Gleanings of the Week Ending November 12, 2016

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

How well are the world’s rivers protected? – The HydroSHEDS dataset includes high-resolution imagery that can be used to assess river quality…measure progress toward conservation targets.

Oregon DOT’s Columbia River Gorge Bus Service a Smashing Success – Something to add to my list of ‘things to do’ when we make our plans to vacation in the Northwest US.

Should birds stay, or should they go? – Some bird trivia…particularly about birds in Alaska.

Interactive: See How Global Health Has Changed Since You Were Born – A fun way to learn a bit about the history of global health.

Urban Forests: what city trees do for us and what we should do for them – Trees in the city...cost effective and good for our psyches too.

Wild cat brains: An evolutionary curveball – Cats are different….the size of their frontal lobes is linked to their social natures in a different way that people and monkeys. Cheetahs (social cats) have small frontal lobes and leopards (solitary cats) have large ones.

Jumping Worms: The creepy, damaging invasive you don’t know – I saw this article and have now see other reference to this invasive species. Aargh! I looked at worm pictures from our Belmont Bioblitz and was relieved that the worms we found were not this species!

Significant Bronze Age city discovered in norther Iraq – A dig only 45 kilometers from territory controlled by Islamic State!

The Lost History of South Africa – Rock art of the San people...older than the cave site in France.

How each one of us contribute to Artic sea ice melt – For example - The carbon dioxide emission for each seat on a return flight from London to San Francisco causes five square meters of Arctic sea ice to disappear.

Seeing Trees as Individuals

Often we see trees as a group – a forest…and not as individuals. There are three in my backyard that I see as individuals even though they are closely associated with other trees. I can see all three from my office window. The first is a red maple. The first picture was taken on Halloween through my office window over the roof of our covered deck.

The next was taken from the ground in our backyard about a week later. Its leaves had started to fall by that time. It is not a forest tree. Our neighbor planted it on his side of the property line before we moved into our house over 20 years ago. But the tulip poplars and beech trees of the forest provide a yellow backdrop to this trees red foliage. It survived a large grape vine that grew from the forest into its crown before I took my big pruners into the forest and cut the vine at ground level about 10 years ago, annual deer munching on its lower branches in the winter and spring, and being squished by some pines and an oak before they were cut down. It is a survivor.

I enjoy its shape and color…all through the year: the red stems of late winter, the tiny red flowers, the new leaves that start out red then turn green, the red samaras that turn brown and fly off the tree, the lush green of summer, and then the mixture of red and green leaves that fly off the tree in the fall – usually in one week.

The section tree is a tulip polar. It is at the edge our forest. It has never been as straight and many of the others of its kind in the forest. It never has been. I think I like it more for its imperfections.

This year the tree seemed to have many flowers in the spring and they must have been fertilized because there are large number of seed pods now.

The tulip polar leaves turn brown very quickly once they fall from the tree. I always feel lucky to find one that still has some green. The first year we moved into our house, on the first of November, the leaves were flying off the tulip polar with every breeze. They are at least a week later this year.

The last tree that I see as an individual in my backyard is the newest. It is a black walnut and a relatively recent addition. In this jumbled picture – it is in the middle with the stems containing multiple leaflets – yellow and green as it changes for the winter. It came up on its own, probably planted by a squirrel. I didn’t realize it was a black walnut until last year when it had two nuts on it.

About 5 years ago I had cut honey suckle and grape vines off a small tree in that area but I didn’t know what kind of tree it was at the time. Now the crown gets sun late in the day in our neighbor’s backyard and the lower part gets sun from late morning onward in our yard. Its tall enough now that the deer can’t hurt it very much. So – I am watching to see how soon it will perturb the forest around it. Black walnuts make space for themselves once they have a good start and this one is getting close to the size that it will have that impact.

Gleanings of the Week Ending September 10, 2016

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

Sunflowers Track the Sun, Like Solar Panels – The behavior was reported in scientific literature in 1898. Now there are studies to understand how the plants do it biochemically and physically. I also liked the picture at the beginning of the article.

Ancient air pockets changing the history of Earth’s oxygen – Ancient air trapped in rock salt shows that earth’s atmosphere contained 10.9% oxygen 813 million years ago….about 300 million years earlier than previously thought. It’s not as much oxygen as in our current atmosphere but a lot of organisms did develop during this time period when there was less oxygen.

Healthy Eating, A to Z – How many of these 26 do you already know?

30 Reason Your Next Car Should Be Electric – I’ve been thinking recently that my next car will probably be electric. It’s good to see that there are a lot of reasons this it is a good idea! Item 29 on this list (kids and grandkids and great-grandkids) is high in my rationale.

How comedy makes us better people – Analyzing humor’s role in our culture – in much the same way as we analyze intelligence.

Exploring How and Why Trees ‘Talk’ to Each Other – An interview with Suzanne Simard.

Closest Living Relative to the Dodo Dazzles with Vibrant Iridescent Plumage – A little eye candy and interesting biology in one article.

As lab-grown meat and milk inch closer to U.S. market, industry wonders who will regulate? – A complex issue and it’s not clear if the USDA or FDA will be responsible. The technology is moving forward quickly in the agricultural biotechnology arena. It is challenging to understand it well enough to propose appropriate regulations for public health and safety.

Newly discovered fossils break record, dating back 3.7 billion years ago – Evidence of microbial life found in Greenland (where there are some of the world’s oldest sedimentary rocks). Another article on the same topic from Science Daily can be found here.

Study assesses climate change vulnerability in urban America – Our area got a wakeup call in this arena with the damage to Ellicott City from recent flooding. It happened very quickly, with very little warning. The planning for infrastructure, human populations and local concerns when it comes to climate vulnerability is in its infancy in many parts of the country.

Ten Days of Little Celebrations – August 2016

August has been hot and humid…punctuated with thunderstorms and downpours of rain. There has been plenty to celebrate:

Lots of tomatoes – Our Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) provides so many different kinds – heirloom, cherry, yellow, red, orange…and I am celebrating the bounty for almost two meals a day. Last week we got a bundle of basil and I’ve had it on the counter all week; I add it to salads and sauces so frequently that I don’t think I’ll have any left to dry at the end of the week.

Homemade salsa – I had a jalapeño pepper from the CSA and combined it with tomatoes, cilantro, dried onion flakes and lemon juice/pulp in the food processor. Yummy. We’ve eaten up the first batch and I’ll be making a second one soon. It’s good food worth celebrating.

Lemon Vinaigrette – I discovered a new favorite salad dressing. I’m celebrating the change – even though I still keep a supply of my previous favorite: Green Vinaigrette.

Clean cabinet doors -  I found some Murphy’s Oil Soap that we’ve had for years and cleaned the cabinet doors. There are times that ‘cleaning house’ becomes a celebration of the place we live and this was one of those times.

Home in the 1990s – I scanned pictures we had taken as we moved into the house we live in now…and the rest of the decade. Seeing the pictures again were a celebration of that time of our lives.

New Kitchen Floor – The new floor makes the whole room look new to me. I’m celebrating the end result…and that our decision to ‘do it now.’

Wood Floor – We got the wood floor in the foyer refinished and matching wood in the office to the side of the foyer and the powder. Wow – the whole area of the house looks very clean and full of light, bigger than it looked before. Now we are thinking about where else we will put wood flooring…while we celebrate the success of this project.

Goldfinches – Every time I see the goldfinches enjoying the zinnia and sunflower seeds it is a little celebration of color and motion.

Monarch butterfly – There are not very many Monarch butterflies in our area so the one I did see near our house was a celebration.

Tree hike – The tree hike at Belmont was something I committed to do months and months ago so when it finally happened this month, it was a milestone of 2016 to celebrate.

Tree Hike at Belmont – August 2016

I volunteered to lead a tree hike at Belmont Manor and Historic Park last weekend. I went out the Friday before to walk the route I’d planned. Even though the hike was in the morning – it was going to be a hot day so I wanted every part of the hike to be worth the effort. The river birch would definitely be the first stop – with it distinctive curly bark.

Some Norway Maples had been planted near the cottage – and I decided that I’d point them out to encourage people to plant native maples instead if they wanted a maple tree in their yard.

I decided to not make the down and back (with no shade) hike down to the pond to see the bald cypress that is the tree with the rounded top to the left of the pond. I pointed it out to the hiking group from about where I stood to take this picture.

We didn’t walk over to the magnolia either. It was enough to view it from further away and talk about the history of large magnolias planted in front of the manor house and the possibility that the large specimen there now is missing the large English Elm that grew uphill until about a year ago when it was cut down before it succumbed completely to Dutch Elm Disease.

On my pre-walk, I walked all the way over to the horse chestnut. The tree is not in good shape. The top was rotten and it broke last spring. The leaves are distinctive but looked pretty battered already.

I opted to go in the direction of the dawn redwood and talk about it being the second example of a conifer that loses its needles at Belmont (the first was the bald cypress mentioned earlier).

We saw two kinds of nut producing trees: a black walnut

And a pecan.

The row of white pines has a few pine cones but the ground crews have thoroughly cleaned up any that fall to the ground.

On the way back I noticed a mushroom under a sweet gum – with bits of dirt clinging to its cap.

There were other trees along the route. The hike on Saturday was almost two hours and we saw something I had missed on my pre-hike: A large English Elm that was being treated for Dutch Elm Disease. The injection ports for chemicals were all around the base of the tree. I hope the tree survives!

Gleanings of the Week Ending August 20, 2016

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

Sweat: How to Keep Your Cool – This post seemed to fit with the hot, humid weather we’ve been having since late July here in Maryland.

How millennials are shaping the future of work – I think it is more than just millennials that want these things. I can remember wanting the latest tech for my entire career….and when I didn’t always get it, being frustrated. I remember in the 1990s wanting a laptop rather than a desktop PC as my primary work machine because I was traveling a lot…and being told that laptops could be checked out when I traveled but were not available for in-office use!

From Tree to Shining Tree – The wood-wide-web that is the forest under the forest…made of roots and fungus. A Radiolab Podcast just over 30 minutes long.

Fresh look at burials, mass graves, tells a new story of Cahokia – Skeletal evidence was re-evaluated. The publications in the 1960s assumed all the skeletons were male….but they were male and female. And the motifs with the graves have to be interpreted differently too.

Pressure Mounts to Reform Our Throwaway Clothing Culture – I’ve been donating clothing for a long time…but this goes a step further.

Questioning the Presidential Candidates on Science – 20 questions sent to the candidates with answers requested by September 6^th. I’m interested in seeing those responses.

Plastic bag usage has 85% decrease in England after government starts charging per bag – Hurray for England. Wish we were doing more in the US to reduce plastic bags. I’ve been using usable bags for the past few years but there are still a lot of people that aren’t.

Wind power fiercer than expected – I was surprised that evidently there has not been a lot of research on the wind patterns at turbine level over the east coast where a number of wind farms are being planned….including off Maryland’s coast.

The Secret Lives of Horseshoe Crabs – We often see horseshoe crabs on Chesapeake Bay beaches…this was a good post about their life cycle and the current challenges to the species.

New Wondrous Photos of the World’s Beautiful Diverse Fungi – Nature photography and eye candy all in one!

About Trees

I volunteered to be the ‘tree lady’ - staffing the tree nature station at the family event following the 5K Green Run at Belmont last weekend. Some of the children just enjoyed looking at tree cross sections (tree cookies) and buds cut from trees around my yard earlier in the morning (tulip poplar, black walnut, red maple, and sycamore) with magnifiers while others were keen to fill in all the blanks in the booklet to earn the Howard County Conservancy’s Junior Naturalist Badge. Most of them left my table and headed down the slope to look at some trees up close – sweet gum, white pine, and sycamore. The sugar maple around the corner from the carriage house got some attention too.

It was a good day to be outdoors – sunny and a near perfect temperature. The turnout was not huge – but enough to make it worth the effort.  It was good to see children learning something new about the natural world…and enjoying the outdoor activities (the tree nature station was one of three stations).

I didn’t take a picture of the whole table – just two of the small branches I took as ‘living’ examples. The black walnut has leaf clusters coming out of knobby stems.

The sycamore is just beginning to pop its buds! I had some sycamore leaves pressed from last summer to illustrate how big the leaves would eventually get. Looking at the branch at it is now, that size increase hard to imagine.

The black walnut and sycamore are far behind the tulip poplar that already has leaves as big as a hand and big flower buds. The red maple is already shedding its seeds while the green leaves rapidly unfurl.

Gleanings of the Week Ending April 2, 2016

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

19 Different Foods that Surprisingly Bloom Beautiful Flowers – Great visuals and informative too. Think of all the different kinds of pollinators needed for these flowers too.

Fulfilling Water Needs as Big as Texas – The Nature Conservancy has created the Texas Water Explorer – wish Maryland had a similar app although I did find Water Quality Assessment Maps for Maryland which have much of the same information. I liked the picture of the Pedernales – brought back memories of a vacation in the state park along the river almost 40 years ago.

New knowledge for managing tree-killing bark beetles – After learning more about the southern pine bark beetle when I visited Chincoteague, I’ve been more aware of the damage it is causing…noticing articles like this one. There is really no good news.

Monet-esque Micrograph and Bug Brothers and Subterranean settlers and Zika viron and Cretaceous Chameleon – The Scientist almost always includes an image in its newsletters. Here’s a collection from March.

Blood test can predict risk of developing tuberculosis – It would be good if a blood test could do this. I remember having to get chest x-rays for my job since I responded to the TB skin test (i.e. was a latently infected person) …and repeated chest x-rays are not a good thing.

It has fast become antiquated to say that you ‘go online’ – Living constantly online…it’s becoming the norm for more and more people. And even when we turn off our devices, our online world continues while we are away. It is the new normal.

Developing better drugs for asthma, high blood pressure – The point of the project is to avoid complications from drugs that require treatment – separate from the original reason the person was taking the drug in the first place. It’s a good goal but I prefer the research toward interventions that address the root cause of a problem rather than starting with a drug that works most of the time and trying to avoid complications from it – which seems to be the goal of this research.

Sleep: The A B Zzzzs and  Learning with the Lights Out and Desperately Seeking Shut Eye and Under the Cover of Darkness (infographic) and Who Sleeps? And Characterizing Sleep (infographic) – The Scientist has had a number of interesting articles about sleep. I wonder how often a person’s sleep (or lack of sleep) is the primary cause of a health issue….and how often doctors decide to treat a sleep problem unless is overwhelming obvious that sleep is the problem. Some sleep problems may be very difficult to treat and may require a significant change in lifestyle which is often very difficult.

These Ancient Trees Have Stories to Tell – I like trees…and these are artfully photographed. They were printed in black and white; I think I like trees in color more.

The Artificially Intelligent Doctor Will Hear You Now – I like the idea here – particularly that it takes into account the patient’s history and circumstances…not just symptoms. One of the things I have observed is that doctors typically key off one or two recent test results rather than taking the patient’s full history into account. They have the problem – like all of us – of being overwhelmed by data. Having an AI that would take all of that into account would benefit the doctor by saving a lot of patient history review time and the patient would get a more informed diagnosis and treatment.

Belmont Manor and Historic Park – March 2016

I’ve been to several Howard County Conservancy training sessions at Belmont this month. The short hike associated with the first training was into the nearby woods. The trees were still very much in winter mode. A few of the young beeches retained dry leaves from last season. The large trees in this forest are beech, tulip poplar, sycamore and oak (fewer oaks, and they are smaller than the other trees).

The only green around were plants close to the ground protected by the buttress roots of trees or

Moss growing on tree trunks.

The next training had a hike that went out to the cemetery on the property. Just outside the fence is a huge tulip poplar. There is a hollow place on the side of the trunk toward the fence and it is unclear how far up the tree that hollow goes.

There is a row of White Pines with picnic tables underneath. I’ve never stopped there for a picnic but last summer the area under the pines was a good place to look for mushrooms to photograph.

We hiked back to the front of the manor house and I finally got around to photographing the date on the plaques above the front door. CPD stands for Caleb and Priscilla Dorsey – the builders of the oldest part of the house.

It was a wet day – but the view from the drive in front of the manor house was still scenic with the large magnolia on the lawn and the pond beyond – a bald cypress standing vigil at the water’s edge on the left.

The dampness gave the gum balls on the ground more color. The wind had trimmed one of the nearby white pines recently to add to the arrangement.

On some of the old trees the lichen on their trunks looks more robust than the tree.

During the third training we hiked through one of the fields and I found a blue jay feather – a little battered from being on the ground for several days.

After the training I decided to stop at all the turnouts along the one lane wide road. The part of the road that has been newly paved now has speed bumps. This is the entrance to Belmont showing the trees along the drive.

A lot of trees have been cut along this newly paved section – supposedly to winnow out unhealthy trees. It has been going on for the past several years. I made a slide show of the pictures I took of the stumps. Can you tell which ones are not part of the recent cutting? (1, 4, 9) One looks like an unfurling scroll to me. (3)  There were several that I wondered why they were cut – they weren’t hollow so there must have been something else that made them candidates for the saw. One such was (11 and 12) --- but then I noticed the space between the bark and the rest of the wood; something was definitely wrong. The one with the biggest hollowed out area would have probably fallen soon had it not been cut (13). Some of the wood from a large branch looked very spongey (14) so clearly the tree was rotting. Still – it is sad to see so many trees cut down at one time.

Gleanings of the Week Ending January 23, 2016

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

Breakthrough discovery reveals how thirsty trees pull water to their canopies – It is cohesion and gravity rather than atmospheric pressure that is the driving principle. I always thought it was due to ‘capillary action’ but that term is not mentioned in the article at all.

Giant Clams Light Up Like Plasma Screens, Only Better – Potential for organic displays…..using the giant clam mechanism for power and color.

Photography in The Parks: Accessible Zion Through the Seasons – Nice to know that Zion has something for everybody. I missed it a few years ago when the government was shut down while I was in the area….want to try again.

How do birds stay warm on a cold winter’s night? – Huddling together seems to be popular. The article suggests providing nesting boxes to help the birds find a good place just after sunset. And another post about birds - Snow birds: 10 birds to look for in winter. The feeders at Sapsucker Woods (Ithaca, NY) have a camera on them; the video feed is here. The birds in this post are not what is visiting my feeder and bird bath right now; I’m seeing cardinals, juncos, blue jays, and doves almost every day.

Scientific Illustrator Hand-Paints Giant Mural Featuring 243 Modern Bird Families – Next time I am in Ithaca NY (Cornell University) – I’ll want to see the mural.

Infographic Offers a Valuable Guide to Feeling Happier in Your Life – Lots of variables…and this is all a matter of statistics. There are happy people that don’t meet all these….and the genetics part is something we can’t change anyway! Another perspective on the same topic from BBC Futures: A 7-day guide to the pursuit of happiness.

Arthropods Abundant in American Homes – The average US household contains 62 distinct families of arthropod species. They range from cockroaches and fleas to carpet beetles and book lice…ants. They are our (mostly) quiet and benign roommates.

Why do we get ‘eye floaters’? – Many people notice them…but they impact vision in very few cases. They are causes when small debris gets into the vitreous humor – the jelly like mass between the retina and the lens in our eyes….that is not replenished or replaced.

The Chemistry of Bread Making – A graphic from Compound Interest.