Tag Archives: Trees

News: Creating Wildlife Habitat in Windsor Terrace

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In the New York Daily News today:

In the densely populated strip of land between Prospect Park and Green-Wood Cemetery, [Jennifer] Hopkins and fellow gardeners are creating oases of green for butterflies and birds.

The goal of the Greenway Project is to link two of Brooklyn’s largest habitats – at least for airborne species.
– Oases of green for butterflies and birds, New York Daily News, June 12

For the birds, Hopkins plants berry bushes, has a cherry tree and keeps her birdbath full. One neighbor has followed in her footsteps and put up a humming bird feeder. Another has a bush where a family of cardinals is nesting. The nearby Immaculate Heart of Mary Catholic Church is also on board and is set to plant a garden this summer, she said.

The article never mentions the name of the neighborhood “between Prospect Park and Green-Wood Cemetery.” It’s Windsor Terrace.

I know of a “Greenway Project” in Brooklyn, but the one mentioned in the article seems to be a different effort. Jennifer, if you read this, please let us know more.

Whatever the name, it’s important to educate and engage private landowners in maintaining and developing wildlife habitat by preserving and planting trees and other non-lawn plants on their properties.

I’ve shown this map on this blog before. It shows the landcover classification for central Brooklyn.
Brooklyn City Council District 40: Classified Landcover

Windsor Terrace forms a corridor between two refuges: Greenwood Cemetery and Prospect Park. Victorian Flatbush forms a corridor extending south from Prospect Park, pointing toward the bays, beaches, and Atlantic Ocean. I recently saw an ovenbird in my backyard, “rare in the city” according to Hopkins as cited in the article.

Most of the tree canopy in Brooklyn is in private hands. It’s unprotected and vulnerable. If New York City is going to have a million more trees in the next ten years, we need to value and find ways to preserve and protect the ones we already have, including those on private property.

Resource: Cornell Urban Horticulture Institute

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A tip from a commenter on my post about the Liberty Elm Project led me to discover the Urban Horticulture Institute of the Department of Horticulture at Cornell University:

The Urban Horticulture Institute currently consists of two faculty, one technician and 10 graduate students.

Founded in 1980 with the explicit mission of improving the quality of urban life by enhancing the functions of plants within the urban ecosystem, the Institute program integrates plant stress physiology, horticultural science, plant ecology and soil science and applies them to three broad areas of inquiry. They are:

  • The selection, evaluation and propagation of superior plants with improved tolerance of biotic [eg: insects, pathogens] and abiotic [eg: heat, air pollution] stresses, and enhanced functional uses in the disturbed landscape.
  • Developing improved technologies for assessing and ameliorating site limitations to improve plant growth and development.
  • Developing improved transplant technologies to insure the successful establishment of plants in the urban environment.

In addition to training for landscape professionals, their outreach section has a lot of information for motivated non-professionals. In addition to DVDs, books and pre-printed materials, many of their publications for free online. These include:

The last selection describes the advantages of planting trees from bare-root stock, instead of container-brown or balled and burlapped (B&B). This is particularly interesting in light of a report in March that it costs over $1,000 to plant a tree in New York City:

Bare root trees are one-third to one-half less expensive than B&B trees. Because they are so much lighter and many more can fit on the bed of a truck, they are cheaper to ship. Planting a bare root tree costs virtually nothing when done by volunteers with shovels. The cost of planting a B&B tree, by contrast, is markedly higher because the sheer weight of the ball requires machinery and machinery operators to load the tree, unload it, and to get it in the ground.
– Creating the Urban Forest

Links

Urban Horticulture Institute , Department of Horticulture, Cornell University

The Liberty Elm Project

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Update 2007.05.29: Cornell University does not recommend Liberty Elm because:

‘Liberty’ is highly susceptibility to elm yellows and is not recommended due to variability of resistance to Dutch elm disease.
– American Elm Cultivars (PDF), Recommended Urban Trees, Cornell Urban Horticulture Institute

Their top choices for American Elm Cultivars are “Valley Forge” and “New Harmony”, both of which they rate “resistant” to Elm Yellows and Elm leaf beetle, in addition to resistance to DED.

At last night’s 2nd Annual Brooklyn Blogfest, one of the highlights for me was getting interviewed by Dope on the Slope. He had some great gardening questions for me, and I hope I did them justice.

One thing I got wrong, though, was in response to his question about the American Elm, Ulmus americana. He mentioned that Home Despot is selling American Elms resistant to Dutch Elm Disease (DED). I responded that, although there are hybrids which are resistant, they’re not fully American Elms.

I Was Wrong

The Liberty elm is not a hybrid. ERI’s [Elm Research Institute] American Liberty elm is actually a group of six genetically different cultivars. All six look like classic, old fashioned American elms. …
– About the American Liberty Elm

DED is caused by at least three fungi strains: Ophiostoma (Ceratocystis) ulmi, O. himal-ulmi, and O. novo-ulmi. At least two species of bark beetles – the native elm bark beetle, Hylurgopinus rufipes, and the European elm bark beetle, Scolytus multistriatus – serve as vectors for infection. American Elms, which used to be premier street trees across the country, were devastated by the disease since it reached U.S. shores on imported lumber in 1928. European Elms have been similarly affected.

The Liberty Elm, or American Liberty Elm, is the outcome of a decades-long research and breeding program to develop a strain of American Elm, developed only from American Elms, reliably resistant to DED. These are not inter-specific hybrids. They have been developed from survivors collected and propagated from across the country. The resulting plants are propagated vegetatively for distribution.

Genetic differences provide diversity. Having six cultivars in the series is insurance against all the elms being wiped out by any disease or problem, even one that might show up in the future. ERI mixes all six cultivars in its shipments.

During the research phase for all these new elms, they were challenged with injections of the Dutch Elm Disease (DED) fungus in controlled tests. But the American Liberty elm is now long past the experiment stages, and at this point it has been through the additional test of growing in public locations around the country for over 18 years, where it has been exposed naturally to DED fungus where it may occur in those environments.

There is no known American elm variety that can be called entirely immune to DED. The American Liberty elm is resistant to DED, and its resistance has a strong record. In the 18 years since the tree’s introduction, ERI has confirmed less than 100 cases of DED among the 250,000 elms it has sent out.

– About the American Liberty Elm

Cornell University notes other DED-resistant cultivars available, including ‘Princeton’, ‘Independence’, ‘Valley Forge’, ‘New Harmony’ and ‘Jefferson’. They also note all of these elms are susceptible to Elm Yellows and should not be used where that disease occurs.

Any of you gardeners out there have any knowledge about these trees? Do you know of any growing in your area?

The Other Avian Visitors

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On Saturday morning, while I was uploading the photos of the Common Yellowthroat in the apple tree, a flock of at least a dozen of these flew into the same tree.

Cedar Waxwings in Apple Tree

These are Cedar Waxwings, Bombycilla cedrorum. The flock flew in, swarming the tree. Again, I don’t know what they were after. I suspect they were after insects in the tree. Who knows how they knew they were there.

I noticed the crests, but couldn’t make out much else of them. I wasn’t able to id these birds until just now, when I took my first look at the photos. I didn’t say anything about them earlier because I didn’t want to promise something and not deliver! As before, most of the shots were of branches, foliage, and flowers. This was the best of the bunch. I was further frustrated by the fact that, when they nosily arrived, my compact flash card was busy copying the previous photos to my hard drive. I couldn’t get the card back into the camera to take more pictures until that was done, which cost me precious minutes. Time to get another card, perhaps.

This is a lifetime first for me. As far as I know, I’ve never seen this species before. And there they were, just 10 feet away from me standing in my tree fort in Brooklyn. When I was looking at the photo above, I showed it to my partner. I asked, “Do you have any idea what this is?” I didn’t know. I thought I didn’t. Then I said, “I have an idea. Maybe it’s a waxwing?”

Where does that come from? At what point in my life did I subconsciously absorb the keys for Cedar Waxwing to the degree that when I saw a bird I’d never seen before, that was the first thing that came to mind?!

Again, the photo above is a crop of the original, though not as tight a crop as that of the Yellowthroat, so they should be easier to find. Here’s the original, full-frame image. Can you spot the waxwings?

Cedar Waxwings in Apple Tree

Avian Visitor

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Look who just visited us in our neighbor’s apple tree less than an hour ago:

Common Yellowthroat in Apple Tree

This is a male Common Yellowthroat, Geothlypis trichas, one of the infamously confusing warblers.

This is also a great example of how digital photography and blogging has transformed my way of looking at things. I grabbed the camera instead of the binoculars. Not only did I want to see the bird clearly enough to identify it, I wanted to share what I saw. The immediacy of sharing is a bonus.

I had just woken up, started a pot of coffee on the stove, and walked out onto my tree fort to admire the apple tree. I caught a flash of yellow on the branches. I tried to find it again among the apple blossoms. I saw it was a warbler, but it was moving too quickly to observe it for long.

I went back inside and got my camera. With a zoom to 135mm (35mm equivalent about 150-160mm) and motor drive, I started trying to capture the quickly moving bird. It was a challenge. The auto-focus kept trying to focus on the flowers, rather than the bird. Sometimes, it couldn’t focus on anything at all. He was moving rapidly, flicking clusters of blossoms with his beak, then moving off. I don’t know if he was after insects in the flowers, or the flowers themselves.

The photo above makes it look like he was inches away. This is a crop of the best of 31 shots I took in a few minutes. Here’s the original, full-frame image. Can you find the warbler in this picture?

Common Yellowthroat in Apple Tree

The apple tree itself is magnificent this year. Covered in blossoms. Lots of flowers means we will have lots of apples later in the year. And lots of apples means lots of parrots. Something to look forward to for the fall.

Festival of the Trees #11: Trees in the Concrete

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2010-08-18: Corrected the name of the sculptor, Steve Tobin.
2007-05-01:

  • Added links to the story of Trinity Root.
  • Added links to Festival of the Trees home site and #12.
  • Added the story of the tree in the photo at the top of the post.

Welcome to Festival of the Trees #11 for May 2007: Trees in the Concrete.

Read the story of this urban tree at the bottom of this post.
Trinity Root

There were a lot of entries. I underestimated the work involved in collecting and assembling all the entries submitted into a semi-coherent post! Part of the problem is technical; I’ve still got about a dozen things I found which I need to review. (Note to self: NEVER use the “Email This” feature of Bloglines, since it strips out all reference information such as URLs.) But I think I’ve addressed all the non-host submissions. I’ll be coming back with an update tomorrow (now this) evening, so If I’ve missed anything, please leave a comment so I can follow up.

Trees in the Concrete (Urban Trees)
News and events

The Society of Municipal Arborists chose the bald cypress, Taxodium distichum, as their 2007 Urban Tree of the Year [PDF].

This past weekend was Sakura Matsui, the Cherry Blossom Festival, at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden (BBG). It’s their biggest event of the year, and tens of thousands of people turn out for it. At the beginning of April, there was a single cherry tree blooming. The 42 varieties of cherry trees planted at BBG extend the cherry blossom watching season as long as possible.

The New York City Parks Department pruned a historic grove of trees in Kissena Park in Queens. These trees are the remnants of the Parsons and Company nursery which had its origins in the 19th Century.

Judith Z. Miller of Park Slope, Brooklyn had an exhibition of her artwork formed from branches dropped from street trees at the Prospect Park Audubon Center.

Also in the past month, New York City provided estimates of the economic value of street trees, and announced plans to plant one million more trees in the next ten years.

Images

A comprehensive collection of images of trees in concrete from Claudia Lüthi in though trees grow so high, another tree blog I discovered by hosting this carnival.

Terrell at Alone on a Limb shared a photo from Digital Tribes of a street tree laid low in a prominent location.

Bevson of Murmuring Trees from New Jersey sent in a photo of a tree in Baku, with bonus cats lounging in its shade.

From here in Brooklyn, some photos of Magnolias as street trees in Clinton Hill Blog and an unidentified white-flowering street tree in Park Slope from Brit in Brooklyn.

Salix Tree shared images of street tree vandalism from her town in Ireland.

Words

On her blog, The Written Nerd, Book Nerd of Brooklyn shared a poem by Marge Piercy, The streets of Detroit were lined with elms, to open National Poetry Month.

Lori Witzel of Austin, Texas was inspired to write about communing with trees in some familiar man-made landscapes.

In Meanwhile, Back in the Holler, Cady May wrote about trying to understand the patterns of tree survival in an urban setting.

In her blog Tree Notes, Genevieve Netz wrote about the importance of diversity in urban forests, contrasting it with the then-conventional advice given by Charles Sprague Sargent over a century ago. Also check out the photo of a doomed tree. Idiots.

In The Brooklyn Paper, Nica Lalli writes about the frustrations of plastic bags in trees, and choices we can make to reduce this problem.

Words and Images

On his blog, Riverside Rambles, Larry Ayers posted photos and a poem by one of his readers, Joan Ryan, about a tree at a community center.

Dave Bonta writes about the interrelationship of suburban communities and their trees on his blog, Via Negativa.

Ficus is The tree that ate L.A., as Elizabeth Licata explains on Garden Rant.

Julie Ardery sent in a post from the Human Flower Project – a wonderful site – about the Girl Trees of Beijing. Some basic botany is in order.

Dave Bonta, one of the founders of Festival of the Trees, discovered the blog Eucalyptus, whose authors hail from Melbourne, Australia. A particularly interesting tree story they related the past month is that of the Lone Pine.

In her blog, Crafty Green Poet, Juliet Wilson wrote about the threat to an ancient woodland outside Dalkeith, a suburb of Edinburgh.

Other Trees

Images

On her blog, Walking Prescott, Granny J of Prescott, Arizona shared her photos of Dangles, the early spring inflorescences of trees: “The trees have a particular beauty just before they leaf out. Some pictures of blossoming trees I saw on walks around town.”

Jade Blackwater shared her visit to the Topiary Garden at Longwood.

Jade also sent in Rohan Rao‘s striking photos of some trees in India.

Don West sent in his journal illustration and notes about a tenacious tree from his blog Idle Minutes.

Christopher of Tropical Embellishments shared some photos of the ripening fruit of Thrinax excelsa, the Thatch Palm or Pea Palm. I’m going to miss his posts from Maui, and look forward to hearing about his new adventures.

A beautiful detail of a weeping larch by Sandy on her photoblog In a Garden.

Words

Rohan Rao writes about the need to save trees in India, raising issues which had not occurred to me, such as the increasing demand for trees for firewood in cremation rituals. Also submitted by Jade.

In his blog Invasive Notes, John Peter Thompson wrote about the challenges of balancing “plant a tree” messages – Arbor Day was this past Friday – with concerns about managing biodiversity.

Surreal Trees

Tim Abbott of Walking the Berkshires submitted the curious case of Nutrimens lepi, the gumdrop tree (now with bark!)

In Where Trees Have Faces, Fred of Fragments from Floyd writes about the surprise they’ve created for their granddaughter in their Enchanted Woods. (Okay, editorial comment here: I hate these things!)

Check out the sculpted trees of Broken Vulture at bingorage, submitted by Jade Blackwater.

Final Notes

Jade Blackwater will be hosting Festival of the Trees #12 for June 2007 on her blog, Arboreality. You can email submissions to her at jadeblackwater (at) brainripples (dot) com. Deadline for submissions for the June 2007 edition is May 29, 2007.

This was my first time hosting a carnival. I now have a better appreciation for the effort and care that goes with the job! I’m grateful that so many people were inspired by the theme, and the importance of urban trees. I hope that I’ve met your passion and done justice to it.

Trinity Root

The image at the top of this post is one of my photographs of Trinity Root, in the courtyard of Trinity Church in Downtown Manhattan, one block from Ground Zero, and three blocks from where I work. Here’s the story of this urban tree from the sign accompanying the sculpture for the 5th anniversary of the September 11 attacks last year, when I took this photo:

This sculpture is cast from the roots of the sycamore tree that was stricken by flying debris on September 11, 2001 in the churchyard behind St. Paul’s Chapel at Broadway and Fulton Street. [Steve] Tobin created the bronze sculpture from 300 individual castings of the tree’s roots to commemorate the events of September 11. The sculpture was dedicated here on this site on September 11, 2005. The original sycamore roots, painstakingly preserved by Tobin with the help of tree experts, now rest permanently in the St. Paul’s Chapel churchyard.

For me, there is no single better example of the power of urban trees and the passion they inspire in us. It’s a fitting close to this edition of Festival of the Trees.

News, NYC: 1M Trees in 10 Years

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A million trees in NYC’s forecast
BY EMI ENDO, Newsday Staff Writer
emi.endo@newsday.com

April 21, 2007

They cool down streets, remove tons of air pollution, boost property values and can even reduce asthma rates.

That’ why trees — a million of them — will be a part of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s sweeping plan to prepare the city for future population growth. The mayor Sunday is expected to call for reversing years of deforestation in the city.

“Every single place where it is possible to plant a street tree, by 2017, we will plant a street tree,” said Deputy Mayor Daniel Doctoroff, who has been overseeing the sustainability initiatives.

Currently, about 5.2 million trees dot the city, creating a tree canopy of about 24 percent of the city, said Joshua Laird, assistant commissioner for planning and natural resources for the parks department.

The city estimates that trees have been planted in about 74 percent of the places where trees could be planted.

In his upcoming executive budget, the mayor will call for spending an additional $37.5 million a year, on top of the current $11 million budgeted, for forestry programs, and an additional $8 million a year for maintenance and tree care.

City officials estimate that for each $1 spent on a tree, the value of the benefits from that tree are $5.

Under the plan, to begin in July, the city will reforest its parks and plant saplings in forests. On the streets, the city will plant 23,000 trees a year to add a total of 210,000 new trees, and require new construction projects to plant trees.

Via AM New York

New York Magazine: How Much Is a Street Tree Really Worth?

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The London Plane Tree in front of our house. It’s taller than the house, and provides shade in the summer and fall.
Sycamore Maple? Street Tree, Stratford Road

Over the last two summers, more than a thousand people volunteered to conduct a tree census of the five boroughs, the second in the city’s history (the other was in 1995) — and the first to put a price tag on each specimen.

… Each tree’s type, age, size, and location was fed into a computer program, developed by the U.S. Forest Service and the University of California, Davis, that quantified the plant’s annual value in saving energy costs (more shade means less air-conditioning), improving air quality, absorbing storm-water runoff, and prettifying the block. The study determined that street trees are collectively worth $122 million a year to the city, with an average of $50 to $300 apiece.

– How much is a street tree really worth?

Not surprisingly, the oldest and largest are worth the most. … The standard formula says a dwelling with a tree in front is worth .88 percent more than a home without one … The city’s math allowed for a tree’s effect on property values, but with a limitation: The survey priced all houses equally, at $537,300, the median cost of a single-family home in 2005.

The article goes on to profile the value to the city and the homeowner of four different street trees in four different settings. Based on its age, and the real estate prices in our neighborhood, I’m estimating our street tree is worth $300-400 a year to the city, and adds about $10,000 to our property value.

via New York Observer

Events and Resources: Hanami and more at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden

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Flower Detail, Prunus “Okame”
Cherry Blossoms

Gowanus Lounge noted an article on New Yorkology about the first cherry tree to bloom this Spring at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, more than a week before Hanami, the cherry-viewing season, officially begins this weekend. I saw that tree in bloom when I visited on Forsythia Day. I didn’t get to write up that visit yet; the least I can do is pump up this tree’s 15 minutes of fame. (It’s not as impressive as the cherry tree which bloomed in December, which I didn’t get to see.)

Before you visit the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, you should visit their Web site. Their Plants in Bloom page shows you what happens where and when: not just right now, but for every month of the year. Some areas are of particular interest only at certain times of the year, and knowing whether or not they’re worth a peek in advance of your trip can help you plan your visit. For example, Daffodil Hill was not quite peaking when I was there on Sunday, while the Bluebell Wood was showing only winter-damaged foliage. Of course, much of the garden has lots of things even when they’re not in bloom, but this still is a good indicator of what you might expect to see.

But this time of year, the hype is all about the Cherry Trees. Hanami runs from this Saturday, April 7, through Sunday, May 6. The big event is the annual Sakura Matsuri, the Cherry Blossom Festival. This year it’s the end of April, Saturday and Sunday, April 28 and 29. There’s always an impossible number of events highlighting many different aspects of traditional Japanese culture, including music, dance, theater, crafts, and more.

Leading up to and during Hanami, BBG maintains a special map on their Web site, just for the cherries.

BBG’s CherryWatch (Hanami) Blossom Status Map showing the single specimen of Prunus “Okame” in bloom at the time of my visit.
Blossom Status Map, Brooklyn Botanic Garden

Each cherry tree on the map is linked to a popup summary of the plant, as shown here, which links to a detail page describing the specific variety. Here’s what BBG has to say about ‘Okame’:

This hybrid of the Formosan and Fuji cherries was introduced to Europe in 1947 from Japan by Captain Collingwood Ingram. Its deep carmine-rose buds open to lighter tinted flowers before leaves appear. This small- to medium-sized tree is excellent for small gardens and is also showy in fall, with orange-red leaves. This variety is recommended by the Garden Club of America’s book, Plants That Merit Attention.
– Prunus ‘Okame’

And here it is: the single flowering cherry tree.

Lone Flowering Cherry and my Doppelganger
Lone Flowering Cherry and my Doppelganger

The other photographer in the photo seemed to be everywhere I was on Sunday, so I had to shoot around him a lot. For example, he was standing next to me (or I next to him) when I took this upward-looking shot against the overcast sky:

Cherry Blossoms

Finally, here’s a different shot of the same cluster of flowers at the top of this post. I like the background of the out-of-focus branches in this one; it works like an oversized mat in a picture frame. I think I’m going to process this one a bit and try to lighten it up without losing the mood.

Cherry Blossoms

Links

Flowering Cherries at BBG

Festival of the Trees #10 and Call for Submissions for FotT #11: Trees in the Concrete

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[Updated 2007.04.05: Corrected submission deadline.]

Still-Life with Hydrant and Tree
Hydrant and Tree

Festival of the Trees #10 is up on Roger Butterfield‘s blog, Words and Pictures. Roger is one of my favorite nature photographers on the Web. He’s in Sheffield in South Yorkshire, England, UK and shares his love and intimate knowledge of his favorite places there.

And I will be hosting Festival of the Trees #11 here at Flatbush Gardener! The photo above symbolizes the theme for this edition:

We are interested in trees in the concrete rather than in the abstract, so while stories about a particular forest would be welcome, newsy pieces about forest issues probably wouldn’t be.
– FotT Submission Guidelines

Yes, I am also interested in trees in the concrete, like the one above. Urban trees and forestry. Street trees, park trees, weed trees. So, for the next Festival of the Trees, I’m especially looking for submissions on this theme. This is not a restrictive theme, so anything which fits the FotT submission guidelines is welcome. If you have a doubt, send it. You can submit entries via the Festival of the Trees Submission Form on BlogCarnival. You can also send an email to festival (dot) trees (at) gmail (dot) com with “Festival of the Trees” in the subject.

The publication date will be May 1st, 2007. The deadline for submissions is April 29. It’s my first time hosting a Blog Carnival, so be gentle.

Important links:

PS: The tree above lives – nay, survives – on Westminster Road, around the corner from my home. I don’t know what kind of tree it is, yet.