Palo Borracho: Drunk on Montevideo's Spectacular Trees

What’s Blooming Now? Palo Borracho

Whether you're driving by or jogging by, you can't help but notice these tropical beauties in Montevideo's parks, blooming in March with a lacy pink canopy. Visible from a distance, their true wonder is revealed when you look up close. Its gorgeous flowers, unique fruits, and shady leaf structure make it a coveted tree in many regions of the world.

“Palo Borracho” and  “Silk Floss Tree” are common names of the Ceiba speciosa, a tree that is native to Peru, Paraguay, Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina. It is in the same family as the kapok and baobab. It can reach a height of over 12 meters.

This tree has many showy features. The bark of the younger trees is green, turning streaky brown and green later in life. The trunk and branches are covered with thick thorns. The base of the trunk flares out in a bulbous shape.

The Palo Borracho flowers in summer to fall, before dropping its leaves. The pink and white flowers resemble hibiscus flowers. The nectar attracts pollinators such as bees, butterflies and hummingbirds. The palmately compound leaves are made up of 5-7 leaflets all coming to a common point on the stem. The tree is bare in winter. In the spring, the fruits appear, looking like woody pears. These burst open, and black seeds covered in fluffy white cottony fibers fly out. This fiber has been used as stuffing for cushions, packaging, canoes, and added to paper pulp.  The seeds germinate easily and the tree grows quickly: nearly ten feet in just two years. 

All photos by Cory Giacobbe, 2017, Montevideo, Uruguay

Butterfly Gardening in Missouri

Butterflies are beautiful to watch, their colors, the way they flit and fly, and sip nectar from the flowers you planted. That's reason enough to attract them to your garden. But the benefits of planting a butterfly garden are much broader than that. Butterfly gardens benefit other pollinators which help your vegetable garden and fruit trees. Many butterfly garden plants provide food and nesting for birds. Caterpillars provide the protein snack that birds need to feed their young and to migrate long distances.

Support the butterfly lifecycle with host plants and nectar plants

For a butterfly to compete its lifecycle, the adult butterfly eats flower nectar or the juices of fallen fruit.  The female lays her eggs on specific plants that she smells with her feet to make sure it's the right one that her caterpillars will need to eat in order to grow, molt and grow some more. Most people know that the Monarch caterpillar needs to eat Milkweed. But all butterfly species have their own particular plants that their caterpillars need to eat. These are called their host plant. You can look at the butterfly list in the link below to see what host plants each butterfly needs.

Provide a habitat network for pollinators

Planting native plants, and encouraging your neighbors to do so as well, provides a network of habitat for butterflies, birds and other pollinators. There may be a fence between you and your neighbor, but a butterfly can get nectar from your garden and hop the fence to lay eggs in your neighbor's garden. The lifecycle is supported by this pearl necklace of habitat oases.

Learn about your local wildlife and the native plants they depend on

This guide is intended as a starter kit for all gardeners who have a garden in the sun, large or small, or a patio with planters, or even something as small as a window box. The PDF in the link below is a list of plants you can choose to get a quick payoff of butterflies in your Missouri or Illinois garden. It's not a comprehensive list. I chose my favorite butterflies to attract, but gave you resources at the end to seek more information once you get inspired to go farther.

Here is a link to the PDF of my list of native midwest plants that attract and sustain butterflies of Missouri:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1J85lJOaDItYkJPLUVuVWkxb2s/view?usp=sharing

For gardeners in other areas of the country or the world, there are some resources in the right side of this blog that can get you started. Over there, look! =>

Water Young Trees in Summer

If you planted a tree within the last two or three years (congratulations!!!), it is still in the vulnerable stage of early root growth. Young trees need to be watered once a week, or twice a week if the weather is especially hot and dry.  The amount of water needed depends on a variety of factors including tree size and how well the soil drains.  Here are the watering guidelines in my area, from the Arlington County, VA website: 

Trees planted within the past two years that are less than 6 feet tall need a minimum of 5 gallons for each watering.  These trees should be watered at least twice a week starting in April and continuing through November.  Rainfall should not be considered adequate unless it is 2" or greater. 

The best time of day to water is early in the morning so that the amount of evaporation is minimized.  Late in the evening is the second best time.  The amount of water that comes through a hose varies for a variety of reasons such as hose size, length, size of the building's plumbing, water pressure, etc.  However, you can still estimate that about two gallons of water flow through a typical garden hose per minute.  This is roughly comparable to the amount of water that flows through the typical shower. Therefore, you should water newly planted trees for at least (3) three minutes with an unrestricted hose.  Hoses with sprinklers may need to be run longer since sprinklers may restrict the amount of water that flows each minute.

Casey Trees of Washington DC recommends "25 to Stay Alive", meaning 25 gallons per week, but the amount of water needed each week depends on the local precipitation and temperature. During the summer months, Casey Trees posts weekly tree watering recommendations on the main page of their website. Check it if you‘re unsure how much water your trees need. You can also sign up to follow them on Twitter, and that way you can receive reminders to water your trees.  If you don't live in the National Capital region, look for tree advocacy organizations in your area for information on the specific needs of the trees in your ecological region.

If you use a slow-release watering bag such as a  Treegator or an Ooze Tube, re-fill it each week from May to November.  These bags should be removed after two years. Arlington County, VA has a water truck and staff dedicated to watering street and park trees during the summer.  However, if you are within hose-watering distance of public trees that appear to be in distress, consider doing the trees and the community a favor and give the trees a drink. The watering bags can be tricky, so go ahead and visit the Treegator website for instructions. My neighbor Cheryl was motivated to fill the Treegator on the county street tree in front of her home, but it was so confusing that she wrote an article about it for our neighborhood newsletter to show others how to do it after she figured it out. Here's a link to her article, "Solving the Water Bag Mystery," in our civic association newsletter (hint, it's on page 8).

For more information on tree care, visit the TreeStewards website. Also, check out some of the great links over there to the right, such as the Tree Owner's Manual, a free downloadable, printable book from the USDA Forest Service, with everything you need to know about planting and caring for trees. =>

My Last Tree Column

I've been editing my neighborhood newsletter for two and a half years now. One of the main benefits of this job is that I've had a free forum for my native gardening and tree canopy advocacy.  I've just sent my final edition to the printer, and with it my final Tree Talk column.  Here it is:

 Tree Talk: Restoring Our Community’s Native Tree Canopy

My Last Tree Column
This is my last newsletter and tree column. My family is being transferred to Italy for three years. If there’s anything to report about trees and wildlife in Rome, I’ll send a dispatch, but the wildlife will probably be of a different nature.

Before turning to trees, I’d like to say what a rewarding experience it has been editing this newsletter. Thanks to Bruce for providing me the design and training to get started. Thanks to my ad man, Marty. Thanks to my newsletter carriers for going out in all kinds of weather to bring the newsletter to your home. Thanks also to my skillful writers, without whom there would be no news. And of course thanks to my husband for doing even more work on the newsletter than I do, even though I get all the credit and the glory. Oh the glory.

Over the last two and a half years, I have gently nudged my neighbors in the direction of tree planting, tree care and native gardening for invertebrate and vertebrate biodiversity support. I’d like to recap here the concepts I think are most important and urgent.

Plant native trees for all their benefits. Trees save energy and save you money. They purify the air and the water. They conserve the soil and provide wildlife food and shelter.

Not all native trees are equal. We’re lucky in the mid-Atlantic region because Dr. Doug Tallamy at the University of Delaware has been measuring which trees provide the most benefit to wildlife here. His prioritized lists can be found on his website. But basically, the most valuable natives for wildlife support are oak, cherry, willow, birch, poplar, crabapple, blueberry bush and maple. Be sure to plant local, native versions of these plants because European and Asian plants don’t feed the invertebrates that are the foundation of our local food web. Read Dr. Tallamy’s book Bringing Nature Home or simply click on “What to Plant” on his website http://bringingnaturehome.net/

Water young trees 25 gallons a week. Every weekend, take stock of the previous week’s rain. If it hasn’t rained much, soak the ground around the root spread, which is at least as wide as the canopy spread.

Plant trees in the right spot. Determine the height and canopy spread the tree will have at maturity. Make sure it won’t inter-fere with power lines, buildings, driveways and neighbors’ property. Call Miss Utility before you dig. In Virginia, dial 811. http://va811.com/

Put mulch under trees instead of grass. Spread it 3 inches thick and keep it 3 inches away from the trunk. Spread it out as wide as the farthest branches. Each year, make the circle a bit wider. Mulch keeps roots moist, provides nutrients and keeps down weeds. It also keeps lawn mowers and weed whackers away from the trunk. Arlington leaf mulch is awesome. Pick some up for free or have it delivered for a small fee: http://www.arlingtonva.us/departments/EnvironmentalServices/SW/Residential/page83856.aspx

Leave the leaves. Trees make their own best mulch by dropping their leaves. Even evergreens drop their leaves, just not all at once. Rake the lawn, driveway and patio, but leave a circle of leaves at the base of each tree, and leave the leaves that fall on your flowerbeds as well. Not only do they benefit from the nutrients and moisture, but the leaves contain the larvae and pupae of next year’s butterflies!

Let me tell you ’bout the birds and the bees. Native plants support moths and butterflies, who in turn support the birds. They also provide food for pollinators. Simply put, native plants are the foundation of the web of life. Don’t forget we are caught up in that web.

Tolerate some leaf damage. Native plants help insects by being their food. If there are holes in your foliage, it means you were successful in choosing good bug food.

And last, but certainly not least, take ivy off trees. What looks like a lovely little green plant can actually strangle trees, accelerate rot, attract mosquitoes and cause mature trees to fall down during storms. Visit the TreeSteward website for more information on ivy removal and tree care, and visit the master gardener and tree tables at the Arlington Courthouse Farmers’ Market on Saturdays in summer.

Cory's Baked Native Garden

Today was the hottest June day in Washington, DC in recorded history, at 104 degrees F.  It's been over 100 degrees F. for a couple of days now here in Northern Virginia, and I'm watching as my native garden bakes. Leaves are drooping, flowers are turning brown, and not even early morning watering perks them up. I'm watching four years of planning, purchasing, planting and nurturing native plants as they wilt, and I'm wondering if they will be hardy enough to withstand this assault. I'm hoping that, as natives accustomed to this climate, they have programmed in their genetic code a mechanism to protect themselves from this dry heat.  And if the leaves and flowers don't hang on, will there be time this season for the plants to grow new leaves and flowers?

I tout the benefits of growing native plants to my neighbors, and one of the selling points I use is that the plants don't need as much care, don't need as much water, don't need fertilizer, because they have adapted to our soil and climate over thousands of years. I guess what we're going to see is how well they handle an extended period of dry heat.

We just got hit with a frightening and severe thunderstorm tonight, a rare weather event called a Derecho, which is sort of a long, horizontal tornado, fueled by dry heat on the front side and cooler rain on the back side. The derecho caused a huge, multi-state swath of downed trees, deaths and power outages. Hundreds of thousands of households, businesses and government agencies lost power for days. We were very lucky in our home to have no damage, but there were trees snapped off like toothpicks, with at least 5 trees blocking streets within 5 blocks of our house.  We hosted one family seeking refuge from their unbearably hot house, and others stopped by to charge phones and cook food to use it up before it went bad.  Actually, I observed a great deal of  camaraderie and cooperation among neighbors over the last few days.  The storm brought the temperature down about 20 degrees in 20 minutes, but the temperatures are going to stay in the mid- to high 90s for the next nine days. Poor plants. Poor bugs. Poor birds. Poor mammals.  We shall see how this all turns out.

Luna Moths Need Black Walnut, Hickory Trees and Dark Skies

Luna Moth (from Wikipedia)

Two decades ago when I moved to our house in Arlington, Virginia, a Luna Moth took up residence for a couple of days among the moon flowers and morning glories climbing up the bean trellis. Since I was new to Virginia as well as the neighborhood, I assumed Luna Moths were a common occurrence that I would be able to enjoy in my new home. That turned out not to be true, and I’ve only seen two, both more than a decade ago.

 

The Luna Moth, Actias luna, is a lime-green swallowtail with a wingspan of four and a half inches, making it one of the largest North American moths.  Its preferred larval host trees in our area are the walnuts and hickories, but it will also use sweet gum and persimmon trees.  Up north, they go for birch, alder and sumac.  The trees are not damaged by the caterpillars.  After eating their fill of leaves and transforming through five instars (life cycle phases or molts), the caterpillars drop to the ground at the base of the tree, wrap themselves in silk and leaf litter, and pupate.

 

Luna Moths face many challenges to survival in the urban sprawl.  They require dark skies to reproduce.  They fly up to the tops of the host trees well after midnight to mate and lay eggs.  There is evidence that the bright lights from streetlights and buildings interfere with the moth’s ability to reproduce. They are also becoming endangered by the measures to control Gypsy Moths.  

While I haven’t read anything about the effect of leaf collection on Lepidoptera, it seems logical to me that our obsession with raking, mowing and blowing our yards clean has had the effect of sweeping away the pupated moths and butterflies as they undergo the miracle of metamorphosis at our feet.   [for more information on supporting wildlife by leaving in place the  leaves, seedheads and leaf stalks that insects, birds and small mammals depend on, see this post by Pat Sutton "A Love of Untidy Gardens and Why!" on the website Native Plants and Wildlife Gardens]

Finally, as our neighborhood’s original native tree cover is aging and disappearing, we are not replacing them with the species that the local fauna require for food, shelter and reproduction. Maybe we can help keep these beauties around by planting native hosts, leaving some leaf litter each fall, especially at the base of walnuts, hickories and sweet gums, and turning off unnecessary lights at night.

 

For more information on native landscaping for wildlife, have a look at the links on the right =>

Update May 27, 2012: We went for a walk this morning at Huntley Meadows Park in Alexandria, Virginia. On the path of the forested area near the edge of the wetlands, I saw a Luna Moth. It was the first one I have seen in almost 20 years.

Why I Plant Native Plants

How did this native plant adventure start for me? Moving frequently with my husband’s job, we rent the house out whenever we are overseas.  The shrubs and perennials I planted got neglected and taken over by English ivy and Asian honeysuckle. I got the idea to plant attractive weeds that would survive renters. That didn’t work out very well because I didn’t have time to research it and implement it.  When I came home in 2008, a friend suggested I take the Arlington Tree Stewards Volunteer training. Over the course of the 3 month training, I became convinced of the literally vital role of native trees, shrubs and forb (the forest ground later that goes away in winter and comes back in the spring), not only for wildlife but for civilized life as well.

As Dr. Doug Tallamy, Professor and Chair of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology at University of Delaware, points out in Bringing Nature Home , native plants are vital to survival of the food web, but we are experiencing a precipitous decline in undisturbed habitats. Bulldozing wetlands, forests, meadows and prairies for housing and monoculture farming is leaving precious little food and cover for insects, spiders, birds and mammals. Combine that with the alien invasive ornamental plants we brought over from Asia and Europe that are choking out the remaining native habitat, and we clearly have a crisis on our hands.

Dr. Tallamy’s current research shows that insects eat plants, and they largely eat the native plants they co-evolved with.  We’re losing our native bugs because we’re losing our native plants. And we’re losing our native birds because they need the bugs and fruit and nuts from the native plants, and so on. You get the picture.

Dr. Tallamy’s solution is to convince homeowners across the country to change the way they think about gardening, and to gradually replace lawns and alien ornamentals with the native trees, shrubs and forb that butterflies and moths need to survive. He focuses on Lepidoptera because he’s an entomologist, but also because butterflies are beautiful and can engage the public.  They also provide food up the chain for birds and mammals, and gardening for them also helps other species.

Blogs are supposed to be short, so I’ll stop here for today. In future posts I’ll point out the benefits of gardening with natives, how to get started, and show what’s going on with my own backyard habitat as it develops.

When you’re ready to get started, have a look at the resource links over here on the right =>

Flying Squirrels Need Tall Trees

Photo by Steve Young

Recently I was browsing the website of the Arlington Virginia Long Branch Nature Center when I spotted a link to this great  video about the Southern Flying Squirrel. Unable to resist watching the video, I learned that there are probably more Southern Flying Squirrels here in Arlington than regular grey squirrels. We just don't see them because they’re nocturnal. They live in pretty much the same backyard habitats as the grey squirrel. They need a hiding place, water and food. In the video, a staff member of the Long Branch Nature Center is demonstrating the behavior of the flying squirrel by showing how it will fly to a tree that has peanut butter smeared on it. In another Long Branch Nature Center video, you can see a flying squirrel up close. This is the resident flying squirrel that lives inside the Long Branch Nature Center. This squirrel was rescued and brought to the nature center in 2007.  He refuses to live in the wild. As a result, he is a wonderful learning resource for Arlington residents.

The Southern Flying Squirrel is the mascot of the Long Branch Nature Center, located in Arlington, Virginia. It’s on their brochure, and they lead night walks to spot the animals.   To learn more, I interviewed former Director of the Center (currently Director of Natural Resources for Arlington County), Alonso Abugattas, our resident expert on the Southern Flying Squirrel. 

The flying squirrels are smaller than grey squirrels. They have larger eyes to see better at night. And they’re more predatory. In addition to nuts, fruits and berries, they’ll eat animals, insects, eggs and carrion. Their favorite nuts are hickory nuts but they also like filberts and oak acorns. They don’t like walnuts so much because they’re hard to carry. They love suet and seeds from bird feeders.

Flying squirrels don’t actually fly. They glide from one tree to another.  They spread out their skin flaps, called a patagium, and catch the air like a parachute. They control the glide by banking.  They don’t use their tails to steer. Sometimes they wipe out on the ground if they miscalculate. For every two feet up, they can glide one foot out. The longest glide observed was 100 yards, off a tree and down a hillside.

Photo from "The Snag" Newsletter of Arlington VA Parks and Rec

Flying squirrels can build leaf nests (dreys) but they don’t like to live in them.  They prefer cavities in live trees, dead trees or snags. Keep your dead trees standing if possible and safe, or cut them down to a safer height, retaining the snag. They will also nest in bluebird boxes. They prefer to be at least 10 feet up.

During non-breeding season they hide together in cavities to keep warm. During breeding season they are incredibly secretive. They spread out in the woods. They prefer a habitat with big trees, larger, older trees that are spread out a bit, 20 feet apart or more.

In suburban areas, if there aren’t enough trees, they will take up residence in other areas such as bird boxes and attics.  This can be a problem because they run around at night and they chew.  If this happens, they’re easy to trap in “Have a Heart” traps with peanut butter as bait. 

To see flying squirrels in your yard, put peanut butter on a tree branch after the grey squirrels have gone to bed. I haven’t tried it yet but I will soon!

Plant and preserve native canopy trees so flying squirrels and other wildlife have a place to live. 

For more information on the Southern Flying Squirrel, check out the website of the Chesapeake Bay Program. There's also a fact sheet by the Audubon Society of Northern Virginia, that gives advice on how to provide food and shelter for the Souther Flying Squirrel by planting native berry shrubs and hickory trees.  Also plant butterfly host plants because they love to feast on caterpillars.

-Cory

Life Support System

Our life support system on this planet is in jeopardy. Burning fossil fuels is using up the oxygen we breathe. We're cutting down trees that produce oxygen at an alarming rate. We've introduced alien invasive plant species that, since they don't have natural limits, are taking over and killing off native species. Our food web depends on these native plants. It's been shown that bugs, butterflies and other pollinators require native plants to complete their life cycles. These invertebrates also support animals on up the food chain. Birds, small mammals and reptiles depend on adult and larval insects for food.

In this blog, I'll post articles I write for my local civic newsletter about native plants and trees. Thanks for visiting!