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To walk through a Longleaf Pine forest is a near – mystical experience. The trees, intolerant of competition, grow straight and almost 100 feet tall. They are widely spaced with no low or mid level branches, which creates a beautiful, open vista.

The original longleaf forests stretched from southern Virginia to eastern Texas and covered almost 92 million acres. Unfortunately, 97 % of this forest land has been lost, making the Longleaf Pine ecosystem the third most endangered ecosystem in North America.

The open spacing of the trees provides ample sunlight for an astonishingly diverse understory. It’s here that native grasses and flowers thrive, providing homes, protection and food for a large number of organisms. Though longleaf pine itself is not considered endangered, the ecosystem supports 30 species of plants and animals that are designated as threatened or endangered, including the red-cockaded woodpecker (pictured below), the gopher tortoise and the eastern indigo snake.

Longleaf pines are surprisingly resilient. They are resistant to fire, most pests and beetles (including the dreaded pine beetle) and seem to tolerate well the adverse conditions caused by climate change. The greatest threat is from logging and development.

It takes a long time for a longleaf to attain maturity. The first years of life, it looks more like a teenager’s ponytail than a stately tree. The needles of the tree, which occur in groups of three, can be as long as 18 inches. For seven years the tree stays in a grass stage, putting all its energy into growing a taproot that can become about 12 feet long before the tree begins putting on height. It takes another 30 years for it to attain full height (80 – 100 feet) and to produce cones. The cones are wonders of nature, measuring up to 10 inches long.

Fire has always been and continues to be a critical part of the life of a longleaf pine forest. (For more about the conservation value of fire, see last week’s blog.). Historically, natural fires occurred every 2 – 7 years. Today, the health of the ecosystem depends on setting controlled fires to keep the understory open and free of potentially invasive plants.

For a fascinating look at some of the history of the Longleaf Pine, read Janisse Ray’s Ecology of a Cracker Childhood.

For more information or to support organizations working on conservation of this important species, click on the following links.

http://www.longleafalliance.org

http://longleaf conservancy.org

The tragic wildfires in Maui and the ongoing wildfires in western Canada have been in the headlines for weeks. It has been a horrendous fire season and prayers go especially to the people in Maui where the loss of life has been devastating and the number of people still missing shocking.

Wildfires, worsened by the effects of climate change, make us all feel vulnerable and the results over the past few years have been catastrophic. But in the midst of all that, it’s important to remember that fire, like many other things, can be both devastatingly harmful and also extremely beneficial.

For centuries, natural low intensity fires swept through many areas, creating and sustaining unique ecosystems.  Fire was as critical to the health and balance of the habitat as sunshine and rain. Many vulnerable plants depend on prescribed fires, which mimic nature’s low intensity fires, for survival.   The Nature Conservancy suggests that half the world’s land ecosystems need periodic fires to stay healthy. In Georgia, from longleaf pine communities and herbaceous bogs in the South to the oak hickory forests and mountain bogs in the North, our state needs these prescribed burns.

Georgia’s endangered species that depend on fire for survival include Smooth sumac (pictured above), harperella (pictured below), green pitcher plant, Morefield’s clematis and Alabama leather flower.

The photographs below are from The Nature Conservancy’s web page about prescribed burning. The first is a picture of a wildfire, where the intensity of the fire causes the tree crowns to burn. The second picture is of a prescribed burn in a thinned forest, where the underbrush burns, leaving the trees, for the most part, intact. (Photographs courtesy of The Nature Conservancy)

A combination of thinning forests and performing prescribed burns may lessen the damage if wildfires occur. Burns are not conducted during summer months, reducing the impact of smoke on air quality.

How you can help:

1. Help educate people about “good fires” and the critical role they play in strengthening certain ecosystems.
2. Write to the Georgia Forestry Commission, supporting the work they do with prescribed fires.
3. Contact the Georgia Forestry Commission about doing a prescribed fire on your own land. For information go to their website: http://gatrees.org

Don’t forget to visit the Gardenhouse Gallery at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens to see the ongoing art exhibit, Imperiled Beauty: Georgia’s Endangered Plant Species.

Generally when botany students are trying to identify a plant, they like to believe that they have found something wonderfully unusual. The rule of thumb, though is that common plants are commonly found while finding a rare plant is ….welll….a rare occurrence.

So, in 1982 when the then 21 year old Jim Morefield thought he had found something rare and endangered, it didn’t create much of a stir – until scientists from Vanderbilt University confirmed that he had actually found a species that had never been seen before. The very rare and federally endangered clematis that he found was eventually named for him: Clematis morefieldii.

Morefield’s clematis

Morefield’s clematis, sometimes called Huntsville vaseline, is closely related to the endangered Alabama leatherleaf. Both grow in only a few counties in Georgia and surrounding states. In the case of Morefield’s clematis, the largest population is actually close to the city limits of Birmingham, Alabama. Some of the plants have been lost due to herbicides used in neighborhoods. Other plants have been lost as empty lots have been cleared to build houses or have been buried underneath invasive plants such as honeysuckle and kudzu. The habitat for the remaining population of these plants is fragmented, meaning pollinators have a hard time finding them. (Think of it like walking a long way to a candy store that only had one or two pieces for sale. It’s just not worth the effort.)

Alabama leather flower

Fortunately, the school children in Birmingham have become interested in this small endangered plant that grows so close to their homes. Third graders have written a play, book and song about the flower and convinced the mayor of Huntsville to write a proclamation about saving it. Also, fortunately, The Nature Conservancy has made great progress in buying land where this grows to protect remaining individuals.

As for the young botany student? Jim Morefield had a long and illustrious career as a rare plant botanist. He recently retired, having spent the last 31 years as head botanist for the Nevada Division of Natural Heritage, the branch of state government that collects information about rare and endangered plants in the state.

When asked why it’s important to protect every single species, Morefield answered, “we don’t know. And that is the reason to protect (rare species). We know what functions some plants perform in nature but we haven’t studied a lot of the rare plants, so we don’t know for sure what important functions they may perform.”

He goes on to say that they may perform an ecological role we just don’t know about yet or they may have medicinal value. But, he concludes by saying “They have their own value besides what they may or may not do for human beings.”

Reason enough, I think, to safeguard them for the future.

Don’t forget to go by the gallery at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens to see Imperiled Beauty: an art and information exhibit about Georgia’s rare and endangered plants.

“You have my dream job,” I told Lauralea Oliver, owner of K9inscentive, “what could be better than working with dogs, plants and conservation!”

Lauralea and many like her, have trained dogs to do conservation work by sniffing out all kinds of things from dangerous chemicals such as PCB, to finding rare animals such as the spotted owl, to locating endangered plants, nearly hidden by the surrounding vegetation.

Scientists usually have a vague idea of where a particular plant grows – or used to grow – but this may be only a couple of very small plants in acres of woods or fields. It takes a lot of time and effort to locate them. Dogs, whose olfactory skills are 10,000 to 100,000 times better than that of the scientists’ can be trained to find these plants quickly and effectively.

For example, the Desert Botanical Garden, in conjunction with U.S. Fish and Wildlife and the Smithsonian Institute, have used Lauralea Oliver and her dogs to find rare and endangered orchids in Southern Arizona. She trained the dogs using a species closely related to the orchid.

Using dogs to do conservation work was the brainchild of Samuel Wasser, a research biologist at the University of Washington. In 1997, he founded Conservation Canines, part of the Center for Conservation Biology at UW and adopted narcotic dog training methods to train dogs to find wildlife and plants.

The results have been stunning. Not only can the dogs find rare plants, they are also invaluable in the early detection of potentially destructive invasive plants. They can be trained to distinguish different species within the same genus, allowing field biologists to remove nonnative species while leaving the native species intact.

One of the most impressive dog detection stories is not about plants but whales. A Smithsonian Magazine article from 2016 is about dogs trained to find feces from the Right Whale. Whale poop (apparently bright orange) sinks within 30 minutes so scientists have had limited success in actually collecting the scat. A dog, however, can smell the feces from a mile away and guide his handlers to it quickly. Before using dogs, scientists found on an average, 10 scat samples per year. With the dogs? an impressive 150 samples. The feces provides scientists with information about the diet, behavior and health of the whales without disturbing the animals themselves.

As much as I love my own Sadie, I’m well aware that she doesn’t have the personality of a detection dog. She’s much too calm and well balanced. A good detection dog is hyperactive and insanely focused. They will do anything, anything to chase a ball. A story is told of a detection dog who sat looking at a ball on top of the refrigerator – until his owner returned nine hours later. So, even though I love the thought of training my dog as a conservation canine, I know she would just rather lie around the yard chewing on sticks.

Even though I said training conservation dogs would be my dream job, it’s really not. THIS is my dream job, writing about and painting the beauty of our rare and endangered plants. That is a job to dream of!

For the past year, I’ve been volunteering in the conservation greenhouse at the Atlanta Botanical Garden.  My tasks there are like gardening tasks anywhere.  Working with a small group of volunteers, we cut back, repot, divide and replant, water, fuss and stew over the plants in our care.  What makes this work so incredibly different is that the plants we are working with are among the rarest and most vulnerable plants native to our state.   It definitely brings an enhanced level of intensity to mundane tasks but it also brings a great sense of satisfaction.  I think, perhaps, there is no more satisfying work than doing something that you know will make a difference.  So, our care for the pitcher plants, the threatened sunflowers, the very rare quillworts makes all of us feel that we are making a contribution to save these species for future generations.

The more I “got to know” these plants, the more fascinated I became.  I watched them in all phases of their growth cycle during the year and observed them closely.  And, what I found is that not only are these plants precious because they are so rare but they are also absolutely beautiful to look.

As an artist, I was determined to both capture and share this beauty so I eventually painted all 19 of the native Georgia plants that are on the federal endangered species list. But as I was painting, I kept wondering, WHY are these endangered? Have they always been rare or is this a new, unfortunate 21st century phenomenon. And, what can we, as concerned citizens, DO about this situation? The scientists are working non – stop but certainly there must be something WE can do. And of course, there is. For some ideas of what you can do to help save these species from extinction, click on How You Can Help.

In the blog posts to follow, I’ll explore some of the many reasons that so many of the plants throughout the country are rare and vulnerable. But for now, understanding the various designations and definitions is a good starting point.

The World Wildlife Fund explains the Endangered Species Act as follows: Passed with bipartisan support in 1973, the law allows individuals and organizations to petition to have a species listed as endangered or threatened. These listing petitions undergo rigorous scientific evaluation and public review before a final decision is made on whether a species should be protected.

Currently there are 1300 species either threatened or endangered on the federal lists. This number fluctuates as new species are listed and (hooray!) other species are successfully restored so that they no longer need protection. What is the difference between the federal designations?

Endangered: any species which is in danger of extinction throughout all or a significant portion of it range.

Threatened: any species which is likely to become an endangered species within the foreseeable future throughout all or a significant portion of its range.

Many, though not all, states have their own lists of Endangered, Threatened and Vulnerable (or Special Concern). A species might be listed as endangered on the state list but not the federal list. For example, the Kentucky lady’s slipper is on the Georgia endangered species list, meaning that in our particular state, it is threatened with extinction. But, it is more secure in other parts of its range in other states so it is NOT listed as endangered on the federal lists.

Global listings are similar but status is based on its presence throughout its range:

G1 – critically imperiled globally

G2 Imperiled

G3 Either very rare throughout its range or factors (such as habitat loss) make it vulnerable to extinction throughout its range.

G4. Globally secure but may be rare or endangered in part of its range

G5 Globally secure throughout.

The Endangered Species Act is a wonderful law but it’s not enough. We need to continue to advocate for stronger laws to protect global biodiversity. I look forward to exploring this important issue with you as we work together to protect our imperiled beauty.

Laura

Note: All those who knew Will Hembree are heartbroken because of his death on July 26th. Will was instrumental in my becoming involved and passionate about our endangered plants and the current exhibit at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens is dedicated to his memory. Will inspired many people in his tragically short life. He will be greatly missed but not forgotten.

My friend, Jessica, loves to arrange flowers and always has a small bouquet somewhere in her beautiful urban condo. Jessica is also the one who alerted me to the environmental impact of buying cut flowers from a florist or market.

Like other goods that are imported from countries thousands of miles away, flowers have a serious environmental impact. Most of the flowers in the US come from Colombia and are flown here in temperature controlled planes. The “shelf life” for most cut flowers is 3 – 5 days so speed is incredibly important. Not only the transportation but the cultivation for flowers also has an impact as these flowers take a tremendous amount of water and are generally grown with chemicals.

So, to do our part and make our own contribution to fighting climate change, Jessica and I pledged to forage for flowers and to try to buy only locally sourced stems instead of purchasing them at the market or grocery store.

This not only influences the way I decorate the house but also how I garden. Knowing that my biggest source of flowers will be my own garden greatly inspires me to plant flowers that I can cut and bring indoors. With a continued promise to grow as many native plants as possible, this definitely narrows the field, so to speak.

As I foraged this week in my garden, I knew I could pick some dried flower heads and grasses but I really wanted something colorful and living. After the cold spell of the century followed by torrential rains, the pickings were pretty slim. But, every bit of green and living caught my eye. All of a sudden moss, lichen and evergreen branches looked beautiful!

I decided on a few buds from my paper bush and the short elongated blossoms from mahonia. I found a small grove of mahonia – one of the worst invasive plants in Georgia – at the side of the house. I hadn’t even realized it was there. I need to cut all the blossoms back so it won’t continue to spread. I used yellow speckled acuba as a filler and put it all in a small crystal vase.

I can’t say that it’s a stunningly beautiful arrangement but it is colorful and it brings a small spot of nature into my living room. And, there was zero negative environmental impact. Actually, since it served to help control an invasive plant, I’ll put it in the positive column. What more could you ask for in January!!

A friend recently came back from touring in Europe, where she met an English professor who focused on climate change. When she asked him the one best thing we could do for our children, his answer was a surprise. Rather than list a list of “do this” or “don’t do that” the professor said, “Leave them with hope.”

When she relayed this story to me, I was first surprised and then delighted, for hope is something I can do – it’s my forte and within my skill set. I may not be able to transform my garden into an environment that absorbs huge amounts of carbon, but I sure can leave my children and grandchildren with a sense of hope. And with good reason!

There are positive signs that the world is finally getting serious about climate change. The U.S. legislation passed earlier this year is a clear indication that Americans are moving forward in mitigating the effects of climate change at a national level, though admittedly, we have a long way to go.

But mainly I’m optimistic because I believe that the smartest minds in the world are working on this issue and I believe in the creative genius of our species. I think that we can come up with solutions and put these ideas to work before it’s too late.

I’m also optimistic because I believe in the goodness of people and in human nature. Viktor Frankl, who spent years in four different concentration camps during World War II was well aware of the power of hope. His book, “Man’s Search for Meaning” grapples with the question of why some people survived and others did not. His answers had everything to do with our attitude and our sense of hope.

He wrote “Our greatest freedom is the freedom to choose our attitude.” This is as true today, when we sometimes feel dark and hopeless about our environment, as it was during the dark days of World War II.

But hope isn’t passive. Hope involves action. Frankl said “Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct.”

Hope is a choice. We can continue to wallow in the dire predictions of the day or we can choose to be hopeful – and to marry that attitude with right action and right conduct.

During this week of thanks, I’m grateful for all those who are working tirelessly to help solve our environmental problems. But even more, I’m grateful for all of you who choose hope.

Update on the leaf blower- Last week I posted about getting an electric leaf blower. I ended up buying a Ryobi 40 Volt. The best thing about it, other than it has zero emissions, is that it is sooooo quiet. The bad news? the battery only lasts 20 – 25 minutes. So, that’s a bummer. There are solutions – I could get an additional battery to have ready. Or, I could reduce the amount of area that I blow. Or, I could become more efficient – I found myself sort of chasing leaves from one side to the other. But, all in all, I’m thrilled.

Lasagna for the yard

I know my neighbors think that I am a dumpster diver, with good reason, I’m always poking my nose into the neighborhood trashcans.  This is particularly ironic because, much to my great embarrassment, during my childhood, my mother was forever going through trashcans and things stacked on the street.  And here I am, my mother’s daughter.  

My Mom took things such as broken down furniture, cleaned it up and handed it over to my Dad, who would fix it as needed.  She, then, would paint it and turn it into a treasure.  She developed quite a business doing this, selling painted discards at embarrassingly high prices.  

I’m not so much into dragging broken down tables home as I am interested in leaves and cardboard, of which there is an astounding amount of piled up by neighbors’ mailboxes. That means that Mondays are really busy days since the city picks up trash on Tuesdays.

 Atlanta is known as the city of trees so you can just imagine fall in our fair city.  In many neighborhoods, mine included, it seems to be a point of honor to keep every leaf off the landscape so there are rows and rows of bagged leaves along the street. What a waste! The ground needs all those leaves to help replenish our poor soils.

In years past I have had 24 bales of pine straw delivered – twice a year. It’s a great mulch and makes things look nice. This year, I began looking for yards with pine trees – and leaf bags at the street. Bingo! I found one house with several bags of fairly clean, leaf free pine straw so I drove around the corner and stuffed the bags into the back of my car. The car was really stuffed so – unbeknownst to me – the back door had not closed and I almost, almost drove off which would have resulted in several bags of pine straw strewn all over the street. It would have been a little embarrassing having to explain why I was raking the street! But just in the nick of time, I noticed and closed up the car.

As for the cardboard? Everything, it seems, comes from Amazon these days in varying sizes of cardboard boxes.  There must be billions of boxes in America now.   I read that you could use these castaways in the landscape to help build back soil – and still keep your lawn and flower beds looking respectable.

This is still all theory for me but the idea behind this layering or lasagna method is to place the cardboard directly on the ground or on weeds that you want to get rid of, wet it down and cover it with mulch – like chopped up leaves!!! Perfect.

I dragged over a few big sheets of cardboard from one neighbor, tore it into the right size and put it on grass that I’m trying to smother (always thinking about less grass!). Then, much to the amusement of the people walking down the street, I watered it.  You can’t use cardboard that has tape or paint on it and that’s a drawback because a lot of boxes are fully painted. But, if you can find plain brown cardboard boxes, you’re in business. You can use other things as well, such as those big paper leaf bags torn to lie flat or newspapers, basically anything that will decompose.

I have a small leaf mulcher so I put it out on the front yard, dragged another neighbor’s bags of leaves over and began to go to work, pouring in leaves, getting out beautiful mulch, which I then put on the wet cardboard.  It’s easier to run over the leaves with a mower but unless you have an electric mower, it means putting more nasties into the air if you run a gas mower even longer.

I hope that the worms and other earth critters will love the cardboard and then by next spring, I’ll have no grass and good soil.  All from the neighbor’s trash. What could be better?

The soil is everything, not only for our gardens but for the entire planet.  It is, literally, the ground beneath our feet and anything to do to make it richer and stronger will benefit us all.

Let me know if you have done this lasagna method of soil building and what your experience was. And, if you have other ideas about building the soil, post that as well. Happy gardening!

There is no doubt that our climate is changing. And we know why – greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide) in the air prevent heat from radiating back out into the atmosphere, trapping it on earth and causing warmer temperatures. We also know the solution – to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases in the air both by emitting less and by actually absorbing what is already there.

Traditionally, our gardens and landscapes have contributed to the problem. We use gas powered equipment to maintain our gardens (a leaf blower running for one hour emits as much CO2 as a car traveling 300 miles.) We water excessively (the most irrigated “crop” in America? Not soy or corn but lawns). We use nitrogen rich fertilizers which add to the nitrous oxide in the air. We spray chemicals to “improve” our gardens and keep away mosquitoes and that kills pollinators which are desperately needed in the garden and in the wild for plants to perpetuate.

New theories or solutions to climate change remind me of new magical ways to lose weight. We’re all looking for a quick solution. But really, to lose weight you just have to burn more calories than you take in. To cure climate change, we have to reduce the amount of carbon in the air.

Can gardening do that? I think yes.

Plants can absorb and trap carbon, can offer shade and cooling for homes and can offer much needed habitat, food and pollen for pollinators. But which plants? And how do we eliminate our chemical, water and fossil fuel dependence and still have beautiful gardens? And if you live in Southern California, how do you maintain your gardens without using precious water? And how do we deal with invasive plants without using chemicals? And how do we build the soil so that it becomes an effective carbon trap? What can we plant to replace lawns? And so on. I definitely have more questions than answers, but in the end, I have these goals for my nature based garden:

1.     To reduce the amount of carbon in the air 

2.     To protect and increase the number of pollinators.  

3.     To protect and improve air and water quality 

4. To bring my landscape into an environmentally balanced system and still have a beautiful, welcoming garden.

I hope that you will work toward these goals with me. I think that together we can have a powerful impact on our environment. The good news is that there are alternative gardening methods that will help us succeed. It doesn’t mean giving up your lovely landscape, it just means thinking outside the box and being open to doing and seeing things a little differently.

The posts here will reflect my journey toward attaining these goals. I’m sure I’ll have both successes and failures. But I am also sure that this journey is absolutely necessary – both for the health of the planet and my own mental health. Certainly to do something about this desperately important issue is ultimately better than doing nothing.

I’m enthused and excited about this journey and am happy that so many of you have the same goals. We all have different circumstances and different challenges. Please share your thoughts and experiences through commenting on the posts. And I’m always open to “guest bloggers!” The more information we have, the more success we will have. I can’t wait to hear about your own creative solutions to bringing our world back into balance. Happy Gardening.

Laura

The first blog, which follows, is about my surprisingly challenging efforts to get the “mow and blow” landscapers to switch to an electric leaf blower. I thought it would be so simple…….

In my seemingly never ending quest to do something about climate change I decided that the first thing I needed to do was to get my own house in order, to drastically reduce my carbon footprint and maybe even have a positive impact on the environment with the wise use of the land that I care for.

To this end, I decided to first tackle the obvious – the men who help care for our yard the “mow and blow” guys still use gas powered equipment.  Because we’re in the height of the leaf season, it only made sense to begin with the leaf blowers.

I have a small electric leaf blower with a looooong cord.  Perfect!

When my 6 foot 230 pound yard man, Daht, pulled up two weeks ago, I was ready! I ran outside to greet him.  I picked up my little lime green blower with the loooong cord.  “Could you use this instead?  It’ll save you gas!” I smiled brightly.

He took it from me and literally laughed out loud.  It looked like a toy in his big hands.  “No.  Too long,” he said in his limited English.

“Oh no!” I said, still brightly, “I have a loooong cord.  It’ll go all the way to the back.”

He laughed again and said, “Take too long.  One hour. Two.”

Hmmm, I said not so brightly.  “Could you at least use it on the driveway? And if I get a larger electric machine, will you use that?”

Hmmmm, he said, also not so brightly,    “Maybe.”

And so we left it, neither of us entirely happy.  But not entirely unhappy either.

I knew that if he wouldn’t use a small leaf blower, he certainly wasn’t going to use a rake.  It occurred to me (briefly) that maybe I would just take care of the mowing and blowing myself but it’s a large property and I really love using my gardening time for more than routine maintenance. 

My next thought was just to leave the leaves on the large, mossy back yard. But frankly, I like the look of a freshly blown yard. It looks neat and cared for. I am adamant about leaving the leaves under trees and in the flower beds, but not so much on the open lawns. In doing more research, I discovered that moss covered areas are wonderful carbon traps, storing more carbon than even mature trees.  Wahoo!!!!

A little more reading informed me that you have to keep leaves off moss or they will smother and kill it.  Not so wahoo.

I looked at electric leaf blowers and there are a multitude available, from little ones like my old one to the Ryobi 40 volt model that I chose.  Electric blowers, like electric cars, seem to provide a solution to taking care of our environment but still doing the things we love to do – taking car trips and removing leaves from the mossy lawn. And they’re quiet!!

I’ll have to admit it wasn’t a seamless transition. Last week I tried out my new blower, happily (and oh so quietly!) blowing leaves off the moss. I only used it about a half hour and then set it out for Daht, who came a few days later. He only used it five minutes before the battery died. WHAT?? The battery is supposed to last four hours. Is it a faulty battery? Does it need to be freshly charged every time you use it? Okay, I can do that. I can have it ready and fully charged.

So, especially those of you who live in neighborhoods, what do you do about leaf blowers? Does your neighborhood have a noise ordinance that prohibits gas powered blowers? Do you rake? If you have an electric blower, which one do you use? How long does YOUR battery last? Please share your experience!

Onward…….