Local Ecologist

Image: Malus 'Golden Russet', Wharf District Parks, Rose Kennedy Greenway One of the things I like about Boston is the maturing Rose Kennedy Greenway that replaced the elevated "Central Artery" highway in Boston.  Growing on the greenway is a pair of heirloom Malus 'Golden Russet' apples planted by the Boston Tree Party project.  Each participating community in the project " has committed to planting and caring for a pair of heirloom apple trees. Together, these trees form a decentralized public urban orchard that symbolizes a commitment to the environmental health of our city, the vitality and interconnectedness of our communities, and the wellbeing of the next generation (emphasis in the original)." Boston neighborhoods like Dorchester, Roxbury, and even Beacon Hill historically supported orchards .  However, I was struck by the choice of heirloom apple trees   I am reading Ina Lipkowitz's Word to Eat By about the social history

Ginkgo ( Ginkgo biloba ) "fruit" is a naked seed covered by sarcotesta (aka Cycad seed coat) Lately we have been noticing tree fruits: Ginkgo, London planetree, crabapple, and dogwood are among the ones we have photographed.  In addition to trees, we are enjoying sightings of rose hips and juniper berries. Image: Dogwood ( Cornus ) fruit (a drupe) The juniper berry is not a berry but rather is a fleshy cone of "merged scales" .  Despite its fleshy appearance, the juniper's berry has a naked seed typical of gymnosperms.  Peter Thomas in Trees: Their Natural History defines the naked seed of the conifer as follows: "The scales of conifer cones can be bent apart to reveal the seeds without physically breaking anything apart".  This is not the case for angiosperms (also referred to as hardwoods by Thomas) where "the seed is completely enclosed by the fruit and cannot be seen without breaking into the fruit, whether it is dry nut or a f

I completed a short walk through the park but it felt more like une randonnée or a hike because I was climbing a rather steep set of steps.  I hiked up from from Ave de Pins Ouest to the Chalet du Mont-Royal.  This is a very small portion of the 190-acre park whose plans were developed by Frederick Law Olmsted but not fully implemented when the park was inaugurated in 1876.  (Several websites including that of the park's nonprofit administrator Les Amis de la Montagne mention that the park was not designed completely to Olmsted's specifications.) At the intersection of the Ave de Pins Ouest (and Peel) and the park you can see the beginning of the steps.  The steps are beautifully designed with wooden treads and black metal railings.  Several materials are used to signal the transitions between steps, drainage cover, path, and active roadway (bicycles and park vehicles mostly).  Most of the people I saw on the climb were using the steps and the pebbled incline as an

Image: 200 Water Street chairs ((note the Rudolph de Harak digital clock in the background) We spotted these colorful chairs on a trip to South Street Seaport last weekend and recalled that when we lived in Berkeley, we blogged about sitting spaces available in many of the city's neighborhoods.  There we discovered a tree guard that doubled as a bench , and wrote a post about an adobe bench at San Felipe de Neri in Albuquerque.   Image: Chairs on Fulton Street Although the Water and Fulton Streets seating is fixed, it is arranged in pairs and, here, seems to encourage interaction .  A close-up of a pair can be seen on the Alliance for Downtown New York Flickr page. Here is what William H. Whyte had to say about fixed individual seats in The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces (1980): Fixed individual seats are not good.  They are a design conceit.   Brightly painted and artfully grouped, they can make fine decorative elements....But they are set pieces.  That i

In this subwayana, we offer a hint: The people depicted in the mural pictured in the first photograph are engaged in a rebellion. Can you name the station and line? More subwayana (thank you Bonnie Hull) at Where in NYC? (Subway Series, No. 5) Where in NYC? (Subway Series, No. 4) Where in NYC? (Subway Series, No. 3) Where in NYC? (Subway Series, No. 2) Where in NYC? (Subway Series, No. 1) Stay tuned for Series No. 7. Update, 10/8/2011: The ceramic and mosaic murals shown above are part of a series of depictions of Rebels, Founders, and Providers of Greenwich Village.  The works were created by Lee Brozgold and the students of P.S. 41 in 1994.  Photographs of all the murals can be seen at subwaynut.com as well as our Flickr page .  Please note that the series is being discontinued on the website.

In his introduction to Mathew Tekulsky's The Butterfly Garden (1985), Robert Michael Pyle urges butterfly gardeners "to realize that gardening is a form of land management " (emphasis in the original).  Conversely, is gardening the umbrella term for managing different types of landscapes?  Natural areas managers might not consider themselves gardeners but they perform tasks such as planting and vegetation suppression and removal associated with the common garden.  Of course, the ecology and scale of natural areas are different from the common garden and thus require additional management strategies (example: "regeneration cutting" ) as well as different site assessment and planning. Although Pyle is writing about the butterfly garden, his observations are applicable to more traditional garden spaces like yards, street tree gardens, and neighborhood parks.  More from Pyle: We might like to manage the bits of land that are "ours" to care for th