Local Ecologist

Local Ecologist has moved!

2025-04-08T10:23:00.003-04:00

Thank you for your readership! I have been writing this blog for more than a decade. This website will no longer be updated. Please find the blog at my new website. The mailing list is still active. I encourage to join it.

The Tree Flowers of Sprummer

2024-06-18T10:11:00.005-04:00

I have a new tree story on the New York State Urban Forestry Council blog: The Tree Flowers of Sprummer. Here is an except:

The word sprummer is making the rounds on social media. Sprummer describes the time between spring and summer; spring weather is still here and there while summer is making itself known with high humidity levels. In the urban forest, some trees flower in this window of time. Hawthorn. Kousa dogwood. Northern catalpa. Osage Orange. Tulip tree. Long gone are the cherry and magnolia blossoms, and the more discrete maple flowers. (Aside: Yoshino cherries’ fruits are ripening and American robins are feasting on them.) Flowering dogwood, serviceberry and sweetgum flowers have passed too.

Read the entire article on the New York State Urban Forestry Council blog.

Threats to Urban Forests

2023-12-04T11:46:00.001-05:00

THREATS TO URBAN FORESTS

Photo by Craig Vodnik on Unsplash

"What are the hazards trees in cities face," a student asked me this summer. I gave a thoughtful but short answer along the lines of it depends on where the tree is located—sidewalk, park, natural area—and if the tree was planted with a carer lined up to provide stewardship. The NYC Parks Department segments the urban forest into three categories: street trees, trees in landscaped parks, trees in forested natural areas. While there are overlapping threats, trees growing in sidewalk settings face unique challenges.

There is a laundry list of threats to trees everywhere, and new ones seem to pop up constantly. With the news of Beech Leaf Disease (BLD) and the decline of the beech component in northeast forests—seeing the effects of BLD in real life—the wind was knocked out of me this summer. I began drafting this post in August and have been sitting with it since then.

American Beech canopy showing signs of Beech Leaf Disease

This more comprehensive response to question about threats to urban trees is not the catharsis urban forest-lovers need, but writing about trees in any capacity is giving attention to trees which is sorely needed in our lives.

Screenshot of a graphic showing breakdown of NYC Land Cover

New York City categories the 861, 576 trees on its Tree Map into three populations:
forested natural areas
landscaped parks
sidewalks
The trees in the forested natural areas bucket are part of 7,300 acres of forest communities. Forested natural areas are structurally and functionally different than trees in landscaped parks and street trees which are managed under arboricultural standards or individually.

Trees in forested natural areas face several major threats including but not limited to fragmented habitat, invasive species, pest & disease pressures, climate change, and disturbed regeneration. The Natural Areas Conservancy details management strategies for forested parkland.

In a landscaped park setting where trees have been purposefully planted (trees are also hand planted in forested natural areas as part of restoration projects) and where the landscape is more intensively managed (think: mowing and weeding to control spontaneous vegetation and regeneration), the primary pressures on trees are adaptability to climate-disrupted temperature and moisture regimes, pest and disease impacts, incompatibility with lawn care, and soil compaction from human use and off-leash dog activity.

The suite of hazards for street trees include some of the pressures faced by trees in forested areas and in parks, plus challenges specific to the more public location of this population of urban trees. Keep reading for ten threats to street trees.

TEN THREATS TO STREET TREES

1. Lack of funding

Seedling growing out of a pile of coins
(Photo by micheile henderson on Unsplash)

One threat I did not include in my response to the student or in my first draft of this post was lack of funding. I am uncomfortable describing trees as infrastructure. Trees are living beings. Healthy lives require resources that need to be paid for. Backed by a broad coalition of advocates, two urban forestry laws in New York City were passed this fall—achieve 30% canopy cover equitable by 2035 and create an urban forest plan. I felt hopeful about trees in the city. However, the mayor's proposed 5% budget cuts to already deeply underfunded agencies like NYC Parks, which manages 14% of the city's land with only 0.6% of total city budget, has deflated me again.

2. Overhead infrastructure

Tree branch pruned to accommodate scaffolding

In New York City, scaffolding is the number one overhead infrastructural threat to trees. Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine remarked in an interview with CBS News, "The average sidewalk shed is now staying up for over 400 days....There are some that have been up over 10 years, and even cases in which these eyesores have been out there for over 15 years." Some sidewalk shed installers make space for tree trunks, branches, and stems. Other installers are careless and trees are damaged during installation. In addition, scaffolding can prevent sunlight and rainfall from reaching the tree.

Power lines are another overhead nuisance for street trees. In communities where the electric grid is not underground, trees that attain heights of 25 feet or more become entangled with overhead wires. The presence of overhead wires can be a limiting factor in canopy height since either small statured trees are planted or tree crowns are reduced. It is still the case that utility pruners do not gracefully trim this subpopulation of street trees resulting in malformed silhouettes and aggressively reduced crowns.

3. Root Zone Conflicts

Underground infrastructure is less evident than overhead wires but they are no less consequential for street trees. Have you ever wondered what is 30 feet below a city sidewalk or street? Power, cable, water, steam, gas, and miscellany construction remnants and engineering artifacts. These objects impact if and where a tree can be planted in the sidewalk. Malfunction and repairs to these systems affect existing trees. I have watched several street trees die after exposure to leaky steam pipes.

4. Girdling

Tree trunk being girdled by 3 different items

Do you know why there are rules against wrapping objects around tree trunks and branches? It’s to prevent girdling. To girdle a tree is to literally choke a tree’s access to water and nutrients. As your unattended string of lights tightens around a tree’s growing girth, the string cuts into the cells and tissues that transport sugars and water within the tree. The girdling object can also instigate bark damage which could provide an entry point for bacteria and pests.

Tape is also bad. Tape traps moisture between itself and the tree’s bark which can become a host site for bacteria and fungi.

Chain wrapped around the trunk flare of a street tree

Don’t lock your bike, scooter, moped to a tree.

Electrical infrastructure attached to a tree's trunk

Use the inanimate objects in the right-of-way to hang your lights, display your signs, secure your wheels.

5. People driving vehicles

Vehicle tire marks visible in wet soil/mud in a tree bed

Coincidentally I finished reading Crossings: How Road Ecology is Shaping the Future of Our Planet by Ben Goldfarb as I was writing this post. People who drive have a lot of roadway at their disposal. There is no reason, but it happens, for people to drive or park their vehicles on the sidewalk. This behavior damages and kills trees. I have seen this happen; sometimes repeatedly in the same location.

Repeated injury to a tree's trunk from passing/parking vehicles

Van and truck drivers damage the upper trunk and crown of trees while parking. I doubt a driver would scrape their vehicle against a light pole or restaurant awning in order to park their vehicle. We not treat trees as living beings. We don’t see them as something worth looking out for.

6. Not enough room to grow

Illegal concretization of a street tree bed

A conventional metric of the amount of soil a tree needs is 1-2 cubic feet to 1 foot squared of crown spread. Do you remember outgrowing your shoes as a child? It was an uncomfortable to painful situation. Eventually you received a new pair of shoes.

This tree bed was expanded (the "mound" shows the original dimensions)

A tree cannot get a new pair of shoes. Therefore, it is important to provide the greatest amount of soil volume possible at the time of tree planting. For example, if you envision your tree reaching 16 inches in diameter with a 32 foot crown spread, your tree requires 1,000 cubic feet of soil, says Deep Root.

7. Don't tread on tree beds

Compaction can reduce the soil volume available to a tree. The permeability of soil, the pore spaces between soil particle, is important for water and gas exchange in the root zone. When we walk within the tree bed or routinely place heavy bags of trash on the soil, the pore spaces in the soil get smaller and flatten thus compromising the drainage capacity of the soil and the ability of roots to navigate through the soil.

Two related issues are too much mulch and too much soil! Mulch has great properties. It protects the soil: reducing water loss and moderating soil temperature. Mulch can also help to reduce the impacts of compacting activities. Too much mulch can be a bad thing especially when mulch is applied close to the tree’s trunk which can become a breeding ground for fungi and bacteria.

Follow the advice in Mulch Out, Not Up.

Similarly too much soil is not a good thing for trees. A tree’s feeder roots are close to the surface of the soil. If you add soil, you can suffocate these roots. If you remove soil, you expose the roots and create the potential for physical damage and dehydration.

8. Whose tree?

Two people engaged in soil care in a tree bed

The absence of a steward can reduce the longevity of a tree. Most tree planting contracts include two years of post-planting care. In a contract this typically means seasonal watering and replacing dead trees. Contract maintenance is not equivalent to stewardship.

A garden planted beneath a street tree

“Trees are more successful when they are stewarded,” I wrote in a blog post titled People-Plant Relationships. Anecdotal evidence and research studies have proven this statement. In “People-Plant Relationships,” I cited five studies that showed higher survival rates in urban trees populations are correlated with human stewardship. The caring does not have to be hands-on either. Boyce (2010) found that “observational stewardship” where people watch out for trees and report threats which were quickly resolved reduced mortality rates in street trees. Jane Jacobs’ “eyes on the street” is applicable to more than just human safety.

9. Cues not to care

A tree bed lined with pink boards filled with trash

Street trees have better survival rates when they are cared for by people. In their 2010 paper “Biological, social, and urban design factors affecting young street tree mortality in New York City,” Lu at al. found that tree carers leave signs of their stewardship such as underplantings, mulching, and signage. These “cues to care” are strong predictors of street tree survival.

I think cues not to care about street trees include trash, debris, and pet feces. All are environmental pollutants. However, Lu et al. (2010) found a surprise about animal waste in their research: “the presence of scat was unexpectedly associated with higher survival.” I am shocked. Pet waste is dangerous to human and watershed health. I have shoveled out pet waste from tree beds. It was an unpleasant task.

The NYC Department of Sanitation has a litter and pet waste clean up campaigns but they do not explicitly focus on tree beds. The tag lines are: “If you are litter, you are garbage” and “Don’t leave _ _ it on the sidewalk.”

10. Vandalism

This Ailanthus altissima was spray painted (c/o @collandthecity)

Some of the previous types of threats could be considered vandalism but they aren’t. Vandalism is “willful or malicious destruction or defacement of public or private property.” Backing up into a tree accidentally or not knowing that your string lights can girdle a tree are not deliberate anti-tree behaviors. Deliberate harm includes spray painting, carving, breaking low-hanging branches.

Not everyone loves trees. The list of arboreal disservices is long and ranges from the high maintenance costs (pruning) to the risk of falling branches during storms, exacerbating seasonal allergies to cleaning up the “litter” created by fallen fruits and leaves, and more.

When I worked in Boston, there was a story of someone pouring gasoline and other chemicals into tree beds to kill street trees. The 200 year old “Sycamore Gap Tree” in England was cut down in the middle of the night in September 2023.

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Given all of these constraints and barriers to thriving, we still keep planting trees, and many of them grow old in our cities. We plant trees to make up for losses either through neglectful or wrongful death. We plant trees because “we” think their benefits outweigh their costs. We plant trees because many of us love living with them. What do you think?

What did I leave out in my list of threats to the urban forest? Please leave a comment.

Notice the Birds and Trees in Your Local Park

2023-09-22T13:39:00.010-04:00

My short article, "Notice the birds and trees in your local park with new guide," is live on The Village Sun website.

The Mast Year

2023-08-15T11:00:00.030-04:00

There are gluts of acorns on the ground right now. This year looks like a mast year for oaks--a bumper crop of acorns. Mast is used to describe the fruit of woody plants associated with forests. A mast year refers to the simultaneous, abundant fruit production within a population of trees.

How big is a bumper crop compared to non-mast years? Mike Hallworth, Vermont Atlas of Life, quantifies the difference between mast and non-mast years: "During mast years, there may be anywhere between a 3- to 9-fold increase in the amount of nuts and cones." Many of the acorns I observe are the fruits of trees in the red oak group, for example Northern Red Oak (Quercus rubra) and Pin Oak (Q. palustris). I have seen very few white oak acorns. Oaks in this group include Swamp White Oak (Q. bicolor) and White Oak (Q. alba).

One of the differences between these two groups of oaks is the maturation of their fruit. White oak acorns ripen in the same year the female flowers are fertilized while red oak acorns mature in the year after fertilization.

Two other distinctions between the oak groups are wood color and leaf morphology. The latter is more visible to the naked eye and you don't have to cut the tree. Oaks have lobed leaves; most of them do anyway. The lobes of white oak leaves are round. The lobes of red oak leaves are pointed with bristled tips. White oak wood is lighter in color than red oak wood--an outcome of the concentration of tannins, says Carey Russell, a NY-based forestry educator.

By the way, white oaks' acorns are more palatable to wildlife and people because they have less tannic acid. Other plants contain tannins (tannic acid) but the name is derived from "the old German word tanna meaning oak. It refers to the use of wood tannins derived from oak trees that were used to convert animal hides into leather."

The internet says that mast years in oaks occur every two to five years. I have not found a scientific source for this popular statement. A news search revealed 2021 was the most recent mast year. Mike Hallworth predicted this occurrence based on differences in summer temperatures in 2019 and 2020. Is 2023 a mast year? It has been two years since the last one!

If you come across white oak acorns, collect them but not too many. Leave some for wildlife and forest regeneration. The "acorn predators"--jays, woodpeckers, turkeys, mice, squirrels, deer--who have survived the lean years deserve to be satisfied too. Trees synchronize their fruit production to overwhelm frugivores to ensure seed survival. This concept is known as predator satiation was hypothesized by Daniel Jansen in 1971 (via Dave Kelly 2020). Red oak acorns are edible, but you might want to remove much of their tannins.

American Beech seems to be experiencing a boom year, too. Which trees in your area are profusely fruiting this year?

Best Nature Podcasts

2023-04-27T10:00:00.005-04:00

Photo by Mohammad Metri via Unsplash.com

Did you read my January post about newsletters for nature lovers? This post is about some of the podcasts I listen to that focus on plants and the outdoors. I host a podcast, Your Bird Story, about bird stories and birdwatching in cities. You can listen to it wherever you subscribe to podcasts. Without further ado, here is my list of nature-centric podcasts.

1. In Defense of Plants

When In Defense of Plants host, Matt Candeias says, "without further ado," this is my clue to devote my 100% listening attention. This is not hard to do. I am consistently amazed by the plant content Matt and his guests share in their conversation. If you are going to add one a plant podcast to your rotation, make it this one. Oh, there's also an In Defense of Plants blog!

2. This Old Tree

Historic trees are full of stories, and Doug Still and his guests uncover them in long-form, monthly episodes. He has an extensive tree people network so you hear the who's who in the urban tree world. Doug loops in listeners by airing their short tales about beloved trees. I am happy to say my story about a row on Kwanzan Cherries was included in Tree Story Shorts II. Get your tree fix with This Old Tree.

3. The Nature of Phenology

A dose of nature can be as short as 5 minutes. WERU's Nature of Phenology pod fits the bill. Hazel Stark narrates the scripts written by Joe Horn. Hazel's voice and the sounds of nature pull you in the seasonal changes of Maine landscapes. You don't have to live in Maine to get the most from this program. I track tree cycles in my local park in NYC. Listening to the podcast provides camaraderie and reattunes me to the outdoors.

4. What's Going On Out There?

A new podcast in my rotation is What's Going On Out There by Shane Sater based in Montana. I discovered Shane's podcast on LinkedIn when I read his blog post "Spring in Seattle and an Anna’s hummingbird mystery." The narrated posts are the basis of the podcast.

5. Tangled Trees

The arboricultural podcast you need is Tangled Trees by Katie Breukers. Katie is an ISA certified arborist with her own firm, Tangled Trees, in London, Ontario. She is also a student. I like the deep dives Katie takes in urban ecological topics based largely on her first hand knowledge. I look forward to many more episodes.

What did I miss? Please share your favorite nature podcasts with me!

Washington Square Park Loses Tree Cover, 2017-2023

2023-04-13T10:00:00.004-04:00

I have written previously about the removal of large trees in Washington Square Park. In 2017, Washington Square Park Loses Three Canopy Trees; in 2019, 10 Trees Removed in 2 Years in Washington Square Park; and in 2020, Did fill kill a large American linden in Washington Square Park?.

This fourth post is a tally of tree removals without replacement in Washington Square Park between 2017 and 2023. I am tracking these removals for a few reasons: (1) commemorate the existence of these trees, (2) canopy loss will affect the park's ecology and micro-climate, and (3) tree removals are not indicated on the NYC Tree Map (not even on the Tree Removal and Stump Removal site).

2017

London Plane Tree, 47 inches and 29 inches

Pin Oak, 28 inches

Green Ash*, 25 inches

Total DBH** loss = 129 inches

2018

Paper Birch, dbh unknown

Dawn Redwood, dbh unknown

2019

Northern Red Oak, 23 inches

American Sycamore, 33 inches

Ailanthus altissima, 30 inches

Total DBH loss = 86 inches

(A Deodar Cedar of unknown dbh was removed and replaced)

2020

American Linden, 35 inches

Total DBH loss = 35 inches

2022

White Ash, dbh unknown

White Ash***, dbh unknown

London Plane Tree, 26 inches

Three Himalayan Pines, dbh unknown

2023

Norway Maple, 23 inches [added on June 12, 2023]

~~Fifteen~~ Sixteen trees have been removed from Washington Square Park since 2017 (including the Ailanthus). Based on the DBH data I have, at least ~~276~~ 299 inches of trees have been removed from Washington Square Park.

Trees are multifaceted with an intrinsic right to live. People tend to plant trees for cultural and environmental benefits, the latter of which depend in part of tree age. A 3 inch tree, the typical size of a newly planted tree, provides much fewer environmental services than a 30 inch tree. The 28 inch Pin Oak was approximately 84 years old when it was removed from the park.

The NYC Parks Department is creating a tree succession plan for the park. As part of this plan, new trees will be planted. I do not have information about the contents or the release date of the plan or its implementation. I have asked! My hope for the document is that it prescribes boosting native species and enhancing the mid-story layer.

*Diameter at breast height is measured at 4.5 feet above the ground

**Ash are removed when they pose a failure risk due to Emerald Ash Borer infestation

***One of the ash were at least 40 inches

This post was updated on April 126, 2023.

An African American Tree Activist Lived in Brooklyn

2023-03-22T11:00:00.002-04:00

Mural of Hattie Carthan adjacent to 679 Lafayette Avenue

I wrote a story for the Brooklyn Botanic Garden about environmental activist Hattie Carthan.

A Southern magnolia, Magnolia grandiflora, still grows in Brooklyn, one of the botanical legacies of African American environmental activist Hattie Carthan. The tree, located at 679 Lafayette Avenue in Bedford-Stuyvesant, was landmarked on May 12, 1970. It had been planted as a seedling, sourced from North Carolina, in 1885.

Read "An African American Tree Activist Lived in Brooklyn" at the BBG blog and share the article!

Landscape History of the African Diaspora in Manhattan

2023-03-10T13:12:00.006-05:00

I am documenting the "how's" of how enslaved and free Africans and their descendants made lives and livelihoods, and a new city, out of the historical ecology of Manhattan island. I use two frameworks: "Black ecologies" by Justin Hosbey and J.T. Roane and a "spatial analysis of slavery" by Andrea Mosterman. In this post, I tell a short version of this project in three collages.

This first slide tells the story of the creation of New Amsterdam. The "F" on the top map, circa 1639 indicates the "quarter of the company slaves," the company being the Dutch West India Company. I learned about this place from the work of Andrea Mosterman, author of Spaces of Enslavement. The landscape of place denoted by "F" on the 1639 Vingboon Map was a Red Maple Hardwood Swamp and an Oak-Tulip Tree Forest (bottom left). The water source of the swamp was the Saw Mill, a creek named for the milling industry at the location. Enslaved Africans harvested trees and made lumber for use elsewhere in the colony including the construction of The Wall, now Wall Street, in 1653. Enslaved African built much of the infrastructure of the colony including canals shown in the 1660 Castello Map (bottom right).

The next story in this timeline is one about water, and maize. Africans, kidnapped and enslaved, were brought to New Amsterdam under Dutch control. The British built an official slave market in 1711 (top left) on the East River waterfront. Under Dutch rule, 11 enslaved African men successfully petition for their freedom. These men are given land grants (bottom left) which carried obligations. One of them was an annual duty of agricultural products including maize which the central plant in the center image. Maize is depicted in this drawing by Pieter de Marees as one crop grown in the Gold Kingdom of Guinea in 1602. Two of the enclaves of the African diaspora in New Amsterdam are Collect Pond (top right) and Minetta Brook (bottom right).

The final part of this project shows the African diaspora's connection to trees in an increasingly built landscape. The black star on the 1660 Castello Map (top right) is the lot owned by free woman Susanna Antony Robert who planted "8 small trees." What were the species? I haven't found a record by archaeological study has found evidence of fruit trees in this area of the city. Moving ahead to the 1800s, William Brown (center top) founder the African Grove Theater in his backyard in 1816. He created a pleasure garden for African Americans; white-owned pleasure gardens were racially segregated. While there are no photos of Brown's pleasure garden, white-owned gardens are drawn and described as verdant. Brown's house was behind City Hospital which had many large trees (left right). Brown's pleasure garden might have "borrowed" the view of the hospital's canopy. Finally, Josh E. Landin was a resident of Seneca Village (bottom right). Landin sold fruit and forest trees (top right) from Lower Manhattan including the store of Black abolitionist David Ruggles.

Chicken Merry, Hawk deh Near

2023-01-22T10:15:00.001-05:00

Two chickens, two pigs, and huts, Jamaica, William Berryman, loc.gov

If you are Jamaican, then you know the proverb in the title of this post. I grew up hearing this idiom in conversations about a person or people who had fallen from grace. It was also used as a warning to be mindful about how you carried yourself in the world. My husband, who is not Jamaican but has heard me talk about "when the chicken is merry, the hawk is near," brought it up when I told him about a recent I am Julie Mango video. In the video, Julie Mango compares what a Jamaican vs others would say about standing on a high balcony. Others talk about the beautiful view, while the Jamaican only points out the potential hazards: falling from the balcony, hurting yourself, dying.

The mode of flogging slaves, J. Hatchard and son, loc.gov

After reflecting on this Julie Mango video, I realized that I fight against this cynical and skeptical cultural inclination. I also acknowledge its necessity, borne of historical and contemporary realities. Enslaved people, and free Black people, had to be vigilant of their behavior and surroundings, and the conduct of others. Merriness was a luxury when your body was another's property and your labor was painfully extracted. Joy could be a distraction, and bring unwanted attention. Pointing out the negative consequences of behavior and situations is a protective measure, so are setting low expectations and preempting disappointment.

I conducted a web search for the origins of Jamaican proverbs. The following excerpt from Daniel, Smitherman-Donaldson, and Jeremiah (1987), quoting Warren Beckwith (1925), perfectly encapsulates my understanding of the role of proverbs in Jamaican life ways.

"African wit and philosophy are more justly summed up in the proverb or aphorism than in any other form of folk art, and the proverbial sayings collected from Negro settlements in the Americas or the West Indies give a truer picture of the metal life of the Negro than even story or song reveals. In them he expresses his justification of the vicissitudes of life.... Proverbs enter constantly into the life of the folk; borrowed sayings undergo a process of remolding under the influence of native conditions, being interpreted to meet the emergencies of native life, and new sayings patterned upon the old. There is no other art so thoroughly assimilated to the life of the people of Jamaica today as this of the aphorism and none employed so constantly in everyday experience."

Volume and direction of the trans-Atlantic slave trade from all African to all American regions, slavevoyages.org

In addition the authors show some Jamaican proverbs have their origins in West Africa, specifically the Akan-speaking people of the Ashanti Empire/Asante Kingdom in current day Ghana. In its history of the island, the Jamaican Embassy asserts "most Jamaican slaves came from the region of modern day Ghana, Nigeria and Central Africa, and included the Akan, Ashanti, Yoruba, Ibo and Ibibio peoples." My mother also makes a similar claim of Jamaicans being descendants of enslaved Ghanaians. There is a modern-day Jamaican diaspora in Ghana. The Gleaner reported in 2019 "there are approximately 4,000 Jamaicans living in Ghana."

Finally, to insert ecology into this post, the hawk in the proverb is the Red-tailed Hawk which was described in Western science from a specimen originating in Jamaica which directly influenced the bird's Latin binomial, Buteo jamaicensis.

Best Nature E-Newsletters

2023-01-11T18:00:00.009-05:00

Plant press in the field. Photo by Olga Nayda on Unsplash.

Newsletters have waxed and waned in popularity over the past couple of decades. Last fall the NY Times asked if paid newsletters have peaked. Maybe so. The newsletters I tend to read, written by naturalists and nonprofits have been less vulnerable to the whims of capitalist bubbles. The newsletters in my inbox range from big data to urban nature. This is a list of my favorite nature newsletters. If your must-read is not on this list, tell me about it in the comments.

NYC Microseasons

As a student of seasonal change especially in trees and birds, I took great pleasure in reading the phenological missives published by Erin Chapman and Allison C. Meier. The project has ended but you can read the entire collection here.

Grow Like Wild

Ecological horticulturist Rebecca MacMackin launched her newsletter in 2021. MacMackin’s mission is “to share studies, stories, and talking points with people engaged in this work so that we can be better practitioners and advocates.” You can subscribe to the newsletter here.

Nature’s Notebook

I administer a phenology monitoring project in Washington Square Park. I work with volunteers to collect data and make observations myself. Many thousands of naturalists collect seasonal change data using the Nature’s Notebook app. We receive a biweekly newsletter chock full of research findings, seasonal highlights, and resources.

Solar One for Stuy Cove Park newsletter

Park manager Candace Thompson writes phenomenal prose about this 1.9 acre public park on the East River. Thompson “collaborates with soil, plants, microbes, fungi, animals, food, land, digital media and other human beings” so the newsletter is multi-species and features natures in places around the city. The park was demolished last year as part of the East Side Coastal Resiliency project. You could follow the city website for Stuy Cove updates but the park's newsletter is better for the soul. Read them here.

Taking Root

If you are an urban forester in New York, then you probably subscribe to this NYS Urban Forestry Council newsletter. Written by Michelle Sutton, it spotlights trees, people, funding, and all things city trees in the state. Subscribe to Taking Root here.

Plant of the Week by Eric Larson

The earliest Plant of the Week newsletter in my inbox is dated March 5, 2015 and the plant was the Tulip Poplar! This species is my absolute favorite tree. I have been a happy subscriber since then. Larson profiles a different plant in each newsletter. The last plant featured in 2022 was the New England Aster. To subscribe to Plant of the Week, email the author at eric.linda.larson at gmail dot com.

By the way, you can subscribe to this blog to get posts in your inbox. I also write the Washington Square Park Eco Projects newsletter.

Creative Street Tree Planting Design

2022-12-16T10:53:00.005-05:00

A residential building on West Street in Manhattan has a unique feature at street level. The street trees are planted in a grove. Technically, the trees are not in the public right-of-way. They are growing in the building's setback. However, their layout and relationship to nearby street trees are striking. This sighting was the nudge I needed to write about street tree planting design. I will cover three aspects of street tree planting design: the arrangement of street trees in the public right-of-way, species selection, and forest structure. I will conclude with several creative solutions.

Street Tree Layout

The tree-lined city has its origins in the late 16th century and early 17th century when trees were planted along canals in Amsterdam (Lawrence, 1988). Street trees are usually planted in a single row on the curbside of the sidewalk. The design goal is to create even spacing, respecting the average canopy spread of the tree at maturity, and creating a harmonious look. Traditionally, both sides of the block were planted with trees of the same age and species, also known as an allee.

Another planting design, though not common, is to plant parallel rows of trees on a single side of a block to create a block-level allee. Sometimes there are accidental allees, an affect that is created between street trees and trees planted on adjacent land.

Tree Species

A prevailing street tree convention was to plant monocultures of a single species with trees of the same ranging from the block level to entire streets. The planting of streets with a single species has fallen out of favor. As cities have dealt with devastating canopy losses due to pests and diseases, urban foresters, designers, and planners are aware of the negative consequences of tree monocultures in cities. Recognition of the problem, however, does not always lead to implementation of mixed species canopy. It is insufficient to only consider species diversity. Genus and genetic diversity are important factors in urban forest health.

Did you know that New York State's urban frest canopy is dominated by only four genus (Bassuk, 2018)? The genera are: Acer (44.27%), Quercus (7.02%), Gleditsia (4.94%), and Tilia (4.07%).

Age diversity is another population factor worthy of attention. One downside to widely planting same-aged trees is the potential for simultaneous decline and death.

Forest structure

Street trees are typically planted as individual tree beds along a street. Many municipalities encourage residents to plant in tree pits. NYC provides a plant list that includes native annuals and perennials, but recommends planting "flowers that have shallow roots and die back each year (annuals)." Perennials are more sustainable, and native and naturalized perennials provide multiple ecosystem services. Can you imagine designing sylvan streetscapes by adding shrubs between the street tree canopy and the herbaceous layer?

Non-traditional street tree planting design

The pace of change in street tree planting design is slow. Technological advances in soil haven't changed the pattern of planting on sidewalks. Structural soil was designed to enable optimal root growth and compaction that meets engineering standards for load bearing. Even with the ability to support tree growth and meet compaction standards, trees are still relegated to the curb. The reasons we aren't seeing more innovation in streetscapes include traditional aesthetics, narrow sidewalks, maintenance, and engineering standards, and risk and liability management. New York City has 19th century infrastructure in the 21st century and nowhere is that more the case than in street tree planting techniques and design.

Here are several creative street tree planting in the public right-of-way.

Stormwater Greenstreets, NYC

Stormwater Greenstreets are located in flooding hotspots and in neighborhoods with waterways classified as having poor water quality. These greenstreets are designed to mitigate 1.7 inches of rain using the following features: inlets and outlets (curb cuts), bioswales, and engineered soil profiles. Each greenstreet system captures, stores, and infiltrate stormwater. (More)

Sidewalk Gardens by Plant*SF, San Francisco

Jane Martin responded to the San Francisco Neighborhood Parks Council's 2003 call for proposals to add greenspace to the Mission District neighborhood of San Francisco in 2003. She began designing "parks along the way" or "parks right out your door" and made them permeable to also respond to annual, intense flooding of streets, sidewalks, and buildings in San Francisco. (More)

"Parking Trees," Washington DC

The land between the building line and the sidewalk, known as the "parking zone," is owned by the municipality though maintenance is the responsibility of the adjacent property owner. On Massachusetts Avenue in DC, trees in the sidewalk as well as trees in this "parking zone" create allees on each side of the avenue.

Sidewalk Forest proposal, NYC

Sidewalk forests of native species to support other plants and animal wildlife are the brainchild of PopUp Forest founder, Marielle Anzelone.

Traffic Calming Management, East Bay, CA

Strategies to calm vehicular traffic in Berkeley and Oakland, CA include rotaries and bump outs on residential streets. Most of the calming measures are planted with trees, shrubs, and herbaceous perennials.

What's Next?

Nearby nature provides many benefits to people, plants, and wildlife. One of the most local elements of nature in cities is the street tree. We can maximize the potential of the city's street trees by thinking of them as an eco-system and not as individual objects to be managed like hard infrastructure. We should plant for genus and species (and genetic) diversity, plant to provide the kind of shade that can mitigate extreme heat, and underplant to tackle extreme flooding. We can provide ecosystem service benefits as Jane Martin says, "right out your door." Check out StreetsBlog Mass's article What Planting in the Street Could Look Like in Boston. Keep in mind: there is no one size fits all. This last point is critical. Cities should be mindful of barriers and resistance to participating in neighborhood greening which stem from legacies of urban renewal and displacement, a lack of agency in program design and implementation, and ecosystem disservices including maintenance costs.

Do you have a creative street tree planting design to share? Let me know in the comments.

This post was edited on Jan 10, 2023 for clarity and to include the StreetsBlog Mass reporting.

The Experience of Birds in the City (a poem)

2022-12-06T10:23:00.003-05:00

A crow flying in front of the Mexico City skyline; Photo by Luis Dominguez

The westward walk in the morning

the sight of gulls remind me I live nearby a big river.

I like hearing the crows because I think of landscapes just outside the city.

Suddenly many, many crows

a roost, but where?

I like watching robins in the park because I don't have a backyard.

I enjoy the soaring of the Red-tailed Hawk whose specific epithet links to my childhood

The aerial conflict between the hawk and kestrel outside my window wilds the sky.

I smile at the squawk of the Blue Jay because I slow to look up and around.

The tin vocalizations of the starlings are preferred to the overwhelm of the din of urban noises.

Titmouse and juncos make me think of snow

These adorable birds are here and it hasn't yet snowed.

I am soothed by the song of the White-throated Sparrow.

Churr, a flight of red, and black and white

for sure a Red-bellied Woodpecker.

Another but different red

the House Finch are here.

Mewling--a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker or a catbird? Then,

drilling

definitely a sapsucker.

Tulip Tree Among the Oaks (City Trees, Sept/Oct 2022)

2022-08-31T11:02:00.008-04:00

Tuliptree, Liriodendron tulipifera, is my favorite tree. I am pleased to have an essay about this species in the September/October 2022 issue of City Trees. Thank you to Michelle Sutton for her skilled revisions and to Sarah Gugercin for the appealing layout.

Here is an excerpt.

The myriad forms of tulip tree’s leaf and flower are striking. The terminal bud, with its valvate scales, favors a duck’s bill. According to my friend Akilah, the two-lobed leaf resembles a cat’s face. The tree’s flower, I suppose, resembles the flower of a tulip bulb, but the blossom of tulip tree is more complex.

Read the entire article at City Trees. Also, see alt test for image details.

Grassroots Citizen Science in Urban Spontaneous Vegetation

2022-08-26T18:59:00.002-04:00

After watching Kevin Vega's presentation to NYBG EcoFlora project about the mighty contributions of small green-spaces to urban biodiversity, I realized there was shared threads between Dr. Vega's work and research I published in 2018 about artists and designers elevating the benefits of spontaneous flora in cities. Please download (pdf) and read

Finding My Black Botanical Groove

2022-05-03T13:00:00.003-04:00

In February 2021, I delivered a short lecture titled "A Black Plantswoman in the 21st Century." In that talk, I highlighted the disconnection between the portrayal of Central Park by its designer and the reality of the park's creation, spatially linked the historic racialized displacement of Seneca Village to a racially antagonistic incident on May 5, 2020 in the Ramble, and spoke about the Black women on what I call my botanical throughline. In light of the celebration of the 200th birthday of Frederick Law Olmsted this year, I thought I would issue my talk as an essay tying the dislocation of Seneca Village residents to my discovery of my botanical groove.

Frederick Law Olmsted was born on April 26, 1822. He was born in Hartford, CT, described enslavement in the U.S. South as a journalist for the Daily Times, and developed the idea of the North American urban park after a visit to Birkenhead Park in London. Olmsted and Calvert Vaux submitted the winning design for Central Park in 1858. The title of "father of landscape architecture" was applied posthumously, I think, but the opening of Central Park in 1859 and Prospect Park in 1867 established the two men as the favored park designers.

Olmsted believed parks were antidotes to city life; they would provide mental restoration from the exhausting pace and dulling nature of urban life. He envisioned Central Park as a place to foster social reform through the mingling of the classes. Despite his reporting on slavery in southern states, to my knowledge Olmsted did not reference African Americans or the role of race in his writings about urban parks. He did argue that the urban park was a space to practice and reinforce democratic ideals. By not explicitly talking about racist animosity and segregation of public space and by not denouncing the destruction of the Black community on what would become part of the park, Olmsted's rhetoric about the park as an equalizing landscape wasn't true at the founding of Central Park, and has fallen apart at various points in the park's existence.

Images of Seneca Village (top; source) and the Central Park Greensward Plan

The Black enclave of Seneca Village was razed in 1857 to facilitate the construction of Central Park. Seneca Village was home to a majority African-descended population. The community supported schools, cemeteries, churches, and businesses. In addition, "twenty percent of the city’s 71 Black landowners and ten percent of its eligible owners” (Charlot 2014). The ownership of property valued at at least $250 was a voting requirement in New York State (Charlot 2014). Seneca Village was created by African Americans in 1825 to protect themselves from racist practices such as kidnapping Black people for the slave trade (Wall et al. 2008). Unfortunately, the term used for these white kidnappers was "blackbirders."

Map of Central Park depicting Seneca Village (orange) and the Ramble (red pin)

More than a century after Seneca Village was destroyed, an anti-Black incident occurred in the Ramble, a naturalized area of Central Park, which is in close proximity to the former enclave. To call out the hateful behavior and demand the right of African Americans to birdwatch safely, a group of Black birders launched Black Birders Week in 2020, which was followed by many Black in X weeks including Black Botanists Week. Participating in Black Botanists Week, and in BIPOC Hort, has changed my life. I am now part of communities that center Black people and our experience and knowledge of plants. I found camaraderie and peers.

The Black Botanists Week organizing committee defined a botanist as a person who loves plants. This welcoming definition was an invitation for this non-botanist tree enthusiast. One of my favorite local trees is a centuries old English Elm in the northwest corner of Washington Square Park in New York City. The elm is admired by locals and tourists who pause to take in the tree's height and spread or to refresh themselves in the tree's deep shade. The elm also supports wildlife like raccoons (one was spotted sheltering in a cavity in 2018), squirrels, and birds (warblers, woodpeckers, and more). There is more to the elm's story, though.

When I began exploring Washington Square Park, I noticed the trees but could not find any digital resources about them. I spearheaded the creation of the park's first online tree map. My engagement with the park's trees has grown to include a phenology monitoring project. Beginning in fall 2019, neighborhood residents and university students track seasonal changes in 14 species representing 13 species. I get to flex my volunteer muscles by logging phenology data too! One goal of the project is to create phenology calendars for the trees in the park. A second goal is to provide community science opportunities through volunteering. Our third goal is to compare the park's phenology with other sites in the city to answer the question: how do leaf out, flowering and fruiting, and the appearance of colored leaves differ along an urbanization gradient in NYC?

My newfound plant home with Black Botanists Week inspired me to make a plantswoman "family tree." This lineage project is a work in progress but there are several Black women I think about when I think about plants. Nanny of the Maroons in Jamaica and Harriet Tubman here in the US used their understanding of forest ecology and natural resources to escape enslavement and to help others navigate to freedom. Kenyan, and Nobel Prize recipient, Wangari Maathai, PhD advocated for female-led forestry programs and mainstreamed the greenbelt. Recently I learned about Melody Mobley, the first Black woman to work for the US Forest Service in the role of professional forester. Dr. Dorceta Taylor, preeminent scholar on procedural injustice in the mainstream environmental movement, also studied botany. Dr. Carolyn Finney put a name to the experience of Black people in the outdoors with her book, Black Faces, White Spaces. White men like Carl Linnaeus, Frederick Law Olmsted, and Gifford Pinchot dominated the canon I read in college and graduate school. I am pleased to chart my own roll call of Black plantswomen.

Radical Understory--No More Tulip Bulbs

2022-04-19T16:46:00.003-04:00

I was invited to contribute an essay to the Global Roundtable hosted by The Nature of Cities. Participants were asked to respond to the following questions: "Can we enable better decision-making when it comes to urban plant selection and preparation? Does urban ecology and the horticulture industry need to be better engaged with each other?"

Here's the central argument of my piece: "We can no longer devote public money and public lands to single-function plants. We cannot limit native understory species to natural areas." You can read the entire essay by searching "Radical Understory" in the April 2022 Nature of Cities Global Roundtable.

Tree Stories from Washington Square Park

2022-01-05T10:30:00.001-05:00

In 2021, I was fortunate to write about two trees/species in Washington Square Park for City Trees magazine, a publication of the Society of Municipal Arborists. The first essay featured the historic English elm in the northwest corner of the park. My second piece for the magazine focused on Ginkgo biloba. You can read the English elm article as a post on the New York State Urban Forestry Council blog. The Ginkgo profile is available to download as a PDF.

Poem - First bird, peregrine

2021-11-28T14:45:00.002-05:00

Peregrine falcon, Photo by Steve Harvey on Unsplash

My new year

First bird, peregrine

A sight

Perched on an eyesore

in the works

Tires, micro-plastic pollution, crunch on

another work in progress

And then, organic honks

Look up

Wide, uneven "V" of

geese

On the move

Nature transect walk in New York City

2021-08-30T17:06:00.001-04:00

Today, on our morning walk, my younger kiddo said to me unprompted, "It is green here." Yes, the city is green. There are trees and other plants, insects and other animals. Fungi, too. I didn't intend our family walk to be a nature excursion, but my kiddo's astute comment made it so. Enjoy this photo walk of a west to east transect in lower Manhattan.

Dog day cicada

Sidewalk shopping-cart planter

London plane tree underplanted with hibiscus

Honeylocust with thorns

Shiitake inoculated logs at Stuyvesant Cove Park

A segment of a larger patch of wood asters

Oak acorn - bur oak? because it not a sawtooth oak acorn

Hackberry leaves and fruit

Oak acorn - swamp white oak

What aspects of non-human nature are you noticing right now?

Opinion - Let Washington Square Park breathe

2021-07-16T13:30:00.001-04:00

My onion piece about the devolution of public park management to the police department was published by the NY Daily News.

Deploying the NYPD in Washington Square Park is the wrong use of police and the wrong use of parks. The city is responding with a bludgeon to a complex situation that requires multiple, effective solutions. The city must provide support services in the park to address some of our most intransigent social issues, namely homelessness, mental illness and drug addiction. And rather than clamping down, it must maintain equitable public access to public land. Otherwise, the cultural fabric that makes Washington Square Park the public space for celebrating difference and practicing tolerance will disappear and we will be left with another tightly controlled, manicured garden.

Read the entire essay here.

Family Field Trip - Hickory Run Boulder Field

2021-04-09T10:48:00.002-04:00

My older kiddo collects rocks. We have rocks on our book case. We have rocks in a large pail. He has rocks in his room. Because of his love of rocks and our family's general love of adventure, we decided to visit the naturally occurring boulder field in the Hickory Run State Park during a recent school break. The Boulder Field is a National Natural Landmark under the National Park Service.

The field is of composed of two types of boulders of various sizes. Each of us was struck my different elements at the site. I was, of course, closely observing the trees. My younger kiddo liked the red sandstones. The conglomerate boulders reminded me and my husband of Roxbury puddingstone. My older kid bounded almost effortlessly across the entire field and back. The total size of this geologic wonder is "400 feet by 1,800 feet and at least 12 feet deep."

We would like the Boulder Field to be improved in one way: provide at least one trail off the rocks. I was exhausted doing a round trip on the boulders. The larger rocks were stable, but the smaller ones required a lot of quick foot work to stay upright.

Minetta Creatures, an eco-art collaborative to celebrate the historic ecologies of the Minetta Brook watershed

2021-02-03T09:59:00.004-05:00

Minetta Creatures has a funding page on IOBY and received matching funds from ArtPlace America. Last year, I spoke with ArtPlace about the project. The following is an excerpt from the conversation.

Why is it important to make this history visible?

When I moved to the neighborhood more than a decade ago, I wasn't aware that there once was a stream that flowed through it. I came across that information accidentally while doing some research about the trees of Washington Square Park, the history of the land. I became familiar with the word Minetta and its origins as a Lenape word and dug deeper, did a lot of Googling and realized that we are missing a core piece of what it means to live in this neighborhood and New York City more generally.

You can read the entire interview here.

The Risks and Rewards of Being Black in Nature

2020-09-03T10:45:00.001-04:00

Photo by Andre Hunter at https://unsplash.com/photos/wN8pecBHoHs

I first learned about the concept of “nearby nature” in graduate school. The term was coined by Rachel Kaplan and Stephan Kaplan in their 1989 book, The Experience of Nature. The Kaplans define this form of nature as a space that contains “one or more plants…that is proximal [and] it can be indoors or out-of-doors.” With this wide-open definition, there are arguably many subtypes of nearby nature. I’ve thought about nearby nature or neighborhood nature or next door nature especially in the context of cities because of my work in urban forestry and urban ecology. Conducting my life almost entirely from my apartment in New York City beginning in mid-March of this year because of the pandemic brought home the importance of nature I could easily access, from my window, on a walk around my block, and when things felt less dire, in my local park. The pandemic and how much I craved nature were the catalysts for writing an essay about the benefits of nearby nature. But then the trauma of two stark incidences of racial violence in the outdoors made me pause my work. I didn’t feel that I could unconditionally tout the benefits of nearby nature, of spending time outdoors, when nature has been the setting for anti-black hate crimes. Read my entire essay here.

Avian biodiversity in a small park

2020-08-05T10:01:00.001-04:00

Large parks such as Central Park in Manhattan and Prospect Park in Brooklyn top the list of birding hotspots in New York City. But smaller, neighborhood parks support diverse bird life, too. My favorite small park, Washington Square Park, is within 10-minute walk from my apartment. It is 9.75-acres and located in the center of the Greenwich Village Historic District. The park is renowned for the Washington Arch, named for the nation’s first president and a doppelganger for the Arc de Triomphe. Locals and tourists also flock to the park to photograph the Empire State Building and One World Trade Center, to sit around the fountain, and to watch and listen to the grassroots performing artists that enliven the park. Locals and tourists engage with wildlife, too. Squirrels are enticed with nuts and bread. Pigeons and house sparrows, the most numerous and gregarious species in the park, get a lot of attention. But most tourists and some locals miss the breadth of bird life in the park. You have to slow down, wander, keep your eyes and ears open, pause, peer into the shrub layer, and stare into the canopy. I learned to take these steps from my birding partner. In the past three and a half years, I’ve been witness to the park’s spectacular bird life. Here are some short tales.

Kentucky warbler, photo c/o Dennis Edge

Kentucky warbler (Geothlypis formosa)

A Kentucky warbler stopped over in the park in May 2017. My birding partner and I first observed the warbler on May 11th. She spotted the bird on the ground in one of the park’s parterres, a location that seems at first glance, most unfitting for this forest bird. However, Kentucky warblers forage for insects on the ground. For much of the rest of its stay, the warbler took refuge in the crabapple grove just west of the Arch, which is densely vegetated in the spring. The bird’s multi-day layover put the park on the birding radar. On the second day of its R&R, the birding paparazzi descended on the park. A large group of approximately 20 birders and photographers lined the sidewalk and an inner pathway for hours to record this rare sighting. Birders and photographers returned to the park until it was clear that the bird had resumed its migration, moving further north to interior forests. I was happy the warbler stopped over in the park, but was glad the bird moved on to his breeding territory. The Kentucky warbler is an at-risk species; it would have been heartbreaking if the park were an ecological trap for the bird.

Belted kingfisher (Megaceryle alcyon)

There used to be an aboveground stream that ran through what is now the park, but the last time Minetta Brook saw daylight was in the 1800s. So, it was a pleasant surprise to observe a belted kingfisher in the park on October 13, 2018. This was the first record on eBird, a bird-listing app, of this species in the park. The kingfisher was heard vocalizing before it was seen. I was participating in a Feminist Bird Club walk in the park, and one of the organizers, CL, thought she’d heard the kingfisher’s call early on in the walk, but a kingfisher didn’t make sense in an inland park whose only water body is a fountain. CL spotted the bird during the second half of the walk. The kingfisher was observed flying and perching in a tree in the center of the largest wooded area of the park. The northwest sector of the park harbors the most biodiversity. The entire walk group gathered below the tree to observe the kingfisher. We were bowled over by the sighting.

Black-crowned night heron (Nycticorax nycticorax)

A black-crowned night heron spent a couple of days in the park in June 2018. The head gardener alerted me to the bird’s presence via text message. When we met up in person, he told me the heron had been chased into the park by two red-tailed hawks. The heron first landed in the water in the fountain’s basin before taken up a perch in one of the Zelkova trees circling the fountain. My birding partner thinks the heron has generational memory of the pre-colonial landscape. One of the historic ecologies of the land on which the park sits was a red maple hardwood swamp. A wooded swamp is a prime habitat for the heron.

Red-tailed hawk, photo c/o Hubert J. Steed

Red-tailed hawk (Buteo jamaicensis)

In 2019, there were 11 active red-tailed hawk nests in NYC. One of these nests is located on a penthouse windowsill of a university building on the southern border of the park. The first hawk pair launched their residence in the 2010-11 season. Courtship began in 2010 and one eyass fledged in 2011. The adult female laid three eggs but only one hatched. Since 2011, the adult partners have changed several times. The first female (“Violet”) died in 2011. A new female (“Rosie”) took over the territory in the same year, but left in 2014. The current female (“Sadie” aka “Aurora”) is the third resident female. The original male hawk (“Bobby”) disappeared after the eyasses hatched in the spring of 2019, and has been presumed dead. A new male (“Juno”) claimed the territory. His arrival was controversial; people had a strong attachment to “Bobby” and disliked Juno’s harassment of Bobby’s offspring.

Yellow-bellied sapsucker (Sphyrapicus varius)

I was unfamiliar with the yellow-bellied sapsucker, a woodpecker, until I began birding in Washington Square Park. I have seen both sexes as well as adult and juvenile sapsuckers in the park. I typically spot them in the northwest corner of the park, but the hollies in the southeast corner are another within-park hotspot. One day, my birding partner and I were talking about the sapsucker with our mentor at the natural history museum. I was discussing my fascination with the sapsucker, and how difficult it was to find recent scientific studies of the species. Our mentor brought up the female black-crowned morph, which only added to the bird’s appeal. At that point, neither my birding partner nor I had seen the black-crowned morph, but one of the next times we birded in the park, we saw one! It was as if our mentor had conjured the bird into the park. The female black-crowned morph is described as “occasionally seen” in the 2017 edition of Sibley Birds East.

The moral of these stories is to give nearby nature another look. Your local sky (and ground) might surprise you!