When The Going Gets Tough, Botanize!

A lot of the people in my life had very unusual holidays. Certainly the economy had something to do with it, as did the weather, and a sad variety of different illnesses.

Mine have been a bit "off" as well, but nothing that a little botanizing won't cure. So I'm headed to the Osa Peninsula in Costa Rica to lose myself (one hopes not literally) in the wilds of Corcovado National Park. I've never been that far south in the country but I've now reserved a hammock with my name on it.

And now for something completely different...

For years now, I've had a hankering to botanize in Turkey and see the ancestral home of tulips, crocus, iris and who knows how many other genera that evolved in that part of the world. Lo and behold, this looks like the year I'm going to get there.

It's all due to a woman named Holly Chase, an NPR listener who heard I was laid off and immediately deluged me with ideas for recreating myself.

And while I can't say I'm ready for a major overhaul, one of Holly's ideas is now a reality. Turns out she's been organizing tours to Turkey for several decades, and guess who'll be leading the next botanical one in April?

It's twue! It's twue! WANNA GO?

2:48 AM ET | 12-29-2008 | permalink

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Wonder What To Do With Your Fab Fall Photos?

If you're new to Talking Plants you may not know about our photo community. Given some of the stunning shots showing up there today, I wanted to be sure you take a look and consider delighting us with some of your own stolen moments from this 2008 fall.

Given what else this season has brought us, I suspect you'll find our photo album a very safe haven -- and there can never been too many of them.

The majority of our group is enamoured with macro shots, and having tried a number of my own I know there's more to it than hitting the old "macro" button and hoping for the best. I find I have better luck with the big picture, which of late has been fairly mindblowing as I continue to hike my favorite (nearby) places on the planet.

I'm going to give the last word to Aleth for capturing a moment we've all stumbled into but perhaps have never fully seen.

10:42 AM ET | 10-20-2008 | permalink

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Last Of The Season's Wildflowers

This just in from the Nature Conservancy's Rob Taylor, who lives in the Wallowa Mountains town of Enterprise, Oregon: the last flower still standing in the Zumwalt Prairie is blue gentian.

Earlier this summer, Rob took me on my first trip into the Zumwalt, where he woks as a field scientist. The region has subsequently stolen my heart. Check out this link to see why.

Send pix of the last wildflower standing in your area to Talking Plants!

11:58 AM ET | 10- 4-2008 | permalink

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The Rosh Hashana Mystery Plant

Happy Jewish New Year! In a few hours, it'll be 5769.

While I wouldn't describe myself as a particularly observant Jew, my Conservative upbringing makes me constitutionally incapable of working on the High Holidays (happily, I can garden). Since Rosh Hashana begins tonight, I won't be blogging tomorrow which gives you an extra day to help me identify this (native?) southern Illinois plant.

Among the changes now ushering in 5769 is a huge improvement in the way we can interact on Talking Plants. Next time you leave a comment, you'll be asked to sign in as a member of the NPR community. Don't balk; it's painless. Fill out your profile, do the confirmation e-mail dance, and voila: in addition to posting, you'll be able to comment on all NPR stories and connect with community-minded NPR staff.

There's also a blog re-design in our future which may enable you to post pix directly to Talking Plants instead of having to go away and post in the TP Flickr pool. You can hardly stand the excitement, right? A toast, then, towards community and connection in the New Year...

12:23 PM ET | 09-29-2008 | permalink

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Can You Answer This Riddle?

From Oregon to Maryland, coast to coast, with stops along the highways of the midwest, it's now electrifying roadsides, brightening streams and illuminating woodlands. Though it sings the same notes first introduced by the daffodils of spring, it's the last brash wildflower of the year. Last hint, its botanic name rhymes with How'd Your Day Go.

The answer is?

10:59 PM ET | 09-23-2008 | permalink

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Another Mystery Solved

We've just had a query from DillyBean over at our discussion group about mystery plants and with a little help from our friends over at Timber Press (what? you don't know about this outstanding horticultural publisher?), we have lift-off.

Based on some elemental surfing, it would appear the shoo-fly plant is inordinately fond of Illinois, since few other states (w/the exception of California) have websites showing where this weedy non-native has naturalized. After planting it voluntarily, Chicago gardener Mr. Brown Thumb has since decided to nip his in the bud.

Nicandra physaloides is hardly poised to take over the planet, and if you can look past its coarse leaves, the flowers and the dried seed husks are quite ornamental. I found a nice assortment of comments about the plant posted on the U.K. website, Plants For A Future. And should you want a variegated form (who am I to judge?) check out Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds.

Oh yeah, about this "shoo, fly!" thing. The plant's reported to have insect-repelling properties, particularly against white fly.

7:59 PM ET | 09- 2-2008 | permalink

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If You Lived Here...

...you'd understand why my garden is minus a gardener. It's not that I've crossed over to the dark side so much as I've become a zealous devotee of the wild side.

Every spring, sometimes as early as March, anyone listening can hear the call of the flora as it breaks bud along the Columbia Gorge. After twelve years living in the NW, that call's become deafening.

It didn't used to be this way. Time was, nothing could get me out of the garden come spring, particularly when I was gardening in D.C. where the race was on to finish everything before the weather turned like a rabid dog.

But as gentle NW rains continue to fall on my garden, lulling me into a false sense of of calm re: planting and mulching for the summer to come, I am nobody's gardener. Instead, I am a grateful witness to a miraculous if fragile world.

Of course not all the flowers in the Columbia Gorge are so bold and gregarious. Because of the continued wet and cold, a number of species remain reluctant to bear their souls.

4:00 PM ET | 05-28-2008 | permalink

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Too Hot to Hike

A heatwave descended on the Pacific Northwest this past wkend and it has not been kind to people, pets and plants. Fortunately, a friend and I got out to sunny Catherine Creek on the Washington side of the Columbia Gorge before the wildflowers fried and the heat nailed us to the wall.

Although the weather's been a crap shoot here and everywhere these last eight weeks, it's been very kind to native plants. I've been lucky enough to follow the entire wildflower progression in both the pouring rain and the odd moment of shine. The shine, of course, is hell for photographs (most of you are way ahead of me, based on your Flickr pix), but I now have a camera that can take it...as soon as I figure out how to point it.

This documents my last '08 trip to Catherine's Creek. It's time to move back into the forest and get ready for the next wave of bloom. On lower elevations we'll soon be seeing Lilium columbianum, our wild orange lily. On higher elevations I'll get to relive what I've already seen.

But I count on Catherine Creek for two serious sun-lovers: purple penstemon on west-facing cliffs, and bitterroot, which turns hot rock into moonscapes of bloom.

I wish I could put into words for those of you who don't or can't hike in wild places what it means to revisit the same wild populations year after year. Even the Obama campaign can't deliver this kind of hope.

1:58 AM ET | 05-19-2008 | permalink

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Not Too Late for the Poppy Reserve

Just a quick note, a gorgeous pix, and a big thanks to TP member Hugh3of5.

If you're anywhere in the southern CA area and you've never been to Antelope Valley, the time is NOW. Admittedly, I've just read that the poppies have peaked, but there's still plenty to see.

Another no-brainer for you So CAL flower power types...here's a number for your cell phone: (818) 768-3533. It's the Wildflower Hotline sponsored by the Theodore Payne Foundation. Let me know if you get somewhere gorgeous and whether I should knock myself out to go, too. I could make it next wkend if you say it's a must.

2:40 PM ET | 05- 2-2008 | permalink

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Remind Me, Why Do We Hate Dandelions?

It's a banner year for dandelions around Portland, I don't ever remember them looking so fulsome and jaunty before. They're strewn like wildflowers along parking strips, lawns and empty lots (the few that are left here in Boomtown) and by and large, their arrangements are quite picturesque.

So what's the deal? Why do millions of Americans prefer using 2,4-D to kill them instead of making dandelion fritters and enjoying the show?

No doubt the answer dates back to the heyday of the British lawn, rhapsodized and defended by no less a plant lover than one of my favorite garden writers, Anna Pavord who wrote, "dandelions are bullies. They simply had to go". At least she had the good grace to feel guilty about buying a weedkiller, but buy it and publicize it she did.

Perhaps a later blog needs to throw open the debate on 2,4-D, still very much in ample supply on the garden shelf but so clearly deserving of more consumer dissuasion. But the focus here is on the dandelion itself.

It's been two decades since the New York Times reported on the "weirdo" Maine farmer who canned dandelion greens. Today, there are dandelion cookbooks, dandelion dinners (strictly upmarket), dandelion blogs and in honor of Passover, Jewish dandelion news:

Conveying the misery of the Israelites' slavery, bitter herbs vary from place to place and even from family to family. Ashkenazim favor freshly ground or sliced, fresh horseradish root, bottled horseradish, or romaine lettuce. Sephardim prefer bitter greens such as endive, escarole, chicory, sorrel, arugula, dandelion, or watercress.

Nearing holiness, let us not forget that dandelions make wishes come true. You just have to do is put your lips together and blow. But if you really can't bear them yet know better than to use herbicides (what, me, guilt you?) garden writer Anne Lovejoy suggests you love them to death.

6:51 PM ET | 04-17-2008 | permalink

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I Sing the Wildflower Blue

Never mind the body electric, mine doesn't seem to much sizzle and sing anymore, but it's no small compensation to have the time, patience and appetite for hanging out with wildflowers which, this very week along the Columbia Gorge, have burst into audacious blues. We're talking a color wave of genera that includes nothing less than lupine (a dozen different species!), forget-me-not, larkspur (a half dozen!) and pools of multi-hued camassia which I most enjoy in bud.

Camas is the Pacific Northwest for many people, certainly for my neighbor's mother who saw fields of them when she arrived in Oregon (a young woman traveling alone from Arkansas) and decided this was where she belonged. And camas has kept untold thousands of indigenous people alive over the millennia, even the not-so-indigenous as described in this excerpt from the Encyclopedia of Northwest Native Plants for Gardens and Landscapes:

On their trek to the west coast, Lewis and Clark saw vast meadows filled with the blue flowers of camas, noting that they looked like lakes in the distance. The hospitable indigenous people rescued the expedition from starvation offering them, among other foods, baked camas bulbs...Humans cannot easily digest raw camas blubs, so they were always cooked first...No matter how they were prepared, poor Meriwether Lewis found the bulbs indigestible, but they helped keep the Corps of Discovery alive...

...unlike the meadow death camas, Zigadenus venenosus, which is also blooming this week. One of my field guides, Wildflowers of the Pacific Northwest notes that much to their later upset, members of the L&C expedition ate this bulb as well.

So, I showed you, now you show me. Natives in the woods, on the roads, by the stream? Post those pix at the Talking Plant Flickr Group and I'll share the best on the blog. If you're not flickr friendly yet, here's how.

1:04 PM ET | 04-15-2008 | permalink

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Mystery Plant Alert

Little did I know when I grabbed this shot that it would end up making me nuts.

So far, two esteemed colleagues have offered two different opinions about what this native NW perennial is: a forget-me-not relative (think blue) or a composite (think generic yellow daisy). I'm skeptical that these buds will open to yellow; admittedly my first thought was a kind of borage, but now I'm convinced it's not. Can you help?

2:06 PM ET | 04- 9-2008 | permalink

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An Avalanche of Yellow Lilies

Despite several downpours and hailstorms a day, we've also had ample sunbreaks (I'd never heard that term till I moved to Oregon), which means the forests and mountainsides of the Columbia River Gorge are officially in flower.

The grass widows (formerly known as Sisyrinchium, now split off as Olsynium) are just about done in, but the camassia has yet to begin; larkspur and lupine, except in the odd hot spot, are still playing it safe.

Not so the glacier lilies (aka yellow avalanche lily), no ma'am, no way!!!

In case you've never met, Erythronium is a fabulous genus and a very garden-friendly plant, with lovely, pendulous flowers ranging from white to yellow to pink (not all in one flower, of course). It also comes in species with showy, mottled leaves.

And while I'm making introductions, consider spending a little time with Keith Wiley, one of horticulture's most electric plantsman. Several years ago, Keith visited the Pacific Northwest searching for erythronium. Just an update since he was last here; Keith is longer with The Garden House, but did show up recently in the Royal Horticulture Society Journal.

11:54 PM ET | 04- 6-2008 | permalink

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Fetid Adder's Tongue, Yum!

It is with some guilt that I will continue to celebrate spring-flowering shrubs and bulbs, knowing that your ground may be not even be close to thawing. But during my stay in DC, I've been corresponding with colleagues in Portland, and was sent a pix of this intriguing native plant by Ed Guerrant, Conservation Director for the Berry Botanic Garden.

Ed, a terrific native plantsman, was featured in a seed bank story for NPR's Climate Connections series. I asked him to pen a few words on this cool California native.

A plant with flowers like these would be noticeable any time of year, but to find the flowers of this reportedly fungus gnat pollinated plant, it is necessary to wander either into its native habitat in Northern California, or make our February homage to a little patch that has been growing at the Berry Botanic Garden for as long as I can remember here at the Garden (1989). It is sort of our Punxsutawney Phil, but without the predictive powers. Nevertheless, Scoliopus in flower it is a harbinger of the spring to come.

So what's popping your wild or cultivated woods? Got winter aconites, snowdrops, crocus, daffs? How about some bold, blueaceous Chionodoxa? I saw one shimmering blue note of this Glory-in-the-Snow at Dumbarton Oaks yesterday, where the chionodoxa are naturalized in the lawn. If you're in or around DC, check back in two weeks for peak bloom.

10:25 AM ET | 02-24-2008 | permalink

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Amazon: A Reluctant Goodbye

Well, it's time to move on from our week in the Amazon. At least to the exclusion of the rest of the world. No doubt Rosario Costa Cabral and the planet's other inspirational farmers, gardeners and environmentalists will continue to be our guests on Talking Plants.

A few parting shots, if you will; not a whole lot to say, just some photos I have yet to share.

Admittedly, I didn't spend a great deal of time mastering the names and kinds of of Amazon flora (a good reason to go back). Little, in fact, was blooming but on our canoe trip, we did manage a small breakfast bouquet.

But there was no missing the dollop of green that came floating down the river like an emerald island (below). It was water lettuce, a staple of American water features coast to coast. This is a wonderful annual aquatic; seeing it was like running into an old friend.

Perhaps it's enough to know that the places, people and moments we've been visiting in the Amazon are real and possible.

8:15 AM ET | 02- 9-2008 | permalink

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Rosario's Jungle: a Brazilian Adventure

If I let go of my Amazon adventure, I might find myself in Washington, D.C. And you wouldn't wish that on anyone, right?

So here's to living in the moment ... just not this one. Instead, I've collected a few of my favorites -- some in sound, some in pictures, some in words -- and buoyed by the stunning skills of my digital media colleagues, I invite you to visit the Rosario family on the Mazagao River in nothern Brazil.

The trip's on me.

...CLICK TO PLAY..CLICK BOTTOM RIGHT SQUARE TO GROW..

4:16 PM ET | 02- 6-2008 | permalink

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Amazon Q&A

Just to catch you up, this week we're focusing on Rosario Costa Cabral, one of the world's more inspiring farmers.

Talking Plants community member Julian Blackwood recently asked a number of in-depth questions that were beyond the scope of the NPR Amazon story. I thought I'd post his q's (edited for clarity) with answers provided by Columbia U. ecologist Miguel Pinedo-Vasquez, who is an expert in Amazonian biodiversity and has known Rosario for a decade.

Q: Since (Rosario farms on) tidal land, presumably the water is somewhat saline? Or is it backed-up fresh river water that floods her land twice a day?

A: The water is not saline. The fresh water of the Amazon actually extends far into the sea.

Q: If the flood-tolerant pepper plant anecdote was accurate, it raises the interesting question of how that particularly valuable gene combination for flood tolerance (if that's what it is) is maintained in a partly cross-pollinating crop.

A: Well, the flood threat (and natural selection) is constant as is the human selection process. So presumably if cross-pollination does occur, any non-tolerant plants that might result are quickly eliminated. But I also saw that Dona Raimunda (Rosario's mother) seems to do some hand pollination with some vegetables; she shakes the flower of onions onto other onions. She says that way she gets better bulbs. How and where she learned this I don't know.

Q: The reference to distributing cassava "seeds" (of her improved selection) presumably meant the usual stem cuttings used for clonal propagation - as cassava is cross-pollinated. But the really big question is exactly what land was she actually farming when you visited?

A: When Rosario and her family came to Mazagao they could not bring cuttings but rather seeds (although as you point out, reproduction by cuttings is the usual process). The family had been dispossessed from their farm and were not sure when and where they would plant again. Any cuttings would have probably died. She also apparently distributed seeds not cuttings; people try out the seeds on their own land, select on their own. On her own land she plants her own cuttings.

Q: I understand Rosario's farming on logged-over land. She is probably planting gaps in various glades, cropping them until soil fertility or pest build-up drives her to a new plot (similar to traditional "shifting" cultivation). Let's hope she changes plots regularly so that the soil is not exhausted to the point where only tertiary scrub can regenerate (her planting of local tree species was good news).

A: Rosario is indeed planting in gaps and she moves annuals and semi-perennials around every few years to other parts of her landholding. Of course many of her crops are actually perennials and are native trees. The problem with fertility loss in the floodplain is not nearly as great as you might have in an upland site. The twice-daily tides carry and deposit nutrients and the flooding (both tidal and seasonal) probably helps keep down some pests.

11:28 AM ET | 02- 6-2008 | permalink

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Amazon Animal Farm

I've got good and even better news for those of you expecting a slide show today. (Welcome to the Year of the Spin). The good news is that the slide show is so cool -- with music, birds, river splashing and narration -- that several of us are now up to our elbows in production and it's taking a tad longer than expected.

The even better news is that in hoping to mollify those of you who heard Rosario on the radio and want more, I've got animal pix from the Rosario family farm. Who could resist this face?

Being a lifelong vegetarian, I tried not to get attached to the little piggy (pictured below, and by the way she's going to be sold; the Rosario family wouldn't touch her), but I nearly fainted from cute overload when I first spied her with his little hoofs hooked over the barn door. Her massive mother, however, Boneca (Doll), is a cherished member of the Rosario family; it seems there are enough stories about her to fill a few childrens' books. My favorite is the story about how she collapsed after eating something clearly lethal, and was subsequently revived by several pots of strong black Brazilian coffee.

One of the reasons there are plank walkways around the entire Rosario house is because the ground floor belongs to a bunch of roosters, chickens, and ducks. The ducks and chickens are easy to live with, but those roosters! They start crowing at about 3am and until evening falls, they never seem to stop. Of course, that's only news to those of us who are more accustomed to car horns and pistols going off at night, not farm animals.

The ducks seems to have the most fun, alternating between dry, muddy and aquatic terrains. I particularly loved the way they paraded up and down the pier during low tide; this close to the mouth of the Amazon, the tides came and went twice a day. After spending a week bathing and swimming in this Amazon tributary, I am living proof the river is quite benign.

I wouldn't have guessed that all these free-range farm animals would get along so well -- true, the dog has been known to steal eggs -- but even the cats are (relatively) well-behaved. They're certainly not warm and fuzzy like my own Lulah, but unlike Pao Preto the dog, they're allowed in the kitchen. And I might add they are quite the beggars.

Come back tomorrow for the first Talking Plants slide show, when I will prove there is more to life than Super Tuesday...

3:04 AM ET | 02- 5-2008 | permalink

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A Not-So Mythic Amazonian

She likes to be called Rosario. Her full family name is nearly a dozen syllables long.

She lives as simply as a human being could hope for and it isn't because she's lazy or unambitious. She is a woman born and bred in the Amazon, and whether it's fish from the river or fruit from the forest, she knows how to coax everything she needs out of the landscape. "The forest likes me," she says. "I look after its young."

Intrigued? You ain't heard nothing yet...

The permanent Rosario household includes her mischievous 82 year-old mother and her two 40-something brothers, but at any given time on any given hammock you'll find one or two of Rosario's stepchildren (the youngest is 20), near and distant relatives, and the odd ecologically-inclined academic.

Bar none (except perhaps his wife, Christine Padoch of the NYBG), the Rosario family favorite has got to be Miguel Pinedo-Vasquez of CERC, who often comes bearing gifts of California pistachio nuts.

The Rosario family has lived on this land now since 1991. Everybody works extremely hard and the results are obvious, including the new house they were able to build out of their own lumber a year ago. The house is very open with high, high ceilings and can accommodate an untold number of hammocks; each room has a door and a single light bulb, but otherwise the house is largely empty, a blessing in such stifling heat.

Not surprisingly, though, the center of life is in the old kitchen, connected to the new house by a covered walkway. The kitchen, for my money, has the best view of any -- into that jungle of a backyard.

So many pictures, so little time...which is why I invite you back tomorrow to enjoy the Amazon slide show we're busily putting together (how many shots of the piglet and the dog can you take?). In the meantime, I will leave you with the one image that's earned pride of place on my piano and I think you'll see why...

Tomorrow, the slide show. And a taste of acai...

9:34 AM ET | 02- 3-2008 | permalink

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Fried Bananas

Only once during my stay in Brazil did I eat bonafide fried bananas. They were fabulous, and in life bore no resemblance to my own, the foliage of which greeted me after my 20-hour plane trip home.

Certainly this dried and dessicated visage is nothing new; it's what happens to banana foliage here in Z8 if you don't wrap it. They once offered a banana-wrapping class at Portland's Classical Chinese Garden (guess who didn't attend); when it's done well, it is indeed art.

I prefer au naturale, but only because I'm tres lazay.

So let's contrast and compare, shall we? Above, what I came home to, and below, what I left behind.

I've got lots of stories and great shots I do intend to post, and soon -- any day now -- but I'm also trying to crank out the Morning Edition radio story from the Amazon, which cramps my blog time. Speaking of which, you guys have also been pretty quiet of late; is everyone en vacance?

8:52 PM ET | 01-22-2008 | permalink

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It's a Jungle Out There

I'm just back from the Amazon and I'll never be the same.

True!

I had the best of intentions of sending dispatches while there, but man was that presumptuous. The phone connection was dodgy enough, and after one storm, we lost electricity for a blissful night and day.

So I've got pictures for the WOW factor and a story I can't wait to tell. It's about an indomitable farmer who experiments with crops people others say can't grow there: fruit trees and palms that must survive under water twice a day. Words can't describe her accomplishments; that's why there's radio! The piece will air on Morning Edition this month.

6:02 PM ET | 01-17-2008 | permalink

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More from the Sinkhole

Here's the plant, here's the sinkhole, look inside and there's the people...

First up, let's take a look at Prichardia aylmer-robinsonii, a species of the lo'ulu palm that David and Lida Pigott Burney planted in "their" sinkhole. The plant is named after the family that currently owns the island of Ni'ihau, the only place this species is known to grow in the wild.

Alas, the palm is no "missing link" as one of our delightfully optimistic TP members suggested; at least no more a link than any other plant in the chain. But seeing it restored in the Makauwahi Cave sinkhole does feels like an Indiana Jones moment of discovery, particularly if you stumble across it as you're walking the landscape above. I mean suddenly YIKES! there's an eight-story drop into this promised land.

11:57 AM ET | 01- 4-2008 | permalink

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For Love of a Sinkhole

Q: How many paleoecologists does it take to excavate a sinkhole, find seven previously undescribed bird species and reintroduce native plant species to a place they haven't grown in for a thousand years?

A: Depends on the paleoecologists.

Fact is, some aren't mortal. In particular, keep an eye out for the pair shown below. They were recently featured in an NPR radio report that mistakenly assumed they were human, based on their oh! so convincing paleoecologist clothing.

Closer scrutiny has determined it simply isn't possible for this couple to do as much as they do in as many places as they do it and not be in league with He Who Cannot Be Named. Consequently, approach with extreme caution should the pair be spotted one fine Sunday morning within the nether reaches of Kauai's Makauwahi Cave.

We'll post more photos shortly plus details as we gather them. Until then, be very afraid.

11:10 AM ET | 01- 2-2008 | permalink

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Rock Star Botany 202

Mahalo! It's another splendid day here on virtual Kaua'i ... of course I haven't been to the actual island in a while, but tuning in to the island's public radio station helps ...

First, allow me a moment of preemptive denial: I am not in the pocket of the National Tropical Botanical Garden (see? no hyperlink). The only reason my Morning Edition report and Talking Plants Kaua'i stories are filled with NTBG people is that the Hawaii-based botanists on my "Must Meet List" were already working for the Garden.

Can I help it if its staff rocks?

In fact, is was on the NTBG staff that I met my first so-called rock star botanist, Ken Wood, a self-effacing plantsman who, despite himself, does justice to the romantic term ... a term taught to me by future botanical rocker Clay Trauernicht, a field botanist tragically too cute for his own good.

(Yes, Clay, you are).

But enough flirting with jail bait, today's rock star botanist is Steve Perlman, who you might have heard hunting for the rare fringed orchid.

Steve Perlman's daring hi-jinks to save Hawaii's native plants is now the stuff of legend among those in the know, as well as the subject of articles, books and an Imax film. He has risked his life so many times gaining access to endangered plants, he couldn't decide which story to tell me when I asked him to describe the scariest botanizing trip of them all.

But describe it he did.

"It's not thrill-seeking," says Perlman. "I'm there because the plants are there and I'm trying to get to them". His track record is astonishing; let's just say that if you were a betting plant lost in the wilderness, you'd be smart to put your money and your life on him. Not only will he get your seeds into cultivation, often — with the help of the world's best propagators — he'll see to it that your offspring make it into the nursery trade.

Perhaps the best-known story about Perlman (Ken Wood is often featured in this tale) is about the lengths he went to in order to collect Brighamia seed in the wild. I recommend you hear Perlman tell it himself, but here's the gist:

Because these plants prefer life on the edge — that is, on windswept cliffs facing out to sea — Perlman had to rappel down to the area where they often grew only to discover they hadn't set any seed. So he'd dangle around, hanging off the cliff, until he'd located a male plant and could collect its pollen. Then he'd dangle around some more until he'd located a female plant, and dabble on the goods.

Months later, he'd return to see if the pollinated female plant had set seed. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. If not, he'd simply return again and again, as often as it took — rappelling off sea cliffs hundreds of feet above the ocean — to collect a few life-giving seeds.

Well, I don't know what you've been doing with your life, but something tells me I might yet consider doing something more significant with mine.

9:30 AM ET | 01- 2-2008 | permalink

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The Little Green Orchid That Could

On behalf of all your chlorophyllic friends here at Talking Plants, Happy New Year!

Now I don't mean to twist your arm, but what I'm going to tell you about field botanist Steve Perlman and his search for Platanthera holochila is likely to make a whole lot more sense if you listen to the Morning Edition feature.

It wasn't a very big plant, maybe 20 inches high. The chances of spotting it were absolutely nil. But Steve Perlman of the National Tropical Botanical Garden had seen this rare orchid years ago, before it was dwarfed by knee-high shrubs. So it wasn't entirely miraculous — but it was pretty damn impressive — when he found it growing the middle of a wind-swept, fogged-in swamp.

His timing was perfect; the orchid was ripe for picking. So he carefully removed a couple of pregnant pods for safekeeping, each filled with hundreds of dust-sized seeds.

This fringed orchid was the last of its kind on Kaua'i, and previous attempts to propagate it had failed. Since there could be no certainty that the orchid would live to see another September, the seeds Perlman was collecting this day were crucial to its survival.

One of the main reasons this particular orchid survived was because the enormous bog it was growing in was pig-proof. No lie. Hawaii's wild pigs are like living rototillers; one of the only effective defenses against them is some very serious fencing.

The next day, Perlman shipped this vial of seed pods to orchid specialist Larry Zettler, professor of biology at Illinois College. (Think: Larry, Larry, he's our man, if he can't do it, NO ONE CAN).

And now, through the magic of radio, you can Be There! when he gets the package.

About six weeks after receiving the little guys, Zettler e-mailed Perlman with good news, saying, "in a nutshell, this has not been an easy orchid to work with, but I am much more optimistic." I wrote to Zettler just the other day. Here's his response:

Hi Ketzel. We sowed the seeds that Steve sent us and they are in incubation. At last check, the embryos appeared OK. Platanthera species in general take considerable time in vitro, especially without fungi, but I'm becoming more convinced that this should be our option with this extremely fastidious species ... I find it ironic that my research with fungi may be taking a back seat with this species in favor of the asymbiotic technique which I had little faith in for the terrestrials. But that's how science sometimes works.

In other words, after intensive work growing terrestrial (ground) orchids in different fungi typically associated with the plant in the wild, Zettler's coming to the conclusion that he might have better luck not using any fungi at all. His findings seem to be consistent with a recent breakthrough in orchid growing at the Atlanta Botanical Garden (beware annoying little "chirps" at this site!).

So will the little green orchid that could ever grown on Kaua'i again? Chances are pretty damn good, given that there's not a more delicious spot in the world to set down roots if your idea of a very good time is relentless wet, muck and rain.

3:15 PM ET | 12-31-2007 | permalink

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Hawaii's Prettiest Pests

OK all you botanical xenophobes (and I mean that in the nicest possible way)...

As a preview to a Morning Edition series coming to a public radio station hear you, Talking Plants is taking a sneak peek at the plant pests of HAWAI'I. I figure some of you are headed there in the next few months, so this may be my best chance to pack another agenda into your luggage.

Folks who visit Hawai'i (and we are many in the Pacific NW) often come back raving about the state's incredible flora. And sure, it's pretty. But most of what people rave about are introduced invasives that have gone hog wild.

Many of the "Hawaiian" plants that turn heads -- the bold yellow ginger, the crimson African tulip trees, the multi-colored lantana -- are not merely non-native, they are trouble. And that includes everyone's favorite houseplant, the schefflera, a greedy plant also known as the octopus tree that has undoubtedly snatched a few extra acres of Kaua'i since you first started reading this post.

Other smothering lovers include the shrubby princess flower (anyone from the Bay Area knows that purple-flowered Brazilian beautygirl, Tibouchina urvilleana)...and the bad bad bad, die! die! die! banana poka (link has video), alias Passiflora mollisssima, a rapacious passion fruit vine (yes, that's redundant).

"So what's an apolitical fun-loving tourist supposed to do about all this?" you may ask. Support thems that give a damn, I answer. Dig deep when you visit Hawaii's botanic gardens and arboreta and leave a generous donation, 'cause it ain't cheap to keep paradise under control.

3:16 PM ET | 12- 9-2007 | permalink

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Fernier Than Thou

It all started with an e-mail from the celebrated California horticulturist and landscape designer, Roger Raiche, titled "With Fronds Like These, Who Needs Anemones":

In one of those small triumphs that will never change the world, but which are personally very satisfying, I finally came across a rare variant of a common fern that I had been hoping to find for nearly 25 years now.

I got the e-mail yesterday and once I found a few hours to read it (I jest, but it is the size of a magazine article), I thought of you guys, or shall I say I thought of the bonafide plant freaks among you.

His story is a very simple one. It's about his decades-long search for the native Californian Lyman fern, not because it was rare or endangered -- in fact, it's in the trade -- but because he simply wanted to see it in its native haunts.

It's a story for fern lovers, plant hunters, grail-seekers and hortiholics. If you've got a little down time and words like polypody and pinnae don't scare you, read on...

Continue reading "Fernier Than Thou" »

10:31 AM ET | 11-16-2007 | permalink

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Tales from the Woods. Yours.

Man what a week we're wrapping up here at TP. So many new folks, so many smart folks and damn if you aren't an opinionated lot. Loggers, mill owners, non-profiteers, academics. Hortheads, spider freaks, xeriscapists.

My kinda folk.

First, a little housekeeping. If you've nothing more to say on the matter than Yes or No, I'd love to get your feedback on whether you've been posting because you heard the Sugar Maple story.

OK, now YOU...

Bill on the VA. woods:

a nearby crossroads...totally rural farmland of split rail fences and fields of straw and its thick summer air filled with setting sun softly illuminating barn swallows after darting dragonflies, mayflies, Lady Bugs, buzzing bumblebees and all their companions

Nice, huh? That crossroads is now called Tysons Corner.

Laura on a wooded refuge in Iowa:

Eden Valley. In the middle of the beautiful Iowa fields and prairie is this place that if filled with limestone bluffs and forests. I love to go at least once a week and escape.

Bruce on growing up around chestnut trees:

I can't tell you how many times over the years we had to have burrs dug out of our feet. Those things *HURT* a great deal. We'd go out and collect the chestnuts, pierce them and roast them. Good eats.

Mike on other painful chestnut memories:

About 30+ years ago a neighborhood friend and I were sitting on the edge of our driveway eating raw chestnuts that we had gathered from breaking limbs out of my fathers tree. Everything was going fine till my father walked up...

Rob on clearcutting:

A "clear cut" type harvest is a closer mimick of natural disturbance, and actually are rarely found anymore-modern sustainable forestry usually uses shelterwood cuts with seed trees left for regeneration (a "heavy thin").

Jason on clearcutting:

The notion that a clear cut is mimicking nature doesn't make sense. In nature...the trees are never removed from the site, but stay there as part of the ecosystem, supporting ecosystem recovery to a more natural state.

Matt on clearcutting:

...just as widely used now as they ever have been. The difference is that now foresters generally utilize an "AMZ" or aesthetic management zone to shield public eyes from viewing the harvest.

And Jim, who lives by the saw:

I work as a logger in the mid-coast area of Maine. I sold the skidder and use horses now. Each cut is different...I particularly like the fact that here folks can speak to their issues and perceptions. We can all learn from each other.

12:02 PM ET | 11- 5-2007 | permalink

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A Good Lumberman Is Not an Oxymoron

I got thinking about good lumbermen after a comment posted yesterday by TP community member, Rob Spence. It was in response to my post about the felling of big trees.

Who is to say that (even) sustainable forestry does not include the taking of some large diameter timber? Big trees grow back too, they just take longer, maybe longer than we personally will be alive.

I know someone who undoubtedly signs execution orders for big trees. And much to my (naieve) amazement, he is a fierce environmentalist and a devoted steward of the forest.

And a lovely guy.

You might have met him briefly if you heard this week's Sugar Maple story on Morning Edition. His name is Jamey French. And we could probably get him to swing by the TP blog if anyone has any thoughtful questions for him.

6:24 PM ET | 11- 1-2007 | permalink

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The Mighty Have Fallen

What mighty have fallen? Well, if we're talking about the building of America on the backs of the American forest, just about all of them. But if the subject's sudden catastrophe, I think of two species: the American Elm and the American Chestnut.

I want to talk about the chestnut, because it was very much on my mind as I visited the forests of Vermont and New Hampshire, places once stuffed with these towering and beneficent trees.

(Before I go any further, if you're already hooked on the topic, you should know about the just-released book, Mighty Giants: An American Chestnut Anthology, a project celebrating the 25th anniversary of American Chestnut Foundation.)

If you're new to this story, let's cut to the chase: within 50 years of the arrival of an Asian fungus we now call chestnut blight in the late 1800's, an estimated FOUR BILLION TREES were LOST. We're talking GONE.

You could just see the trees dying. You could see them changing from time to time. One would die; the leaves would turn brown and fall off in the middle of the summer ... people couldn't believe it. They thought they'd come back.

One of the eye-witnesses account from Mighty Giants. This is from a NYTimes account, summer 1911:

Chestnut Trees Face Destruction -- Trees Worth Millions Dying in This State from a Canker for Which There Is No Remedy. Eats Beneath The Bark -- Sprays and Other Attempts to Check Spread of the Paraside Unsuccessful -- Trees in Botanical Park Doomed.

Nothing new under the sun. Not with what worries us today. But optimism abounds about the future of the chestnut and our ability to undo damage (could it be?) from very un-Pollyanna-like people like Bill McKibben, who wrote the short introduction to this softback book.

... the story of the chestnut echoes like a fable -- a fable about carelessness, and about the hard work and hard love needed to make up for that carelessness. A fable we need to start telling more and more, for the hope it gives and the lesson it provides.

OK, so it's a little Pollyanna-ish but the point's this: people have been and continue to be devoted to the return of the chestnut. And who's to argue with their vision, their certainty, that the job can be done.

American Chestnut memories, anyone? Bring 'em on...

Frank Meyer, "intrepid and tireless plant explorer" for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, tracked the source of the chestnut blight back to China in 1913. (His pix alone is reason enough to see this book.)

2:00 PM ET | 10-31-2007 | permalink

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Talking Forest

So let's talk about the forest.

Forgive my earnesty, but I'm increasingly aware that outside of my loved ones, there's nothing more important to me than the forest. Admittedly, not a particularly striking revelation coming from someone who loves plants. But I wasn't like this till I moved to Oregon, and now wherever I travel, I seek out the region's deepest woods.

The forest works for me because I need the relative silence of the woods to shut me up, shut me down, help me connect to what I think matters (that is, the forest itself). That's why I prefer hiking alone unless I'm with an equally willing silent partner (the dogs do nicely). I need the girth of trunks and the filtered atmosphere to see exactly what's in front of me -- which then makes it possible to tune everything else out.

What wild places keeps you sustained, sane, balanced? And what are you doing to help protect them?

This is a genuine question; no imperious tone here. I'm just curious what organizations you support, how you support them (money counts, most assuredly), plus what recommendations you have for others who want to give back to the plants, trees, forests -- but don't know where to start.

Boy I'm boring when I'm earnest...

7:32 PM ET | 10-29-2007 | permalink

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Shout-Out for the Sugar Maple

Out of my own harrowing frustration trying to boil down a complex and nuanced story, today's Morning Edition feature now spills onto the page.

The saga features that incomparable big-headed beauty Acer saccharum -- also known as the fiery Ms. Sugar Maple -- and her possibly fatal choice of a landlord -- often high-on-octane and always unpredictable -- the notorious Climate Change.

A quick count of the supporting cast, all stars in their own right, include Ecology, Entymology, Sustainable Foresty, and those three evil stoogies, Forest Fragmentation, Greedy Development and All-Terrain Terror. Plus the one player absolutely everybody's sweet on, Maple Syrup.

Without her, no one would bother seeing the show.

Can you imagine the trouble I had handling this cast, trying to keep one from overshadowing all the others?

Frankly, the whole story's a bit out of control. Imagine trying to predict the ending! Will Man save Ms. Maple? Will Climate Change conquer them both? And even if you don't like the way it's headed -- with Ms. Maple's friends the cold-loving Conifers getting the heave-ho first -- tell me this:

Do you think there's still time to change the ending?

4:56 PM ET | 10-28-2007 | permalink

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Rock Star Botanists

As promised, you're about to meet Ken Wood. He's one of the so-called "rock star botanists" on the Hawaiian island of Kaua'i, associated with the National Tropical Botanical Garden.

Why rock star? Most likely because his exploits have become the stuff of legend, his relentless, daring feet (insert wink) in the wild decade after decade, in search of endangered Hawaiian and Pacific Islands plants.

Yet for all the risks he takes on his seemingly death-defying plant expeditions, Ken Wood is no pumped-up Indiana Jones. Consider his modest comments from the talk we had while hiking a ridge overlooking his beloved Kalalau Valley.

All through time, there've been very interesting field biologists, many out here in the Hawaiian Islands, and these naturalists, botanists and biologists were incredibly adventurous; the rigors and difficulties they encountered were intense and amazing. So I think we've a similar mindset.

As for describing that mindset, how's this for a swashbuckling answer:

It's often said, "Who am I, Where do I come from, Where am I going to." Well, the "who am I" part is not just my physical form but what I'm a part of. So that curiousity we have, that interest in understanding our relationship with earth and/or the universe, I think that's in us all. And once we start to tap into it and learn a little bit and open the first few pages of this incredible story, we're locked in there. And if you can make a living at it, then you're in for a really cool ride.

It occurs to me that reading Ken Wood is no substitute for hearing him. So much is in his delivery. As he talks about hand-pollinating plants to get them to set seed -- we're talking very rare plants now, often the last of their species, clinging to rock cliffs 3,000 feet high -- his slow, seductive way of explaining things makes the act itself sound like soft porn. So if you haven't already, give a listen to the audio clip up top.

Ready to rock? Cool. How 'bout starting with an overview of the endangered plant crisis in Hawaii. Two good articles that feature Wood are Hanging by a Thread from Discover Magazine, and Paradise Lost? from Plant Talk.

And for you plant geeks, here's the blow-by-blow list of Hawaii's threatened and endangered plants, as well as an awesome overview of Hawaii's native flora.

A flora, I might add, all the richer because of guys like Ken Wood (I can already hear him protesting that he's just one piece of the conservation puzzle. Agreed). Not only has he kept countless plants from extinction, he is the decidedly bashful papa of a previously undescribed species. Get a look at this exquisite yellow Hibiscadelphus woodii.

Stay tuned for more adventures from Kaua'i...

9:03 PM ET | 10- 2-2007 | permalink

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Botanizing in Hawaii

It's all-Kauai all week on Talking Plants where the subject is Hawaiian native plants. So get comfy and start streaming Kaua'i Community Radio (it plays Hawaiian music all morning, though some dj's are decidedly better than others) and let me say, Mahalo! for listening.

I'm just back from a week botanizing on Kaua'i with a pretty remarkable cast of characters, whose stories I'll be telling later this year on Morning Edition. No reason for you guys to wait, though, since these are plant people you're gonna want to meet.

First up, the guy below in the orange cap, Ken Wood, who climbs mountains, jumps from helicoptors and dangles thousands of feet in the air to save plants from extinction. His story, tomorrow.

3:05 PM ET | 10- 1-2007 | permalink

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Going Gazaniac

Now that it's been established that I can't tell an annual gazania from a tuberous dahlia, I'd like to introduce you to a straight species gazania -- unadulterated by hybridizing -- as she once appeared to me in her native South Africa.

On my honor, here's an untouched pix of the South African native, Gazania rigida. Like many native gazanias, she's a perennial in the daisy family, and smolders like coal as she sprawls across the landscape.

On this particular trip to the western Cape in September 2002, the plants stretched every which way along roadsides and across fields. I fondly recall a group of us even botanizing in acres of garbage.

I only bring this long ago but oh! so! delicious! trip to your attention because I'm just back from hiking in New Mexico's Jemez Mountains, where I saw wildflower displays reminiscent of South Africa's western Cape.

Not the same brilliant colors, of course, and certainly not the same flabbergasting array of species; I'm talking 'bout the sheer acreage of bloom. At one point my friend Bill and I were standing in a flowering field of soft violet Erigeron divergens at least 200 ft long and 100 ft wide!

3:39 PM ET | 08-22-2007 | permalink

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