local ecologist (localecology.org blog)

9 gifts for local ecologists

2009-12-15T06:00:00.004-05:00

Our first, we think, holiday gift list. The list is features three books, a CD, a jersey, a birdhouse, a hand pruner, a free map, and items from the Therapeutic Landscapes Network store. Why nine suggestions? Because it's 2009.

3feetplease bicycle jersey (via WalkBikeCT via Design New Haven)
The carboard, water-repellent foldable birdhouse by Mxyplyzyk (via the Dec. 10th Home section of the New York Times)

Source: The Felco Store

Trained citizen pruner? We really like the original Felco 2 pruner (we have at least two).

Courtesy of Ellen Zachos, Acme Plant Stuff and Garden Bytes from the Big Apple

The "Green Up Time" CD by Ellen Zachos is available through Acme Plant Stuff
Washington Square Park (NYC) free Sustainable Lunch Map, developed by Eat Well Guide and courtesy of the NYC Food & Climate Summit

Courtesy of Naomi Sachs, Therapeutic Landscapes Network

Therapeutic Landscapes Network mug, tote, clothing, etc. at the TLN Store
Living Modern: A Biography of Greenwood Common by Waverly B. Lowell

Architect William Wurster envisioned Greenwood Common as a development that combined an idealistic sense of community with a modernist aesthetic and an awareness of regional traditions. Utilizing the Berekeley Design Archives this book details the eight distinct homes designed between 1952 and 1957, by seven significant California architects, that harmonize effortlessly with each other and with their location. The Common's landscape, along with four gardens designed by Lawrence Halprin, captured what had become the mid-century ideal of indoor-outdoor living.

Source: Random House

Flora Mirabilis: An Illustrated Time Line of Botanical Exploration, Discovery & Delight by Catherine Herbert Howell, a National Geographic Society book
A sumptuous showcase of superb illustrations paired with fascinating stories of botanical exploration and trade through the ages, this book will be an evergreen delight. A collaboration between National Geographic and the world-renowned Missouri Botanical Garden, this book blossoms with legend and lore as it culls the most engrossing mysteries and adventures of plant exploration, science, and discovery and garlands them with astonishingly beautiful illustrations. The pages are abloom with the rich details and engaging allure of beloved flowers, stunning gardens, ancient trees, medicinal herbs, and valuable plants of all varieties from around the world. Unique "plant profiles" chronicle the especially remarkable roles each plant has played in matters of economics, politics, and taste.
Public Produce: Filling the Sidewalks with Fruit Trees by Darrin Nordahl (the book is available at Amazon.com or you can try your local bookshop)

Call for a tree story: East Village tree basin

2009-12-12T06:00:00.000-05:00

We photographed this East Village tree basin a few months ago and have not figured out its story. Can you provide us with one? Inspiration: Looks like a new sidewalk was installed.

Tree Walk: Unter den Linden

2009-12-09T06:00:00.003-05:00

We are pleased to bring a guest post about Berlin's famous lindens from an anonymous contributor.

Original linden allee, Berlin, 1691, Source: Wikipedia

Source: localecology.org

I was thinking of you because of the beautiful street Unter den Linden or Under the linden trees. I am sure you must have studied it but really must be the perfect example of a street tree. Each tree is numbered. The little tags are white and nailed into the tree. Each tree in the entire city is in fact numbered, creating a nice sense of order-very necessary in Deutschland. All districts of the city have their own trees and budget for maintaining them. The guide was saying that if a man got drunk he could tell his wife to pick him up under tree number 47. And the other day the guide overheard police officers saying an accident had happened at tree number 7. The linden trees are not growing too well and the city wanted to replace them so they could have ones that would grow better. But the Berliners are 'quite sentitive' and cannot let go of the originals.

About the Ginkgo biloba

2009-12-07T06:00:00.000-05:00

A friend's dad is on sabbatical in Manhattan. He's an art professor at a liberal arts college in Ohio. The Ginkgo is one of his favorite trees; I noticed several ginkgo-themed drawings tacked unto to the wall in his office. At a recent dinner, he told me that he had noticed that the Ginkgo is a common street tree in the city. He wanted to know why this was the case. Also, he wanted to know about the tree's reproductive strategy; he had heard that there are separate male and female trees. Here's what I told him.

Ginkgo, Berkeley-Oakland border

In my estimation, the most common street trees in NYC - in no particular order - are London planetree, Ginkgo, honeylocust, maple (red or Norway), and oak (red or pin). I missed one; the Callery pear! Learn more about the city's street tree population in the Parks Department's 2005-2006 Street Tree Census.

The Ginkgo is a great street tree because it is hardy; it tolerates well the various limitations of the urban environment. Also, it is a long-lived, albeit slow-growing, species. Arthur Plotnik writes,

By the 1900s, ginkgoes had shown urban planters their ability to survive pests, drought, storms, ice, city soils, and some pollution. Architect Frank Lloyd Wright's favorite tree, it made its way into city landscapes across North American, as happy in southeastern Canada as in New Orleans.

Ginkgo male catkins

The fruit of the female ginkgo has a bad reputation. When bruised, the smell is malodorous. The Ginkgo is dioecious; male catkins and female flowers are on separate trees. Monoecious species have both male and female organs on the same plant. Although the fruit's smell leaves something to be desired, the leaves and nut are highly desired. The former for medicinal purposes and the latter for culinary purposes. A web search revealed that the Ginkgo biloba extract or GBE is taken from the leaves. The nuts were featured in an Gourmet.com article titled Gathering ginkgo nuts in New York.

Ginkgo fruits

From Sara Crosby's Gourmet.com article:

Instead—egged on by the conviction that the elderly Asian ginkgo fruit gatherers who had originally motivated me had to be on to something worthwhile—I started in on four days of ginkgo nut experiments. Based on a recipe from the grill cook at Masa, I boiled them in a tiny bit of salted water and put them on a salad. I roasted them with maple syrup. I roasted them in the shell, and then served them with a little bit of salt. But nothing was working: They had a gummy texture, and their rich, nutty flavor was curbed by a quick bitterness. Then, using my Cajun husband’s motto that all things taste good fried, I egg-washed them, rolled them in flour, salt, and pepper, and threw them in hot oil. My husband and I watched them immediately turn a brilliant, beautiful jade-green color under their light layers of fry. I beamed. I felt like I’d just harvested my first backyard zucchini crop or caught my first fish from a nearby river. Even before we popped the little fried pips into our mouths and tasted the perfectly charming balance of nature’s nuttiness and searing hot oil, we knew we’d done it—we’d amped up our already ridiculous game of seasonal and local eating. And so, naturally, we stood there chomping away in our tiny urban kitchen and started working the fried ginkgo nuts into our Friday night dinner party menu.

By the way, the Ginkgo's fruits are ready for picking in the fall, but a tree might not flower until it is 20 years old (UConn Plant Database; Wisconsin Master Gardener Program)!

Trees above and below

2009-12-02T06:00:00.000-05:00

Vegetated roof and sidewalks, Commerce Street, NYC

Wild turkeys in Sacramento

2009-11-26T06:00:00.002-05:00

Wild turkeys outside the Sacramento Tree Foundation office

One hanging garden or cascade deserves another

2009-11-19T09:48:00.003-05:00

Babylon is not the only setting for hanging gardens. Now, Armenia has one, too. Michael Kimmelman details the origins of the Cafesjian Center for the Arts in his article for the NY Times titled "Unveiling the Hanging Gardens of Armenia" (Nov. 19, 2009).

Kimmelman writes of the design,

I arrived, having been invited to lecture at the opening, dimly aware of the center’s history, which began during the 1930s, when a prominent local architect, Alexander Tamanyan, conceived the Cascade, as it’s called, a towering, white travertine ziggurat of artificial waterfalls and gardens tumbling down a promontory that links the historic residential and business centers of the city.

The Cafesjian Cascade reminded me of Oakland's Cleveland Cascade which connects a residential neighborhood to Lake Merritt and Oakland's downtown. The original essay was posted on September 22, 2006 and is reposted below. Enjoy (again).

Cleveland Cascade, 1931. Source: clevelandcascade.org

The Cleveland Cascade is located in Lake Merritt Park in Oakland, CA. The water feature was designed and built in 1923 by landscape architect Howard Gilkey. In the post World War II period, the cascade was filled in and planted with rosemary, though the irrigation feature was maintained. Two years ago, in a move described as a "guerilla act," neighbors began restoring the water feature to its original design. The early work consisted of locating documentation of the original design (see above) and removing plant materials. The Oakland City Council has allocated Measure DD funding to completely restore the cascade to its "original flowing-water gurgling vitality."

Source: Oakland Department of Public Works

Measure DD (The Oakland Trust for Clean Water and Safe Parks) is an approximately $198,000,000 bond to finance the purchase, construction, restoration, and improvement of recreation facilities, creeks, waterways, Lake Merritt, and the Oakland Estuary. The Cleveland Cascade is one Lake Merritt Park project. Other park projects are 12th Street (restoration of the original scenic boulevard), Lakeside Drive (restoration of the municipal boathouse), and Lakeshore Avenue (daylighting the channel by removing the 14th Street/12th Street interchange).

The Lake Merritt Park improvement projects have been criticized, especially in regards to tree removals. Officials cite poor physiological and structural and various communities of interest claim that the existing trees have social, historical, and ecological value.

Here are a few articles reporting on the tree controversy:

There are several Lake Merritt advocacy organizations including the North Lake Merritt Neighborhood Group, Waterfront Action, and the Lake Merritt Institute.

Managing stormwater runoff at Lake Merced

2009-11-18T06:00:00.002-05:00

Plan view of Sunset Circle parking lot

Trees, vegetated swales, slopes, and infiltration basins: four elements of the stormwater runoff management landscape at the Sunset Circle parking lot off Lake Merced Boulevard. The project was designed by the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission and the Department of Public Works. The management system was designed to slow and to clean stormwater runoff before it enters the lake. The landscape is an example of Low Impact Design (LID).

Vegetated swale

Vegetated swales were designed to capture stormwater runoff from the parking lot paving. Source: SF Public Utilities Commission Sunset Swales Project Summary

Main infiltration basin

The infiltration basins reduce and delay stormwater flows by capturing and holding runoff. They also allow stormwater to percolate into the soil, recharging groundwater and postponing or completely bypassing drainage into on-site catch basins. Source: SF Public Utilities Commission Sunset Swales Project Summary

Two central swales, planted with coast live oaks and native herbaceous plants, shrubs, and grasses such as Berkeley sedge (Carex tumilicola), capture and direct stormwater from the parking lot surface to a series of swales located at the edge of the parking lot and connected to a central infiltration basin (there are a total of three basins). Cutouts in the concrete lips of the swales allow stormwater to flow into the swales. The exterior swales are connected to each other by concrete tunnels on top of which pedestrian walks were constructed. Click here to see the swales on a rainy day.

The oaks are not faring well; 7 of 18 are dead or in poor condition (0-50% live canopy). I did not find any information about the causes of tree death; perhaps the oaks are less tolerant of contaminants in the stormwater runoff than the other vegetation.

Question: Are swales being used to manage stormwater runoff in your city?

City Garden, St. Louis, MO

2009-11-16T06:00:00.002-05:00

by guest blogger Katydid on the Street (all photos courtesy of Katydid)

When I was in St. Louis in September I visited the City Garden and was very impressed with this new park in Downtown St. Louis, not that far from the Arch, which has successfully incorporated native plants into a small, urban park design that is also packed with water features and artwork. The horticulturalists from the Missouri Botanical Garden helped with the selection of native plants for several rain gardens. Although it is a very constructed park, with many paths and benches to accommodate a high level of foot traffic, more than half the site is permeable. Read more about the landscape design here.

I was impressed with the size of the trees that had been transplanted just last spring including a native oak (Quercus genus)

and red maple (Acer rubrum).

This being St. Louis, there was an abundance of cardinal flower (Lobelia cardinalis)

and there were also some very whimsical sculptures that made some of the large trees look not so big.

The most popular feature of the park by far was the water fountains. This fountain shown above was a plaza where water would shoot up from the ground at irregular intervals and irregular speeds. A wide array of people from toddlers, to teenagers to grandparents seemed to enjoy walking through and playing in this surprising fountain.

Street Trees: Let’s Think Outside the Wires

2009-11-10T06:00:00.002-05:00

Recently, we were forwarded such positive feedback about one of our essays for Human Flower Project that we decided to post the original essay here. Let us know what you think!

Hawthorn in bloom - find the bee

In urban settings, human tensions arise over the selection of large stature or small stature street trees. The “Right Tree in the Right Place” planting policy recommends that short stature trees – 25 feet or less – should be planted beneath utility lines because the canopies of these trees do not interfere with overhead wires. But emphasis on height alone neglects larger issues—of ecosystem value.

Large stature trees—like red oak, London plane tree, or sweetgum—do interfere with overhead wires, but they also provide greater ecosystem benefits than do small stature trees: they sequester (store) more carbon, filter more particulate matter from the air, and intercept more rainfall via leaves, trunk, and soil (and slow runoff into storm drains). And, because of their larger crown spread and evapotranspiration capacity, larger trees cool larger areas of surrounding air (cooling nearby infrastructure and buildings, too).

In a study of Berkeley’s street tree canopy conducted by the USDA Forest Service Center for Urban Forest Research (CUFR), researchers found that city trees saved $12.58 per tree in annual electricity costs. As for capturing stormwater runoff, the average street tree intercepted 1,478 gallons, a value of $5.91 per tree annually. The researchers also found that, overall, larger stature trees provided the most benefits: the average small, medium, and large deciduous street tree produced annual benefits totaling $32, $79, and $96, respectively. (Note: Author Georgia Silvera Seamans, assisted by Qingfu Xiao, research scientist at UC Davis, obtained this information as part of a research grant with Urban Releaf.)

Non-showy Ginkgo flowers

Though not all short stature trees have showy floral displays, they tend to have larger, more conspicuous flowers. Most people think of herbaceous perennials as the plants that attract bees and butterflies, but flowering trees are definitely popular with wildlife too. As cities make tree selections, they should consider the “wildlife-value” of species that produce fruits, seeds, nuts, catkins, and acorns. A tree’s wildlife-value in the larger ecosystem, something not usually quantified, involves its floral services for small, highly mobile species like butterflies and bees and some birds. Hummingbirds, for example, utilize showy flowers for nectar. As well, floral displays attract insects on which non-nectar eating birds rely. Not only are the showy flowers of shorter stature trees attractive to birds and bees, their exuberant flowering draws “oohs” and “aahs” from us humans. I have never visited Washington, D.C., in the spring, but I have heard the buzz about the mass blossoming of the Mall’s 3,000 cherries. (At this year’s San Francisco Flower & Garden Show, the USDA Forest Service created an urban forest garden. The sign below the coast live oak, interestingly enough, listed the aesthetic monetary value of the oak over 40 years as $5,210.)

Given the dual appeal of short stature trees, I was curious to see which varieties municipal urban forestry departments selected. A natural choice for a case was the City of Oakland. I am an intern of urban forestry issues for the City of Oakland Mayor’s Office. Oakland’s street trees are managed by its public works agency. The city’s Official Tree Species List, as of November 2007, has a limited palette of small stature trees. The list contains seven species: Strawberry tree (Arbutus unedo), Eastern redbud (Cercis canadensis), Crape myrtle (Lagerstroemia indica), Photinia (Photinia fraseri), purple leaf plum (Prunus cerasifera ‘Thundercloud’), Evergreen pear (Pyrus kawakamii), African sumac (Rhus lancea), and Water gum (Tristania laurina ‘Elegant’). Many of Oakland’s residential streets are lined with overhead utility wires, so I expected a longer list of short stature trees.

Of these seven species on Oakland’s approved street tree species list, four have documented wildlife value. According to the USDA Forest Service Silvics Manual of North America (1990), the eastern redbud nectar is used for honey production (and the fruit is eaten by cardinals, bobwhites, ring-necked pheasants, rose-breasted grosbeaks, white-tailed deer, and gray squirrels). The crape myrtle attracts “beneficial insects” according to the UC Davis Arboretum plant database, but it does not give a list of insect species. Water gum or Tristania laurina provides nectar to honey bees; these bees are common to very common visitors of the water gum flowers. The UC Berkeley Urban Bee Garden project also observes that water gum flowers occasionally attracts small, native bees.

Considering power lines when planting trees. Source: Pacific Gas & Electric

As mentioned previously the primary limiting factors in planting the right tree in the right place with regards to overhead utility lines is height; trees should be twenty five feet or less in height at maturity. Of the seven species listed by the City of Oakland as “small,” two can attain thirty feet in height: the crape myrtle and the purple leaf plum. Two of the species categorized as “medium” are listed with heights of twenty feet: the bronze loquat (Eriobotrya deflexa) and the Saint Mary magnolia (Magnolia grandiflora ‘Saint Mary’). In general, magnolias are medium-sized trees, but I gather that the Saint Mary variety is typically twenty feet at maturity. The flower of the loquat attracts bees (and birds eat the summer fruit).

The City of Oakland does not list the hawthorn. I have noticed bees buzzing around and landing on hawthorn (Crataegus species) flowers in my Berkeley neighborhood. My casual observation is supported by the UC Berkeley Bee Garden project. Crataegus laevigata attracts five to nine honey bees every three minutes for pollen and nectar, while C. phaenopyrum (Washington hawthorn) attracts five to nine honey bees every three minutes and occasionally attracts small and medium bees for nectar.

Of course, wildlife value is not limited to short stature, showy, flowering trees, and flowers are not the only source of value. Linden trees (Tilia species) attract bees in great numbers according to observations made by the Cornell University Arboretum. The valley oak (Quercus lobata), according to the UC Davis Arboretum plant database, attracts butterflies, beneficial insects, and birds. But, the valley oak does not make a good street tree. Urban sidewalks are not designed to accommodate this large, broad-crowned California native that requires “deep soils where it can tap groundwater.”

Coast live oak, Oakland's City Hall Plaza

Actually, the City of Oakland is named for the oaks that used to cover its land area. The coast live oak (Quercus agrifolia) is conspicuously absent from the city’s list of large tree species. This species would require a large growing area and the majority of residential sidewalks in Oakland are six feet wide; a four-foot right of way is required by the Americans with Disabilities Act. To see an urban mature coast live oak (and its optimal growing space), visit Oakland’s City Hall Plaza.

Flora Mirabilis: How Plants Have Shaped World Knowledge, Health, Wealth, and Beauty

2009-11-05T08:54:00.004-05:00

Update: Stay tuned for a review.

With a comment (see below) to Garden Rant's contest - "Win the awesome book Flora Mirabilis" - I won a PDF copy of the book. Yesterday I received an email from Garden Rant's Susan Harris with details on receiving my prize.

Source: Random House

My comment:

My plant geek credentials. Well, I studied for the Massachusetts arborist exam by exploring the grounds of the Arnold Arboretum and the streets of Boston.I took a very short course about mycology held at the Harvard Museum of Natural History. During the first class (of 3?), we learned about "chicken of the woods" among other 'shrooms. This mushroom stuck with me. While out on inspections for my job, I came across a large specimen which I picked, placed in a paper bag (luckily, I had one in the car), and cooked it in olive oil and s&p for dinner that night. Delicious! (My dinner mate was skeptical but the amazing aroma convinced him to try it.)

Garden Girl is also hosting a contest for Flora Mirabilis with a November 7th deadline.

Tree Walk: Inside Sir Winston Churchill Square at Downing Street Playground

2009-11-02T06:00:00.000-05:00

Going around in a circle has negative associations unless you are walking a labyrinth or walking inside Sir Winston Churchill Square; these circular walks are delightful! The small square, 0.05 acres, is located at 6th Avenue and Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village, NYC. (I had forgotten the name of the square between visiting it and writing this post. I could not locate the square or its name on the NYC Parks Department website. I looked at an area map on the Parks website, saw the Downing Street Playground, and searched for "park near Downing Street Playground," and found the name of the square. Phew! The square is considered a part of the playground and thus is not mapped separately.)

The square's sitting area was designed by George Vellonakis and built between 1998 and 1999 (the original parcel was purchased in 1943). The square is organized like an arboretum with specimen trees tagged with name plates. Among the trees are:

Dawn redwood (Metasequoia glyptostroboides)

Zelkova (Zelkova serrata)

Redbud (Cercis canadensis) or is it a Katsura (Cercidiphyllum japonicum)?

Canopies of Japanese Sophora (Sophora japonica, left) and hawthorn (Crataegus genus)

Dogwood (Cornus genus)

In the spirit: Paradise Lost…And Found garden

2009-10-31T15:35:00.008-04:00

Monkey puzzle tree

Photographs taken during the 2009 San Francisco Flower & Garden Show

The garden was designed by Joleen and Tony Morales of Redwood Landscape in Millbrae, California. Read our essay about some of the show's gardens at Human Flower Project.

Untitled architecture installation

2009-10-30T06:00:00.000-04:00

Wurster Hall, Department of Architecture, UC Berkeley, May 2009

Question: What is it? A sun catcher? A sun dial?

Jane's houses

2009-10-28T06:00:00.002-04:00

In the span of a year, I visited Jane Jacobs's New York and Toronto neighborhoods. During a 2008 research trip to Toronto, I walked through Spadina and photographed Jane's former house.

This summer, inspired by Anthony Flint's Boston Globe article about Jane "wrestling" with Robert Moses, I visited Hudson Street in Greenwich Village, site of the famous "intricate sidewalk ballet." I did not observe a sidewalk ballet when I walked Hudson between 11th and Perry Streets on a September afternoon. The ballet described by Jacobs's in Death and Life of Great American Cities occurred on a weekday evening.

Four in a million trees - Million Trees NYC

2009-10-26T06:00:00.002-04:00

First, a quote from the MillionTreesNYC website about the tree planting campaign:

MillionTreesNYC, one of the 127 PlaNYC initiatives, is a citywide, public-private program with an ambitious goal: to plant and care for one million new trees across the City's five boroughs over the next decade. By planting one million trees, New York City can increase its urban forest—our most valuable environmental asset made up of street trees, park trees, and trees on public, private and commercial land—by an astounding 20%, while achieving the many quality-of-life benefits that come with planting trees.

We've been eyeing four trees on West Broadway (not to be confused with the western section of Broadway) planted as part of the city's million tree-planting campaign. The trees are a mix of pin (Quercus palustris) and red (Q. rubra) oaks which can attain mature heights of up to 75 feet (with a 40 foot canopy) and 90 feet, respectively. Note the gardens planted in the tree basins. The garden in the second photograph has not thrived.

Cooling parking lots - trees face competition from PV carports

2009-10-22T06:00:00.003-04:00

The Sacramento Parking Lot Ordinance, passed in 1983, has a 50% shading requirement for off-street, surface parking lots within 15 years of their development (Sacramento City Code, Title 17). Sacramento was one of several California cities that passed "cooling" ordinances in response to the energy crisis of the 1970s (McPherson 2001). Sacramento's shading requirement mandates tree planting. McPherson (2001) writes that not only is "tree planting is one of the most cost-effective means of mitigating urban heat islands and associated expenditures for air conditioning" (after Huang et al., 1987; Akbari et al., 1992; Simpson and McPherson, 1998), tree planting is "considered essential to moderating the heat gained by asphalt parking lots" (after Asaeda et al., 1996).

S Street, Sacramento

Despite the effectiveness of tree planting in moderating elevated temperatures of surface parking lots as well as in providing associated benefits such as stormwater runoff mitigation, trees have competitors. During my field work, I learned that photovoltaic shade structures are becoming a popular alternative to trees in providing surface shading. (I am not sure if the city's ordinance has been revised to accommodate these structures.)

PV-shade structures provide not only shade, but the capture of solar energy can provide revenue to the property owner. The parking lot in the above photograph is owned by the Sacramento Municipal Utility District. The lot sits on the site of a former building. The array

produces 80 kilowatts of electricity. This is equivalent to powering about 40 single-family homes or enough hydrogen for about 14 fuel-cell vehicles. (SMUD News Release 2008)

A final thought: I prefer the tree-shaded parking lot; in addition to its environmental benefits, it is more attractive than the PV-carport. Hopefully the MIT scientists who have mimicked photosynthesis will focus on using photosynthetic energy to power electric vehicles.

Conventional versus expanded tree basin, San Francisco style

2009-10-21T06:00:00.003-04:00

Dolores Street, San Francisco

We're back from our California research trip. We conducted field work in Sacramento and San Francisco. In yesterday's post, we featured a photograph of an assessment of Sacramento's urban heat island. Today's post features two types of street tree planting areas in San Francisco: a conventional tree pit and an expanded tree basin. The former is typically 3 feet by 3 feet. The expanded basin in the photograph is 54 feet by 6 feet!

Providing expanded tree basins in San Francisco's neighborhoods is a project of the Friends of the Urban Forest (FUF). Using the city's Permeable Sidewalk Landscaping Permit, FUF staff and neighborhood residents remove sidewalk concrete blocks to provide greater planting and growing space and other environmental benefits:

Valley Street looking east towards Dolores Street, San Francisco

The replacement of concrete by plants allows for the absorption heat instead of reflection of it. This absorption of solar energy reduces the Urban Heat Island effect, a phenomenon which can significantly alter surrounding ecosystems and increase the amount of energy used in the city. These open areas also absorb more rainfall, reducing the strain on our combined sewer system, a system that mixes building waste with street water runoff before processing. In periods of high rain fall our sewer system can't handle the volume of water that passes through it and the combined sewage is released directly into the bay without being cleaned. Removing a 3' square of concrete will reduce the amount of rainfall run-off by five gallons for every inch of rain that falls. (fuf.net)

Sacramento's Urban Heat Island, circa 1998

2009-10-20T06:00:00.004-04:00

Photograph taken at the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SUMD) Customer Service Headquarters

This map of surface temperatures is the product of a 1998 NASA flyover of Sacramento. The hottest temperatures are represented by red, orange and yellow while cooler temperatures are represented by green, blue, and purple. The map illustrates the city's urban heat island. Impermeable, dry surfaces, more common in urban areas, have elevated temperatures which contributes to greater energy use and emissions, poor water quality, and reduced human healthiness (see Eric Klinenberg's Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago).

Smell the flowers all week

2009-10-12T06:00:00.006-04:00

We are on a week-long research trip. While we're away, we encourage you to read our contributions to the Human Flower Project.

Matchmaking on the Wedding Day

A Legacy of Jamaican Fruits

HFQ#9: What Thrives in Qatar?

A photo: Escalator Garden

HFQ#8: Fungi Need Names

Kings, Queens and Mangosteens

Listen Up: SF Garden Show 2009

HFQ #6: Fit for Foraging?

Oops a Daisy ~ Plant Idioms

The Florists of Telegraph Avenue

Walking with 'Sharp-eyed' Margot

Bookends: Native and Ornamental

Gardening in Prison

Street Trees: Let’s Think Outside the Wires

A photo: Slow Down for Quince

A photo: Quatrefoil—Flower of Andalusian Architecture

Pollen-feld: A Bee Movie Review

Georgia’s News Bouquet: 3rd Week of Oct.

Bringing City Trees to Fruition

Wildlife could "takeback" the Holbeck Urban Village in Leeds

2009-10-09T11:00:00.002-04:00

From the Garnett Netherwood website

Spotted in the October 2009 issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine, the proposed Urban Takeback project by architects at Garnett Netherwood consists of Green Tower Structures designed "to cater for the wildlife of Holbeck Urban Village" in Leeds, England.

Funky nest identified...almost!

2009-10-09T07:00:00.004-04:00

Could the "funky nest" we wrote about in our May Bird Watch be the nest of a Bullock's Oriole?

We received an email from Cornell's NestWatch that identified the nest as that of a Baltimore Oriole but NestWatch was not aware that the nest was photographed in Berkeley, California. California is not part of the Baltimore Oriole's range, but the state is part of the Bullock's Oriole's range. However, the Bullock's Oriole is "a bird of open woodlands in the American West, the Bullock's Oriole is especially fond of tall trees along rivers and streams" (All About Birds). Our nest was located in a front yard, adjacent to the sidewalk, with no water in (human) sight. (The nest has been found in urban parks, near water.) But, the Bullock Oriole's nest resembles the Baltimore Oriole's nest.... What do you think?

Scenes from the road - Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong

2009-10-06T07:00:00.006-04:00

On a ped. bridge above a highway near National Univ. of Singapore

In a tram on Hong Kong Island

Kuala Lumpur's Petronas Twin Towers ahead, Malaysia

Watching trishaws and scooters on Lebuh Light in Georgetown, Penang (Pinang), Malaysia

In a trishaw going through an intersection near Khoo Kongsi in Georgetown, Penang (Pinang), Malaysia

Festival of the Trees #40, the benefits of trees

2009-10-01T06:00:00.004-04:00

Northern New England autumn leaves, courtesy of Letters from a Hill Farm

Aspen gold by Priscilla Stuckey, PhD of this lively earth is the perfect kick-off to this edition of Festival of the Trees. First, it feels like fall in New York City where this edition was written. Second, Priscilla's post perfectly captures some of the psychological benefits of trees. She writes,

A photo cannot capture the sensation of being surrounded by a thousand twinkling prisms of golden light.

and

And then there is the special aroma of aspens. Sniffing an aspen grove sometimes makes me imagine that I’ve discovered an ancient wooden chest that sat empty for centuries, and I suddenly lift the lid.

After all, trees are usually preserved and planted because of their appeal to our senses.

DN Lee of Urban Science Adventures! is working on her PhD dissertation; she's 72% there according to her dissertation progress meter. Lee writes about the shade-giving Mimosa Tree in her paternal grandmother's back yard.

I remember this tree as magical. Shorter than the other trees in the yard, but much, much taller than me, this tree always provided a cool, shady spot in the backyard.

And a Mimosa at the War Veterans Memorial in Rennes, France.

Yes, it still can do important jobs like provide food and shelter for animals and insects, but we plant it because it's pretty and provide shade to people.

In another post about trees seen in France, DN Lee remarks that she did not see acorns last fall in the U.S. Well, this year she might.

Courtesy of Hoarded Ordinaries

Lorianne of Hoarded Ordinaries has noticed a big acorn mast in Newton, Massachusetts and throughout New England. Why the bumper crop in New England? According to a Boston.com article,

Scientists say oak trees produce bumper crops of acorns every two to seven years, but that the record snowfalls and rain over the past year have helped the acorns bloom larger and in greater numbers than they otherwise would have. No one in the state tracks the actual number of acorns every year, but observers from the Blue Hills to the Berkshires say they can’t remember a larger crop.

Wildlife are the beneficiaries of this bumper mast. Also from Boston.com,

...the extra acorns will probably reverberate across the food chain, enabling more squirrels, skunks, chipmunks, mice, deer, and bears to survive the winter. As a result, predators such as hawks, coyote, foxes, and others are also likely to flourish next year, when there is more prey.

Courtesy of Rock Paper Lizard

Acorns may be wildlife booty, but horse chestnut fruits are wind-given "kid treasure" writes Hugh of Rock Paper Lizard. You cannot eat horse chestnuts but you can eat the fruit and sap of the Palmyra Palm or nongu (in Tamil). Arati of Trees, Plants and More writes,

The fruit is edible, is similar to the flesh of the lychee and is very cooling. Very refreshing in these incredibly hot and humid summers! The sugary sap from this tree is used to make an alcoholic beverage (toddy) and a concentrated sugar, used in indian cooking (jaggery).

Another Tamil treat can be made from the flowers of the neem tree. Head to Trees, Plants and More for the recipe.

Courtesy of Rambling Woods

Rambling Woods's beautifully illustrated post about a wetland woods "in a western NY suburb" was written specifically for this issue of FOTT. The woods, pictured above, provide habitat for

... a pair of horned owls and they nest every February finding small rodents to feed their nestlings. Black-capped chickadees, white-breasted nuthatcheds, tufted titmice, northern cardinals, blue jays and other species call this area home....

But all is not well in the woods. Fewer "large tracts of mature trees" mean less habitat for large woodpeckers like the Pileated Woodpecker and increased conflicts between humans and wildlife such as coyotes, white-tailed deer, and "even black bears." Another walk through the woods, this one more upbeat, is provided by Seabrooke of the Marvelous in nature. Seabrooke's "artifical" natural forest houses

A total of 141 species of birds have been tallied from the forest, including such rare or threatened species as Evening Grosbeak, Northern Goshawk, and Whip-poor-will. Other groups, including herpetiles, mammals, butterflies, odonates, vascular plants, and others, have also been documented. They’ve even got a moth list, which stands at 211 species, probably representing only a handful of nights of effort, given that any mothing parties would by necessity need to be brought in and run off of a generator.

This Festival ends with a return to the city with one of our - local ecologist - posts. We travelled to Chicago this summer and fell in love with the city all over again.

The city is lined with street gardens which not only beautify the streets but also mitigate Chicago's urban heat island. With the cooler temperatures of fall here one might want as much heat as possible. But these gardens help cool Chicago during its famously hot summers. And during rain events, their permeable surfaces not only absorb rain but don't contribute to runoff.

The November Festival, FOTT #41, will be hosted by Juliana of Blog do Arvores Vivas. The theme of FOTT 41 is "If I were a tree" and submissions are due to arvoresvivas (at) gmail.com by October 29, 2009. I enjoyed compiling your submissions for FOTT 40; thanks to Dave Bonta for the opportunity to do so, again!

Flyerboxes to Planterboxes!

2009-09-29T07:00:00.002-04:00

I now cannot recall where on the web I first saw Poster Child's FlyerPlanterboxes but I sent an email asking for permission to publish the photos on this blog and got this response:

Of course! Please just credit the source! Thanks for asking,

So, without further ado, here are photographs of a FlyerPlanterbox. (All images courtesy of Poster Child.)

Click here to leave & read comments for this post.