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Showing posts from February, 2012

Preserving the Great Outside in NYC

New York City's open spaces and landscapes are the focus of the Historic Districts Council's 18th Annual Preservation Conference  titled "The Great Outside: Preserving Public and Private Open Spaces.  The conference will be held this weekend, March 2 - 4, 2012, and the slate of speakers is impressive: Charles A. Birnbaum, FASLA, FARR, and founder of The Cultural Landscape Foundation;  Thomas J. Campanella, associate professor of urban planning and design at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, will address Moses-era parks;  Alexandra Wolfe, preservationist at the Society for the Preservation of Long Island;  Thomas Mellins, curator and architectural historian of mid-century public housing landscapes; and Evan Mason, independent scholar of New York City rear yards. As an aside, Campanella is the author of one of our favorite books,  Republic of Shade: New England and the American Elm  (2003).  Also Charles Birnbaum has written about Hideo Sasaki and the S

Tag, you are an ALB-free, Fraxinus pennsylvanica

The "first official U.S. identification" of ALB or Asian long-horned beetle ( Anoplophora glabripennis ) was in Brooklyn in August of 1996 but infestations have been found in Queens, Manhattan, and Staten Island  and elsewhere. The beetle is a hardwood pest native to China.  Its preferred host tree species are maple, horsechestnut, birch, elm, willow, poplar, sycamore/London planetree, hackberry, and mountain-ash.  The female beetle will also lay her eggs in green ash trees. Last fall we observed Davey Tree crews climbing London planetrees, Norway and red maples, and green ash in our neighborhood and were told that NYC Parks had contracted them to assess public trees for infestation.  Since then I have noticed yellow dots at the base of many trees such as the one at the base of the trunk of the green ash ( Fraxinus pennsylvanica ) pictured above on Charles Street near Bleecker. The ash has another tag: a botanical label indicating its common and Latin names.  The

All is not peachy for Quercus phellos

The grove of oaks on Bleecker Street between LaGuardia Place and Mercer Street have always fascinated us.  They are growing in a lawn beloved by playing children, relaxing mothers, and squirrels and pigeons.  The ledge of the south side of the grove is well-used, too, by couples, sunbathers, and climbing children.  Most of the oaks in the grove are red oaks ( Quercus rubra ) but some are willow oaks.  In fact, there are six willow oaks ( Q. phellos ).  The species is also known as peach oak .  Two of the willow oaks are in poor condition: decaying tissue and mushrooms are visible.   Frequent mushroom associations are Pluteus mammillatus and Nigroporus vinosus . I cannot identify the mushroom in the photos below. Can you? The willow oak is an S1 listed species under the New York Natural Heritage Program (NYNHP)  which means it is "endangered/critically imperiled in New York because of extreme rarity (typically 5 or fewer populations or very few remaining individua

Paradise Lust by Brook Wilensky-Lanford

Paradise Lust cover via brookwilensky-lanford.com ( source )  In Paradise Lust Brook Wilensky-Lanford chronicles 16 searches for the Garden of Eden.  The quest for the Garden is international in scope from Venezuela to Syria and Zambia to the North Pole.  I wanted to read the book for two reasons.  First, the author is an alum of my alma mater and second, the book title and jacket cover illustrations are intriguing.  Furthermore, I borrowed the book from the library for leisure reading but so enjoyed the content and writing style that I wanted to share a review with our readers. While reading the book I discovered that it is about trees!  The Tree of Knowledge is a central figure in the biblical tale of the Garden of Eden and is usually assumed to be an apple tree.  However, "apple" is an old word for fruit tree.  Wilensky-Lanford adds arboreal specificity to the tales of the Tree: a fig in Babylon, a sequoia relative in the North Pole, pitch pine in Peebles, Ohio,