Princeton Nature Notes

The Second Snow

2012-01-21T16:20:00.003-05:00

Snow finally arrived last night, having been loathe to return ever since its much criticized, heavy footed miscue back in October. My daughter, deciding the snow was insufficient for sledding, chose instead to send her little people on an exhilarating slide off the rooftop, aided by a broom handle.

Later on, some paddleboating in snow? What were they thinking? At least it got them outdoors.

This seemed much more sensible--some restful cloudbathing after their brief but exciting sledding venture, and a bit of stretching. Many a time have I thought there should be a designated "Conspicuous Stretching Zone" in the park, where parents wishing to spend their time more productively could feel permitted to assume various self-improving poses, free of any sense of awkwardness.

I didn't see how this contraption fit into the narrative. There was no enemy castle in sight, into which to hurl plague-infested pigs. Perhaps they thought it would be a good way to get back to the second floor.

As the day's light faded, a couple hardy northerners, dreaming of winters past, looked longingly out across the lake, wondering when the ice will be thick enough to skate on.

Nature Stereotype Listing Badly

2012-01-17T14:50:00.001-05:00

In part to lure an audience, television tends to emphasize the violent side of nature. Preferential exposure is given to storms, wildfires and animals with big teeth. When nature is consistently portrayed as an adversary, people may forget that its primary role is as an ally, and that it's up to us whether we want to work with its forces or against them.

The latest contribution to the stereotype of nature as adversary is an ad seen last week immediately following the Miss America contest. We had finally strayed from Ingrid Bergman's improbable romance with Anthony Perkins in "Goodbye, Again" just in time to see Miss Wisconsin crowned the new Miss America, which closed with an ad for Carnival Cruises. They've launched a new ad campaign that compares land-based and sea-based vacations.

In the ad, a couple gazing serenely out at the ocean, drinks in hand, flash back to last year's camping vacation, when they were trapped in a car out in the woods by an enormous grizzly bear and mountain lion, pawing at the car, trying to get at the occupants. "Never again.", the woman says. Obviously, it's best to avoid the dangers of nature in favor of a safe, clean vacation on a massive cruise ship.

The ad segued immediately, improbably, into ABC evening news' lead story about the cruise ship that ran aground off the coast of Italy. Eleven found dead thus far, at least 24 missing. The ship is owned by a subsidiary of Carnival Corporation. April 15 will be the 100th anniversary of the Titanic's demise. Not a great time to be touting cruises as safer than a camping trip.

Backyard Bird Numbers Down?

2012-01-13T14:25:00.003-05:00

I'm hearing reports from friends that their backyard birdfeeders are not needing as frequent refills as in past years, meaning there are fewer birds around. Though we don't have a birdfeeder, I noticed a flurry of bird activity in the backyard in early to mid-December, with mixed groups of birds visiting and then moving on, but have seen almost none since then.

This from Bill Sachs of Princeton:

In winters past, we have had to replenish the seed in our backyard birdfeeder at least twice a week. This winter, the birds seem noticeable by their absence and the interval between needed refills has exceeded two weeks! Oh, we have birds visiting the feeder from time-to-time, especially mourning doves and blue jays, but visits by chickadees, titmice, nuthatches and wood peckers seem much reduced. I am curious because there was a review article in a recent edition of Science magazine on “Globalization, Land Use, and the Invasion of West Nile Virus” (A. M. Kilpatrick, Science, 334: 323-327) in which the author writes,

“The impacts of WNV on wildlife have been yet more severe than those on humans. Millions of birds have died from WNV infection, and regional-scale population declines of >50% have been observed for several species (11). The range of taxa that have suffered declines is surprisingly large and includes corvids, chickadees and titmice, wrens, and thrushes (Fig. 1) and probably others. Some populations have recovered after initial declines, whereas others have not.”

And this from an avid birder in town:

We too have had fewer birds at our feeder. Don't know why. Maybe mild weather, more berries, more insects? We've had a lot of Red-Tailed Hawks in the neighborhood, too. Declines of migratory birds, e.g., thrushes, have been occurring over a few decades, and that's due to multiple factors, including loss of winter habitat in the tropics. Among the year-round residents, or short distance migrants, disease could be a factor. Blue Jays were victims a while back, but seem to have recovered. House Finches, on the other hand, were decimated by disease a few years ago and have not come back.

Note: Ran into Henry Horn, professor emeritus at the PU Dept. of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, who agrees that birds are very scarce. Closer to usual numbers are bluejays, crows and Carolina wrens.

Note #2: Data from the Princeton Christmas Bird Count, and also from the national Cornell Backyard Feeder Watch, will be available soon. I'll post that when it comes in.

Puerto Rico and Princeton--Parallels in a Rainforest

2012-01-07T09:10:00.000-05:00

Even in a tropical rainforest, witnessed during a hike up El Yunque, it's possible to find parallels to Princeton's nature. El Yunque rises into the clouds 40 minutes southeast of San Juan, its slopes populated by a mix of palms and hardwoods. The Puerto Rican coqui frogs sing "ko-kee" along the path to the top.

With only the diminutive ferns of temperate forests as a reference, one has to get used to the concept of looking upward at a 30 foot high tree fern reaching into the clouds.

As in Princeton, nettles are found near streams,

Since jewel weed (Impatiens capensis) is a frequent companion of nettle in Princeton's floodplains, it wasn't surprising to find an Impatiens species growing along the trails in a Puerto Rican rainforest,

doing a good imitation of the Impatiens planted as annuals in northern gardens.

The Impatiens in El Yunque have the same spring-loaded mechanism for distributing seeds as our jewelweed.

The mountain, with its opulent vegetation providing abundant surface area for water to cling to, acts like a sponge to capture rainfall and slowly release it into the surrounding lands below. Though it was recommended to take rain gear, we found that weather changed constantly during the day. If a light rain started, we needed only wait five minutes for some other weather to come along. I speculated, purely for the sake of speculation, that such mild, free-flowing, constantly transitioning weather would influence people to hold less tightly to moods.

It was a surprise, in such an exotic world, to find information about two familiar birds. This sign tells of spectacular mating flights to be seen above the rainforest cainopy by redtailed and broadwinged hawks.

When I travel to other parts of America, I look for parallels to two species shot to extinction in the early 1900s in North America--the Carolina parakeet and the passenger pigeon. Puerto Rico's one remaining native parrot, which may share little relation to the Carolina parakeet other than family and color, still survives in small numbers in El Yunque National Forest.

Puerto Rico: Stalking the Elusive Baby Pigeon

2012-01-03T12:53:00.001-05:00

While visiting Old San Juan, the question may come up: What to do while the next generation is feeding pigeons in the park? Break into a rendition of Mary Poppins' Feed the Birds in espanol?

Or take a photo of a hibiscus tree,

or a colorful caterpillar feasting on a favored plant?

Finally, my mission of the moment came into focus. I remembered a segment from a radio program years back called "Ask Dr. Science (He Knows More Than You Do!)", in which Dr. Science explained why we never see baby pigeons. I forget what the answer was--something about the species' deeply engrained embarrassment over the appearance of its young. This wall of nests seemed the perfect opportunity to finally get a glimpse. Yet even here, the babies were kept so well hidden that the enigma remains, at least until you google "baby pigeons" and click on images.

Puerto Rico: Skinless Trees and People

2012-01-02T09:59:00.001-05:00

On the way to the historic fort El Morro, in Old San Juan, we encountered something that looked less like a tree than a sculpture built of rebar.

This branch is reminiscent of a man's arm without the skin, or an exagerated version of one of Princeton's musclewood trees (Carpinus caroliniana).

This sort of growth is common in more tropical climes, particularly among species of fig (Ficus). If you google images for strangler fig, you'll see all sorts of extravagant examples.

As explained in a Wikipedia entry, a strangler fig can actually begin its life above ground, sprouting on the limb of another tree, then extend its roots down towards the ground while also sending branches and trunk upward. Over time, the original tree dies off and the strangler fig completely usurps the space.

Some of our invasive vine species in New Jersey, such as English ivy, can weaken their host tree, but they don't develop the sturdy infrastructure to continue to stand if the original tree dies.

By chance, there was an exhibition called Body Worlds just down the street in San Juan,

featuring skinless renderings of people. As a friend once said after seeing pictures of her vocal cords, there's a good reason why people have skin.

And at a local museum, a similarly fibrous merging of tree and human. It's tempting to think the painting was inspired by the local strangler figs.

Puerto Rico and Princeton--Buttress Roots

2012-01-01T12:56:00.000-05:00

One of the pleasures of an acquaintance with plants is being able to see similarities and differences in distant plant worlds. Some of our potted plants, such as the pothos vine and various kinds of fig trees that show little ambition while standing neglected in a dimly lit corner, grow to enormous size outdoors in tropical climes.

The roots of fig trees can be as impressive as their canopies.

Here's one, growing next to dormitories at the University of Puerto Rico, that brings back memories of flying buttresses on European cathedrals.

If this tree were to ever blow over, which is looking very unlikely, it would take the wall with it.

Princeton offers a few examples of root buttressing. This white oak grows on a lower slope of the Princeton Ridge, in Herrontown Woods, where the soil is often wet for long periods.

Fire's Ecological Role

2011-12-29T13:59:00.000-05:00

Fire is an important and beneficial ecological force. Writers like Stephen Pyne have documented how it was in past centuries an important tool for maintaining meadows and open woodlands even along the east coast. Many native plant species have evolved adaptations to and even dependency on periodic fire. In past years, living in the midwest and later the piedmont of North Carolina, I was fortunate to participate in controlled burns of some small prairies. One prairie was right in the city of Ann Arbor, Michigan, where they regularly burn native prairie grasses and woodlands in their parks, in a very controlled way, of course. Controlled burns are being done at a few preserves in New Jersey, as described in a previous post about Schiff Nature Preserve 30 miles north of Princeton, and more widespread use would undoubtedly benefit habitat and ecological health.

This storyline is seldom encountered in news reports, which focus on war-like responses to wildfires out west. A post at another website of mine speaks to the gap in people's knowledge perpetuated by this unbalanced reporting: Rethinking News Coverage of Wildfires.

Communal Bath for Robins

2011-12-17T15:36:00.001-05:00

Flocks of robins have been appreciating the backyard minipond the last couple days, arriving in flocks of 20 or so to splash in the shallow water. Their frenzied head-dipping is reminiscent of the movement of the birds on this toy, and wooden birds are much more cooperative in front of a camera.

While half of the flock is in the water, the other half remains perched in the overhanging branches, to keep a keen eye or two out for any approaching photographers. The old apple tree next to the pond, half of its branches dead, serves this function well. The human inclination is to trim trees up and remove all the dead branches, but the birds make it clear they like lots of perches of varied heights--the better to scope out the ground before dropping in.

Let Them Be Cake?

2011-12-16T14:45:00.002-05:00

Back in the early 90's, I had two jobs--taking care of indoor plants at a university, and playing weekends in a wedding band. Sometimes the band would play at large surburban reception hall complexes that serviced multiple wedding receptions simultaneously. During breaks, we'd walk the hallways, ornamented increasingly with plastic plants, and note how wedding parties were trending towards hiring D.J.s instead of bands. Real plants and musicians were steadily being replaced by imitations.

Given that indoor plants, and saxophonists playing Top 40 pop/rock, are seriously displaced from their preferred habitats, their phasing out cannot be compared to the rapid changes in habitat many native species are up against.

Something about this polar bear,

these penguins, and the Santa, encased like museum displays, made me wonder if and when the penguins of the southern seas, and the polar bears of the north, will join Santa in the world of make believe and memory. It wasn't a very sweet thought to mix with all that frosting.

The next day, part of the answer was provided by Stephanie Pfirman of Columbia University in a fascinating talk at Princeton University entitled "Managing Arctic Sea Ice".

The quick answer, for those in a hurry, appears to be that polar bear numbers will be decimated in coming decades, but that a residual population might survive through most of the century in an area just north of Greenland, where computer models suggest summer sea ice will linger. Her talk did not focus on penguins, though she did say that one colony of Emperor penguins at the South Pole has already disappeared, for reasons linked to changing climate. Changes at the South Pole are more subtle thus far than in the Arctic. Here is fuller account of her talk:

She began in an uncharacteristic way for a scientist. Back in 1992, when scientists assumed that the big impacts of climate change were 100 years off, she had a dream in which she was flying over the arctic, and all the ice was gone.

Her dream is looking prescient. It is now believed that most of the summer ice in the Arctic Ocean will be gone by 2035, and with it most of the habitat for polar bears and the ringed seals they feed on. Already, the diminishing summer sea ice has triggered polar bear cannibalism and interbreeding with grizzlies.

They still expect the Arctic Ocean to freeze over in winter, but the ice cover is getting progressively thinner. Ice that was 4 meters thick before is now half that. As ice melts in the summer, deep blue water is exposed, which absorbs solar energy that was before being reflected back out into space by the snow-covered ice. (Much like the difference between having a white roof, or a dark-colored one, on your house.) This radical shift, from reflection to absorption of energy, is causing much more rapid heating of the arctic than, say, is occurring in New Jersey.

The food chain of polar cod, seals and polar bears is being further stressed, surprisingly, by pollution that is carried on trade winds from northern Europe and Asia. As an example, Inuit indians have some of the highest levels of PCBs anywhere, and as temperatures warm, these pollutants become more mobile in the arctic ecosystem. Oil spills, an inevitable result as easier access to the Arctic attracts extractive industries, will pose an additional threat.

There is one small hope, however. Pfirman and others have used modeling to determine that the last vestiges of summer sea ice later this century will be found in an area north of Greenland. Discussions are underway to create a refuge there. In this way, a small portion of polar bears has a chance of surviving after others perish.

Though I felt a flush of sadness at the beginning of her talk, Pfirman described the devastating changes in a matter of fact way. Scientific inquiry can have its satisfactions, even when the subject of study is a human-driven process heading full tilt towards tragedy. People in dead-end jobs can seek new ones, but a polar bear in a dead-end habitat does not have that luxury. Some would say a polar bear is inferior because it cannot adapt, yet we are the one's who most clearly show a refusal to change, even in the face of well-studied consequences. It's the scientist's spirit of inquiry, that capacity to be dispassionate and yet deeply engaged, that we could all use, to get past the paralysis of guilt and denial, and figure out what we can do.

A Visit From the Claw

2011-12-14T15:00:00.005-05:00

A Visit From The Claw

'Twas the month before Christmas, when all through the town,

The streets were chocked full of great mounds of brown--

Yardwaste and tree limbs, dumped without care,

In hopes that the street crew soon would be there.

The kids, how they wished they could jump in a pile

Of leaves dry and crisp, where they'd linger awhile.

But all dreams were dashed! Their dad called a halt

To such thoughts of venturing near the asphalt.

The streets had become so exceedingly narrow,

That bicyclists mixed with the cars at their peril.

The street drains were clogged, the rains made a river.

I watched this insane spectacle with a shiver.

When just down the way there arose such a clatter.

I sprang to the door to see what was the matter.

From round the next corner at once there appeared

A caravan that was demonstrably weird.

With dump truck and pickup and street crew I saw

A giant contraption with grappling claw

That groaned as it scooped up the leaves in great gobs.

One thing that was clear was they wouldn't lose their jobs.

For no sooner did they the street cleaner make,

Than neighbors dumped even more leaves in their wake.

The mounds they grew higher than ever before.

I guessed that our town had gone nuts at the core.

How could such a state of affairs come to pass?

What sense underlies this self-made morass?

Is decomposition a thing to be purged

From yards prim and proper that so blandly merge?

The leaves, they have value, it's clear, don't you see?

To earthworms and robins and flowers and trees.

Let's make room between the back fenceline and shrubs,

And there place the leaves as good food for the grubs.

Hidden from view they will quietly mellow.

As Jefferson did at beloved Monticello.

To ground they return; no need for more work.

As they flatten and fade, no varmints will lurk.

Let humus and nutrients there feed your soil.

The mulch will kill weeds, and save you some toil.

The leaf-softened ground will soak up the rain

And lessen the floods that now seem to gain.

Or, grind up the leaves as you last mow the grass.

Okay, so it might take just one extra pass.

But saved be our streets from a public display

Of all that in nature is meant to decay.

I know that I'm fighting a dominant force,

That flouts local law as a matter of course.

No bureaucrat dares to deliver a fine,

Risking taxpayer wrath of a virulent kind.

But speak up I must, and speak up I will

As long as the streets continue to fill.

This dumping is wrong. It's an ongoing blight.

To all who love sense: Let's fight the good fight!

Background: Yesterday, a man overheard me talking to a friend at the Arts Council about all the leaves clogging the streets. He came over and said that West Windsor has the same problem, and that their town council had just thrown its hands up in exasperation, for lack of a solution to the annual deluge of leaves. The thought of towns all over New Jersey struggling with the same intractable problem, mixed perhaps with the flush of vitamins from eating swiss chard from the backyard garden, had the unexpected effect of later moving me to verse, which I read yesterday night at the Princeton borough council meeting. When faced with adversity, write a poem. By coincidence, The Claw came by our house as I was writing it. My apologies to Clement Clarke Moore for rerouting his 1822 "A Visit From St. Nicholas" down a very messy street.

Recycling Information

2011-12-10T11:08:00.003-05:00

Three recent posts at another of my blogs, PrincetonPrimer.org, offer information about recycling in Princeton, including a cargo bike that ferries recyclable plastic from the Whole Earth Center to the township recycling bins. Here are the specific links:

http://princetonprimer.blogspot.com/2011/12/whats-recyclable-and-where-our.html

http://princetonprimer.blogspot.com/2011/12/are-rollout-bins-right-for-princeton.html

http://princetonprimer.blogspot.com/2011/11/cargo-bicycle-on-princetons-streets.html

Ivy's Deadly Embrace

2011-11-30T10:29:00.001-05:00

This picture tells the story of a neighbor's Kentucky Coffee Tree laid low by English Ivy's long embrace. The smaller trunks are the ivy, which had climbed far up into the canopy of the tree. During the freak snowstorm earlier this fall, the snow clung to all that extra surface area created by the ivy, the extra weight of which toppled the tree. The fallen tree blocked the street for a week.

My backyard, too, is in an uncomfortable embrace of English ivy, in that the vine is invading from the neighbor's yard to the north,

cascading in over the ramparts facing the park to the east,

and creeping over, under and through the fence to the south. If a neighbor's runoff is flowing into my yard, I can change the contour of the ground to direct it away from the house, and consider the problem largely solved. But the flow of ivy in from neighbor's yards cannot be diverted, and instead creates a perennial chore.

The moral of this story? Never plant english ivy anywhere that its potential to spread is not blocked on all sides by lawn, pavement or foundation. Cut english ivy off of any tree you wish to live. Better yet, never plant english ivy, and remove as much as you can from your yard.

One approach to getting rid of it without working too terribly hard can be found at http://princetonnaturenotes.blogspot.com/2007/11/ivy-control-part-2.html. Other related posts can be found by typing the words english ivy in the search box at the upper left corner of this blog.

A Flock of Robins

2011-11-30T10:09:00.001-05:00

If I were organized enough to keep faithful track of when migratory birds pass through, I would write neatly and clearly in that hypothetical journal that on Friday, Nov. 25th, some exact number of robins, let's say 15, visited the backyard, accompanied by a few white-throated sparrows, juncos and chicadees. The robins busied themselves flipping over red oak leaves in search of delectable insects or worms hiding underneath. A robin's orange breast starts making complete sense as camouflage once you see it amongst the similarly colored leaves, as if one were the reflection of the other.

When I lived in the piedmont of North Carolina, there would be one day in the fall when hundreds of robins would descend upon the neighborhood and strip the dogwoods of their ripe, red berries. If we were lucky, we saw a green female scarlet tanager mixed in. I've often wondered how these migrations are fairing since an introduced disease greatly reduced the numbers of flowering dogwoods in the eastern forests, and whether the timing of berry ripening and the birds' arrival is being thrown off by climate change. Nature has adjusted to very gradual changes in the past, but the multiple changes--new species, new temperature regimes--we're throwing at it are by comparison very rapid.

The Annual Purging of Leaves

2011-11-26T10:48:00.000-05:00

One of this blog's "pages" (listed in the right column as Leaves) contains my annual letter to the editor calling for clean streets and backyard composting, and each year the dumping of leaves, dirt, grassclippings, branches and garden trimmings on the pavement becomes more emphatic and non-stop. The power of the pen is overrated.

What does a tidy yard gain the homeowner if the street in front of it is clogged with debris? It's as if we've disowned the public space. Dumping on the streets has become a year-round, essentially unregulated activity.

True, the leaves, etc. eventually end up getting composted outside of town, but collecting leaves is a highly mechanized, gas-gulping process that makes municipal workers unavailable for other tasks.

And leaves the streets strewn with organic debris that then adds a nutrient load to local waterways.

Streets function essentially as ephemeral creeks, connected directly to local streams, so that the dumping of organic matter in the streets is akin to dumping directly into a waterway--an urge society was supposed to have cured itself of decades ago.

There was a time when leaves were appreciated, not only for their rich fertilizer value but for their beauty and the joy a pile of dry, crisp leaves can bring to kids.

Many homeowners have abundant space in back, yet make a point of raking all leaves to the street. Seeking to comprehend, I came up with two new possible reasons this year: 1) the frenetic pace of life has caused people to reject the relatively slow pace of decomposition, and 2) since homeowners often take their cues from neighbors, the highly visible practice of dumping leaves on the streets is more readily imitated than the comparatively hidden practice of piling leaves in a corner of the backyard.

Thanksgiving Article on Chestnuts in NY Times

2011-11-26T09:36:00.000-05:00

Last year on Thanksgiving, the New York Times had an oped piece on the surprising role eels played in early Thanksgivings, and in American diets in general. This year, there's a wide-ranging piece on chestnuts, which among other things explains why my store-bought chestnuts didn't keep well in the cupboard. Lacking the fat content that helps preserve nuts like walnuts and peanuts, chestnuts need to be kept refrigerated, the article says. Cooking them after they had sat for a week in the kitchen cupboard, I found that the leathery inner skin had become inseparable from the meat.

Frost and Water on Kale

2011-11-25T18:20:00.000-05:00

Water interacts in interesting ways with a backyard kale leaf. Here's frost one recent morning, like a miniature game of pick-up sticks.

Put a curly kale leaf underwater, and it develops glittery metalic highlights, much like a jewelweed leaf.

The waxy underside of curly kale gathers water into droplets.

In the same genre, an oak leaf fringed by frost, reminiscent somehow of a deer antler.

Walking Tour of D&R Canal in Trenton Sunday

2011-11-18T11:39:00.000-05:00

The Delaware & Raritan Canal Watch will hold a free walking tour of the D and R Canal feeder in Trenton on Sunday at 10am, Nov. 20. The walk will explore the part of the canal feeder between Cadwalader Park and the junction with the main canal at Old Rose Street.

More info at the DR Canal Watch website.

Big Changes Come to a Hidden Valley

2011-11-14T15:58:00.003-05:00

There's a hidden valley in Princeton that everyone drives by but no one sees. Just over this ridge is Washington Rd, with athletic fields beyond. Down to the left is Faculty Road and Carnegie Lake.

Despite being sandwiched between a busy road and Jadwin Gym, the valley's rich soil sustains old oaks, tupelo, beech and ash that reach improbable heights.

This year, big changes have come to this long-hidden valley. Approached from Faculty Road, stacks of boulders and heavy equipment suggest some sort of road construction.

A pile of stumps looks less than auspicious.

Further up the valley, more boulders, bales of hay, and orange fencing.

Giant trees, some a yard thick, have been cut down. How could this be anything but bad news? But wait, this post is getting depressing, so let's start from the top of the valley and work our way down.

The valley, which is to say the remnant of valley that was never developed as campus, begins at the new bridge over Washington Road. In the distance is the new chemistry building and the football stadium.

Looking downhill from the bridge, a lovely little stream meanders peacefully down the valley.

Starting farther up towards Nassau Street, the stream runs underground through campus, then emerges (or "daylights") from a big pipe just below the bridge.

The water immediately encounters what looks like an olympic luge track, attractively armored with stones.

Further down, the narrow channel flows through a broad floodplain.

All of this--the pleasing meanders, the floodplain for stormwater to spread out into, the series of riffles and little waterfalls over stones--is manmade.

Why would anyone want to remake a stream? After a hundred or two years of flash floods caused by all the impervious surface on campus, the stream channel had eroded the ground around it, and was threatening to undercut Washington Road (beyond the green fence on the right) if nothing was done.

Here's a portion of the old streambed, broad and ill-defined. More photos of the old streambed can be found in a post one year ago when members of the Princeton Environmental Commission were given a tour of the proposed project.

A group from Rutgers developed the plans. In this photo, you can see the hoses used for pumping water around the section of stream being worked on. The "V" of stones at the left is called a "cross-vein". Water flowing over the rocks converges to scour out a pool just below them. Pools, riffles, and a narrow stream bed to focus flow are all characteristics of a healthy stream.

The stacks of boulders, then, are materials used to direct water in such a way that the streambank will survive the flash flooding coming from the hardened landscape of campus.

Lots of digging is required to form an adequate floodplain to accommodate the massive infusions of water during storms. The disturbed areas will be restocked with native plants, and though they had to take down some large trees, many were spared.

So that gets us back to the downed trees. This section of white ash is 36 inches in diameter. I counted roughly 200 annual rings, which are caused by the alternation of light-colored fast spring growth followed by a darker band of slower growth later in the season. The tree, and others in the valley, standing or cut, could well date back to the Revolutionary War. Visitors to Mount Vernon may remember the giant white ash trees in the circular drive approaching the house.

About 160 years back, this ash began to grow very slowly, as can be seen from the very narrow rings on the left. Perhaps it was shaded heavily by another tree, which apparently fell 120 years ago when the rings began to spread out again.

It is unsettling that such old trees have been cut down, and all the more remarkable that few even know about it in a town that loves and protects its trees. But there are extenuating circumstances, tradeoffs made, factors that mitigate, at least partially, the loss. Erosion from campus has been undermining some of the majestic trees, and this project is meant to reduce that erosion.

Time will tell if the trees that were saved will survive all the disturbance around them. Tree roots are very sensitive. And the carefully designed channel is not necessarily immune from the powerful erosive forces of repeated floods.

One useful pursuit at this point would be to study the rings of the fallen trees to see what they might tell us of Princeton's past.

I had recommended a pre-construction rescue of rare native plants like horsebalm, but the idea probably got lost in the mix. Not everyone has learned to make a distinction between rare wildflowers that have survived for centuries in a valley, and whatever natives one can buy in pots at a nursery.

I had also encouraged them to remove the Norway Maples (mottled green/yellow in this photo and next) that have invaded the valley, since the invasive maples are competing with the old growth natives, and their dense shade will threaten the newly planted natives over time.

Overall, though, there's reason to believe this stream restoration--rare in New Jersey--will validate its good intentions. The project leader spoke excitedly last year during the tour about how he hopes students will find the valley an attractive place to visit, rather than merely serving as a traditional shortcut for athletes heading to practice.

This long-sheltered space, with so many stories to tell of past centuries, is beginning a new chapter worth reading.

Squirrels Take Lead On Sustainability

2011-11-14T10:50:00.002-05:00

Squirrels are such showoffs. They're already putting us to shame by harvesting all their food locally, living in zero carbon footprint homes, wearing homemade clothing and making their young walk to school.

Now they seem to be considering using bikes for transportation. There's an essay by a well-known author read long ago--I think of Late Night Thoughts On Listening To Mahler's Ninth, but the author's name, Lewis Thomas, doesn't sound right--that suggests squirrels are the likely successors to humans on earth. Perhaps they're checking out our hardware, assessing our strengths and weaknesses, biding their time.

On 11.11.11, Some Princeton Trees

2011-11-11T14:42:00.001-05:00

In honor of 11.11.11--a uniquely unique, highly vertical day--some Princeton trees of note, in no particular order:

The brilliant red maples at Princeton Shopping Center in a photo taken today, with Fothergilla shrubs adding orange in the foreground;

A clock tower looking very one-ish today next to the trees;

A photo my daughter took beneath a red oak in the backyard;

A descendant of the famous Mercer Oak at the Princeton Battlefield;

A 15/16th native chestnut planted at Princeton Battlefield in front of the Clark House;

A hican behind Clark House, showing the change in bark where a pecan/hickory hybrid was grafted to a hickory base.

Another red maple, planted by a couple in honor of their newborn son at Potts Park in the borough, positioned to shade the play equipment in future years;

And in memorium, a photo sent to me by Eric Tazelaar, of the old, old white oak near the driveway to Mountain Lakes House, before it was blown down this year during Hurricane Irene (see Oct. 28 post).

The Legacy of a Pin Oak

2011-11-11T14:17:00.000-05:00

We had to take down a pin oak recently, and tried to make the best of it. Primarily, the tree had squashed a key drainage pipe running beneath it, causing runoff to flow into our neighbor's yard. No other routes for the drainage proved feasible.

Despite that reason, which was enough to get a removal permit from the borough, there was hesitation. The tree helps shade the driveway and house in the summer, and oaks provide food for an extraordinary diversity of insects, including the inchworms that fuel the migration of warblers north in the spring.

But the oak, too, was each year casting more shade on the neighbor's vegetable garden and our own. In our yard as in others, a steadfast love of trees is increasingly having to share space with an interest in the local food movement, and the allure of solar energy as prices continue to fall. All three compete for the allegiance of arbiters of sunshine, whether it be a homeowner or the local shade tree commission.

After many months of hemming and hawing, and recurrent floods in the driveway, we finally had it taken down. What, then, is the legacy of this fine tree, done in not by wind, or the bacterial leaf scorch that is taking so many red and pin oaks, but for having grown in the wrong place? Respect can be paid by making the most of its 40 years worth of bottled sunshine.

The carbon it captured from the air and injected underground via its roots will remain there for many years, slowly shifting from wood to humus, a small but measurable service to slowing climate change.

The straight trunk looked to hold some fine lumber, but arborists told us the wood is not as commercially useful as red oak.

We ended up with firewood, which is conveniently packaged sunshine to drive a wood stove's metabolism in much the same way a pecan is nicely packaged to feed our own. Chippers these days can gobble up very large branches, even trunks of smaller trees, so I had to lobby to save for firewood some of the branches that are now routinely chipped up.

They left the chips for mulch, the stored solar energy of which quickly became a snack for microorganisms ready to assist the wood's return to soil (see related post).

As the tree's legacy lives on, the sunny void is quickly getting populated by dreams of varying degrees of practicality--of fruit trees, blueberries, and an arbor for grapes and squash to shade the driveway. And a young red oak, better placed, looks poised to claim its share of the sky's riches.

Woodchip Piles and Other Massings

2011-11-11T13:50:00.002-05:00

A pile of fresh woodchips doesn't look particularly dynamic, but this one took only two days to start steaming.

The steam, which rose from only one spot, gave the pile the look of a miniature volcano. Though steam may look like smoke, it's a sign of health, not danger--the steam being an ongoing exhalation and venting of heat as microorganisms consume the wood's energy, transforming it into heat, CO2 and water vapor.

After a week or two, on a 55 degree day, the temperature about a foot beneath the surface was 140 degrees. It felt burning to the touch, but I've never heard of a small pile like this catching fire. I searched the web for testimonials, without success. "Georgia Gardener" website offered some validation for my lack of worry. It considers the danger of small backyard woodchip piles catching fire to be an urban legend. Much larger piles that are unable to vent their heat may be a different matter.

Some people try to use this heat. There's an urban greenhouse in Milwaukee that heats its greenhouses in part with compost.

If a lot of good organic nutrients end up in the wrong place, like these leaves and garden clippings incongruously banished to asphalt, or kitchen scraps thrown in the trash, it may be because any massing of organic matter is considered suspect. Fears that leaf piles cause odors, or kitchen scraps composting in the backyard attract varmints, often thrive without any need of evidence.

Part of getting back in sync with the natural world involves allowing decomposition a place in the yard, working with its quiet powers, and thereby mending the circle that is nature's endless cycling of nutrients.

Contrasts in Leaf Fall

2011-11-04T13:56:00.000-04:00

The juxtaposition of Norway Maple and Kentucky Coffee Tree makes for a stark contrast in relative timing of autumn leaf fall. The native coffee tree (Gymnocladus dioicus) strategy for life is to play dead for half the year. Thus its latin name, which means unclad. It drops its leaves early in the fall, and is the last tree to leaf out in the spring.

To the left of the coffee trees in the photo is a Norway Maple that has yet to react to fall weather. Like many woody plants introduced from other continents, it tends to leaf out early in the spring and drop late in the fall.

The Ginkgo tree, believed at one time to be only a fossil, then found alive and well in remote valleys of China, is now a common street tree with a dramatic approach to losing its leaves,

sometimes dropping them all in one day.

Sustainable Jazz Ensemble Demonstrates Note Upcycling

2011-11-03T13:04:00.003-04:00

This month, during two Princeton performances of its original jazz and latin compositions, the Sustainable Jazz Ensemble will demonstrate the art of musical note recycling. Tonight, Thursday, Nov. 3, we'll be at the Labyrinth Bookstore, down in the book-lined basement.

Friday, Nov. 18 at 8pm we'll perform a concert at the Arts Council of Princeton, with their beautiful grand piano.

The group specializes in the so-called "upcycling" of notes, which involves fashioning fresh, new melodies out of well-worn C's, B flats, G sharps, what have you. Our sophisticated jazz technology allows us to even utilize an occasional C flat or B sharp--notes that might otherwise sadly end up in a landfill. As is well known, most note recycling these days is done by iPods and other mechanical devices. To see a Sustainable Jazz Ensemble performance is to witness an updated form of ancient note recycling techniques, performed by real people operating real note-regenerating instruments.

In a culture where so much goes to waste, it can be satisfying to hear notes getting recycled in melodious ways at sometimes dizzying speeds, right before your very ears. Audience members are encouraged to bring spare musical notes for reuse during the performance. All scale tones, numbers 1-7, are accepted.

www.sustainablejazz.com

To hear music selections: www.myspace.com/sustainablejazz

A Banner Year for Hickory Nuts, Hicans, Butternuts and Beechnuts

2011-11-01T14:03:00.004-04:00

It's easier to dream of what bounty the forest once offered in a year when hickories and hicans are littering the ground with delicious nuts conveniently packaged for longterm storage. These in the photo are hickory nuts, which may trigger memories for some of Euell Gibbons pitching Grapenuts cereal.

In this photo, hicans from a hybrid pecan/hickory tree rub shells with butternuts (Juglans cinerea), also called white walnut. The butternut, particularly one that is pure native and not a hybrid, is fairly rare and made rarer by butternut canker. The canker disease, like so many diseases and insects that threaten our native trees, was likely introduced from another continent.

Some good news on that front is that local expert on nut-bearing trees, Bill Sachs, harvested 80 native butternuts from a local tree this fall, and has planted most of them in a small nursery for spring germination. He has already grown some from previous crops and planted them in various parks and preserves in Princeton, in an effort to help the species rebound in our area.

A good harvest of nuts deserves a good nut cracker--one that exerts pressure on either end so the meats inside don't get smashed in the process.

Given that this blog courageously endeavors not to turn its back on reality, and nature being what it is, there are some other--not particularly appetizing--species that take an interest in the nut crop. This, to me, seems like part of the adventure of real food, as opposed to the factory-like conformity favored on grocery shelves. Open-mindedness, though, is easier if the insects leave a goodly portion of the nuts untouched.

After collecting nuts from the ground, it's best to leave them in a metal bowl for a week or so to allow time for any pecan weevils to emerge. Nuts that don't have the characteristic exit hole should be fine to eat.

Another nut being scattered in Princeton's woodlands is the beech nut. Though it's reportedly edible, word of mouth has not been encouraging, and these in the photo turned out to be empty.

Save!, With Naturally Scary Halloween Decor

2011-10-31T10:42:00.001-04:00

"Holy habitat!", Batman. What's a giant spider doing climbing our chimney? Influenced by E.B. White and Charlotte's Web, I decided to approach the spider as friend, not foe, and asked if it would kindly pose over our front door for Halloween.

It proved to be an obliging spider, and will save us trying to find the fake spider stowed somewhere in the basement.

If the truth be known, these photos were generated a month ago when my standard approach to the house was suddenly complicated by some seriously strong fibers some twenty feet out. Suburban navigation is not usually impeded in this way. The fibers extended from a tree limb down fifteen feet to the ground, and held a spider calmly consuming its most recent catch, which appeared to be a yellow-jacket.

While I was thanking it for its good work in reducing the population of stinging insects, it apparently decided I would be too cumbersome to wrap up, and so headed back up to the tree limb, there likely to reconsider its web placement.

When I returned half an hour later, one of the two main vertical strands of the web had disappeared. The Wikipedia page on spider webs states that spiders often consume their own webs--a sort of recycling that is problematic for humans with store-bought Halloween webs.

For E.B. White fans, there's a good interview about the book "The Story of Charlotte's Web: E. B. White's Eccentric Life in Nature and the Birth of an American Classic" on NPR's Science Friday from August. It details White's careful research of spider behavior. Most amazing for me, watching the Charlotte's Web movie with my daughter years ago, was the "ballooning" scene, in which the young spiders make silk strands that become their sails to ride the wind to new locations.

In Death, a Long Life

2011-10-28T16:25:00.002-04:00

A big white oak, veteran of many storms, finally met a windstorm it couldn't match.

All its sprawling limbs came crashing down, leaving the trunk as a monument to its long and acornful life. The monument even bears its name on a label attached fifteen years ago as part of an eagle scout project.

One limb decided to patronize a heavyduty picnic table--those old tables that loom like lost battleships in the overgrown woods at Community Park North, strong enough to last for centuries but so uninviting and misplaced they never get used.

The tree was hollow, and last year rather gruesomely sported a raccoon that had sadly gotten stuck trying to exit through a hole 15 feet up.

Now, in its long life after death, it will begin the slow return to soil, sheltering and feeding life of all sorts in the process.

Edible Landscaping--Serviceberry

2011-10-28T16:01:00.000-04:00

Serendipity can really add to the flavor of food. How else to explain the delicious taste of serviceberries encountered several summers ago out along Route 1 in front of the FedEx store, formerly Kinko's. The tree--more like a shrub, or a shree or a trub or maybe a trush, given its size--is still there. Hopefully it doesn't get sprayed when bearing.

I mention it in case anyone is planting in fall, or wants to daydream through the winter of new native fruits to try out next year. It must be a cultivar, because the unbred serviceberries I planted in my yard years back have not borne anything to rival its berries' size and taste. Maybe FedEx could be talked into boxing up theirs and sending it along.

Serviceberry (genus Amelanchier) is also called shadbush, because it is said to bloom in early spring when the shad migrate up New Jersey's rivers to spawn. A cluster of mature serviceberries, of tastiness unknown, can also be found near the play equipment behind Community Park school.

Talk Tonight, 7pm, About New Mid-Atlantic Native Seed Bank

2011-10-26T10:01:00.000-04:00

Here's a chance to hear about an exciting and timely new collaboration between the NY City parks dept. and DR Greenway, to develop native seed production locally and elsewhere along the mid-Atlantic. Plant species exhibit genetic variation across their ranges, and there is an effort to preserve the distinct traits of local populations. One approach is to have multiple nurseries along the eastern seaboard, each of which grows natives drawn from local wild stock. Ed Toth of NY City Parks will be the speaker. More info here, and below:

"DR Greenway's St. Michaels Farm Preserve is host to a new pilot project in native seed production that could change the future of conservation. The 13 species of native seeds being grown at the site, with support from the Natural Resources Conservation Service, will be used to restore landfills in New York City and will contribute to a Mid-Atlantic Native Seed Bank. New York City Parks is our partner in this project, led by naturalist Ed Toth, Ph.D.

Seed is a critical natural resource that has been largely unrecognized, unprotected, and undermanaged. Locally adapted seed sources are widely acknowledged as critical for habitat restoration because they do not pose a genetic risk to surrounding native plant populations. However, our seed resources are in danger of being lost from misuse of non-local source seeds.Learn how to begin to wisely manage resources through seed banking and seed networks to prevent the extinction of these critical natural resources."

Ring-Necked Snake

2011-10-25T10:44:00.002-04:00

Why did the Ring-necked snake cross the road?

Answer #1: Because the habitat is always greener on the other side.
Answer #2: So it could learn its name from a biologist passing by.

Thanks to Tim Anderson, environmental science teacher at Princeton High School, for the photo and email below. There's long been talk of putting "Turtle Crossing" signs along the driveway up to Mountain Lakes House. Here's another denizen of the woods whose wanderings sometimes intersect with asphalt.

"Biking up the road to the house at Mt. Lakes, ran into a couple trying to help a juvenile snake cross the road...It was so small we couldn't pick it up with fingers...but got it off the road while a car waited to pass. It matches this northern subspecies picture of ring-necked snake juvenile. It was about this size too." --Tim

Nature Walk This Saturday, 10am-noon, Herrontown Woods

2011-10-21T10:37:00.000-04:00

For all those who happen to be fancy free and wanting to get out tomorrow, I'll be leading a nature walk through the color-coded forest at Herrontown Woods in the morning. Meet at 10am at the preserve's parking lot, which is at the end of the deadend road opposite the Snowden Lane entrance to Smoyer Park. Included in the walk will be a visit to the grounds of the Veblen Farmstead, and a discussion of recent progress towards preserving and restoring the long-boarded up buildings there.

Porcelain Berry--New Jersey's Kudzu

2011-10-12T16:41:00.002-04:00

Anyone for a little topiary? This shot was taken last week at Princeton Battlefield, where the battle for Princeton's open space is currently being won by the kudzu of the north--porcelainberry. A vine native to northeast Asia, porcelainberry is related to grapes, and grows over ground, shrubs and trees like a grapevine on steriods.

It has beautiful berries, which may have helped gain it transport originally to our continent, but its rapid advances along the DR Canal, at the Princeton Battlefield, and elsewhere in recent years does not bode well for any other species seeking to share in the sun.

Lest one think all is lost, the Oct. 11 Princeton Packet includes a picture of volunteers at the battlefield removing another invasive weed--bamboo. The recent workday was a collaboration of the NJ Div. of Parks and the Sierra Club.

66 Acres Along Princeton Ridge Preserved

2011-10-12T12:01:00.000-04:00

The mood was celebratory at the ribbon cutting for two newly preserved tracts along Princeton Ridge. One tract, the 14 acre Ricciardi property, came very close to being developed several years ago. The adjoining 35 acre All Saints Church parcel connects the Ricciardi tract to Herrontown Woods, which in turn connects with Autumn Hill Reservation and additional undeveloped lands towards Kingston. With the 17 acres along Bunn Drive to be donated by developer Bob Hillier, an extraordinary corridor is now preserved, due to the persistence and generosity of many people and organizations.

Here's an attempt to list all the organizations involved in the effort: Friends of Princeton Open Space, DR Greenway, NJ Conservation Foundation, NJ Green Acres, Mercer County, Princeton Township, Save Princeton Ridge, Stonybrook-Millstone Watershed Association, and Kingston Greenways.

Afterwards, everyone got to say a few words at the reception at Mountain Lakes House, including U.S. Congressman Rush Holt.

In the middle of this remarkable corridor stand the boarded up house, cottage and barn of the Veblen homestead. See veblenhouse.blogspot.com for information on efforts to restore these county-owned buildings, to serve as a useful destination that could increase utilization and appreciation of the preserved open space by the public.

What to Do With Grass Clippings

2011-10-03T14:32:00.001-04:00

This photo may not be worth a thousand words, but it started a nice conversation. It so happened that, during one of my ongoing documentations of the export of nutrients from Princeton's yards, the owner pulled in. I figured he'd think, "Oh, just another Princetonian photographing my beautiful grass clippings," but to my surprise he came over and expressed interest in knowing what was so interesting about two blobs of discarded green.

It seemed inauspicious to begin a conversation by saying there's a (unenforced) borough ordinance against putting grass clippings on the street, but a mutual interest in composting quickly emerged. I offered news that the county extension master gardeners recommend leaving grass clippings on the lawn, so that all the clippings' nitrogen returns to the soil rather than getting washed down the street into Carnegie Lake. The dreaded thatch buildup of yore, which once spurred homeowners to bag up grass clippings, apparently dissolved into a myth.

Grass clippings' high nitrogen content endows them with the power to do great good or considerable harm. Massing them in piles tilts them towards harm. They pack tightly, shutting out oxygen, thereby making perfect habitat for anaerobic bacteria to feast on the rich organic matter. Break open a pile of grass clippings that have been sitting for awhile, and you will learn the hard way that the anaerobic decomposition process produces vapors profoundly repellent to humans. Aerobic bacteria, by contrast, do not produce nasty odors. Therefore, the best thing to do with grass clippings, if one is determined not to leave them on the lawn, is to give them access to air by spreading them in a thin layer either on a compost pile or as a thin mulch under shrubs.

Particularly relevant this time of year, autumn leaves, chopped up as one's mowing the lawn, can also be left to settle down into the ground between the grass blades.

Television Composting

2011-10-03T14:03:00.037-04:00

With contributions from friends, and periodic curbside rescue efforts in the neighborhood, 4 TVs, 2 computer monitors, 2 printers and a microwave were diverted from the landfill and made their way to the Oct. 1 Mercer County electronics recycling event.

There, all the rejected middle-aged TVs finally got to socialize again after their long careers of solitary confinement in living rooms, and soon set to commiserating about the boring programs they were forced to show, and the humiliation of being dumped after years of high fidelity for some slim young thing their owners met on the internet. Soon they would depart on their final journey to (we can hope) an environmentally benign deconstruction and recycling facility.

Though the delivery seemed a small victory, it also dramatizes how far short society falls in imitating nature's recycling program, which brilliantly deconstructs and reuses any and all of its creations wherever they land.

Fall Foliage Walk by Henry and Betty Horn

2011-09-30T14:26:00.000-04:00

An upcoming walk of note:

Kingston Greenways Association Fall Foliage Walk

Saturday, October 15, 2011 - 2:00 pm at Mapleton Preserve/D&R Canal State Park headquarters – 145 Mapleton Road, Kingston

Naturalists Henry and Betty Horn will lead the walk. Both Betty and Henry are enthusiastic teachers and will share their expertise on a walk that focuses on trees (Henry), flowers (Betty) and whatever other discoveries are made during this leisurely hike.

Betty is an avid botanist with an intimate knowledge of our local wildflowers. She has served as Curator of the Biological Collections at the Princeton University Museum of Natural History since 1978. Henry, now Professor Emeritus, has taught in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton since 1966, and is well known for his professional enthusiasm and dedication. He has wide-ranging interests in natural history, a passion to understand our local environment and its context, and a deep fascination with tree ecology.

With any luck, the fall foliage will be in full display. If desired, bring binoculars or tree or wildflower identification books. Don’t forget to wear sensible shoes, and dress for the weather.

The meeting is free and open to the public.

Electronics and Hazardous Waste Collection Event Tomorrow, Oct. 1

2011-09-30T14:07:00.000-04:00

It's time to fill up the old pickup truck with collected electronics and drive over to the Mercer County event to have them recycled. If you can't make it out there and want to drop something off for me to take along, give me a call in Princeton at 609 252 0724 or find my email address on the View My Complete Profile link. Here is a link to detailed information about what can be recycled at the event.

Of particular note, they recycle televisions, which people often put out on the curb, unwittingly violating a state law that is on the books but very hush hush.

For directions to the event, which is 9-2 this Saturday, use this address: 240 Bakers Basin Road, Lawrenceville, NJ 08648-3308 (Lawrence Twp Public Works). There can be a line of cars there, but it moves along at a good rate.

Signs of Fall

2011-09-28T12:58:00.004-04:00

Every year, it's good to remind people that goldenrod is NOT allergenic. Goldenrod is golden as a means of attracting bees that then do the work of spreading the pollen, rather than the wind. The true allergen is ragweed, which blooms at the same time of the year as goldenrod and has inconspicuous green flowers--green because ragweed (Ambrosia artemisiifolia) is wind-pollenated and therefore doesn't need to attract insects with bright colors.

Walk along most any nature trail in Princeton this time of year and you're likely to see a shrub that is turning yellow a few leaves at a time. This is spicebush (Lindera benzoin), an important shrub for bird nesting and also for its lipid-rich red berries. Lipids are fats, and fat is a more concentrated form of energy than sugars and carbohydrates. Birds like to travel light, so high lipid foods are the best fuel for their migrations. Professional deer management in the township over the past decade has allowed spicebush to make a dramatic comeback in Princeton's forests.

Now is the the last chance to pull out Japanese stiltgrass (Microstegium vimineum) that may be invading your flower beds, before its seeds mature and fall to the ground. Stiltgrass is an annual introduced to the U.S. back when it was used as packing material for porcelain from Japan. At Mountain Lakes Preserve, it forms monoculture meadows on the forest floor. It uses a "warm season" growth strategy similar to crabgrass, sprouting from roughly a gazillion seeds late in spring, maturing in late summer. You'll find it growing in miniature in your lawn, or crawling 4 or 5 feet high, up and over other plants. This plant's a big, big problem if one's interested in promoting biodiversity, and the best way to keep it from becoming an ongoing nuisance in one's yard is to catch it early and pull it out before it drops its seed. If deer would eat it, some sense of balance could return to the local woods, but don't expect their taste buds to change any time soon, despite the presence of this hugely abundant food source. Read more here.

Persimmon is a native tree that typically bears fruit out of reach. This photo was taken thirty feet up, looking down from the new university bridge over Washington Road, between the chemistry building and the athletic fields. A couple more years growth and we'll be able to pluck the fruit from the bridge.

One Man's Mess Is Another Bird's Habitat

2011-09-25T17:04:00.000-04:00

Sometimes, most of the time, it's easier to conceive of possibilities than realize them. Take this pile of wood, for example. Great stuff, and delivered at no cost! It can be chopped up to make carbon-neutral fuel in a modern, clean-burning stove,

or it can be stacked to make sculptures in the backyard.

Or, it can sit in the driveway, unsplit for most of the summer.

Free time and determination finally converged in the Princeton doldrums of late August, and I was feeling celebratory about the diminishing size of the pile when a Carolina wren came over and perched on the remaining wood, just three feet from me. Puffing up its feathers in an endearing show of chutzpa, it seemed to be pleading with me to leave the pile be. From the human perspective, I was cleaning up a blighted part of the driveway. In the bird's world, I was messing with what?, a nest?, a wonderfully chambered kindergarten for fledglings?, a playground?, a safe harbor from neighborhood cats? A birder friend told me they would not be nesting that late in the summer.

Later, four wrens were seen having some sort of discussion on another woodpile, with a similar indifference to my approach. By the time I had returned with a camera, they had left, apparently resigned to the inscrutable need of humans to dismantle perfectly good jumbles of wood.

Princeton Day School Community Day at Mountain Lakes

2011-09-23T14:33:00.002-04:00

On September 16 at 9am, 100 PDS 9th graders arrived at Community Park North ready to help remove invasive plants, as part of the school's annual Community Day. First step was to buddy up with 4th graders who had also made the hike over from their school.

After a brief intro by yours truly about plant identification, the why and the wherefore of invasive plant control, and some tips on how to use loppers, saws and garden rakes safely, they set about the day's task.

Neither the thorns of multiflora rose nor the sheer numbers of invasive shrubs crowding the woods could deter them from their newfound mission. Those with loppers cut honeysuckle, privet and multiflora rose, while others hauled the cuttings into brushpiles, to serve as habitat.

What I particularly enjoy is showing the kids how to work together, use the tools most effectively, and how to get into a steady working rhythm so that a lot can be accomplished. After a morning's work session, they could see the difference they had made.

Native shrubs intermixed with the exotic invasives had been tagged beforehand, and left uncut to take advantage of the additional sun and water available now that the exotic competition had been removed. In the photo is spicebush (Lindera benzoin), which the kids discovered gives off an appealing fragrance when the leaves are scratched. That natives will fill the void left by the removed invasives helps make clear the positive impact of the work.

An innovative method of transporting litter was developed when some of the kids went back out to pick up stray tools.

During the lunch break, volunteer Andrew Thornton engaged the kids in some juggling.

After lunch, I led the 9th graders on a tour through the 400 acres of preserved land in and around Mountain Lakes. Like so many Princetonians, the majority of the kids had never seen Pettoranello Gardens, the evergreen forest, or the historic fields of John Witherspoon's Tusculum. (the area we worked on is in the lower right; PDS school is in the upper left)

They walked past trees stripped of their limbs by Hurricane Irene,

clambored across a bridge washed askew by the recent flooding,

and past construction to restore the lower dam at Mountain Lakes.

At one stop along the way, a student asked why it's called Mountain Lakes if there are no mountains nearby. I explained that Princeton bestows its ennobling magic on all within its borders, making ponds into lakes and hills into mountains. These words having been spoken, I am sure that all within earshot gazed out upon the landscape with new eyes.

When they reached the turn leading to their school, they disappeared up the trail, their good deeds done and another school year begun.

The Friends of Princeton Open Space thank the students and teachers of Princeton Day School for their contribution to restoring habitat in town.

Thanks also to community volunteers Andrew Thornton and Tony Beesley for helping out with supervision.

Landscaping No No

2011-09-22T10:36:00.001-04:00

Landscaping rule #1: Do not plant spreading, spineful rose bushes next to a middle school sidewalk. (My daughter came home bleeding one day some years back, thanks to these schoolyard bullies.)

Note to self last week: Take pruners along on next dog walk.

Followup Observations: An unidentified pedestrian, accompanied by a baffled dog, was seen cutting intrusive nastoids back from sidewalk, in time for Back to School Night. Human intervention may not be necessary in future years. The shrubs appear to be succumbing to the same rose rosette disease that is (fortunately) knocking out the invasive multiflora rose in Princeton's woodlands.

Chestnuts Boiling On A Stovetop Fire

2011-09-20T14:41:00.003-04:00

This week's roadside menu features chestnuts. The American chestnut, once a prominent tree in our forests and an important source of food for wildlife and people, was laid low by a lowly imported fungus more than a century ago. The native species is making a slow comeback thanks to decades of breeding to develop immunity to the disease, but in the meantime, there are chestnuts of Asian origin scattered here and there in Princeton that scatter their tasty treats on the streets this time of year.

The treats come encased in a spiny covering that looks and feels like a baby brown porcupine.

Squirrels, as always, get first dibs, combing their whiskers at the same time.

But a few yield up a shiny treasure for lowly humans.

Though Mel Torme makes chestnuts roasting on an open fire sound appealing, the first batch tasted great after 15-20 minutes of boiling, with a flavor reminiscent of sweet potatoes. Recently, though, a friend roasted some on a gas grill for a similar amount of time, and it has to be said that the aroma generated by a plate full of freshly roasted chestnuts is enough to endear one for life to this rarely encountered food.

As any squirrel can tell you, the chestnut is not to be confused with the Horse Chestnut (Aesculus hippocastanum), which lacks the dense spines and is inedible. Palmate (leaflets radiate out like fingers from the palm of the hand) leaf and nut in photo. I used to collect horse chestnuts as a kid, in part because of their lustrous beauty but also with big plans to use them as ammunition in defense of strategic positions. Can't remember if any battles were actually waged.

Below is some advice from Bill Sachs, our resident expert on nut-bearing trees, about eating chestnuts (Castanea sp.). Harvesting chestnuts from the roadside, it's hard to tell if they've already cured for a week, and the chestnuts we've cooked thus far have been free of any bugs, but it's good to keep these things in mind. Also, be sure to score the shell before cooking. Otherwise they can explode like popcorn. I had one spit in my eye.

From Bill:

"Most nuts need to “cure” for a week or more after harvest to reduce their moisture content before they acquire proper flavor and texture.

One note of caution… before you roast your chestnuts, cut a couple of them in half to see if they contain curculio larvae. The chestnut curculio or weevil is a fairly widespread pest that lays its eggs in developing chestnuts. When the chestnuts fall to the ground, the change in temperature signals the eggs somehow and they hatch. The result can be an unpleasant surprise. In their natural life cycle, the larvae emerge from the chestnuts by eating a small hole in the shell and burrowing into the ground to emerge a year or two later as the next generation of weevils."

Stuart School and FOPOS Collaborate

2011-09-20T10:04:00.001-04:00

The forests of Princeton and Central America both got a boost on a recent Saturday, when volunteers met behind Stuart School to clear trails and remove invasive plants. The afternoon's work was preceded by a presentation by leaders of a Fair Trade coffee collective, who explained how the purchase of Fair Trade Certified coffee works to improve the lives of coffee growers. Camila T., a Stuart School student who has been very active in promoting Fair Trade products in Princeton and beyond, served as translator for farmer Angelina Espinosa.

Afterwards, more or less bravely oblivious to the arrival of onagainoffagain rain, we headed into the woods to improve boardwalks and cut invasive shrubs like privet and Asian Photinia. A collaboration has been long in the works between Friends of Princeton Open Space and Stuart School, which is directly upstream of Mountain Lakes. Impetus to finally set things rolling came from Sophie Glovier and Stuart School science teacher Eric Anderson.

Coffee with the Fair Trade emblem on the package, competitive in taste and price, can be found at McCaffery's and no doubt many other locations in town.

Tall Yellows

2011-09-19T09:33:00.001-04:00

One way a study of plants benefits overall thinking is the way they offer exercise in making distinctions. For minds that like to lazily leap to generalizations, plants offer a case for taking a closer look.

In a field of lanky yellow flowers, it's easy to say "they all look the same" until one looks.

Helenium autumnale has a yellow head and short petals.

Greenheaded (cutleaf) coneflower has green heads and long petals that flare back like a cone.

Cup plant has yet another assortment of distinguishing characters,

and characteristically distinct flower buds. The "cup" can be seen where the pairs of leaves surround the stem and form a container that holds rainwater. Though I've never seen cupplant in the wild, it's a native that has been planted most notably in NY's Central Park along the lakefronts as part of their habitat restoration.

Those shown here in the photos were a discrete propagation from a fine stand found growing next to the dumpster in the parking lot of Mark Twain's house in Hartford, CN.

Cattails Growing in Asphalt

2011-09-19T09:28:00.001-04:00

Late summer was so wet that cattails grew in cracks in the pavement,

along with nut sedge.

Actually, species that thrive in wet soils can also survive well on roadsides, where soil compaction creates the same low-oxygen conditions that wetland species have adapted to in waterlogged soils. Street trees like pin oak, willow oak, sycamore and elm are all floodplain species.

Backlit Grasses

2011-09-18T08:34:00.000-04:00

On the backside of the high school grow some backlit grasses--this year's placeholders for schoolyard garden dreams. The raised beds lovingly and optimistically installed in recent years at the town's middle school and elementary schools are living their dreams, prospering with their intended vegetables planted by students and cared for over the summer by volunteers.

Some glitch this past spring, however, left the high school gardens unplanted and untended, allowing the weeds to throw a party in the rich soil. Better to say that the garden is now a weed study lab, providing insights into the succession from intention to unintention. Old buildings and civilizations tend to follow a similar path. In the first photo, one of the many species of foxtail.

In the second photo, barnyard grass arches across in the foreground. There's a smartweed in there, too, just behind the barnyard grass, leaning to the right.

Weeds seem like free spirits, self-sufficient. But weeds need our neglect. They need the fresh ground laid bare and enriched by good intentions. "Knowing" us better than we know ourselves, they patiently wait for us to move on to other things, having set the stage for their glory.

Plant Sale This Weekend at D&R Greenway

2011-09-15T08:57:00.000-04:00

D&R Greenway will have a native plant sale in Princeton this coming Friday and Saturday from 3-6pm. More information can be found here.

Inadvertent Black Walnut Husking

2011-09-13T13:59:00.001-04:00

Every year around this time, a homeowner on Linden Lane dumps black walnuts at the curb, apparently for pickup by the Boro Yardwaste Patrol's giant claw. As cars drive by, many of the walnuts get processed, that is, run over and stripped of their yellow-green husks. My father used to do this--put walnuts in the driveway and drive over them until the husks were off. What was left were the walnuts, with meats safe within an iron-hard shell. We may have tried breaking some open with a hammer, then toiled to pick out what small portions of nut were inside. Most of them remained for years in a big tin can in the basement. I think of that toil and trouble every time I buy a bag of nuts, all perfectly cleaned.

Breaking apart some of the nuts collected on Linden with a hammer proved very easy, though the meats were only black papery remains--nothing edible. Clearly, more gathering and testing is needed.

Dragonflies Dazzle in Local Parks

2011-09-10T21:10:00.001-04:00

If you're out in a park tomorrow, take a look up in the air.

First, a memory: A couple years ago (will have to check what time of year), I chanced to walk into Potts Park--the little pocket park just off North Harrison Street--to find the sky filled with hundreds of large dragonflies. A closer look revealed that they were feasting on small winged, antlike insects streaming up out of the ground. The dragonflies zigged and zagged, snatching flies from just above the lawn up to sixty feet or so. Above them, in turn, was a flock of swallows trying to catch the dragonflies. A plain park of grass and play equipment had been transformed into a dazzling airborne foodchain of hunters and hunted, all precipitated by the hatching of a colony of insects that had probably been quietly living under our feet the whole summer. The plain lawn proved not so plain after all.

This memory came quickly to mind when today, returning home around 5:30pm, I found a phone message from Peter Wolanin, former collegue on the Princeton Environmental Commission. He had called to tell me dragonflies were swarming in Quarry Park. There had been lots yesterday, but still quite a few today. I got there in time to find about twenty large dragonflies, bluish in tint, flying above the lawn. What, don't you see them in the photo? I had about as much luck photographing their zippings around as the swallows had two years ago catching them for dinner.

There were no swallows this time, but I was able to track down the source of the small insects the dragonflies were catching. They were emerging out of a plain patch of mowed grass and mugwort near a stormdrain.

These, too, were hard to photograph, but you can see their antlike shape and wings. They crawled around on the grass blades until ready to fly. Some appeared much smaller than the others.

They're tiny, but apparently worth the while for the dragonflies. It's a scene not unlike the hatching of sea turtle eggs on a beach, where the baby turtles then have to run the gauntlet from nest to surf before getting snagged by a seagull.

Though the dragonflies' approach could seem helter skelter, they will sometimes assume a very systematic search pattern. Staying head height off the ground, one will fly thirty feet in a straight line, then make two perfect 90 degree turns to return in the opposite direction, exactly parallel to its previous path, offset about five feet. The pattern seldom lasts long before they break it to snag another insect.

A few dragonflies were also found patrolling above Potts Park today, a quarter of a mile away, where a similar hatch must have occurred.

More distant memories of dragonfly swarms were more likely associated with migration, such as when I saw thousands of them flying what must have been north, above the freeway that parallels the shoreline in Chicago.

There are many, many videos of dragonflies swarming on youtube. Here's one from "thedragonflylady."

Searching for Pettoranello Gardens

2011-09-10T09:08:00.004-04:00

One of Princeton's secret, verdant enclaves is Pettoranello Gardens. If you not only know where it is but can also spell the name correctly, you are truly among a select few. It's a bit like the word "Wednesday", which refuses to spell itself the way people say it.

The Gardens can be found just down the paved trail from the Community Park North parking lot, off Mountain Avenue at 206.

Though the setting looks natural, it was reportedly once a dump. After a great deal of cleaning up, ground was pushed around to form a berm to buffer the Gardens from 206, and a pond was created, fed by a stream diverted from its original course.

The grounds are tended by volunteers with the Pettoranello Foundation--Pettoranello being Princeton's sister town in Italy, from whence many Princetonians originally came. They traditionally have workdays early on Sunday mornings, assisted by township staff.

The centerpiece of the Gardens is Pettoranello Pond, a manmade impoundment with a maximum depth around 8 feet.

An amphitheater looks out over Pettoranello Pond. This performance space used to host Shakespeare plays in the summer, but now is mostly used for periodic musical performances, and just today by the local Stone Soup Circus. I believe the Princeton Township recreation department oversees programming.

A dense planting of alders along banks breaks up the view of the water, but no doubt helps support the banks next to the paved trail.

Though the pond was dredged not long ago, it's upstream end is already filling with sediment from the feeder stream. I wish there were a way to periodically dig the sediment out, so as to postpone the next dredging, but in the meantime the shallows are great habitat for turtles. The pond is fed by two branches of Mountain Brook, one that comes tumbling down from the Princeton Ridge next to 206, the other beginning at the north end of the high school grounds, along Guillo Street.

Homage to a Swimming Pool

2011-09-08T15:08:00.004-04:00

It was a summer like many others at the Community Park pool, with blue umbrellas and well-tended purple coneflowers gazing skyward at the entryway,

and blazing stars playing off the banners stretched across the main pool.

Sun and shadow played upon the walls of the dressing rooms,

whose patterned weatherings spoke so richly of the years.

Clock hands counted hours slowly,

and whistles 'round the watchful lifeguards' fingers twirled, as timeless summer days sped by.

By Labor Day, the last day for summer and for this pool, the flowers had faded,

to merge with deeper greens.

The sun cast no shadows, and it was time to take some last shots of what will soon be gone.

Forty years of passing days, arcing suns and summer squalls, etched in a wall.

Wondrous space where in is out and out comes in, welcoming breeze and tips of trees,

sheltered but not enclosed,

seamlessly shifting from in to out.

Up the spiraling stairs, perched on stilts,

gentle authority spoke from humble highrise,

voice reaching round the rounded shrubs,

whose soft ramparts sheltered birds,

and others who might wish to fly.

There were town folk tan with splash gargantuan,

and a past Olympian

who cut

the water

clean.

It seemed, as final lengths were swum, the rippled light could dance forever 'cross the bottom of the pool,

but in the end, time ran out on the timeless. The well-aged words of closing came, to ask the scattered to be gathered, the gathered to disperse, reminding us that all goodbyes come by and by.

A place so welcoming of people and the elements will now to the elements return. For sun and shadow, birds and bathers, a new year will bring new habitat.

May this place play long upon our memories.

Surprises Along the Boardwalk

2011-09-06T15:02:00.001-04:00

When the township, with the help of a grant from the J. Seward Johnson, Sr. Charitable Trust and considerable initiative by the Friends of Princeton Open Space, built the long boardwalk below Coventry Farm, it provided a convenient link from the Great Road and Farmview Fields Park over to Mountain Lakes Preserve. From a botanist's point of view, it seemed moreover a great place to show off native wetland plants. The boardwalk extends three feet high over a corridor typically kept wet by seepage from Coventry Farm. Unfortunately, early planting efforts fell victim to the smothering growth of an invasive plant called reed canary grass, here seen growing over the edges of the boardwalk like a green wave.

On a recent visit, however, a few self-planted native wildflowers were found holding there own in spaces left open by the reed canary grass. Here's some arrow-leaved tearthumb, so called because its stem is raspy if you run your fingers down it.

Moths grazed on a goldenrod.

Virginia creeper imitated topiary on a fencepost.

An elderberry bush showed promise of providing edible berries in years to come.

Clumps of ironweed were about to add purple blooms to the picturesque view.

A prairie grass called purple top gave the meadow a colorful sheen at the Great Road end of the boardwalk.

Most intriguing was a clump of boneset. Type "boneset" into the search window at the upper left of this webpage and you'll find many posts documenting the seemingly endless variety of insects and spiders that take up residence for the month of August in its miniature metropolis of white flowers.

This particular boneset did not disappoint. A close look at the center of this photo holds a surprise--for people as well as a hapless wasp that had been feeding on the nectar.

Waiting just under the flowers was a praying mantis, which had grabbed the wasp and was now enjoying its lunch. The accumulation of wasp legs on the leaf below suggests the praying mantis is particular about which pieces of the anatomy it consumes.

Heading back towards Mountain Lakes, the seeds of green bulrush,

and the prospect of a fine picnic for humans in a week or two.

Towpath Seeks Mule Team After Flood

2011-09-06T14:25:00.000-04:00

Maybe the mules that once towed the boats along the canal could return to scrape all the mud off of the towpath. When I stopped by, three days after Hurricane Irene's deluge, a fine layer of goo had been deposited throughout the floodplain. Rivers have long deposited sediment in floodplains during floods, enriching the soil. Hopefully, lighter rains will wash the mud off of the trail.

It was easy to see how deep the floodwaters had been--about knee-high along the towpath near Harrison Street.

Meanwhile, at Rogers Refuge, upstream from Alexander Road, floodwaters rose halfway up the kiosk.

Unexpected Beauty In a Thistle

2011-08-30T13:32:00.000-04:00

This may be a bull thistle, found along the sewer right of way at Mountain Lakes. Bull thistles are not native, but the seed head is quite a sight.

Close up, the seeds look as if they're auditioning for the role of the forest spirits in the movie Avatar.

Pictorial Impression of a Bee Sting

2011-08-29T12:25:00.001-04:00

This hardwon image might rightly be entitled: "Portrait of a Forest While Being Stung By a Bee". It's poignantly called "Ouch!!" for short. Few have dared to try this innovative, impressionistic approach to nature photography. Fortunately, the camera landed on leaf litter rather than a rock. Identification of the bee down to species level was made more difficult by its capacity for remaining unseen.

Princeton High School Floods Again

2011-08-28T12:16:00.003-04:00

Yesterday, with Hurricane Irene headed our way, I stopped by the Princeton High School to check on preparations for the coming deluge. This part of the school had stormwater seep under the doors a week ago, and was most emphatically flooded two years prior when Hurricane Bill paid a visit. I've heard from several sources that the bill for Hurricane Bill included a new stage floor for the high school's performing arts center, which had become warped by flooding damage. Even if insurance paid for the replacement, one has to wonder if the district school's insurance rates took a jump afterwards.

Here's how the flooding happens: The retention basin in the photo (a.k.a. "ecolab", which we have planted with native wetland species), is surrounded on three sides by the high school and receives runoff from the high school roofs and also from nearby parking lots. The basin in turn drains into the system of stormwater pipes underneath Walnut Street. If it rains long enough and hard enough, however, the street's underground stormdrain system becomes filled to the brim, water has nowhere to go, and the basin overflows. At that point, pipes no longer matter and surface flow dictates where floodwater goes. Since water flows downhill, the only way to get rid of the water is for it to flow out to Walnut Street and safely away from the building. Unfortunately, Walnut Street is higher than the high school doorway thresholds. In these heavy rains, Walnut Street floods and becomes a river, and stormwater actually flows towards the high school rather than away.

The highschool has responded to this by placing sandbags in front of all the doorways during heavy rains. These help, but when I stopped by at 1am this morning, after Irene's fury had begun to ease, the music room and hallway into the performing arts center showed signs of having again been flooded. (These photos were taken this morning, after stormwater had receded.)

Exasperated school staff were trying to pump water out of the school. The custodians had just finished prepping all the floors for the return of students, and now they would have to do it all over again. The cafeteria had flooded, and it looked like utility rooms in the basement were now under water.

One staff member tried to blame the vegetation in the retention basin, but all around him was evidence that the vegetation had played no role in the flooding whatsoever.

The drain, photographed this morning, showed no signs of blockage, which is no surprise given that, when the street storm drains become overwhelmed, the water reverses flow and heads in to the retention basin from the street, rather than out.

At 1am this morning, this whole area was a lake.

A curb cut meant to carry surface water away from the retention basin was instead carrying water towards it.

The only solution I see is to lower the curb on the other side of Walnut Street so that the mighty Walnut Street River can flow into the field owned by Westminster Conservatory.

This, in fact, is what some water was doing last night, but to an insufficient extent.

A pond formed in this field last night, next to the Westminster parking lot. Last year, the field was declared by Westminster's own consultants to be a wetland that could not be developed. Since the conservatory uses the highschool performing arts center for some of its performances, utilizing this field more effectively to prevent flooding of the high school seems to be a solution that would benefit all involved.

What needs to be made clear to decision-makers is that the native plantings in the retention basin have no impact on flooding, lest this ecologically vibrant and educational planting become the victim of an invasion of red herring.

Hurricane Irene--A Reprise of Hurricane Bill's Flooding Two Years Prior

2011-08-28T10:39:00.003-04:00

Most of these photos are from a post two years ago after Hurricane Bill paid a visit to Princeton. Hurricane Irene, because it passed through 'round midnight last night, was less photogenic, but the impact of the torrential rains was the same. The underground pipes designed to carry away stormwater get overwhelmed, the streets become rivers, and the flow of the water becomes dictated by the lay of the land (and streets).

In my part of town, these massive downpours cause water to flow from the high school and Westminster Conservatory onto Franklin Street. It then takes a right down Ewing before making an unfortunate left turn into the apartment parking lot.

The water then flows pell mell down to the bottom of the parking lot, (photo taken today, after flooding was over)

quickly overwhelms the stormdrain, then heads under the fence into people's backyards.

This is not good. The water came within one inch of the neighbor's threshold.

After flowing diagonally across the block through backyards and around foundations, it emerges across the street from me, spilling over the curb at Ewing and Harrison Street on its way down to the intersection with Hamilton, where it serves as a traffic calming device.

Back at the point where things go wrong on Ewing Street, this unfortunate foray of stormwater runoff into people's backyards could be avoided if the entryway to the apartment parking lot off Ewing Street was raised slightly so that the surface water would continue down Ewing rather than flow into the parking lot.

I proposed this solution to the borough engineer two years ago, to no avail. Reportedly, the borough has no control of the matter, and the apartment complex is within its rights to (unintentionally) "harvest" stormwater from a public street and divert it into the yards of neighbors.

All this seems strange. Since the needed modification is within the boundaries of the borough's street right of way (the street right of way actually includes the sidewalks), the borough would seem within its rights to intervene. In the meantime, history continues to repeat itself.

More White Pines and Spruce Dying

2011-08-25T12:04:00.000-04:00

The latest white pine fatality in the neighborhood is at the edge of my backyard and Potts Park. Across the street from my house is a dead spruce. The township arborist believes that the drought last summer, plus another drought this year in late June and July, may have stressed some of the local white pines and spruces beyond their limits.

Another arborist tells me that the herbicide Imprelis, mentioned in a previous post as a possible culprit, would only affect the more manicured areas where herbicides are more likely to be used. Spruce and white pine have been dying in many unmanicured areas, and he sees climate shift as a likely cause. White pines and spruce were introduced to Princeton from their more natural range to the north, suggesting they'd be the first to show stress from increasing heat and drought.

Though all urban trees eventually have to be removed, typically at a cost of $1000 or more, one can speculate that the weather extremes associated with climate change are making those costs come due earlier than they would otherwise.

This particular tree had a scar that surely didn't help.

Kayaking Through A Wetland Garden--the Lehigh River and Glen Onoko Falls

2011-08-22T08:17:00.002-04:00

Say you love to whitewater canoe, and want your kids to experience the same joys of running rapids that you remember from childhood. But you live in New Jersey. Chances are, your internet research will lead you beyond the Delaware River to the Poconos, which turn out to be in Pennsylvania. As it happened, they were right on the way to a family gathering we were having at ancestral grounds further west.

Rentable canoes for whitewater apparently no longer exist, but Blue Mountain Sports offers a ten mile do-it-yourself kayak trip through some easier rapids on the Lehigh River, starting at the town of Jim Thorpe.

The rapids were a perfect introduction for my daughter, who quickly figured out how to follow the current and steer clear of the rocks.

Meanwhile, Dad was getting distracted by the native plant diversity flourishing along river's edge. Conducting plant inventories while negotiating rapids may prove to be the next new fad in extreme botany. Cardinal flower (red) and JoePyeWeed (pink) grew thick along the shore, mixed with a host of other familiar native species that sometimes made me feel like I was kayaking through my backyard.

One surprise was the streamside stands of big bluestem, a tall native grass more typical of midwestern prairies. It's also called turkey foot, for the 3-pronged seedheads it sticks up into the air like an upside down turkey. (Other species seen as the current pulled us along: river birch, red maple, alder, spiraea, buttonbush, deciduous holly, buckthorn (hopefully the native Rhamnus lanceolata), meadow rue, fringed loosestrife, cutleaf coneflower, and what looked like a native hosta.)

Causing some worry were a few sightings of Japanese knotweed, an exotic species that can replace native diversity with a monoculture over time.

Here, a cardinal flower is trying to hold on at the edge of an expanding Japanese knotweed clone. A several-acre field of solid J. knotweed seen on the way in to Jim Thorpe foretells what could happen to this beautiful river corridor if no preemptive action is taken to nip knotweed's invasion in the bud.

Later on, camping at Mauch Chunk State Park, the lakeshore offered still more familiar wetland garden species. Here's deer tongue grass, which in Princeton is numerous along the towpath.

Pickerelweed blooms all summer long just out from the shoreline, thriving in the stable water regime of the park's impoundment.

The next day, after making a note to research better pads for sleeping in a tent, it was back to the Lehigh River for a hike up a narrow valley to the Glen Onoko Falls.

The trail is unmaintained, and described as steep and dangerous. On a dry day, and exercising some care, the hike was easily doable. We had almost as much fun going up as the water clearly was having cascading down the hillside.

For a picnic at the top, the view provides the main sustenance.

Flood Alert--Basement Recall

2011-08-21T22:26:00.002-04:00

Heavy rains in late August can cause major mischief in Princeton, with many people gone on vacation and a lot of basements left unwatched. This is a good time to recall someone who's out of town, and consider contacting them to ask if their basement is prone to flooding. Typically, the worst flooding happens during the last of a series of downpours, after the ground has already become saturated from previous rains.

For my part, as the last downpour was easing up at dusk, I headed out across flooded streets to the high school ecolab wetland, where past overwhelmings of the stormdrains had caused water on Walnut Street to flow under the back doorway into the performing arts center, ruining the stage floor. Since that fiasco, the school has sandbagged the doorway during heavy rains. But in late August, it's quite possible that the staff who know about the sandbagging procedure are on vacation.

The first evidence of heavy flooding was a green frog playing the role of refugee from its own wetland,

which was filled to the brim with water from nearby roofs, parking lots and streets. It's supposed to fill up like that; the design flaw is in the overflow, which sends extra water not out into the street but instead towards the school. The hallway of the performing arts center looked a little wet. I slogged home, called the borough police and asked them to have someone at the school check for flooding indoors.

Of course, it would be nice if product recalls could include flood-prone buildings and basements. Simply send them all back to the original builders for a redesigned version.

Berry Abundance

2011-08-15T10:07:00.000-04:00

This year's crop of wild berries shows promise. These native shrubs, aided by the solar energy reaching them through an opening in the tree canopy, will be offering organic produce to the birds before too long. Found at Mountain Lakes were silky dogwood,

the hips of swamp rose,

and, on higher ground, blackhaw viburnum.

White Pines Turning Brown

2011-08-11T10:04:00.000-04:00

When this neighbor's white pine started turning brown, I was secretly pleased. Growing to the south of my house, it had started to block out the sun's warmth in the winter. I had hoped the neighbor would take it down, to save the fig tree underneath it, and to give growing room to a nearby red oak. He had said he would, but didn't. Usually such an impasse continues for years, given the power of procrastination, but this year my wish came true in an unexpected way. The tree simply died.

Lest I think there be power in a wish, a recent email from former Princeton Environmental Commission member Grace Sinden implicated the herbicide Imprelis, manufactured by DuPont and approved last year by the EPA. It's used only by landscape professionals. Several other white pines around town have turned brown recently, though there's no definitive word on cause.

Cicadas "Clean up real good"

2011-08-09T09:40:00.000-04:00

This fellow was found crawling across the front walk, still bearing evidence of its long stint underground. Seeking a mate, a shower might be timely, but given the lack of facilities, the cicada has come up with a far better strategy. It climbs up to a good perch, sheds its old skin in the privacy of darkness, and pumps blood into newly unfolding wings.

The underside of a tree limb works well, since there's no obstruction that could rub against and bend the delicate wings as they take shape.

My daughter discovered lots of these shed skins still attached under the limbs of a red oak.

Some cicadas don't bother climbing a tree. This one latched on to the petal of a coneflower in preparation for moulting.

Canal Walk This Saturday, 9-11am

2011-08-04T13:47:00.000-04:00

This Saturday morning, I'll be leading a nature walk along the towpath that runs next to the canal between Washington Road and Harrison Street. The walk is free and open to the public. There's parking off Washington Rd just past the canal, on the left before the turnoff for the university athletic fields. A quick walk downstream along the canal will get us to a wider strip of land between Lake Carnegie and the canal where a variety of wildflowers are in full bloom, including JoePyeWeed,

wild senna,

swamp milkweed,

and cutleaf coneflower. Off the towpath, DR Canal State Park staff have mowed a path through the expanse of wildflowers under spreading oaks. Raindate, if needed, is Sunday morning, same time. Check this website for any last minute weather-related change.

Free-Range Musicians To Perform this Thursday and Friday

2011-07-27T18:37:00.003-04:00

Unlike industrially raised music, the original compositions of the Sustainable Jazz Ensemble are performed by musicians who live their lives roaming freely outside of cages. In addition to the obvious benefits for the performers, music performed by free range musicians is said to be higher in nutritive value.

You can sample locally grown compositions like Scrambled Eggs and Lemon Merengue while eating lunch on Palmer Square tomorrow (Thursday) from 12 to 2pm, as part of Palmer Square's Lunchtime Music on the Green series. Thanks to Palmer Square for having us.

We'll also be performing for free this Friday from 6:30 - 8pm, surrounded by and taking inspiration from books in the basement of Labyrinth Bookstore. The trio is composed of Jerry D'Anna on bass, Ron Connor on piano, and myself on saxophone, clarinet and woodpile.

Note: To supplement your musical diet, you can hear selections from our repertoire at www.myspace.com/sustainablejazz. Upcoming performances are usually listed here.

A Magical History Tour

2011-07-27T18:09:00.000-04:00

It seemed a straightforward drive out into the country, to help a currently carless friend check out a cottage to rent at a small farm. The farm came with 40 sheep, which help mow the neighbors' lawns, and a retired draft horse named Gentle Ben. I found the big horse with the ornate Clydesdale-like hoofs impressive, though if this picture looks curiously composed, it's because I cropped off my daughter holding her nose. Kids tend to exaggerate.

Away from the animals was a fire circle, the likes of which people have told me they wished could be had in Princeton for gatherings of youth groups like the Girl Scouts.

On the way back, the trip took on new dimensions when we stopped out of curiosity at an old country railway station, which came equiped with its very own steam engine, built by the American Locomotive Company back in 1937.

Nearby were an assortment of old train cars and retired cabooses. Some had "stay off" signs, others did not, and the general feel of the place suggested an unstaffed, informal railroad museum.

Seeing no signs disallowing it, we decided to explore the steam engine's cab, packed with levers of many shapes and obscure functions. Lower in the photo you can see a cupholder (a design feature that anticipated the mounting of cup holders on strollers many decades later). Careful examination of all the surrounding levers suggested that this is where the engineer would make his cappuccino during long cross-country trips.

An informal museum can be more "transporting" than the standard formal variety. There was a feeling that these train cars are not necessarily at their final resting place, but might still get taken out for a spin now and then. The smell of oil on metal, and the pre-digital, straightforward nature of the place made us all forget the hurried, multi-tasking cellphone age waiting in our pockets. There is something refreshingly direct in a cord that travels from an engineer's cab down the barrel of the engine to a brass bell,

and the simple utility of a windshield wiper on a caboose.

Even the weeds were authentic, reminiscent of what I used to see along rail lines in the midwest: Wooly Mullein, Queen Anne's Lace, bull thistle, sweet clover and, less endearing, given past run-ins with its invasive capacities, spotted knapweed.

Back in Hopewell, we stopped briefly at their fine old train station, complete with a functioning rail line behind it, and a class in english dancing underway inside. We thought the history tour was over,

until we passed by a gas station on Hopewell's main drag, where some horseless carriages had paused on their journey to Princeton.

The proud owner of a 1905 Oldsmobile even offered to give each of us a ride. One cylinder, two gears, a rudder instead of a steering wheel, and a smooth quiet ride. "The first mass-produced horseless carriage," he said. The Model T was still a few years off. I thought it would get great gas mileage, but he guessed around 18 mpg. The carburetor leaks more gas than it passes along to the engine, he said.

Like my daughter, he emphasized the unflattering aspects of horses, referring to the 10,000 pounds of manure produced in New York City each day before horseless carriages came along.

Future histories, written in a world transformed by climate change, will look more kindly on Gentle Ben than on the machines that followed, but it was a charming bit of serendipity to happen upon so much free-range history out and about on a Sunday afternoon.

Weeding--An Expression of Love or Intolerance?

2011-07-27T15:27:00.001-04:00

The New York Times has published a couple curious opinion pieces recently about introduced species. The general conclusion offered is that we should learn to live with all the introduced weeds rather than try to counter those that prove destructive and invasive. One opinion piece, entitled "Mother Nature's Melting Pot", actually suggests that people who fight against any non-native species are nativistic and xenophobic.

It's strange to see such naive and fatalistic thinking finding space in the newspaper of record. Weeding my garden the other evening, I found the act to be informed not by xenophobia but by love. When I was done, hundreds of nut sedge (non-native) and silver maple seedlings (native) were lying in a heap. Spared were a dozen far less aggressive species that would have otherwise been lost in a weedy tide. I have nothing against nut sedge, which has a beautiful inflorescence, or silver maples, which when not producing a million seeds are providing shade and air conditioning. It's just that I like other plant species, too, and experience shows that the nut sedge and maple seedlings in my backyard have imperialistic tendencies.

On a much larger scale, the Friends of Rogers Refuge have been fighting a several acres' infestation of Phragmitis (non-native) which would if left undeterred eventually turn a richly diverse wetland into a monoculture of greatly reduced habitat value.

The paradox is there for anyone to see. People who love plants spend a lot of time killing some of them in defense of the plants and diversity they love. A ready analogy is the act of editing, in which the love of writing leads to an unsentimental excision of weedy words.

The new conceit, expressed in the above-mentioned opinion piece and a subsequent one entitled "The Price of Liberty: Weeds", seems to be that we should abandon largely futile resistance and open our minds to an agreeable acquiescence. Since some weeds introduced from other continents are relatively benign, or even have positive attributes, it is then argued that we should accept any and all introduced species wherever they want to grow. The result of this laissez-faire approach, promoted as a liberation from intolerance, is actually the promotion of "intolerant" plants--the subset of weeds whose aggressive behavior diminishes biodiversity over time.

Though dressed up in a newspaper as synonymous with tolerance, this "let it be" approach plays out in the field as just another form of neglect.

Harrison Street Raingarden in July

2011-07-12T09:37:00.001-04:00

Another sight to be seen from Hamilton Avenue is the raingarden at Spruce Circle, just up from the intersection of Hamilton and Harrison Street. Type "raingarden" into the search box at the upper left of this blog and you'll find posts showing the raingarden in various seasons.

In July, the switchgrass (foreground) is fully grown, and the JoePyeWeed is in full flower (tall and purple).

A view uphill from the raingarden shows the long roof that feeds the garden during rains.

Here's a view from uphill looking down. Rain flows through the downspouts and out onto the grass, then down to the raingarden, where it collects and infiltrates into the ground over the next 24 hours or so, creating a nice underground reservoir of moisture to feed the roots of the wildflowers through droughts. Only in the most extreme droughts, such as the two-month long drought last year, does watering prove necessary.

Scattered through town, taking advantage of wet, sunny spots, raingardens like this one serve as lifelines for pollinators otherwise starved by the trees n' turf landscaping dictated by convention.

New Sprout Next To Princeton's "Mother Elm"

2011-07-12T09:25:00.001-04:00

Keep riding up Hamilton Ave. and it starts changing names, which is one of the exciting things about living in Princeton. You think you're on one lazy street, when suddenly, unbeknownst to you, it has changed itself into another.

Hamilton Ave. is one of the most dynamic stretches of asphalt in this respect, perhaps in all the world, because it begins as Tyson Lane down in the lowlands of the east, then transforms itself in the blink of an eye into Littlebrook Road. Before you know it, it's changed again into Rollingmead Street, then settles into Hamilton Avenue for a good six blocks before whimsically becoming Wiggins Street. Subtle clues, which I have yet to discern, tell you if you're on a lane or a road or a street or an avenue.

Just before Wiggins is about to give up the ghost to become Paul Robeson Place, across from the public library, a glance into the cemetery will reveal a new American Elm growing next to the stump-shaped gravestone of the great "mother elm". Unlike many distinguished denizens of Princeton, the "mother elm" did not win a Nobel Prize, but it did earn an article in the NY Times at the time of its passing in 2005, telling of its glorious past and contributions to society. Those are some big shoes for the new tree to fill, but it appears unfazed.

Nut Sedge and Bindweed

2011-07-12T08:52:00.000-04:00

My daughter says that what she likes about bike riding is that you're going just the right speed to see everything as you go by. A bike ride up Hamilton Ave. offered some fine displays of weeds for general edification. Most people would see in this photo a royal spread of turf meant to set off Westminster Conservatory to its best advantage. But what I noticed is the expanse of Nut Sedge spreading through the lower parts of the lawn. It's the light green in the photo, contrasting with the darker green of the turfgrass.

You likely have Nut Sedge growing in your garden. Like all sedges, it has a triangular stem. Most sedges are native and perennial. This one is non-native and an annual. It pulls out of the ground very easily, but is intimidating in its abundance. Either keep it well pulled, or suppress it with mulch, or, if you don't mind it taking over your garden, enjoy the attractive inflorescence it constructs on top of the stem.

As to what can be done about such an invasion of traditional turf, it's doing a good job of defining where Westminster could plant an expansive raingarden to feed the local pollinators and birds.

Further up Hamilton Ave., a fine display of Bindweed, the weedy member of the morning glory family, here seen crawling over boxwoods and a fence. Like Nut Sedge, it can be very hard to get rid of, but staying on top of the weeding will slowly starve the underground portion.

Diverting a Neighbor's Runoff Away From the House

2011-07-04T16:07:00.000-04:00

During heavy downpours like yesterday's, water from my neighbor's driveway used to head straight for my house. This flow of water from one property into another is a common source of tension between neighbors.

Rather than complain, I dumped some extra dirt under some bushes on that side of my yard, forming a berm that redirects the neighbor's water towards the front of my lot. The water flows into a raingarden under the dogwood tree, where a buried, perforated pipe carries any unabsorbed water out to the sidewalk.

It's subtle, but you may be able to see the water flowing across the sidewalk into the row of hostas.

The goals here are 1) divert water away from my foundation, to reduce humidity in the basement, 2) capture some runoff in a raingarden so it has time to infiltrate into the ground to feed the trees, 3) use the city stormwater system in the street as an escape valve for any extra water the raingarden can't hold.

The only drawback is that, if you want to have the satisfaction of seeing that the system works, you have to go out in the rain, which, after the lightning and thunder has passed over, may not feel like a drawback at all.

Struggling Trees Amidst the Splendor

2011-07-04T15:40:00.000-04:00

Walking home from the Dinky through Princeton University's campus, my eye was drawn to two struggling trees amidst the splendor:

Why browned oak leaves in early summer?

Maybe this newly planted tree, with only a few green leaves left at the tips of branches, simply didn't get enough water, but another factor is its size. The bigger the tree being transplanted, the bigger the shock, not to mention the sticker shock. Hopefully it will recover and leaf out fully next spring.

Signs telling of recent pesticide application don't give one the warmest feeling,

but it's the only way to keep some of the university's remaining American elms alive (probably through injection into the trunk). This one isn't as graceful as some elms, but shows the distinctive vase-like shape that made elms such a wonderful street tree before Dutch Elm disease arrived on the continent.

Early Summer Wildflowers

2011-06-30T14:28:00.001-04:00

A nice native combination this time of year is black-eyed susan in front of bottlebrush grass. These, along with cutleaf coneflower, tall meadow rue, wild senna and other local natives, I included in a miniature raingarden planting along the sidewalk at Whole Earth Center on Nassau Street.

Some white flowers to keep an eye out for are bottlebrush buckeye (in front of Mountain Lakes House),

buttonbush (along the edge of Carnegie Lake and the canal),

and Lizard's Tail (also found along the edge of Carnegie Lake).

Chicory Time

2011-06-30T13:52:00.000-04:00

It's the time of year when blue weedy flowers start popping up along Harrison Street. My interest in wildflowers was first piqued by what grew along roadsides in the midwest--salsify, bouncing bet, wooly mullen, dame's rocket, teasel--nearly all of them non-native. Each had nice details in the flowers when I'd stop to take a look. This one's chicory, whose root was widely used during the Civil War as a coffee substitute.

On Tree Planting, And Believing in the Future

2011-06-30T13:39:00.002-04:00

Having followed my kids to many a playground, I've noticed that parks often lack strategically placed shade trees. The result is burning hot play equipment in the summer. You'd think the planting of shade trees would be almost automatic in such situations, given that direct sun can otherwise render the equipment untouchable for hours at a stretch.

But even when I suggest trees be planted, I'm told that big trees are too expensive, and little trees take too long to grow.

This tree in Potts Park, then, is something of a contrary act. Donated by parents who wanted to celebrate their new son's arrival, it was planted with the conviction that time passes, trees grow, and the future will come.

Sustainable Jazz Ensemble--Free Performances in July at Labyrinth

2011-06-29T14:36:00.000-04:00

My jazz trio will be performing among the subterranean bookshelves of the Labyrinth this month. Press release below. More info about the group, and links to some of the music, can be found at sustainablejazz.com.

JAZZ IN JULY AT LABYRINTH
_____________
Sustainable Jazz Ensemble
Stephen Hiltner, Jerry d'Anna, Ron Connor
every other Friday in July starting the 1st:
July 1, 15 & 29, 6:30 to 8PM
Labyrinth Books, 122 Nassau Street, Princeton,

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Labyrinth is bringing back summertime jazz with 3 more performance by the Sustainable Jazz Ensemble: free and free-range, sustainable jazz. Coffee and tea will be provided; otherwise b.y.o. and join us for an informal evening of outstanding music.

Based in Princeton the Sustainable Jazz Ensemble plays all-original jazz composed using only local, organic ingredients, natural chord progressions and solar-powered imaginations. No virgin timbres are harvested for their performances.The music combines fresh melodies, inventive arrangements and improvisation.

The players: Best known in town for his environmental work, STEVE HILTNER is a longtime jazz saxophonist and composer who in his life-before-Princeton was musical director for an all-originals jazz/latin group in Ann Arbor, called the Lunar Octet. The group played festivals in Michigan and beyond, including three performances at the Montreux Detroit Jazz Festival. Steve got his start in jazz in the II-V-I Orchestra, playing gigs with many of the top players on the Detroit jazz scene, including a pre-Miles Kenny Garrett. During that time, he studied sax improvisation with Sam Sanders, an instructor at Oakland University and former student of Detroit jazz legend, Yusef Lateef. JERRY D'ANNA is a versatile freelance bass player, doubling on both electric and acoustic basses. His work with jazz, theater, folk, rock and blues bands has taken him from his native metro New York-Philadelphia environs to tours in Europe and the Caribbean, with such notables as singers Jeanie Bryson, Barbara McNair and Frank D'Rone, trumpeters Michael Mossman and Terence Blanchard, drummer Elvin Jones, saxophonists Sonny Fortune and Pat LaBarbara, and pianists Kenny Barron, Steve Kramer and John Bianculli. Mr. D'Anna received a Bachelor of Arts degree in music from Rutgers University, and studied privately with Rick Laird, Larry Ridley, Homer Mensch, Lou Kosma and Lisle Atkinson. Now settled in the Princeton area, he works in the financial services software industry, performing locally with the Midiri Brothers Orchestra and Jerry Rife's Rhythm Kings. Joining on key-boards is pianist and composer RON CONNOR, who attended Berklee College of Music in Boston, and has been composing and playing popular, jazz and improvisational music for three decades. A Princeton resident, Ron continues to explore and create music for solo piano, dramatic scores and jazz.

open to the public; wheelchair accessible

Community Park Elementary Gets New Learning Habitat

2011-06-29T14:35:00.000-04:00

The science teacher at Community Park school continues to transform the grounds. In the back courtyard area, a wildflower planting now has seating for 20, the better to listen to the garden grow.

And some words by Van Gogh.

Out in front, off Witherspoon, changes are harder to notice. New trees are popping up in the lawn, giving a hint of habitat to come.

FOPOS Trail Committee Installs Corduroy To Enjoy

2011-06-28T11:43:00.001-04:00

Mud makes many a Princeton trail problematic in the spring. Fortunately, the Friends of Princeton Open Space has a spirited volunteer trail committee that has been making great strides for hikers in recent years, building boardwalks over muddy stretches.

Their most recent project was to roll out the "wood carpet" on a trail heading to Witherspoon Woods from the Mountain Lakes driveway. Called "corduroy", the process involves fitting short sections of log crosswise along the trail.

On the job this particular day are FOPOS board members Ted Thomas, Van Williams, Nick Wilson, Clark Lennon and Eric Tazelaar (behind the camera).

If you want to experience the committee's good works for yourself, walk up the Mountain Lakes driveway to the kiosk, turn right down the trail, then head north towards Witherspoon Woods, keeping the meadows of Tusculum to your right.

A Walk At Mountain Lakes

2011-06-27T12:12:00.003-04:00

Recent walks through Mountain Lakes led us down paths paved with path rush, a short, dark-green grass-like plant that survives foot traffic better than other plants.

Close up, it has this squashed, angular look.

Usually, stopping to smell the roses proves to be a forgettable experience, given that fragrance has been bred out of most roses. But the swamp rose has escaped the breeders and rewards anyone who wanders into the low, wet, sunny places where it grows.

Common milkweed is another wildflower that survives where trees have not claimed all the sunlight.

We also found a fox grape (Vitis labrusca), that had some very promising-looking berries developing. For identification, it helps to look at the underside of the leaf, which is white/tan instead of green. Concord grapes are bred from fox grape.

We also saw a hazelnut shrub that is kindly donating a portion of its leaves to the food chain.

Part of gaining some woods savvy is learning to recognize poison ivy in all its forms. Here, it has grown up the side of a pear tree next to the creek. The poison ivy "trunk" is hairy, which rhymes with scary, while the horizontal rows of holes on the trunk of the pear tree speak to past visits by sapsuckers. I'm not actually touching the poison ivy, but if I did I'd rinse my hand off in the creek within twenty minutes or so, to avoid getting a rash.

Head downstream from Mountain Lakes and you eventually reach the long boardwalk to the Great Road, where a smaller kind of grape framed a view of Coventry Farm.

Where the lower dam is being rebuilt, we were hoping to see the old ramp, recently discovered, upon which the big blocks of ice were hauled up into the barns in the early 1900s (see earlier post), but the artifact has been covered with a tarp, in preparation for reburial. The best way to preserve it, reportedly, is to cover it up again with muck and lake water.

Nature Walk This Sunday at Mountain Lakes, June 19, 2pm

2011-06-17T16:52:00.000-04:00

After quality time with Dad, a nature walk this Sunday, June 19 around the back side of Mountain Lakes, with a look at progress on the lower dam restoration, including the recently unearthed ramp from the 1900 ice business, if they haven't covered it back up yet (see post earlier today). I'll be doing some plant inventorying along the way. All welcome.

Meet at Community Park North parking lot, on Mountain Avenue just off 206. Check this website for any last minute cancellation due to weather.

Native American Chestnut in Princeton

2011-06-17T14:48:00.000-04:00

It's been a long time since healthy leaves of an American chestnut were last seen in Princeton. True, there are a few remnant specimens of the species still sprouting from ancient roots, and these new ones are actually 1/16 asian, to confer resistance to the blight that devastated the American chestnut more than 100 years ago, but they're about as native as we're likely to get with the blight still around.

Nut tree expert Bill Sachs obtained the seedlings last year from an associate in Connecticut, planted them, and served as one man bucket brigade during the two month long drought last summer. His reward: the trees are flourishing this year, with one at Mountain Lakes having grown three feet this spring.

A Manmade Wildlife Sanctuary on Walnut Street

2011-06-17T14:36:00.000-04:00

One of my favorite spots to stop on a summer evening is the ecolab wetland at Princeton High School. Most detention basins are mowed, making for curious grass pits of little use for wildlife, but this one we managed to transform into a glorious display of native plants, teaming with frogs, crayfish and birds.

The basin was designed to receive water from the highschool's roofs and a parking lot or two, but the unusual plant diversity is sustained by the high school's sump pump. "Old Faithful", I call it, because it pumps water from the basement year round, every fifteen minutes or so.

The biggest threat to the wetland, other than loss of that wonderfully consistent water source, may come as a surprise. The weeded out plant debris in the foreground of the photo is cattail, which is the native plant people most commonly associate with wetlands. Yet, it is so aggressive that, if we were to allow it to grow here, it would soon dominate to the exclusion of 20 or 30 other native species.

Liking cattails, we allow them to grow in one corner,

and also planted a less aggressive species of cattail--narrow-leaved cattail, which is also native but rarely encountered in the wild.

Stop by sometime when you're on Walnut Street, on the back side of the school. It can be fun to watch the goldfinches and sparrows bomb around, ducking into the cover of a willow, eating seeds, feeding their fledglings and singing their proud songs atop last year's dried stalks of hibiscus.

Historic Ice Ramp Discovered at Mountain Lakes

2011-06-17T14:14:00.000-04:00

The draining of the lower Mountain Lake, while work is done to restore and enlarge the lower dam, has led to some interesting discoveries in the 100 years accumulation of sediment. Various rusty saws and pry bars were found, harkening back to the early 1900s when the ice was harvested for Princeton's iceboxes.

And just this past week workers came upon an old ramp used to transport the big blocks of ice from the lake and lift them up into three story barns just down from the dam. The dams, insulated with hay between double walls, could reportedly store ice for up to two years.

I hear that the plan is to rebury the wooden and steel ramp, in place, since the wood would rapidly decay if not buried in the ooze. Archeologists carefully uncovered, measured and photographed the remnant--a snapshot from a bygone and more earth-friendly era, when refrigeration was imperfect but left little or no carbon footprint.

Mysterious Ant Behavior Underfoot

2011-06-13T09:42:00.004-04:00

When I was a kid, as part of my rigorous early training as a naturalist, I used to put black ants and red ants in a bottle and watch them fight. The black ants were bigger, but the red ants were more energetic.

One day, I came across a major battle being waged by the red and black ant kingdoms in the backyard. Being partial to black ants, I quickly stomped out all the red ones, only to realize that it would have been much more interesting to have watched the battle unfold.

Recently, on the way home from the Princeton Shopping Center, I noticed a similar "Where's Waldo" spectacle at the edge of the sidewalk. This time, I got down and took a closer look. On top of the pile was a frenzy of movement, but the ants near the bottom were nearly motionless.

Many of them were paired off, in some sort of mandible to mandible gridlock. The tiny ants all looked like the same kind, but there were also a few dead bodies being dragged off the field of mysterious endeavor. It was either war or some wild and crazy cultural tradition.

Below is a video that may help get a sense of the multilayered dimension.

Unsentimental About Sediment

2011-06-13T09:18:00.000-04:00

One thing gardening teaches is to extrapolate from the present what the future will likely bring. A gardener looks at a 3 inch tomato seedling and sees the mature bountiful plant it will become. A gardener, too, pulls a weed before it goes to seed, happy to be spared all the future weeds those seeds would bring.

Look at Pettoranello Pond, and it's clear that a plume of sediment is growing at the inlet, where the incoming water slows and drops whatever dirt it's carrying from upstream. If one digs this sediment out periodically, the sediment won't spread to the rest of the pond, and an expensive dredging operation can be avoided. I've mentioned this to the township, but the response seems to be that the state Dept. of Environmental Protection imposes regulatory barriers to this sort of proactive pond maintenance.

Farming Princeton

2011-06-13T08:59:00.001-04:00

The gradual conversion of Princeton's lawns to food production continues.

Community Park Elementary just got a new fence, paid for by the school district, to expand its school garden project and outdoor classroom. In the background, Dorothy Mullen, best known for her garden project at Riverside Elementary, is teaching a class.

Long in the making, the fence expansion provides more space for raised beds and a small orchard.

Meanwhile, passing by an Italian neighbor's sideyard farmlet on the other side of town, I noticed a strange-looking green and purple flower. He emerged from his productive jungle of vegetables and fruit trees to tell me it's a persimmon tree he started growing twenty five years ago. Over the years, he said, they've grown taller, and he's grown shorter.

Gravity Plus Rainwater= Backyard Waterfall

2011-06-13T07:35:00.001-04:00

Garrison Keillor made a disparaging remark about drainage during his show at McCarter Theater this past winter, but for many Princetonians, what seems like a mundane subject can raise considerable passion, particularly when the runoff is coming from the neighbor just up the hill, or results in basement flooding.

My advice is to give the water a good ride through the yard. Don't spurn it, or consign it to underground pipes. Water can be mischievous, but its obedience to gravity is absolute. Herded away from the foundation, it can flow on the surface to make attractive ephemeral streams and waterfalls, and feed plantings.

There's no reason, for instance, why water must fall from roof gutters in the obscure confines of a downspout. In this project, water emerges from a gutter (obscured by the shrub) in a small waterfall that is carried away from the house on a rockstrewn "streambed" underlain by black plastic.

The roof runoff flows down the rocks some 20 feet into a small raingarden (not in photo), where it collects and seeps into the ground, feeding nearby trees and any roots that reach it from the vegetable garden. In a deluge, the raingarden in turn overflows onto the lawn, where the water continues downhill as sheetflow. Whatever doesn't get absorbed eventually flows between the two neighboring houses down the slope and into a storm drain.

Maintaining Meadows at Tusculum

2011-06-13T07:05:00.000-04:00

Drive up Cherry Hill Road from 206 and you'll see on your left the picturesque meadows of historic Tusculum, where John Witherspoon once lived. The landscape was preserved through the work of FOPOS, DR Greenway, Princeton Township and others. Some is still privately owned and managed for hay.

The rest is publicly owned and is supposed to be mowed annually to maintain the meadows. But wet conditions and staff shortages over the past two years have made it hard for the township to do the mowing. Exotic invasive species like multiflora rose (the white bloom in the photo) and autumn olive have spread. If they spread into the adjoining hayfield, the quality of the hay harvest will be diminished.

An effort is underway to better manage the field for the prairie grasses and wildflowers that could be prospering there.

To access the trails through Tusculum from Cherry Hill Road, walk downhill to the end of the white fence and follow the trail along the edge of the field. The meadows can also be accessed from Mountain Lakes and Community Park North (see njtrails.org map).

White On Green

2011-06-13T06:42:00.000-04:00

White must be a cheap and easy color for nature to produce, because there are so many white-flowered shrubs and trees this time of year. Among the natives, elderberry and silky dogwood have been blooming lately, having followed the Viburnums and flowering dogwoods that got the white theme going earlier in the spring.

Most thoroughly white is the Korean dogwood (Cornus kousa), which two weeks back was at its peak.

It blooms later than the native Cornus florida (florida as in florid), and this year was so prolific that the blooms completely obscured the green leaves underneath.

Prescribed Burning in NJ

2011-06-12T08:17:00.000-04:00

Drive 30 miles north on Route 206 to Schiff Nature Preserve, and you will be greeted by a kid looking at you through a very bug-eyed pair of binoculars.

Inside, watch your step, lest you bump into the resident box turtle out for a stroll.

I was there for a management planning workshop that included a walk through their fields and woods, both of which, by the way, are managed with prescribed fire. Historically, fire was a natural and largely beneficial form of disturbance throughout North America.

Here, in a photo supplied by the Schiff preserve manager, is what the meadow looked like on March 21, when professional fire crews conducted the prescribed burn.

Unmentioned in nearly all media coverage is that destructive forest fires often follow decades of fire suppression, during which fuels accumulate to dangerous levels. As you can see on the back of this forest service truck, Smokey the Bear approved of this intentional and carefully planned burn.

Periodic, low-level fires help keep fuel levels low, recycle nutrients, and aid seed germination by exposing mineral soil. Prairie grasses promote fire by leaving considerable dead foliage standing from the previous year. If the grassland isn't burned or mowed, those dead stems can have a suffocating effect, shading out new growth.

In a woodland, low-level fires are aided by the persistent leaves of oaks, which have also adapted to fire by evolving thick fire-resistant bark. This picture shows how elegant fire can be as a management tool when carefully applied. Native species are sprouting amidst the dead stems of exotic invasive shrubs.

It may seem shocking at first that fire would be allowed so close to a building, but the crew knew what they were doing. You can see how low the flames are, as they burn through leaf litter from the year before.

The result over time is the park-like landscape early western explorers of North America told of, with broad expanses of Pennsylvania sedge and wildflowers like black cohosh.

You'd think the neighbors living in expensive homes just down the hill from this woods would have raised concerns about danger and smoke, but the spring burns are a tradition at Schiff. Information is distributed beforehand to all neighbors, and the burns are conducted by trained forest service crews, with the local fire department standing by.

As one who has participated in prescribed prairie burns in Michigan and North Carolina, I was glad to see fire being used to good effect in New Jersey as well.

Nature Walks This Weekend

2011-06-10T15:14:00.000-04:00

June 11, 10am: Marquand Park Tree Walk -- This should be a very informative and enjoyable walk through Princeton borough's park/arboretum, led by devoted park supporters Roland and Pam Machold. Rain date, June 12. For details, click here.

Walking tour of D&R Canal slated for Sunday, June 12, 10am --

If you've never explored the scenic towpath that extends north from Princeton, here's an event that can serve as motivation. The guided walk begins downstream of Princeton in South Bound Brook, near the treatment plant that provides Princeton with its drinking water, and ends in East Millstone, where there's a nice cafe next to the canal (see previous post about canoeing the same stretch). A full description of the walk can be found here. There will be some carpooling available. It's also possible to bike down the towpath from Princeton, then walk partway back with the group. For further information and weather-related updates, call Mr. Barth at 201-401-3121 .

Playin' Jazz For Free at the Labyrinth Bookstore This Friday

2011-06-09T18:58:00.000-04:00

For those wondering what happened to the usually steady stream of posts on this blog, I have been collecting photos in my usual way--of odd ant behavior on a sidewalk, a NJ forest being restored by fire, a turtle freely ranging through a forest of legs at a habitat management meeting, a neighbor's persimmon orchard, a piedmont prairie--but for some reason have not managed to launch them into the ether. I will, but in the meantime want to let everyone know about other creations to be launched in a free performance tomorrow evening, Friday, from 6:30 to 8.

In addition to growing wildflowers, I grow jazz compositions, mostly at the baby grand piano in our living room. We'll be performing some of them tomorrow at the Labyrinth Bookstore on Nassau Street, which has a nice space in the basement for literary and musical performances. Ron Connor will be playing piano, with Jerry D'Anna on bass. I'll be playing saxophone and clarinet.

So, tell your friends and come on down. Labyrinth will provide coffee and tea. Otherwise, b.y.o.

More information about the group, and links to some compositions, can be found at www.sustainablejazz.com.

Beavers

2011-05-28T07:30:00.001-04:00

The killing of two beavers at Pettoranello Pond two weeks ago brought into the spotlight two sharply contrasting views of the animals. Beavers are adorable, and impressive in their craftsmanship. One of my most serene memories is watching a beaver swim peacefully across a moonlit pond. Their approach to living--find an auspicious spot, transform it to your needs, and make a living there--has parallels with ours, and so can serve as a bridge of kinship between people and nature.

Their inclination to change their surroundings, as in the sticks and mud they were using to obstruct water flow under this bridge, also triggers a distinctly negative view of beavers as nuisance animals. People get a pond just the way they want it, plant some pretty trees, and then a beaver comes along, changes the water level and starts eating the trees. That's what was happening at Pettoranello Pond. Of course, if beavers are stigmatized for changing the environment, imagine what an animal community that could form and hold opinions would be thinking about us.

Beavers have been living in the canal and Lake Carnegie for a long time, and I had been wondering why they hadn't made it up Mountain Brook to Mountain Lakes and Pettoranello Gardens. Now that they have, I'd expect more will come. My hope would be that some way could be found to accommodate the beavers while keeping the pond level stable and any valuable trees protected. There are devices that allow water through dams without the beavers being aware. In my opinion, the beavers would do Pettoranello Gardens at least one favor by thinning out its thick stands of alder along the water's edge. If the beaver's additions to the dam obstructed storm flow, then a spillway for heavy runoff could be dug somewhere along the bank. The pond already has a bypass upstream of it for storm surges.

A Visit To Mercer Educational Gardens

2011-05-23T14:21:00.001-04:00

I finally got out to the Mercer Educational Gardens for their annual plant sale. It's out past Terhune Orchards a ways, and features well-tended gardens and various useful demonstrations.

For instance, a variety of rainbarrels are on display. The giant white cistern, which looks like it holds a thousand gallons, is what you'd actually need several of if you were serious about capturing all the runoff from your roof.

I've been starting to see these lately--plastic rainbarrels made to look like pottery. These two are in tandem. The second one has an overflow pipe if they both fill up.

This appears to be a compost bin that actually converts the decompositional energy inside into classical decompositions which, if played backwards through the speaker on top, sound like music. Devotees of this obscure genre may be familiar with some of the more accomplished and experienced decomposers like Nevohteeb and Levar.

This sign explains how 41% of our "household trash" is compostable.

Maybe if more homeowners in Princeton read this sign,

(warning: pet peeve about to be taken for a walk)

they wouldn't keep dumping their high-nitrogen grass clippings on the street, where they create a mess and pollute the local waterways.

Thanks to the Mercer County Extension for encouraging people to do right by their gardens and their local streams, and showing them the way..

Stalking the Rare Horsteria Westnut

2011-05-22T12:59:00.003-04:00

What kind of tree could this be, so bright and fragrant a week or two ago,

with two kinds of flowers--some white, some lavender? Closer inspection showed it to be a horsteria westnut, that is, a horse chestnut being engulfed by wisteria vines.

If one's going to kill a tree--the likely outcome--this is one of the prettier ways to do it.

Lesser Celandine

2011-05-22T12:35:00.001-04:00

Among invasive species, the most intimidating are not the giants like kudzu but instead the diminutive species that quietly multiply into millions, defying anyone to pull them all up. Lesser celandine, which has engulfed large areas at Pettoranello Gardens, cannot even be successfully pulled up, as each plant forms many bulblets underground that remain even if the plant itself is pulled. The species, which turns yellow this time of year as it goes into dormancy until next spring, continues to spread downstream into Mountain Lakes and beyond.

I've heard many testimonials from gardeners who love its yellow flower when it first shows up, then become distressed as it begins to take over the garden. Spraying with a low toxicity herbicide like 2% glyphosate (the active ingredient in Roundup) is the only way to get rid of it over time, unless one can cover it all up with a layer cake of cardboard and mulch when it first appears in the spring, robbing it of energy. Leave one plant, however, and the problem begins anew.

My Parents' Garden

2011-05-22T12:10:00.000-04:00

One thing I did on May 8, the first Mothers' Day since my mother passed at the age of 94 earlier this year, is to pull garlic mustard at Mountain Lakes Preserve. The logic of this is rooted in my parents' backyard, in the '70s in Ann Arbor. They had just bought an old Tudor house, previously owned by a mathematician. That first spring, yellow primrose popped up along the garden paths, with swaths of pulmonaria, mayapples, solomons seal, bloodroot and trillium grading into a small woods. There was little difference between the cultivated and wild areas, the gardens being little more than a steering of nature's already fortuitous and ornamental energies, with a few gentle introductions like primrose and pulmonaria thrown in.

That order, which seemed timeless at first, began to slowly unravel year to year. A patriarch elm, its graceful arms spreading in a protective arc over the center of the garden, succumbed to Dutch Elm Disease. Myrtle, wisteria and bishop's weed (snow on the mountain) began their relentless expansions. Hours were spent in hand-to-root combat, as rock walls and less aggressive species came under ongoing threat of being engulfed by a monotonous, weedy tide. Garlic mustard slipped into the mix somehow, at first seeming ornamental enough to leave, then turning into brown skeletons later in the summer, flinging its seeds about before I thought to react.

The fight to save a valued balance was not against exotics, but instead against the aggressive plants, the preponderance of which happened to be exotic species introduced into the garden by chance or with the best of intentions. The wildflowers continued to bloom along the path edges, and one year a pawpaw sprouted mysteriously in one of the beds, eventually bearing tropical-tasting fruit. But the beauty and serendipity that make a garden a joy were under constant threat from a subset of plants with imperialistic tendencies.

That garden taught me more than could have been guessed about the forces that tilt the world towards imbalance, and the work required to counter them.

FOPOS Annual Meeting and Walk

2011-05-18T09:48:00.000-04:00

Friends of Princeton Open Space had its annual meeting May 1 at Mountain Lakes House. Here, president Wendy Mager is pointing out the window to where the newly restored upper dam is now operational. The upper lake, which had become filled with eight feet of sediment over the past 100 years, has regained its original depth.

Water flows in a glistening curtain over the full length of the new spillway.

Guest speaker Bob Martin, who is Commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection and lives in Princeton, told an attentive audience about state environmental policy. During QandA, he was asked about the state's continued desire to dismantle the DR Canal Commission, despite compelling arguments and strong public support for its continued existence.

Afterwards, I led a walk around Mountain Lakes, pointing out various species, including this flowering bladdernut

and the woven bark of butternut (also called white walnut). Both of these species are rarely encountered in Princeton's forests, though there's an effort underway at Mountain Lakes to find and propagate native butternuts.

With the upper lake and dam restored, the lower Mountain Lake will be the focus of work this summer, as the dam gets rebuilt and enlarged, and the historic spillway is reconstructed from a jumble of rocks.

In the meantime, the great blue heron is trying to go about business as usual.

Flying Seeds and Soaring "C"s

2011-05-10T14:02:00.001-04:00

These are the days when seeds take wing, as a spring breeze sends the maples' winged achenes helicoptering across the sky. In the midst of this blizzard of genes searching for a new scene, I received a call from further down the piedmont, in North Carolina, where the 13 year cicadas are singing. My friend, sitting on his back porch, reported that they sound to him more musical than the calls of the annual cicadas. I could hear their drone in the background and checked the pitch on the piano. "C," I informed him, so he would know he's living through the time of the soaring "C"s.