Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from June, 2008

Tree-named streets and a brook in Fairmount, Hackensack, New Jersey

Pin oak, Oak Street Hackensack is named for the Achkinheshcky tribe; Achkinheshcky was simplified to Hackensack. The tribe settled at the mouth of the Hackensack River. The city is the seat of Bergen County; the county was once covered with farms, many of which, along with orchards, were located along the river (see History of Hacksensack ). The river runs east of the Fairmount neighborhood which has several tree-named streets: Elm Avenue, Poplar Avenue, Pine Street, Cedar Avenue, Catalpa Avenue, Willow Avenue, and Oak Street. A search of the online history book of Hackensack revealed the names of several creeks and brooks. I was told that many of these smaller bodies of water have been buried. Coles Brooks (pictured above), a tributary of the river, runs north of Coles Avenue remains in its natural state. Perhaps the tree-named streets in Fairmount are an homage to a lost, more extensive riparian landscape. Imported Comments Comment from : Albert Dib [Visitor] &quo

Dutch farmhouse, creek, and diverse sidewalk canopy in a Clifton, NJ neighborhood

An after-breakfast walk took us past a nineteenth-century Dutch farmhouse on Valley Road, a creek on Robin Hood Road, and a block of McCosh Road planted with seven species of (street) trees. In the aerial above, the farmhouse is outlined in yellow, the creek in blue, and the block of trees in green. The creek - whose name I have been unable to find - is located in Watershed Management Area 4 of the Passaic River watershed in New Jersey. The creek runs perpendicular to Robin Hood Road in the first block east of Valley Road. The first indications that there was water were a thick line of trees (riparian zone) and a bridge railing along the sidewalk, pictured above. We discovered the farmhouse between a shaded block of McCosh and the creek. The nineteenth-century house and garden are a museum - Hamilton House Museum - set amongst single-family houses, Montclair State University, and municipal playing fields. The house was moved to its present location in 1973; its current

Photo du jour: Jane Jacobs's house

69 Albany Street, The Annex, Toronto A full-length post about Jane and her neighborhood will follow in July .

Tree Walk: Tilia and Aesculus in bloom

June 21 is the summer solstice and the official start of summer but the presence of linden flowers is a good sign that summer is already here. The flowers bloom “for about two weeks, when spring turns to summer,” according to Plotnick in The Urban Tree Book. The linden (genus Tilia ) pictured above is not a littleleaf ( T. cordata ) or a silver linden ( T. tomentosa ), common lindens on the streets of Boston where I worked as an urban forester. I think it is a bigleaf linden or T. platyphyllos . The leaves of the lindens tend to be heart shaped with imperfect – lopsided – bases. The leaves end in long points, a perfect design for directing water to the root zone. The lindens also grow a second type of leaf known as a bract, a “more or less modified leaf situated near a flower or inflorescence” (H.D. Harrington in How to Identify Plants). The bracts frame the lindens’ flowers (pictured above). Both the flowers and leaves of the linden offer something sweet. The sap produced i

State-wide drought, regional water rationing, and local wasteful irrigation

The above photograph was taken on June 11, at approximately 1 p.m., on the UC campus. The previous day, the fountain at Bancroft and Berkeley, several feet away from the lawn in the photo (see steps in the background), was overflowing. The overflow might have been related to the construction project at the law school to the east. I do not think the June 11 lawn watering was the result of a mechanical malfunction. At 3 p.m. on the same day, I noticed that the lawn in front of Hearst Gym on Bancroft had been watered - the grass was covered with water drops, glistened in the sun, and the sidewalk was wet. East Bay Municipal Utility District (or EBMUD) is enforcing a mandatory water rationing rule. EBMUD has set water use reduction goals for various users; the required water use reduction for institutions is 9% . California governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, declared a statewide drought last week, on June 5. The governor "called for a 20 percent reduction in water use statewid

News: recent plant articles

Worries Mount as Farmers Push for Big Harvest Last winter, as the full scope of the global food crisis became clear, commodity prices doubled or tripled, provoking grumbling in America, riots in two dozen countries and the specter of greatly increased malnutrition. State-grown Tomatoes OK, but Warning Widens ...leery shoppers seem to be redirecting some of their tomato shopping away from supermarkets and toward farmers' markets, where most produce is grown locally in small batches. Growers nationwide urged health officials to speed up their investigation into the origins of the salmonella, before massive quantities of tomatoes that are awaiting sale end up rotting. Is Bamboo Flooring Actually Good for the Environment? Don't automatically assume that bamboo is the environmental winner, especially if there's a locally sourced, FSC-certified hardwood option. If you are tempted by bamboo, don't settle for the salesman's patter about his product's wonders—g

Go with the flow: Touring Cordonices Creek in Berkeley

Tour participants creekside, University Village, Albany The Cordonices Creek bike tour co-sponsored by Sustainable Pacific Rim Cities and Cycles of Change was held this Saturday with fourteen participants. Grey of Cycles of Change led the tour with help from me. We met at Berkeley BART at 10 a.m. and rode uphill to Cordonices Park where we parked our bikes and walked to the waterfall. After a brief guided meditation at the fall, we biked to several more sections of the creek at the Beth El Synagogue, at Live Oak Park, at Albina Street near St. Mary's College High School, at two places in University Village in Albany (the first of which was a restoration by EcoCity Builders), and finally, where the creek meets the bay at the Albany Mudflats Ecological Preserve. The preserve was the official end of the tour but several of us continued to Albany Bulb. The next bike tour will be held on July 5 and will tour gardens, parks, and water features in Oakland and Berkeley. The full

Photo du jour: Contaminated water at Strawberry Creek Park

Taken on June 4, 2008

Nature-made: California Academy of Sciences green roof

Nature making profiles is the signature project of local ecology. We have written three profiles , are working on a fourth, and are traveling to Toronto to see more. There are several styles of nature making. The sites we have profiled thus far (and the ones we are primarily interested in) were designed by neighborhood residents. These nature made sites are "introduced patches" (see Forman and Gordon, 1986) of intended ecological succession versus purely ecological infrastructure patches (like the California Academy of Sciences green roof) or traditional restorations of remnant "spontaneous nature" (Mozingo, 2007). The roof is in the background of the photograph - note the rolling "hills." I saw the California Academy of Sciences green roof from the de Young Museum tower and from ground level. The roof's outline is impressive but the design details became obvious only after reviewing the Good magazine article about the roof. The roof is engin