Winter Walk-Off 2012 in London

Les of A Tidewater Gardener is hosting his Winter Walk-Off again this year.  Read our contribution to the 2011 Walk-Off here.  This year we share photographs of several features we observed on our walks in London.  If you would like to contribute to the walk-off, the deadline is March 19 and details can be found here.

The spread of London planetrees at Hyde Park.

Allees, malls, and other linear arrangements of trees (also taken in Hyde Park).

Lovely utility access covers.

Mews and alleys to shorten your journey or to bypass busy roads.

Creative, adventurous playgrounds.

So many private squares -- nice to look at though but even better if you have a key...

Gorgeous architecture! This photograph of the original Natural History Museum (entry is free).

Thoughtful historic preservation, at the V&A Museum (also free entry): "The damage to these walls is the result of enemy bombing during the blitz of the Second World War 1939-1945 and is left as a memorial to the enduring values of this great museum in a time of conflict."

In full swing

Image: Belt seat swings, Hester Street Playground, Manhattan

The recent recall of Landscape Structures "Slalom Glider" reminded us that we had not written about playgrounds or play spaces since last October. Also, we only have two essays in the "At play" series. In this post we consider the older belt seat swing and the newer flat seat swing .

Image: Flat seat swings, Washington Square Park, Manhattan

The belt seat swing is often listed as the "standard belt seat" in play equipment catalogues. It is made of molded rubber; thick yet flexible and adjusts to the anatomy of the swinger. On the other hand, the flat seat swing can be made of vulcanized rubber or more commonly rigid high-density polyethylene (aka HDPE). HDPE is light weight but it does not conform to the swinger's "seat" nor does it "stick" to certain types of fabric. Both factors often lead to slippage for children who are transitioning from the infant/toddle bucket swing which are typically constructed of molded rubber. The tire swing seems easier to master than the flat seat swing.

Image: Flat seat swings and infant/toddler bucket swings, First Park, Manhattan

Are the swing sets in your favorite playground outfitted with belt seats or flat seats?

New York City's animal geography

Wildlife in New York City is the subject of an essay by Traci Warkentin in the March 2012 issue of AAG Newsletter.  AAG (American Association of Geographers) held its annual conference in New York City last week.

The specific geographic focus of Warkentin's article was Central Park and she writes, "At 843 acres, spanning from 59th to 110th Street, Central Park alone provides habitat for multitudes of animals and a wide diversity of species."  I learned that "over 275 species of migrating birds" use the park as a stopover; rats, raccoons, piegons, geese are common; and owls, herons, bats, red-tailed hawks, rabbits, and turtle are less so.  Warkentin also mentions the unseen and rarely seen invertebrates, pollinators, detritivors, and decomposers.  The essay ends with a description of the Animal Geography Specialty Group of the AAG and its mission "to enhance geographic research and scholarship on matters relating to human-animal studies."

The N/R train stops at 5th Avenue and 59th Avenue adjacent to Central Park.  This station stop is decorated with glass tile mosaics of animals as well as of leaves of trees found in the park.  Knowing about the diversity of animals that inhabit and use the park, I am surprised that this diversity is not better represented in station's art.  (I do not know if other subway stations adjacent to the park have animal art.)  The reason I found is that the artist, Ann Schaumburger, designed "Urban Oasis" (1997) "to appeal to children and to the child in the adult"  and used animals at the Central Park Zoo as her models.

Central Park is famous for its non-captive animals such as the nesting pairs of red-tailed hawks (Palemale, Lola, etc.).  The hawks are the subject of children's book such as City Hawk (Meghan McCarthy) and The Tale of Pale Male (Jeanette Winter) as well as fiction such as Red-Tails in Love (Marie Winn).  Central Park in the Dark: More Mysteries of Urban Wildlife is Winn's second book.  Winn also maintains the Central Park Nature News blog; if you are interested in blogs about hawks in New York City, see Roger_Paw, Urban Hawks, and Washington Square Park Blog.

For an entrancing tale of animal geography, we recommend Jon Evans's Beasts of New York populated with red-tailed hawks, squirrels, robins, dogs, cats, rats, bluejays, pigeons, crows, coyotes, tigers, and more.  (For a theoretical introduction to animal geography, read Jennifer Wolch's chapter "Zoopolis" in Animal Geographies: Place, Politics and Identity in the Nature-Culture Borderlands edited by Wolch and Jody Emel.)

Preserving the Great Outside in NYC

New York City's open spaces and landscapes are the focus of the Historic Districts Council's 18th Annual Preservation Conference titled "The Great Outside: Preserving Public and Private Open Spaces.  The conference will be held this weekend, March 2 - 4, 2012, and the slate of speakers is impressive:

• Charles A. Birnbaum, FASLA, FARR, and founder of The Cultural Landscape Foundation; 
• Thomas J. Campanella, associate professor of urban planning and design at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, will address Moses-era parks; 
• Alexandra Wolfe, preservationist at the Society for the Preservation of Long Island; 
• Thomas Mellins, curator and architectural historian of mid-century public housing landscapes; and
• Evan Mason, independent scholar of New York City rear yards.

As an aside, Campanella is the author of one of our favorite books, Republic of Shade: New England and the American Elm (2003).  Also Charles Birnbaum has written about Hideo Sasaki and the Sasaki Garden at Washington Square Village, a privately-owned by publicly-used green space in the Greenwich Village neighborhood that is one of our "sacred places".

The conference is offering five four walking tours and one bike tour on Sunday: (1) Woodland Cemetery, Bronx, with Susan Olsen of Friends of Woodlawn Cemetery; (2) Sunnyside Gardens, Phipps Houses, and Woodside Houses, Queens, with Jeffrey A. Kroessler; (3) North Shore Waterfront and Greenbelt, Staten Island, with Linda Eskenas; (4) Midtown Plazas, Manhattan, with Matthew Postal; and (5) Bike the Williamsburg and Greenpoint Waterfront, Brooklyn.  You can download the conference brochure here.

HDC maintains a Tumblr site which includes amazing photographs of open space in New York City.  We cannot attend the conference but if you do, we would like to hear about your experience so please leave a comment.

Tag, you are an ALB-free, Fraxinus pennsylvanica

The "first official U.S. identification" of ALB or Asian long-horned beetle (Anoplophora glabripennis) was in Brooklyn in August of 1996 but infestations have been found in Queens, Manhattan, and Staten Island and elsewhere. The beetle is a hardwood pest native to China.  Its preferred host tree species are maple, horsechestnut, birch, elm, willow, poplar, sycamore/London planetree, hackberry, and mountain-ash.  The female beetle will also lay her eggs in green ash trees.

Last fall we observed Davey Tree crews climbing London planetrees, Norway and red maples, and green ash in our neighborhood and were told that NYC Parks had contracted them to assess public trees for infestation.  Since then I have noticed yellow dots at the base of many trees such as the one at the base of the trunk of the green ash (Fraxinus pennsylvanica) pictured above on Charles Street near Bleecker.

The ash has another tag: a botanical label indicating its common and Latin names.  The marker indicates that this ash is part of the NYC Parks Sidewalk Arboreta program though the link to the program is broken.  If you have photos of "Sidewalk Arboreta" trees, please share them with us.

All is not peachy for Quercus phellos

The grove of oaks on Bleecker Street between LaGuardia Place and Mercer Street have always fascinated us.  They are growing in a lawn beloved by playing children, relaxing mothers, and squirrels and pigeons.  The ledge of the south side of the grove is well-used, too, by couples, sunbathers, and climbing children.  Most of the oaks in the grove are red oaks (Quercus rubra) but some are willow oaks.  In fact, there are six willow oaks (Q. phellos).  The species is also known as peach oak.  Two of the willow oaks are in poor condition: decaying tissue and mushrooms are visible.  Frequent mushroom associations are Pluteus mammillatus and Nigroporus vinosus. I cannot identify the mushroom in the photos below. Can you?

The willow oak is an S1 listed species under the New York Natural Heritage Program (NYNHP) which means it is "endangered/critically imperiled in New York because of extreme rarity (typically 5 or fewer populations or very few remaining individuals) or is extremely vulnerable to extirpation from New York due to biological factors", but only naturally occurring individuals or populations are considered.  The willow oaks  in the grove on Bleecker Street were planted.  If willow oaks sprouted in the Bleecker grove, would they listed as S1 plants by the NYNHP?  These oaks will be negatively impacted by the proposed NYU 20-year campus expansion plan though the university states in the NYU 2031 EIS (Chapters 6, 9) that it "would commit to a tree maintenance plan."  NYNHP states that the existing natural populations are stable but "could be eliminated at any time since none are protected."

New York is the northern limit of the willow oak and within the state "there are five existing native populations, but except for one population of tens of trees, there are only a few trees in the other populations. There is one historical population on Long Island and one on Staten Island...."  The willow oak is a common street tree in New York City and can be found in parks, too.  In New York City Trees, Edward Sibley Barnard (2002) lists a park each in Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island were willow oak trees can be found.

Book Review: Paradise Lust by Brook Wilensky-Lanford

Paradise Lust cover via brookwilensky-lanford.com (source)

 In Paradise Lust Brook Wilensky-Lanford chronicles 16 searches for the Garden of Eden.  The quest for the Garden is international in scope from Venezuela to Syria and Zambia to the North Pole.  I wanted to read the book for two reasons.  First, the author is an alum of my alma mater and second, the book title and jacket cover illustrations are intriguing.  Furthermore, I borrowed the book from the library for leisure reading but so enjoyed the content and writing style that I wanted to share a review with our readers.

While reading the book I discovered that it is about trees!  The Tree of Knowledge is a central figure in the biblical tale of the Garden of Eden and is usually assumed to be an apple tree.  However, "apple" is an old word for fruit tree.  Wilensky-Lanford adds arboreal specificity to the tales of the Tree: a fig in Babylon, a sequoia relative in the North Pole, pitch pine in Peebles, Ohio, and a willow-currant hybrid in the Creation Museum in Kentucky.  While trees figure largely in the book, Wilensky-Lanford also focuses on river and marsh ecologies and the role these ecosystems played in claims about Eden.

Paradise Lust is more than a straightforward retelling of other people's stories.  The book contains an extensive annotated bibliography and the list of sources for the photographs and illustrations suggest much time perusing in domestic and international archives.  I find it useful to situate authors within a cohort based on writing style and Brook Wilensky-Lanford reminds me of Sarah Vowell (of The Wordy Shipmates, Unfamiliar Fishes, etc.).  I hope Wilensky-Lanford has a long career!