Inside The New York Botanical Garden
Posted in Science, Shop/Book Reviews on May 20 2009, by Plant Talk
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Douglas Daly, Ph.D., is Director of the Institute of Systematic Botany and B.A. Krukoff Curator of Amazonian Botany. He is the co-author, along with Beth Ellis, Leo Hickey, Kirk Johnson, John Mitchell, Peer Wilf, and Scott Wing, of the newly released Manual of Leaf Architecture, published by NYBG Press. In this blog entry, Doug describes the invaluable information the book provides.
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Often we can distinguish two unrelated plants just from their leaves, even if the leaves are similar in size and shape, but how do we pinpoint those differences and put them into words? Similarly, foresters in the tropics need to be able to distinguish valuable timber trees from closely related tree species that may be endangered or have poor quality wood, but what characteristics can they use to detect those species? Other scientists who study the plants of the distant past need to be able not only to separate leaf fossils but also to quantify how many of the same species are found at a given site; how can they do that consistently?
Until now, plant classification and identification have relied heavily on flowers and fruits, but these structures are not present most of the year. Moreover, fossil leaves are almost never found together with reproductive parts. Leaves display a wealth of characteristics that can be diagnostic at the level of genus or even species, but there wasn’t a logically ranked system that defined, described, and illustrated these characteristics. My co-authors and I wrote the Manual of Leaf Architecture precisely to provide an exhaustive, comprehensively illustrated reference for thoroughly describing the leaves of flowering plants, especially their vein patterns.
In our reasearch and writing we were able to draw fundamental conclusions about the evolution, ecology, diversity, and management of ecosystems and plant resources, based on identifications and characterizations that in turn are based on leaves. This reference puts all that work on a more secure footing.
Editor’s note: Manual of Leaf Architecture is receiving rave reviews. Lawren Sack of UCLA considers it a major contribution that will “revolutionize the study of leaves” and says it is “analogous to the first manual on human anatomy.” Sir Peter Crane of the University of Chicago calls it “indispensable” for researchers.
Posted in Uncategorized on May 19 2009, by Plant Talk
“Greening” Existing Buildings Works Toward Mayor’s Proposal
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Daniel Avery is Sustainability and Climate Change Program Manager at The New York Botanical Garden. |
On Earth Day last month, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Mayor Mike Bloomberg announced major new legislative proposals to increase energy efficiency in existing buildings. The measures, some of which will no doubt prove controversial (and, perhaps in some cases, difficult politically to get through), are a response to the reality of reducing emissions in a densely urban setting.
As perhaps you noticed the last time you strolled around your city block (or any city block), there are buildings everywhere, and collectively they contribute the vast majority—about 80 percent—of New York City’s greenhouse gases. In addition, of the buildings that will be standing in 2030, the date by which the Mayor’s PlaNYC 2030 envisions a 30 percent reduction in greenhouse gases from 2005 levels, 90 percent have already been built. This is why Rohit Aggarwala, Director of the Mayor’s Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability, said to The New York Times regarding the proposed legislation: “Existing buildings are in fact the nut that must be cracked if we are ever going to make a dent on the demand side in terms of energy.”
In terms of buildings, The New York Botanical Garden is much like the city: We have a lot of buildings of many different ages performing an astonishing number of different tasks. We represent, in short, a microcosm of the City’s challenge to reduce building-related emissions. And over the years we have been quietly going at this problem. Such efforts are not as visible or as easy to explain as new green buildings (if you find the list below exciting, you’re officially a policy nerd), but in many ways they are more challenging and more important.
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Posted in Gardening Tips on May 18 2009, by Sonia Uyterhoeven
How to Water Newly Planted Trees
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Sonia Uyterhoeven is Gardener for Public Education at The New York Botanical Garden. Join her each weekend for home gardening demonstrations on a variety of topics in the Home Gardening Center. |
Newly planted trees are thirsty for water. On the day of planting, give them a deep soaking; then come back the next day and soak them again. The ground around the root ball of the tree will take up most of the water from the first day, and the second watering ensures that the root ball gets soaked.
If you walk around The New York Botanical Garden, you will notice that around newly planted shrubs and trees is a small berm of soil (part of the backfill). What we have done, basically, is to build a saucer around the woody plant that will help retain water.
The saucer should be the size of the root ball. When water is added to this makeshift well, it penetrates into the root ball (and hence the roots) rather than seeping into the disturbed soil around the plant. The berm should be broken down after several months and certainly by the end of the growing season. Distribute the soil away from the tree so that you do not alter the soil level around the root ball
The easiest way for a homeowner to water a newly planted tree or shrub is to lay a hose at the base of the tree and run a slow trickle of water for several hours until the soil is thoroughly soaked. It is better to water your tree once a week with a deep soak than to water it frequently for a short time (which produces a shallow, weak root system).
For additional tips on watering newly planted trees…
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Posted in Programs and Events on May 15 2009, by Plant Talk
Plant Edible Bulbs, Weave Onion-Dyed Cloth, and More
Here’s a sight not often seen at the Howell Family Garden: Toby Adams, Manager, holding back tears.
Truth be told, I didn’t see it either. One morning I wandered into the Family Garden by following the tasty smell of soup. Alas, it was not lunchtime. I learned instead, that in preparation for Bulbs Unearthed, part of the Dig, Plant, Grow! program at the Howell Family Garden, Toby and staff the previous afternoon had peeled several hundred onions in an act that must have made several grown men cry. Then they boiled the skins into a Macbethian brew of yellow and green dyes. Into this concoction went strips of cloth. After a brewing period, the fabric was set to dry in the sun. The end result of all that labor? Beautiful honey-colored material ready to be woven into bracelets by our visitors.
Our craft successes with onions so far have been most popular with folks with braiding experience. “More often than not, it’s the little girl teaching the father to braid,” staffer Junior Schoulton reports. Visitors not so adept at braiding, however, are welcomed to help our gardeners plant scallions or to use colored pencils to capture on paper the last tulip blooms fading from the meadow.
If all that isn’t enough, from 2 to 5 p.m. on June 6 and 7 staff from the Wyckoff Farmhouse Museum in Brooklyn will share traditional Dutch crafts with our visitors, such as they did this past weekend. The reception was enthusiastic: snacking on freshly churned butter with oregano, attempting to roll wooden hoops across the lawn, and decorating ceramic tiles were just a few of the activities the Wyckoff staff provided. Shirley, who happily operated the butter churn with the help of several visitors, confirmed the general enthusiasm. “The kids are loving it. Mostly it’s the parents who say, ‘That’s all there is to it? I’m going to make my own butter!’” Additional activities the Wyckoff staff will offer in June are apple pressing and ink-making as well as lessons in using quill pens.
Although it’s a bummer to lose our tulip blossoms to the warming weather and heavy rain, I’ve noticed flowering onions’ purple tops puckering up by the pond. These gorgeous alliums allow the bulbs’ showy season to go out with a bang. My favorite bulb trick? Saving the giant alliums’ blooms to dry as Independence Day flower-fireworks!
Bulbs Unearthed will be featured in the Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden from 1:30 to 5:30 p.m. through June 7.
Check out all of Saturday’s programming
Check out all of Sunday’s programming
Posted in Gardens and Collections, People on May 14 2009, by Plant Talk
Carol Capobianco is Editorial Content Manager at The New York Botanical Garden.
On the surface, one would expect that the dozens of volunteers who answered the call to help plant 1,000 trees and 50 shrubs in the Botanical Garden’s Native Forest April 24 and 25 did so in observance of Arbor Day or Earth Week or Hands On New York weekend or just because it was an excuse to be outside on a warm, sunny spring day.
But dig deeper—in a figurative way, that is, as we were all instructed by our deft leader Forest Gardener Anthony Copioli to dig only as deep as each tree’s root system to keep the root flare above the soil—and you’ll find that those worthy causes for the most part didn’t factor in to the motivational equation. What inspired these folks, instead, was much earthier: They came because they love gardening, the outdoors, and the Botanical Garden, some from as far back as childhood. There is something about touching the soil that touches the soul. Simply, they needed to be out here.
Take Garden Member Marco Burmester, for instance. He grew up on a farm in northern Germany and has missed the woods and gardening since he moved to New York City four years ago. He took the day off from his banking job for the opportunity to plant a tree once again. “I used to do this in my childhood; I’ve planted hundreds of trees in my lifetime.”
Ellen Alger of Montvale, N.J., and Irene Ryan of Nanuet in Rockland County, rode their bikes to the Garden as kids growing up in the area. “We received so much from the Garden that it’s nice to give back and to put our mark on it,” said Ellen, who is a Garden Member.
The two became planting buddies for the day with Board Member Julie Sakellariadis, who lives in Manhattan and visits the Garden weekly to walk the grounds. “I look for any excuse to come up here, to be outdoors with no phones ringing. There’s nowhere in the world so wonderful as The New York Botanical Garden.”
The other volunteers would agree. “This is an oasis; it’s awesome that it exists in this urban area,” said Paula Lawrence, Vice President of The Starr Foundation, a Garden Leadership Donor. She joined five other co-workers—half the Foundation staff—to dig holes, cajole tangled pot-bound roots, and plant with a purpose some of the hundreds of trees, provided through the MillionTreesNYC program, that would help in the restoration of the Native Forest.
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Posted in Uncategorized on May 13 2009, by Plant Talk
Bronx Officials Open Children’s Nutrition and Urban Farming Programs
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Nick Leshi is Associate Director of Public Relations and Electronic Media. |
New Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. spoke last week at The New York Botanical Garden’s Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden to officially open the vegetable gardening season. He recognized the Botanical Garden’s role in educating kids and the public about the importance of nutrition and healthy eating in combating obesity and other health issues and how community gardens help generate “green-collar” jobs in the city. Vegetable gardening and healthy eating will be showcased in The Edible Garden, a summer-long celebration of growing great food, June 27–September 13, at the Botanical Garden.
One of Bronx Green-Up’s community gardens, the Garden of Happiness on Prospect Avenue between East 181st and 182nd Streets in the Bronx, was abuzz with activity for the start of the gardening season. Among those on hand were, from left to right, Judge Dianne T. Renwick, City Councilman Joel Rivera, Community Gardener Karen Washington, City Councilman Larry B. Seabrook, Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr., New York Botanical Garden President Gregory Long, Bronx school children, and NYBG’s Director of Bronx Green-Up & Community Horticulture Ursula Chance (far right in purple shirt).
Photos by Jason Green
Posted in People, Science on May 13 2009, by Plant Talk
Garden Researchers Try to Understand, Address Challenge
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Karl Lauby, Vice President for Communications, interviewed Christine Padoch, Ph.D., Matthew Calbraith Perry Curator of Economic Botany, who works with her team in Amazonia to combat agricultural fires that now regularly devastate both forests and farms in the region.
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What’s going on with fires in Amazonia?
Fire has been used in tropical agriculture for millennia. In the past, fires rarely escaped the fields where they were used to clear brush, control pests, and fertilize soils. Large fires escaping from burning fields and pastures have recently become common events, ravaging forests, farms, and settlements in much of Amazonia. Such destructive fires have become a major problem along the upper Ucayali River in the lowland Peruvian Amazon.
Why are today’s fires in the Amazon Basin different and so destructive?
Extensive clearing of humid forests for cultivation and pasture, especially along the eastern slope of the Andes, has increased the vulnerability of the region to escaped fires. A major drought in 2005 set in motion conflagrations that burned more than 300,000 hectares (about 741,000 acres) of forests in the neighboring Brazilian state of Acre, producing economic losses of more than $50 million in Acre alone. Although the 2005 drought was indeed an exceptional one, droughts of similar magnitude have occurred in the western Amazon in 1926, 1983, and 1998, with far lesser impacts on forests and people. An observer of the 2005 fires in Acre concluded they were “a disaster never previously experienced by modern societies in this part of Amazonia.”
What does your research involve?
The premise of the project is that fire results from an integration of social, ecological, and climatic changes that are occurring in the region. Controlling fire damage and anticipating future fire depend on understanding these changes and how they are linked. The project, funded by the Tinker Foundation, is exploring the increasing fire danger inherent in landscapes in transition, e.g., ones that combine small- and large-scale uses, traditional communities with plantations operated by urban-based companies. The work will produce insights that will have implications not only for much of Amazonia but also for developing regions around the tropics.
How is your research and the Botanical Garden’s work bringing about change?
Project results are helping policymakers, communities, and farmers avert even more fire catastrophes as global climate change affects the region. The project has developed activities specifically designed to inform policymakers, local scientists and technicians, students, and members of the area’s communities of the increased danger as well as of ways to use fire safely. Our methods include informal meetings, illustrated lectures, and training courses. We are working closely with the regional government in all our outreach programs.
Please help support the important botanical research, education, and programs that are integral to the mission of The New York Botanical Garden.
Posted in Learning Experiences, People on May 12 2009, by Plant Talk
I was an eight-year-old boy growing up in Forest Hills, Queens, when my parents bought a country house. The house was overrun by thickets of wisteria, poison ivy, and weeds, but I used to go out there and just hack away and try to reshape the landscape. I believe that’s where my love for working on the land originated.
When I got to college I studied the natural sciences and art. After graduating I became a magazine art director, working for Time, Sports Illustrated, and Business Week for 25 years. Eventually, I reached that age when you need to figure out what you really want to do when you grow up. I started a personal exploration and one day everything came together. I decided that landscape design was the perfect match for all of my skills, experience, and interests. I could capitalize on my design and drawing skills, my natural science education, and my love for landscaping.
I looked around for different landscape design programs and settled on the program offered by NYBG. It would be difficult to go through the program one course at a time for me since I was living in Connecticut, working in Manhattan, and had a full-time family life. So I gravitated toward the Summer Intensive program. I managed to talk my employer into letting me take all of my vacation time at once.
To learn more about Jay’s career-changing experience…
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Posted in Gardening Tips on May 11 2009, by Sonia Uyterhoeven
Lovely Lilacs for the Garden
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Sonia Uyterhoeven is Gardener for Public Education at The New York Botanical Garden. Join her each weekend for home gardening demonstrations on a variety of topics in the Home Gardening Center. |
Lilacs have been a staple of the home garden for hundreds of years. They flourished and were coveted by founding fathers such as Thomas Jefferson and George Washington. The popularity of lilacs comes as no surprise—they are easy to grow, wonderfully fragrant, and produce beautiful, blousy flowers from late April into June (depending on the cultivar).
The common lilac (Syringa vulgaris) is also known as the French hybrids from important hybridizing work that was undertaken in France in the 19th and 20th centuries. This lilac, indigenous to Eastern Europe, is the image we conjure up when we think of lilacs. It has elegant heart-shaped leaves and large, fragrant flowers, typically in white or purple. Another common lilac is the early flowering hyacinth lilac (Syringa x hyacinthiflora). This is a cross between the common lilac and an Asian species. It flowers up to 10 days earlier. It looks very similar to the common lilac and has fragrant single or double flowers.
Tree lilacs (Syringa reticulata) are wonderful disease- and pest-resistant plants. These large lilacs can easily grow up to 20 feet tall. They have creamy white flowers that appear in June and lovely ornamental bark.
Meyer or ‘Palibin’ lilacs (Syringa meyeri) and the Manchurian lilac (Syringa patula) are two dwarf varieties that make excellent garden additions to beds and borders and are often used as screens or hedges. Their height ranges from 4 to 8 feet, and they produce pale mauve flowers in late May to early June. The popular cultivar ‘Miss Kim’ (Syringa patula ‘Miss Kim’) is one of the few lilacs that have a wonderful fall color—a deep burgundy.
For tips about growing lilacs…
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Posted in Exhibitions, Programs and Events on May 8 2009, by Plant Talk
Family Concert, Plein Air Painting, Dutch History, and More
Gayle Schmidt is Manager of Public Education.
We can all appreciate the beauty of the Garden especially now in spring, but there is so much that goes on behind the scenes to make it what it is, especially the exhibitions. For months, the horticulturists at the propagation range have been chilling and forcing bulbs to make them ready for The Glory of Dutch Bulbs, another beautiful show. This weekend we share some of those tips as we celebrate bulbs and Dutch culture with additional tours and home gardening demonstrations as well as with special guest lectures and programs.
The inspiration for the exhibition is the recognition of the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson’s discovery of the region, and the weekend’s lectures bring to light the history of how the Bronx has been changed since Dutch settlement. Local historian Peter Derrick from the Bronx County Historical Society describes how the area developed from Dutch farms to the few parks and wild spaces that remain today. Pat Ernest, former educator at the Bartow-Pell Mansion Museum, speaks about the original residents of the Bronx, the Lenape, as well as Jonas Bronck, the first European to settle in the Bronx, in 1638.
Peter Rose, author and scholar, explores how Dutch recipes and customs changed in the New World. Through a lusciously illustrated slide presentation on the food and drink seen in the paintings of the 17th-century Dutch Masters, we discover the connections to the food we eat today. Samples of some Dutch treats will be available on a first-come, first-served basis after this lecture, which is sponsored by the New York Council for the Humanities, a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. These programs take place in the Ross Lecture Hall, where visitors can also view The Heirloom Tomato exhibition on display in the Ross Gallery.
In the meadow of the Ruth Rea Family Garden, Wyckoff Farmhouse Museum staff re-create a playful day in the life of early Dutch settlers. If you take the trails of the Native Forest to get there, you can imagine what the whole of New York City looked like before any development took place.
On Mother’s Day the Bronx Arts Ensemble presents a musical performance for families, The House That Ruthie Built: A Bronx Baseball Fairy Tale. The audience is invited to participate in the entertainment as they learn about musical instruments and are amused by the actors having fun on stage.
Each Sunday during of The Glory of Dutch Bulbs, instructors from the Continuing Education department will lead Art in the Open Air: Plein Air Landscape Painting at various locations on the Garden grounds. We invite visitors to take a moment to study the surroundings and capture its beauty on paper by their own hand. The instructors will be there to coach you along and show some of their talent.
Don’t miss the additional activities this weekend—you are sure to take away some new understandings!
Check out all of Saturday’s programming
Check out all of Sunday’s programming
