Blog - Page 2 of 6 - Wild Roots

Ice Age Sand Dunes: Hidden Gems In the Pines

Walking down a dirt road through the pine barrens in Brendan Byrne State Forest, all of a sudden, the woods open up, and we’re standing in a sandy open area with virtually no vegetation.? People lucky enough to be familiar with the area know that “pine barrens” is a bit of a misnomer given the vibrant plant and animal communities that thrive there.? But my first impression of this clearing is that it’s, well, pretty barren.

A small group of participants in the Rutgers Environmental Stewards Program is touring the pine barrens, and Emile DeVito, ecologist and Manager of Science and Stewardship for the New Jersey Conservation Foundation is our guide.? And we couldn’t ask for a more knowledgeable one.

What we’re standing on, Dr. DeVito informs us, is a paleolithic sand dune, a remnant of the forces that shaped the landscape during the last ice age.? While the ice sheets themselves never reached this far south, the spot where we were standing was only about 70 miles from a wall of ice thousands of feet high.? Hurricane-force winds regularly scoured the sandy former sea floor that makes up southern New Jersey’s coastal plain.? Sand from wetlands was piled up into nearby dunes, many of which persist today.

And sure enough, just a couple hundred yards from the dune area is a vernal pool.? Inundated in the winter and spring but mostly dry in the summer, it has no outlet or connection to nearby waterways, and therefore no fish.? So it makes an ideal breeding ground for frogs and toads.? I made a mental note to bring Mae to this spot in the spring to hear the frog symphony.

Though it looks like a regular meadow now, this vernal pool is saturated in the springtime and is teeming with amphibian life.

As for the dune itself, despite appearances, it’s far from barren – in fact it’s a haven for several rare species.? In this particualr area, Dr. DeVito points out a population of Pickering’s Morning Glory (Stylisma pickeringii), one of the many rare species of plants that can be found in the pines.? There are only a handful of populations left, and off-road vehicles are a particular threat.? The plants were going dormant now, but we did see a number of seedpods, which will hopefully lead to new seedlings in the spring.

These Pickering’s morning glory vines don’t look like much as they’ve entered dormancy. But they’re a very special plant that needs to be protected.? Here they’re growing across a carpet of mint-green reindeer lichen.

Dr. DeVito also pointed out the den of a northern pine snake, another threatened species and an excellent burrower.? Growing up to five feet long, their coloring allows them to blend easily with the forest floor.? Off-road vehicles are a threat to the snakes as well, as are poachers (they’re prized as pets for their docility and long life span).? The New Jersey Conservation Foundation is using radio transmitters to track a number of female pine snakes to identify and protect their winter dens, where up to 30 individuals will pass the colder months.? On our dune, we can see that a female had laid eggs this year and the young had shed their skins upon emergence.? Didn’t spot any actual snakes though.

The entrance to an egg chamber of a northern pine snake. If you look closely in the vegetation, you can see some of the skins shed by the baby snakes.

Later that day, at another spot a few miles away, we did get a chance to radio track a female snake.? After tromping through the woods for about 20 minutes listening for the beeps of the transponder, we were able to locate the snake.? Since it was warm, Dr. DeVito was hoping it would be out and about, but she was below ground in her burrow.? This particular snake was living very close to a popular area for off-roading spot, so we hoped it could stay safe as it moved about in search of food and a winter den.

Other ancient dunes are scattered around the pine barrens, and they’re yet another great reminder of the surprises these landscapes always seem to have in store.

How can you tell where the dune ends? Just look at where the vegetation starts back up again.

I looked down and thought, “Cool, the mist looks neat on those spiderwebs.” Dr. DeVito, on the other hand, pointed out that today would be a great day to study the spiders’ territoriality.

New Studies Weigh Ecological Value of Native Cultivars

I recently wrote about the key differences between native cultivars and straight species and why we should care. My conclusion was that while it wasn’t necessary to completely eschew cultivars of native species (sometimes referred to as nativars), if you wanted your garden to provide crucial ecosystem services, like supporting pollinators, you should be sure to include a significant number of straight species plants, ideally from local ecotypes, or geographic origins, if possible.

It makes intuitive sense that if you want to support wildlife and natural processes (and you should!), you’d want the plants you select to reflect those processes, as opposed to choosing genetically indistinct clones that may exhibit unusual characteristics. But is there a scientific basis for this?

Luckily this is a question that a few intrepid scientists are beginning to address. Doug Tallamy, entomologist and celebrated author of Bringing Nature Home, has been studying caterpillar interactions with native plants and their cultivars alongside graduate student Emily Baisden at Delaware’s Mt. Cuba Center. And Annie White recently completed doctoral research at the University of Vermont which tracked pollinator visits to straight species and cultivars in the context of pollinator restoration projects. Hopefully this will be the start of even more robust research, but early results, which should be of great interest to land managers, the ecological restoration community, and even home gardeners, are highlighting the value of straight species while not dismissing cultivars out of hand.

Tallamy’s findings are preliminary, but they show that different characteristics of cultivars can have different effects on how they fit into the ecosystem. In terms of cultivars with distinct plant size or habits, caterpillars had no preference between them and the straight species. The same went for specimens selected for disease resistance, which is good news for the folks working to restore elm and chestnut populations. Leaf color, however, was an area where differences started to come through. Cultivars with purple leaves, for instance, were not nearly as attractive as their green straight species counterparts. This could be the result of visual cues, or as Tallamy suggests, the unpalatibility of the specific chemical compounds that lead to those unusual colors. Variegation in leaves (streaks of color) was less conclusive. Some caterpillar species actually preferred the variegated cultivars, though most avoided them (and since they contain less chlorophyll, they’re probably less nutritious).

White’s research in Vermont focused not on caterpillars and leaves, but on adult insect visits to flowers during the pollination process. “Because cultivars have been selected primarily based on ornamental and cultural traits,” she writes, “it is not clear whether or not they perform the same ecological roles as the species, which evolved naturally in the landscape.” To test this performance, she painstakingly counted thousands of visits by bees, moths, butterflies and flies to the flower varieties she was studying. Her findings were for a general preference for the straight species plants among pollinators, but, she writes, “not always, and not exclusively.” Among the species and their cultivars that she studied, all commonly found in restoration projects and home landscapes, she observed “seven native species to be visited significantly more frequently by all insect pollinators (combined) than their cultivars, four were visited equally, and one native cultivar was visited more frequently than the native species. Bees (both native and non-native) and moths/butterflies exhibited similar preferences, whereas flies showed no preference between the native species and the native cultivar.” The differences could be profound in some cases. During her observation periods, she recorded 1,414 pollinator visits to Achillea millefolium (common yarrow), but only 119 to the popular ‘Strawberry Selection’ cultivar. She cautions that further research is required to account for the wide array of species and cultivars as well as regional differences, but her data do certainly support a more widespread use of native straight species plants.

This coneflower cultivar, ‘Double Delight,’ has a double flowered structure. White found that this major morphological difference from the straight species plant made it difficult for pollinators to physically access the nectar. Image: Ltshears, Wikimedia Commons

And the insects’ preferences notwithstanding, both Tallamy and White warn about the lack of genetic diversity that comes from widespread plantings of cultivars. ?It is a bad idea to load the landscape with plants that have no genetic variability,? says Tallamy. ?I?m not a hardliner on this issue, but gardeners ought to have access to straight species. We have to convince the nursery industry that native plants are about more than just looks.?

In my own experience this can be a problem. While straight species plants are generally available to the restoration community, home gardeners will often have a hard time finding them compared to cultivars. In order to find many of the plants for our own garden, we’ve had to seek them out through wholesale growers that typically don’t do much retail business, along with the one-day native plant sales that many nonprofits offer. And there is certainly a growing desire among home gardeners to have a positive impact on wildlife, especially pollinators, so the overabundance of cultivars in the market may mitigate the potential impact they can have.

Like Tallamy, I see no need to be a hardliner on this issue. If you want an accent that lends a splash of unexpected color, if you’re gardening in a small space and need a more compact shrub, or if you’ve had issues with certain pests or diseases, there’s no reason not to make use of native cultivars in your garden that have those desired characteristics. But if knitting your garden into the wider ecosystem is important to you, making heavy use of straight species should be a key part of that strategy.

Header image: Luckily this tiger swallowtail didn’t mind that we planted phlox ‘Jeana’ instead of the straight species in our garden.

A Plant’s A Plant, Right? Cultivars, Straight Species, Ecotypes, and Maximizing Your Garden’s Ecological Value

Okay, so you’ve decided to add some native plants to your yard, or maybe even a lot.? Great!? But then you roll up to the garden center, start browsing the selection, and wind up glued to your phone, engaged in endless plant species Google searches and more confused than ever. If you’re lucky enough that your garden center even carries more than a handful of natives, you should just buy them, right?? A native plant’s a native plant, isn’t it?

I’m sorry to say that it’s not quite that easy. As with anything else, there are folks that will passionately argue about some of these topics at length. In this post, I just want to try to make things a bit simpler for you.

What’s a Cultivar?

First things first: If you’re buying a native plant at a big box garden center or even at many independent garden centers, there’s a really good chance you’re buying a cultivar.? That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but here’s what you should know.? Cultivars (a portmanteau of ‘cultivated variety’) are almost always clones, sometimes of a naturally occurring variety of a plant and sometimes of a hybridized or selectively bred specimen.? The alternative would be a ‘straight species’ plant, which you could call the garden variety plant.

You can tell that it’s a cultivar if it has an extra name attached. The plant with the common name of Wild Bergamot (Monarda fistulosa) has a number of commercially available cultivars, such as the very popular Monarda fistulosa ‘Claire Grace.’? At a lot of the big garden centers, you’ll be more likely to find this cultivar than the straight species.? The cultivar name will be in English as opposed to Latin, must be included in the label, and it comes after the scientific name in single quotes.? Sometimes you’ll also see the term ‘nativar,’ which is simply a cultivar of a native species.

There are also intellectual property implications of cultivars.? If I work to develop a cultivar of a certain species and there are good commercial prospects, I can name it something like Echinacea purpurea ‘Tim’s Choice,’ and you wouldn’t be able to propagate that variety without paying me a licensing fee.? It may seem strange to have intellectual property rights over a living thing, but that’s how the system works.

The benefit of cultivars is that you know exactly what you’re getting.? They’re sold that way because they exhibit desirable characteristics.? Maybe they have a certain distinctive color, or they’re more compact, or they’re particularly disease resistant.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with cultivars.? I’ve planted them in my yard and included them in plant sales that we’ve run.? But there are a few issues to consider, which I explore below.

And to add to the confusion, there’s the prevalence of hybrids, which are crosses between multiple species.? If they’re properly labeled in the nursery (not always the case), hybrids will be indicated with an ‘x’ after the genus and before the cultivar name, e.g. Coreopsis x ‘Redshift.’

Attack of the Clones: Maintaining Genetic Diversity

We can take it as a given that genetic diversity is important to a healthy ecosystem.? So if that’s our goal, having only a handful of clones dominating the nursery market certainly isn’t helping things.

People have been cloning plants forever, simply by dividing them or by taking cuttings (some plants have even figured out how to clone themselves).? But if we really want our gardens to do more than just look good ? that is, to provide ecosystem services?? we should include a significant portion of straight species in our plantings.? The gold standard for this is open-pollinated plants that are propagated by seed.? By including straight species in our plantings, you give up a bit of control, but you’re adding to the genetic diversity of the plant population, and that adds strength to the ecosystem.

It’s also important to note if you collect seeds in your garden (or if you’re planting species that self-seed like cardinal flowers or many asters), many cultivars won’t ‘come true’ from their seeds.

Origin Matters: Getting into the Weeds With Ecotypes

There’s another element to take into account, and that’s the geographic origin of our plants.? Of course we’re already considering that factor by planting natives, but it’s not always as simple as saying that just because you live in a plant’s native range, the one you’re buying at the garden center is geographically appropriate.? Within that native range, there’s a great diversity of climate and local conditions, which means that plants in any given region may have their own set of characteristics suited to their locality.? So there’s a possibility that if you collect seed from a butterfly milkweed in Florida, grow it in a nursery, and then sell it to a customer in Maine, it might not be cold hardy enough to survive the winter, even though other members of its species can and do.

That’s why we sometimes refer to the ecotype of a certain plant.? It’s still the same species, but local populations might have distinctive characteristics that other populations won’t have.? The EPA’s ecoregion maps are a useful tool for grouping plants into ecotypes.? Unlike the USDA’s gardening zones, which take into account temperature ranges only, these designations include climate, topography, hydrology, and more.? Firms and government agencies running big ecological restoration projects expect their growers to be able to report the ecotypes of the plants they’re using (and they’ll generally be using straight species).? Some projects will even propagate their own plants from nearby sources to ensure those local characteristics will be present.

The EPA has divided the country into several hundred eco-regions, ranging from broad (Level I) to fine (Level IV). Shown here are the Level IV regions of the Northeast.

In an ideal world, any native plant you buy would have the propagation method and ecotype listed on the label, but when it comes down to it, most home gardeners don’t need to worry about getting that much detail.? But if you find a nursery or garden center that says they are selling plants only or primarily grown from local ecotypes, you can be confident that buying from them is a responsible decision.

Some of these issues can come into play with cultivars as well as straight species.? The ‘Claire Grace’ monardas I mentioned above were bred from plant stock in Mississippi but are widely sold.? I’ve read about problems from customers in northern New England with hardiness, whereas monardas from a local ecotype would do just fine.

Does Wildlife Care?

This is a complicated question, but many of us are planting natives at least partly for their value to wildlife, so we should consider it.? The fact is not much research has been done on the topic, but some early results are starting to come in.? I’ll follow up with another post specifically about some of this new research [Update: here’s the post].? But if you’re gardening for wildlife, you can’t go wrong with straight species plantings.? And if you are buying cultivars, watch out for plants with big variations, like changes in color or double flowers, which might make things difficult for the wildlife that evolved alongside those species.

The Right Plant in the Right Place

I’ve been talking about variations in genetic makeup and geographic range, but I hope it goes without saying that you should always select plants for the actual conditions where you’ll be putting them.? Just because a plant is native doesn’t mean it will do well anywhere?? every plant has its preferences for light, soil type, moisture, etc.? Those preferences aren’t always on the label, but luckily there are many online resources with thorough information about native species.? You should also be aware that some plants are specialists, which is to say they will only thrive in very specific conditions, while others are generalists and can thrive in a wide range of conditions.? Think about blueberry bushes, which must have acidic, well drained or sandy soil.? Just because they’re native to New Jersey doesn’t mean I can put one anywhere in my backyard.? But an Atlantic ninebark is more of a generalist, able to grow in sandy soil or clay, moist or dry conditions, and a range of light.

Making Sense of It All in the Mid-Atlantic

So how is a home gardener without a horticultural degree supposed to decide what to plant?? You could decide that you want to plant coneflowers, but there are literally dozens of commercially available cultivars and hybrids out there.? How do you know which to choose?

Well if you live in the mid-Atlantic, you’ve got a fantastic resource in Mt. Cuba Center, specifically in their research reports from their trial garden.? They’ve run three-year trials on a number of popular genuses, pitting different species and cultivars against one another to see which varieties will thrive in typical mid-Atlantic conditions, and which ones you can expect to underperform.? So far they’ve trialed monardas, baptisias, coreopsis, echinaceas, heucheras, and asters, with trials of helenium and phlox pending.

Me and Mae, checking out the phlox trials at Mt. Cuba Center

The Bottom Line

There’s no simple answer, but if your goal is an ecological garden with wildlife value, and you have a choice, you can’t go wrong with sticking to straight species plantings.? And best yet is to use plants from local ecotypes whenever possible, though at most retail garden centers, this information simply isn’t available yet.

And there’s certainly nothing wrong with planting cultivars, especially in parts of your garden where you’re trying to achieve a certain effect.? Just try to make sure you’re not using them exclusively ? leave some room for the genetic variation that straight species plants offer.? Otherwise you’ll be looking out your window at a sea of clones selected for their purely decorative value.

Featured image: A bluestar cultivar in Mt. Cuba’s Trial Garden

Thursday Pop-up Sale: Native Plant Availability for 7/20

We’ll be at the Green Challenge Film Fest screening of Inhabit at the Collingswood Community Center, Thursday, July 20th. Stop by, watch a great film (for free!), and pick up some native plants for the community garden or your garden at home. We’ll be there from 5:30PM – 9PM.

All of these plants are native perennials grown here in South Jersey.

This batch of Jersey-grown native perennials comes from one of our favorite growers, Clemenson Farms.

Battling Backyard Mosquitoes, Easily and Naturally

fight mosquitoes world war 2 poster national archives

We’ve talked a lot on this blog about not just welcoming bugs into our yard and garden, but actively encouraging them.? But there’s still one bug that you’d probably have an easy time convincing this wildlife-friendly organic gardener to nuke from orbit*: the mosquito.? But this summer, I’ve won a battle against this enemy, if not quite the whole war.? And I’ve done it without neurotoxins, hormone disruptors, carcinogens, or any of the other garden-variety poisons that the agrichemical industry pushes on gardeners.

Look, I don’t have to go through all the reasons mosquitoes are terrible, and I don’t even live in an area where I have to worry about Zika or malaria.?In the Philly row homes we lived in before moving to Collingswood, our patios were virtually unusable without a beekeeper suit in the height of summer.?But this year, though I can’t say we’re mosquito-free, we can now spend a whole evening sitting in our yard without being tortured by them.

Our chief weapon is Bti**, a naturally occurring bacterium that has absolutely no effect on humans, plants, birds, mammals, or the vast majority of insects other than a few pesky members of the order diptera (true flies): fungus gnats, biting black flies, and of course, mosquitoes. Bti (Bacillus thuringiensis israeliensis) is marketed commercially as Mosquito Dunks or Mosquito Bits, and the idea is that if you have a water feature near your home, you can use it to prevent mosquitoes from breeding in it. But you can go beyond that and use these products to actively set a trap for them.

We all know that mosquitoes breed in standing water, and standard advice is to get rid of as much of it in your yard as you can.? But you’ll never get it all, and even if you do, your neighbors will inevitably have some.? This is where the Bti comes in.? It doesn’t affect adult mosquitoes, but it kills their larvae upon hatching.? So why not set up some nice inviting standing water, toss some mosquito bits in it and hope that those lady mosquitoes take advantage of what appears to be a very promising breeding ground?? They’ll lay their eggs none-the-wiser, but their offspring will never survive to torment you.

In our case, I set up a bucket in an inconspicuous part of our yard, filled it with water and Bti (tip: use the smaller bits instead of the big dunks unless you have an actual pond), and just refill it every week or so.?We bought Summit Responsible Solutions Mosquito Bits from Amazon. I also toss some bits into a gutter that always stays wet and on top of a tarp we’re using for solarization that collects water after rains.? That’s it.? And it’s made a noticeable difference in our yard.

Now the best way to do it is to start in the early spring.? If you can knock down that first generation after the mosquitoes emerge, you’re also preventing many future generations.? But even if you started now, it would prevent a lot of little mosquit-lets from being born.? And just think if you got your neighbors in on the act.? Mosquitoes aren’t great fliers?with a little neighborly coordination, it wouldn’t be that hard to make a big dent in the mosquito population in your neighborhood.

And by the way, we’ve tried other methods in the past.? You’ll probably find lots of websites touting the virtues of certain plants like citronella, but there’s no evidence of effectiveness, and they haven’t worked for us.

We should also point out in keeping with the ethos of this blog, that by inviting wildlife into your yard through native plants and other techniques, you’re bringing in mosquito predators. House wrens are one of many bird species that like eating mosquitoes, so chances are the wren families that moved into our nesting boxes have chowed down on more than a few this summer.

And I’ll mention this again, because it’s the best part: other than a fly swatter, Bti is the only product I know of that only kills the bugs you want to kill and has no known negative side effects.? So you can attack the mosquitoes, but the firefly populations are safe.? And best of all, you don’t have to worry about health effects for you or your kids.

So this summer we’ll spend more time enjoying our backyard.? And next spring we’ll encourage our neighbors to put out their own mosquito traps.

* It’s the only way to be sure.

** Well, in addition to fear and surprise.

Header image courtesy of National Archives

America, The Beautiful: Show Pride in our Natural Heritage

It’s the Fourth of July, a chance for all of us to come together in our red, white, and blue and agree that despite all of the divisiveness that’s got us down, we love this country and are proud to call it our home.

The spirit of today has got me thinking about our garden, as usual, and dreaming of what it might be like if everyone celebrating with juicy watermelon and good beer and patriotic songs and parades small and big would have that same pride and sense of place when planning their home and community landscapes. Often when we talk about our natural heritage, the conversation centers around how critical it is to protect our national and state parks. But what sense does it make to stop there? If you believe that gorgeous and diverse forests, wetlands, deserts and prairies are part of our identity, why not promote that same message through your own ecological restoration efforts?

?Here is your country. Cherish these natural wonders, cherish the natural resources, cherish the history and romance as a sacred heritage, for your children and your children’s children. Do not let selfish men or greedy interests skin your country of its beauty, its riches or its romance.? ? Theodore Roosevelt

I find it funny?and sometimes sad and often frustrating, depending on my mood?that we hang flags and talk about who and what is un-American, and then we rip up, replace, or pave over our natural areas with little thought about what it means to strip the country of this incredible part of our past.

Take a minute to dream about what your piece of land might have looked like before past generations replaced it with composed gardens meant to mimic the places from which they came. Imagine that 40 million miles of hard-working, air purifying, wildlife-supporting natural beauty we paved over with cement.

Now that’s not to say that there’s a single specific pristine time to go back to. Native Americans transformed the land for their needs long before the Europeans began dismantling the massive hardwood forests that covered the East Coast and plowing over the prairies of the Midwest. And prior to all that, there was a mile-thick ice sheet just a little ways north of our little town. But the scale of the transformations of the past 100 (heck, even 60) years have left our ecosystems reeling.

If that mental exercise of imaging what was and what is today brought a sense of calm quickly replaced by panic, take comfort knowing that you can actually do something about it.

How cool would it be if everyone waving American flags, donning patriotic outfits, and parading down Main Street today took a little time to learn more about how they might help preserve the United States’ natural beauty?

As with any movement or area of interest, there are the fanatical: those who don’t believe in planting a single seed that would not have been here without our help. And while I respect that, Tim and I suggest and practice a less strict approach that simply requires you to research what plant species were once prevalent in your area and plant them in a design that makes you happy. Keep it neat and tidy if that’s your thing.

I love the wild look. It makes me happy. I drive around wishing I could turn all the strips of useless turf grass and overly manicured spaces to lush, green, gorgeous landscapes, which is why I’m so proud that New Jersey recently passed a bill requiring three major statewide transportation agencies to use only native plants when landscaping.

All of that said, we’ve still got a ways to go here at home. We have time and budget constraints that have made it necessary to plant from seed or plugs, and do what we can every year rather than what we want to do all at once.

Start with a few plants if that’s all you can do right now, and be proud. You’ll be joining fellow citizens from across the country coming together to restore, protect, and conserve America, the beautiful.

Image: Cole Thomas’s The Course of the Empire: The Arcadian or Pastoral State, 1836

Chinese Yam Was Sent Here From the Future to Kill My Plants

Listen, and understand! Dioscorea polystachya is out there! It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop… ever, until your plants are dead!

Since moving in to our house we’ve dealt with a typical array of weeds and invasives. Plenty of English Ivy. Japanese stiltgrass. Zombie wisteria that keeps coming back no matter what I do. But by far the worst has been Chinese yam, a climbing, strangling vine that is so persistent, I can only assume that a plant in my garden is an ancestor of a key leader of the future plant resistance, so Skynet sent Chinese yam back in time to terminate it.

It doesn’t seem to be one of the most common weeds in our area, but the stuff is pretty much everywhere in our yard, thriving in both sun and shade. It closely resembles bindweed, but the leaves are more rounded and heart-shaped (as opposed to the arrowhead-like bindweed). It starts as a little shoot poking out of the ground, and seemingly within a day it’s grown several feet. You could take a moment to admire a shrub in your yard. Then you go inside for a nice cold drink. When you come back out, you’ll find a new tendril has already made its way to the top of the shrub. Vines seem to seek each other out and wrap around one another to form thick ropes. God forbid you go away for a long weekend. When you get home, you’ll find the ropes have braided themselves together to form an impenetrable blanket over an entire flower bed. The sheer amount of biomass of this species that I’ve removed from my yard so far this spring is incredible. And it’s still everywhere.

How Dioscorea polystachya sees the world

As the name suggests, the plant uses tubers to store energy underground. This makes it hard to control. When pulling a vine, if the tubers don’t come up with it, I’ve got some news for you. It’ll be back. And they wind so tightly around their prey, pulling it off just strips the foliage right down to the stem. But the real trouble starts when the vine matures enough to produce aerial tubers in late summer. They look, appropriately enough, like tiny potatoes. And they’re attached to the stems by the most delicate of linkages. So any attempt to pull the vine out at that point will send dozens of tubers flying in every direction, where they’ll lay in wait to sprout a new vine.

A semi-successful pull: some of the tubers came up with the vines. Note: do not compost the tubers.

Joining forces for maximum destruction

This year there seem to be more than ever, and I’m determined to remove as much as I can while making sure any I can’t get to aren’t able to produce new aerial tubers (this happens in late July and August). If the ground is really wet, you can often pull the full plant and tuber from the ground. It also seems like the first sprout from an aerial tuber is a large, kidney shaped leaf, whereas more developed ground tubers (which probably overwintered) will put out a thicker vine to start. The new sprouts are relatively easy to pull from wet soil, especially if you grab a bunch at once. In some areas I can also attack them with a string trimmer without hitting desirable plants. This obviously leaves the tuber behind, but if I keep at it, hopefully it will exhaust all of its underground energy eventually. But a lot of them are around other plants, so it’s pretty much hand-pulling for me.

Either that, or trying to place a healthy plant on the other side of some kind of giant industrial crushing machine, then activating the press just as the vines are creeping through to reach it.

Mountain Laurelpalooza at Black Run Preserve

mountain laurel flower kalmia latifolia bloom

There’s a lot to love about Black Run Preserve, but maybe the best thing in my mind is how close it is to home. Most other Pine Barrens hikes are a 45-minute to an hour drive for us, but we can get to Black Run in under 25 minutes. (When you have a 2-year-old in the car, that extra 20 minutes can seem like an hour.)

Visiting Black Run feels almost like you’re being transported.? You’re driving in the worst kind of Jersey suburban sprawl, then all of a sudden, right around Route 73, you cross from the inner to the outer coastal plain, and everything changes. The sandy, acidic soils give rise to a completely distinct plant community. Far from being barren, these woods are teeming with life?though it’s limited to a relatively small number of species that have co-evolved to thrive in these infertile landscapes.

We’d never been to Black Run in the spring before, but after seeing the many mountain laurels (Kalmia latifolia) scattered throughout, we made a note to try to get back at the right time to see them in bloom. This past weekend was just about the peak.

Warning: If you get bored easily by pictures of flowers, this may not be the post for you.

Everywhere we looked we spotted?Mountain Laurel in bloom.

Practicing more naturalistic, ecological landscaping at home makes any walk out into nature more interesting, because inspiration is everywhere. Though we haven’t had much success (any success) growing mountain laurel yet, seeing the way the shrubs mix with ferns and high bush blueberry helps give us a nice reference point when thinking about how to incorporate different types of plants in a (slightly more composed) way that mimics natural plant communities.

Here’s some intermingling with Ostrich Fern (Matteuccia struthiopteris), another common Black Run sight.

Again, it’s amazing how different the landscape is from our own for how close it is.? Note the classic Pine Barrens sand.

Mae rolled in ready for action, having insisted on wearing both her new pants and new skirt at once. She also managed to find the perfect walking stick.

One highlight of our walk was getting to meet this Fowler’s toad.?A family was hiking a few hundred yards ahead of us, and their son very thoughtfully decided to bring the toad he caught back to show Mae.?She was very pleased, but a little nervous about touching it. There were also a lot of what looked like Spicebush Swallowtails (Papilio troilus) and other butterflies flitting about, but none of them stayed still long enough to get a picture.

A Fowler’s toad, attempting to demonstrate how not to be seen

There are only about twenty species of tree that are native to the inhospitable soils of the pine barrens.?Aside from the pines, of course, you’ll see a lot of oaks (mostly swamp oaks) and sweetgum in Black Run, as well as the occasional sassafrass.

A young sassafrass tree (Sassafras albidum), which is a host plant for the Spicebush Swallowtail butterfly

Black Run is fairly heavily wooded, with most of the open, sunny areas being grassy wetlands.? But we did spot a big colony of sweet fern in a bright opening in the upland woods.? It’s actually a small shrub, not a true fern.? And it loves sunny spots with crappy soil, so it’s a good one to try in any problem spots in your yard.? The leaves also smell great when you rub or crush them.

Comptonia peregrina

Ok, to wrap things up, here’s one more flower shot, this time with some cool lichen that Lindsay spotted.

Black Run is well worth a visit, and if you get there in the next week or so, you’ll still be able to catch the big show.

Trail Map

We parked at the main lot on the east side of Kettle Run Road.? For our hike, we mostly followed the wide trail marked in blue on the map, turning around when it started getting perilously close to naptime for the youngest member of our party, though there are lots of side trails to head out on as well.? The lot was packed with cars, but with all the side trails it didn’t feel crowded.? Despite the bogs, it didn’t seem buggy, but we did find one tick (luckily unattached), so use appropriate caution.

Devil’s Tongue: A Northeast Native for Cactus Lovers

The succulent trend?is still very much alive in the design and gardening world. Run a quick Etsy search and you’ll?find?62,331 results for “succulent” and another 77,723 results specifically for “cactus,” most of which are not the plants or handmade?containers for them. There are 2,554 pieces of succulent jewelry, and another 1,462?non-jewelry succulent accessories. I totally get it. Succulents and cacti are resilient, strange, and beautiful plants with an exotic quality, especially to us here in the Northeast. They?elicit thoughts of hot deserts and big skies, at least for me.

I’m a sucker for these drought-tolerant plants, and have a growing collection of them in our home. This love for succulents and cacti started?before I knew much at all about the importance of ecological gardening, and perused Sunset in awe of the drought-tolerant landscapes of the Southwest. (Yes, I get Sunset magazine, which friends find funny. My grandmother used to subscribe, and so I started too. It’s escapism.)

If you’re into succulents but also understand the importance of?gardening outside with plants that contribute to a healthy ecosystem,?I’ve got a few plant recommendations that serve both botanical interests.

Devil’s tongue (Opuntia humifusa)

This one, by far, is the best match for Northeastern succulent lovers. Also called low prickly pear or smooth prickly pear, this is the only cactus widespread in the Northeast. It’s a low perennial with striking yellow flowers that precede edible fruit, and really the closest thing you’re going to get to that desert vibe here in Jersey.

Prickly pear has been used in?traditional Mexican cuisine for thousands of years, and both the pads and fruit can be eaten. If you’re successful enough in growing this awesome?native succulent and get lots of fruit from it, the juice from the fruit?makes great jelly and can also be used in candy.

That’s not all:According to WebMD (yep, that’s right), prickly pear cacti, which are rich in pectin and fiber, are?used to treat?type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol, obesity, hangovers, colitis, diarrhea, and benign prostatic hypertrophy (BPH), as well as to fight viral infections.

Not surprisingly, native bees and honey bees also love it. The yellow blooms are easy to find, and as Dave Taft points out in this New York Times article, the stamens within the?bowl-shaped flowers actually lean in toward the bee. “Finding an open flower, a bee dives in, swimming through masses of pollen-laden anthers and vibrating its body rapidly to loosen the pollen grains,” Taft writes. “It turns out this activity is hardly necessary: prickly pear cactus stamens are ‘thigmotactic,’ that is, they are mobile, and bend inward when stimulated. The stamens proactively bend in toward the bee, dusting its fuzzy coat with pollen.”

Devil’s tongue (obviously the best of its names) likes sun and very dry, sandy and rocky areas best, though I’ve read that it’s somewhat adaptable and does alright with a half-day of sun in well-drained clay or loam soil. In spreads quickly and can be transplanted by sticking?the cut side of a pad down into sand.

My plan is to give this a shot as a container plant, so that the bees can enjoy it but I can manipulate its environment a bit. If devil’s tongue is growing in your garden, tell me about it in the comments or on Facebook.

More Ideas for Succulent Lovers

Woodland Stonecrop (Sedum ternatum)

This trailing sedum with tiny succulent leaves and white flowers that bloom from April through June deserves a post of its own, because it’s such a great little plant for anyone?especially people who are into succulents. It’s a groundcover that likes part shade and damp, rocky areas, which would make it a really nice one for those of you with backyard ponds. We planted it on the roof of a bluebird house Tim made and chickadees call home, which is an idea we got on walk through Longwood Gardens’ meadow.

Adam’s needle (Yucca filamentosa)

This is another succulent that can be found in the Northeast, and is a good pick for Shore dwellers. Adam’s needle likes well-drained to dry, course sand. It has these bold spikes surrounding a cluster of white bell-shaped flowers that can reach up to 3 feet high. Cherokees used it to stun fish, making them easier to collect. In Spanish tradition, parents plant this yucca under a daughter’s window to keep?boys out with its sharp spiky leaves.

Marsh Marigold (Caltha palustris)

While this one isn’t a true succulent, its glossy kidney-shaped leaves and bright, strong buttercup-like flowers might also?appeal to you. It does best in wet, rich soils so it’s a great addition to your rain garden or in the shallow water around a backyard pond. It’s a cheery spring bloomer worth planting if you’ve got the right conditions. (Note: There is an invasive plant called “celandine” that people often mistake for marsh marigold. It sounds negative, but if you think you already have marsh marigold, it’s probably the invasive.)

Northeast Native Ferns

If the aspects that draw you?to?succulents are their sense of mystery and low maintenance, ferns are another great pick. Ferns are green and wild and?delicate and ornate, and certain varieties in particular (Ostrich fern and hay-scented fern, for example) can spread quickly and beautifully. Imagine ferns?blanketing the ground of an otherwise dormant forest, or the unfurling of a fern’s frond’s in spring. They’re downright magical, and there are dozens of?native species to try. (Read this post on gardening in the shade for some fern ideas.)

South Jersey: Pick Up Your Ready-to-Plant Pollinator Garden

Why buy mom a bouquet when you can give her a whole garden?

Hopefully you’re aware of the benefits of native plants and their value to pollinators already. But if your yard is lacking in those areas, it can feel daunting to start from scratch. That’s why we’ve put together two ready-to-plant kits, one for sunny spots and one for shady spots, to help you turn a patch of yard into a beautiful, sustainable wildlife habitat.

Our kits have five species each that will form a beautiful, perennial plant community that attracts beneficial wildlife to your yard. They are made up of landscape plugs, which are an economical short-cut to establishing larger-scale plantings, and are usually harder to come by outside of the landscape trade. Our small kits will fill a 25 square foot (5′ by 5′) area, and the large will cover 50 (of course, you can order multiples if you’re feeling ambitious). Kits will come with a planting guide and sample layouts.

Each kit includes four wildflower species and one grass or sedge selected for their beauty, their wildlife value, and their suitability to low-maintenance plantings in South Jersey. In other words, we chose these plants because they are native to this region?they’ve evolved to grow well here without much fuss. The kits also offer a succession of bloom times and plant forms so your garden will show off new beautiful elements all throughout the growing season.

You’ll need to order by noon on Friday, May 5th, and kits can be picked up in Collingswood on Saturday, May 13th (Mother’s Day weekend).?Local delivery is also available, depending on your address.

If you’ve been thinking about starting a pollinator garden or replacing part of your lawn with hardy native perennials, now’s a great time to do it. For those of you interested in Collingswood Community Habitat Project or the National Wildlife Federation Backyard Habitat Project, our kits would get you one or two steps closer to certification. Oh, and as your garden grows,? also consider adding your property to the Million Pollinator Garden Challenge map.

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