There Were No Fences

There are no more-powerful organs than roots. They define everything about a plant and, though largely unseen, everything that we see above-ground is determined by them. It is no wonder then that we talk about our own roots. They do the same. As I watch the birds that now visit my feeders, I think I relish most the visits by the Carolina chickadees and Carolina wrens. Although the differ a bit from the birds of my Wisconsin youth, they bring back memories of the birds I grew up with and I am then struck by how my roots define me. Just as the roots of plants anchor it and supply the nutrients necessary for its life, ours do the same for us. We never actually escape our own roots no matter how many times we move about the world. Where we were first planted nourishes us for the rest of our lives. As a Midwestern child of the 50's and 60's, I wandered the hills of southern Wisconsin, exploring the magic of spring in the deciduous forests that were near me. Perhaps that is why I am ...

Bumblebee nectaring on native Garberia heterophylla Hummingbird clearwing moth nectaring on a nonnative Buddleia As I've written before, my Holy Grail of pollinators in my new landscape is the continual presence of bumblebees. For the past week, I've had one in my yard and it shows up each early morning to visit my patch of native red salvia ( Salvia coccinea ). It is not the plant I would have guessed that would entice the visits, but I am excited to see it. I don't see the bumblebees later in the day yet, but they visit me routinely in the morning hours - and only on this plant although I have dozens of blooming wildflowers for it to choose from. I've learned over the years that timing is everything - much more important than the exact species of flowering plant. Plants are not identical in what they provide and they do it much more "intelligently" than most folks seem to understand. As I have more time right now to watch the pollination of my flow...

To me, the holy grail of pollinators is the bumblebee. It is my ultimate quest here in my new landscape to have them as regular visitors and to have them create a nest and produce more. Since I first began my landscape makeover here I have witnessed an exponential curve in the number and types of pollinators that now share my new home with me, but I have seen very few bumblebees. They are the most elusive visitor that I have and the one I would completely miss if I was not specifically looking out for them. Yesterday, I saw one making the rounds of my backyard wildflowers and I saw one several days earlier. Perhaps, my grail is close at hand. My love of bumblebees has not been a constant over my life. It began in childhood - perhaps at the age of 7 or 8, when I discovered that there was a bumblebee nest in the tattered cushion of our toboggan in the garage. I watched, partly fascinated and partly scared, as bumblebees entered and exited the cushion, flew out the open garage door, an...

A deciduous woodland has sunlight in the understory A well-managed pineland is sunny One of the most important decisions one can make in designing a landscape revolves around sunlight. Too often in my own experience, I have "protected" plants from the sun and it always has failed me. The reason is that sunlight feeds plants. It's not nutrients in the soil nearly as much as it is sunlight itself. Nutrients are important for a great many things, but most are only really important for the role they play in facilitating photosynthesis. It's really a simple equation: sunlight plus water and carbon dioxide creates a simple sugar - glucose, and that sugar gets manufactured in the plant to form every carbon-based molecule necessary to the plant's survival. Cell walls, proteins, fats and everything else a plant requires comes from sunlight and the carbon in carbon dioxide. Once we understand this, we understand the role sunlight plays in the growth and health of o...

I've written about seeds in the past, but I wanted to write a bit more extensively about them here. It would seem that many view seeds as inanimate objects to some extent. We view them as relatively simple things, not the complex living objects that they are. All of us know that seeds sprout when we add the right ingredients, but we often fail to fully understand them. They look dry and lifeless to a great extent. Of course, that is wrong and understanding their complexity makes us better gardeners. Seeds are composed of three basic parts; the seed coat, the endosperm, and the embryo itself - the baby plant. I write about seeds extensively in my newest book - The Nature of Plants: An Introduction to How Plants Work , but I'll provide a synopsis here. All parts of a seed have a purpose and they work together. The seed coat is a covering - it is what we call bran. When you eat wheat bran, for example, you are eating only the coat of the wheat seed. Bran is high in fiber and l...

Tulip tree - Liriodendron tulipifera Arrowwood Vibernum - Viburnum dentatum Plants are not so different from animals. They reach sexual maturity on their own time. You can't rush it. As I read posts on various social media sites asking why their plants are not flowering or setting fruit, my first question is about the age of their plants. Often, it's only a question of patience - waiting for their plants to reach "puberty."  This is the first question that needs answering in diagnosing why a plant is not yet floweing. Some plants are precocious. They mature quickly. It's not about growth rate as much as it is about age. It's no different than what most of us understand about animals. Some, like most rodents, mature quickly and begin producing offspring before they are a year old. Others, like whales and elephants, take decades before they are mature enough. Most shade trees, like the commonly planted live oaks ( Quercus virginiana ) often don't ...