “buck”s that trend.

Check out the video below hosted by Plant Records Manager Jon Peter as he covers a few of the many types of Aesculus you can see at the Garden, and who knows, maybe in your own backyard?

Previous Video Plant Profiles:

The Cottonwood Tree

Rhodedendron

Magnolia

Galanthus

Sadly, you can’t camp under our conifers, but they still provide a delightful respite on a sunny day.

Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen

Trees can act like punctuation marks in your garden. Proof:

Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen