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Showing posts from July, 2014

Wild About: Bees

Wild About is a celebration of the flora and fauna commonly found in our cities. Instead of fact sheets, this space will showcase books, art, music, societies, and whimsical objects about urban-adaptable plants and animals. If you would like to see your favorite urban-oriented plant or animal featured, please email us at info at localecology dot org. Image: Stenotritus pubescens by Sam Droege, USGS Bee Lab (flick/ source )* Two things inspired this edition of Wild About. The first is Laline Paull's excellent novel titled The Bees . The second is a Your Wild Life blog post about urban native bee research at North Carolina State. If you need to expand your summer reading list, I strongly recommend The Bees .  Emma Straub reviewed the book for the New York Times . I was browsing issues of Edible East Bay for photographs of iced tea (!) and came across two bee-related essays, one about native bee habitat restoration and the other about backyard bee keeping .  Edible Austi

Three proposals for the NY-NJ Waterfront from Matthew Baird Architects

Image: Repurposed oil tankers to generate algal biodiesel, Matthew Baird Architects via MoMA ( source ) In 2009, five multidisciplinary teams of landscape architects, architects, ecologists, artists, and other specialists were selected by the Museum of Modern Art to participate in its Rising Currents exhibit which debuted in 2010. Baird Architects was among the five teams and designed solutions to rising sea levels in Zone 2, the Bayonne and Kill Van Kull shipping route area in New Jersey. I learned of the Baird master plan for Zone 2 from a profile in the Spring 2014 Alumni Horae published by St. Paul's School. [N.B. I am not an alumna of the school.]  The team's proposals are summarized below The proposals of the Matthew Baird Architects team relied on the waste-stream and existing infrastructure to mitigate flooding associated with sea level rise and storm surge.  One proposal was to use the approximately 93,000 tones of water glass to create artificial reefs.  

Catch and release crabbing

Image: Crabbing, Manchester Harbor, Massachusetts

Reading: The Bees by Laline Paull

Image: Laline Paull's The Bees cover courtesy of Harper Collins ( source ) About The Bees via Laline Paull's website About The Bees via Harper Collins

Testing the waters at Lost Lake, Whistler

Image: Lost Lake, Whistler, BC

24 tree species in the Tree Museum

The Tree Museum is not a building.  It is a  narrated walk of 100 trees of 24 species along the Grand Concourse between 138th Street and the Moshulu Parkway in the Bronx.  The public art project was designed by visual artist Katie Holten in 2009.  The audio guide has been discontinued but you can still walk the project and gaze at the trees.   Download the map . There are "more than 60 species of trees currently growing along the Grand Concourse.  This is more than 70 percent of the species we plant citywide, making the Concourse not only grand, but also diverse," said Jonathan Pywell, Bronx Senor Forester, NYC Dept. of Parks & Recreation to Katie Holten.  The 24 species featured in the Tree Museum are: Ailanthus Ailanthus altissima Amur corktree Phellodendron amurense Green ash Fraxinus pennsylvanica Cottonwood Populus Crabapple Malus Kwanzan cherry Prunus serrulata 'Kwanzan' American elm Ulmus americana Chinese elm Ulmus parvifol