Diario del proyecto Casual Woodland Garden

When working with non-dimensional materials, the most sophisticated engineering principle of all is... the Kentucky Windage. There is no way to join two pieces of natural material together without a little guestimating. Trees aren't plum and true, they twist and turn chasing the sun. This isn't a reason to avoid their use. There are many advantages:

Black locust is used for the main supports. It's very heavy and dense. It takes a long time to rot and can handle direct contact with the ground. This is especially true if the bark has fallen off or been removed prior to sinking them in the ground. It will lighten to a light brown once it's removed from the woods and installed in full sun.

Eastern Red Cedar was used for all of the above ground elements of the arbor. Eastern Red Cedar is also rot resistant but doesn't do as well with ground contact. It will rot a lot quicker if it's on (or in) the ground. The advantage to cedar is that it's much lighter in weight and easier to carry up a ladder when assembling an arbor or treehouse roof.

In some ways, cedar is easier to work with. It's much softer than locust and simply driving a self tapping wood screw into it is no problem. Attempting this same feat with locust would result in turning the torque up on the drill and twisting the head of the screw off. Every time I use fasteners with locust, I pre-drill pilot holes. The wood is simply too dense for self-tapping screws. One caveat is... cedar is also brittle. Dry cedar will sometimes split without drilling of pilot holes.

Between the two, I like locust a little more than cedar because you can use logs already down that have been decomposing on the forest floor. The bark is already off and they're ready to go. With cedar, you need to find standing dead or find a tree in a young woods that is actively being shaded out by non-pioneer canopy hardwoods. Or... take down a live healthy tree that is not being shaded out, which I still see as preferable to treated dimensional lumber from a big box.

Top to bottom, left to right...
Blue Lobelia
False Sunflower
Wild Leek
Blue-stemmed Goldenrod
Orange Milkweed
Grey-Headed Coneflower
White Coneflower
Purple Coneflower
Eastern Bottlebrush Grass

Tried 30 different things in total. Some probably haven't sprouted yet, maybe? Most excited by the Wild Leek and Blue Stemmed Goldenrod. Oh, just noticed some Illinois Bundleflower is up too. I wasn't the brains behind this operation so it's bound to be successful!

Left unconsidered during the SLOSS debate of the 70s and 80s was the potential for new technology to emerge and more easily connect decentralized small restorations for any given region. This initial debate occurred before the emergence of the internet, let alone iNat and its potential for umbrella projects containing several at-home restorations.

Current thinking is that ...the SLOSS debate should be refined and cannot be solved without explicit spatial consideration of dispersal and environmental dynamics. Here again, the potential for new technology is being ignored.

Once regional umbrellas for several small at-home restorations exist, dispersal formerly achieved by ants and turtles can be achieved by humans in the form of restorative gardeners. Solomon’s Plume (Maianthemum racemosum) and Mayapple (Podophyllum peltatum) have each expanded to cover my project area after honeysuckle was removed over 15 years ago. These colonies have expanded to the point of being constrained by roads that I can’t disassemble and neighboring properties where I have no authority to conduct invasive removals, let alone full scale restoration.

What I prefer to do is share these locally adapted genotypes with other local smalls who are just starting on their restorations. I have no formal training in this so it makes sense to do this work on this network while inviting oversight from the exact group of people that can tell me what is most reasonable to share. I feel pretty confident about sharing these two species. I feel less confident about the sharing of species with more rarity. I realize I’m not the best person to assess what to share and how to share it. Despite all this, I’m fairly certain that decentralized sharing of multiple local genotypes at scale might be more compelling than centralized sharing of a few local genotypes.

A box turtle is unlikely to use the crosswalk when carrying mayapple seeds to other gardeners in my region. If I use iNat to identify the parent colony when sharing these seeds my fellow gardeners can link to my parent colony after establishing a casual child on their lot where no Mayapple currently exists. In this sense, I’ll be able to see how my genotypes spread across my region. If there become too many of mine, wise restorationists will clamor for someone else’s… but only if the software exists to track provenance. And… it does!

Before I had finished removing all the honeysuckle.
Before I had learned that garlic mustard was a biennial and that if you don't pull it every year it comes back.
Before I had finished the rock wall using fieldstone off the craigslist free page.
Before I planted PawPaw and Spicebush and Asarum and Claytonia & Everything Else.

After. (although looking in the other direction. the large, straight trunked walnut is on the right in the 1st pic and on the left in the second)

I believe it's fair for me to ask, after being informed by professionals. After doing my level best to restore this space. After having brought nature home (past tense). What next?

So many of us are working on our little piece of a crazy quilt. Each piece with a different size and shape. With the small spaces every bit as important in the final assembly of a well-formed quilt. If we want our quilt to support as much wildlife as possible, we should be thinking about how the individual pieces of quilt can be stitched together as they are completed.

I started my native restoration about 15 years ago. This project started in an inner suburb of Cincinnati. Honeysuckle conquered this area long ago. There were very very few native under-story seeds existing in the soil under the honeysuckle when it was removed. Now, 15 years later, I have some tree seedlings emerging but they mostly match the species in the over-story (black cherry, tulip poplar, white ash, black locust, etc). The under-story is still non-existent. And it's been 15 years!

I started my native restoration of a second property six years ago. This second property exists further away from Cincinnati. Further from the city there were more native under-story seeds existing in the soil under the honeysuckle when it was removed. Now, six years later, I have many under-story seedlings emerging. Every yellow under-story plant in the picture above is northern spicebush that was unlocked when I removed the honeysuckle. There are other areas of this property that have large populations of Ohio Buckeye and PawPaw emerging after the honeysuckle removals.

Areas closer to the city, that have been more heavily impacted by invasive plants cannot always be expected to regenerate like in a place further from town. If I could go back in time, I'd push the seeds of spicebush, ohio buckeye, and pawpaw down into the soil during honeysuckle removal. All three have proven themselves capable of coexisting with hungry deer and have expanded post honeysuckle removal in the rural location. I'd go with seeds because of the size of the wooded area I'm trying to restore. It's too expensive and time consuming to plant potted shrubs and saplings. Collecting a bunch of seeds to stratify, scarify and push into the ground is easier and more scalable for large areas (or cheap owners).

It seems obvious to me that if we want to counter the potential for species loss in the Anthropocene, we should collect under-story seeds from areas further from cities and install them in areas closer in. It's observably true, from my examples, that the under-story needs to be restored from scratch in some areas. It's also a catch-22. I've observed many more wood thrushes at the rural location. Wood thrushes love spicebush seeds. If I attracted wood-thrushes they'd deposit these seeds on my lot in the city. But to attract the wood-thrushes, I need spicebush for them to eat! Once I attract them here, they might deposit some of my seeds on neighboring properties. Mwahahaha.

Decided to set up a moth sheet in the tree house to see what might show up. This was more challenging than I expected it to be. There were plenty of moth and insect visitors, but they were difficult to photograph with my new lens. I think this is because the bright light and black-light messed with the aperture. Some of the photos I ended up taking with the iphone. I didn't get the large silk moths I hoped for, but knew at the outset they might not show up.

The trial run didn't include a black-light and I only spent an hour or so the first night trying it out. The next night, I bought a cheap black-light at Depot and had a few more visitors. If I do it again, I'll probably get a more powerful black-light.

First the non-moths...
       

I didn't expect to get this much attention from non-moths. I was also surprised by the plant-hoppers. I think of them as staying closer to the ground, which obviously isn't true. There were many smaller beetles, hoppers and insects that I didn't take the time to photograph.

Now, the moths...
           

I wasn't really sure what to expect in terms of moths. I don't know if this is a good amount or a bad amount. I suppose I was satisfied with the turnout. The Betrothed Underwing was the most exciting visitor because of its size. I was hoping for large silk moths, and when it first fluttered in I thought I might have one. It was clearly interested in the black-light. The best thing about this project is the creativity in the naming of the moths... elegant grass veneer, betrothed underwing, deceptive snout, dusky groundling. Who among us isn't thrilled by a deceptive snout?

The other thing worth mentioning is that I prepared some "moth attractant" liquid. There is a recipe for this stuff online. It involves mixing together beer, brown sugar, and bananas. It worked, but when I spread it on the railing in the tree-house it also attracted bald-faced hornets. I'd advise not spreading the attractant too close to where you're planning to observe the moths. The good news is the hornets aren't nocturnal and all but one confused, possibly drunk hornet left after nightfall.

We have a wooded backyard and a traditional front yard with lawn and landscaped beds. For the longest time, I carefully trimmed and maintained burning bush in front of our house and along one side (eight plants in all). I did this even as I removed burning bush in the back. I was thinking of the two areas differently and independent of each other. I felt that the wild and wooded area in back should host only local and naturally occurring species. In the front, I was willing to host more cultivated and cosmopolitan species. I went along like this for 15 years. Carefully trimming and tolerating the burning bush in the front beds but removing it whenever it popped up in the back. Eventually, I became tired of this silliness and replaced it in front with thuja occidentalis, oak leaf hydrangea, and bottlebrush buckeye. It makes no sense adding to a problem in the front that I'm trying to subtract from in the back. The new plantings in front better complement the assisted regeneration I'm working on in back.

     

This in no way means we're in a hurry to remove the other non-native species planted in our front beds. Only that we're choosing our battles carefully. If anything, we're focused on filling the beds in front and limiting the need for so much mulch.

Provenance is a word I hear used a lot on "Antiques Roadshow" and "American Pickers". It's used by museum curators and anyone trying to guarantee the authenticity of an object by tracking its whereabouts through time.

It's so much more interesting, when I plant a thing, to think about how that thing came to exist for me to plant in the first place. Where specifically did that thing come from? It makes you seem silly when you're at a "native plant sale" and ask "where specifically is the parent colony that this plant is descended from"? It's too ideologically pure, but this is missing the point. I'm self-aware enough to know that the question is silly. I know that any visitors to my garden will be happy if it explodes with life. It won't matter where the plants came from if 1,000 pollinators alight from the plantings as visitors walk down the path.

I've gone to several garden shows over the years. You can see just about anything at a garden show. The one thing that each participant has in common is passion. They are the type of people who ask silly questions at plant sales. These are my people. But is the question silly?

Almost every serious park, preserve, zoo, or arboretum has a collection policy. Depending on size and funding, they may not have published collection policies, but I promise you it's something they've talked about and think about. They think... "if we are going to plant things, these things should benefit our area ecologically, so which plants are most appropriate"? These self-imposed constraints on the palette of plants is coming from a place of passion and love and science.

One of the most common constraints is based on geography. It's unrealistic to expect the web of life existing in North America to be best supported by the plant community in Australia. I believe this is also true within North America. It's unrealistic to expect the web of life existing in Ohio to be best supported by the plant community in California. I don't need to continue decreasing the size of my collection circle to know what my preference should be. My preference should be... the more local the better.

What's new is... modern software that allows home-gardeners the opportunity to establish provenance for their locals and for anything they plant.

Moving forward... when I plant something in my Casual Woodland Garden, I want to link to the parent colony observation from the observation of the planting. This link establishes the provenance for each of my plantings. My Eastern Redbud observation has an observation field called "parent colony" that links to an observation showing the geographic location this colony was sourced from. If I click the "parent colony" label on this observation, I can select "Observations with this field" (see image below).

When I click "Observations with this field", the results show all of the cultivated colonies that have a link to the parent colony that establishes provenance. This makes the hobby more interesting to me. I'm not expecting everyone to do this, but I think it will be an interesting idea for some to consider. I would love it if the plants I bought at native plant sales all had qr codes linking to the exact location of the parent colony from which the seeds and cuttings were sourced from. I would love it so much, I'd pay more for it.

All of my cultivated colonies that have a link to the parent colony thereby establishing provenance...
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?verifiable=any&place_id=any&field:Parent%20Colony

When you think about it, every restored woodland area is becoming more like a museum of plants that might have existed at their installed location prior to the Columbian exchange. More importantly, these museums of plants might be critical to the preservation of downstream species. Then again, maybe not, but it makes the hobby more interesting.

Lately I've become interested in Coefficient of Conservatism scoring for each plant growing in the woodland garden. It provides a way of measuring my success at encouraging a more specialized and diverse habitat. At least that's my understanding of it. Encouraging plants with a higher CofC to expand or emerge naturally on my lot suggests that I'm providing a more specialized and ecologically improved area for these plants to exist and thrive within.

I'm not going to get overly consumed with trying to install plants with a high CofC score. I only want to use the score as a way to quantify my success at creating the conditions necessary to support a more specialized plant community. I've been excited to see two American Beech seedlings emerge on my lot because I didn't plant them and because they have a CofC of "7" which is high for my lot. If I force them to exist it's different from creating the conditions for them to exist.

One thing that jumps out at me when I look at this is... There are 13 species of non-cultivated native plants on our lot with a CofC of 6 or higher. Out of these 13, a total of 11 are tree species. This is surprising because there are far more herbaceous layer plants on our lot than tree species. One possible explanation is that the canopy trees have long lives and the canopy exists above plants like honeysuckle, garlic mustard, and celandine. All of the specialized herbaceous layer plants may have been overtaken by invasives long enough in the past for their seed bank to have been exhausted. Meanwhile, the canopy trees existing above the honeysuckle continued adding to the seed bank and waiting for it to be unlocked.

Here's is a link to Ohio's Floristic Quailty Assessment Index which explains CofC scoring...
https://epa.ohio.gov/static/Portals/35/wetlands/Ohio_FQAI.pdf

Final Consolidated Results:
American Beech.......: 002 (Fagus grandifolia)
Ash..................: 346 (Fraxinus)
Black Cherry.........: 089 (Prunus serotina)
Black Locust.........: 004 (Robinia pseudoacia)
Box Elder............: 163 (Acer negundo)
Buckeye..............: 002 (Aesculus)
Callery Pear.........: 043 (Pyrus calleryana)
Dogwood..............: 003 (Cornus florida)
Eastern Redbud.......: 004 (Cercis canadensis)
Eastern Red Cedar....: 002 (Juniperis virginiana)
Elm..................: 060 (Ulmus)
Hackberry............: 059 (Celtis occidentalis)
Hickory..............: 013 (Carya)
Honey Locust.........: 002 (Gleditsia triacanthos)
Oak..................: 003 (Quercus)
PawPaw...............: 018 (Asimina triloba)
Sugar Maple..........: 050 (Acer sacharum)
Tulip Poplar.........: 010 (Liriodendron tulipifera)

Total Trees..........: 873
Total Native Trees...: 830

A total of 873 tree seedlings were observed in the study area following honeysuckle and garlic mustard removal.

This was an unscientific study. Invasives were removed haphazardly and over the course of several years in fits and starts. All sorts of different removal methods were used (hand pulling, root docking, cut and paint w/glyphosate, string trimming, etc.). No grid was laid out prior to conducting the survey (we just walked through making observations). Wild homo sapiens (neighborhood kids) had unfettered access to the study area during the study. I could go on and on. The point is... there were no formal controls. But that's also what makes it interesting... A completely unscientific person fumbled around in the woods removing invasives and the result was 830 native tree seedlings. That's a pretty good result.

346 of these seedlings were Ash. I remember reading somewhere that before the Emerald Ash Borer, the majority of Ohio's trees were Ash. This was hard to believe at the time. When you walked through a forest, even back then, you noticed Ash... but it didn't seem like most of the trees were Ash. I think this is because you tend to focus on the mature trees in a forest, not seedlings and saplings. In terms of number of individuals, when seedlings and saplings are taken into account, the Ash is triumphant. Obviously, the strategy of the Ash is to be a prolific seeder and hope that a couple make it to maturity. I'd guess that the Tulip Poplar has the opposite strategy.

There were only 10 Tulip Poplars observed and yet Tulip Poplar was one of the dominant canopy trees on our lot even before the Emerald Ash Borer came to town. The 10 Tulip Poplars observed, were much taller than the Ash trees. Their strategy seems to be, seed less / grow more.

The Box Elder might be most interesting. It had the second most instances and is more likely than Ash to live to maturity. I'm told it's Ohio's only native Maple. It's a prolific seeder with 163 total specimens observed, but it's also a really fast grower. This is both a blessing and a curse. My overarching goal is to assist regeneration, not shade it out. Box Elders are prolific seeders, grow fast, and have a dense canopy. If I want to move as quickly as possible toward healthy, mature, diverse forest... it seems I'll need to thin these out to make sure I don't lose some of the under-represented and less common specimens.

Specimens like American Beech or Chinquapin Oak, both of which have a Coefficient of Conservatism score of "7". Do what now? Yah, I didn't know what Coefficient of Conservatism (CofC) meant when I started either. It's a way of assigning a value to the specialized needs of some plants. You could throw a rock in any direction in the state of Ohio and have a reasonable chance at hitting a Box Elder. You are much less likely to hit a Beech or Chinquapin. The higher the CofC, the more specialized the needs of the species. American Beech and Chinquapin have scores of "7". The Box Elder... "3".

The Floristic Quality Assessment (FQA) index for the State of Ohio defines CofC scores for our state. Here's what they have to say about the range from 6 to 8, the range that includes Beech and Chinquapin... "Plants with a narrow range of ecological tolerances that typify a stable or near climax community". Now we're talking! But the FQA is about more than just trees. I'll need to keep the composition of seedlings, saplings, over-story, under-story, and herbaceous layer moving in this direction and I'll eventually get there. But how to keep the progress going?

I've decided to borrow the concept of collection and extraction policies from arboretums. For now, my extraction policy is very simple. If it's non-native and aggressive, extract it. My collection policy is equally simple. If it's locally native, and especially if I can find a local genotype, collect it.

It's appropriate to borrow the extraction and collection policy concept from arboretums. I have inadvertently encouraged enough species to become one. Arbnet requires 25 unique species to be a Level 1 arboretum. I observed 18 species but only identified Ash, Elm, Oak, and Hickory to the genus. I have at least three variety of oaks, two types of hickory, and two types of Ash. Bringing me to 22 species. If I throw in Sycamore, Sassafras, and Basswood, all of which occur on our lot albeit just outside of the study area, I'm at 25.

I would't be at 25 without having removed the invasives. Five of the species that were counted in the study had no representatives here prior to invasive removals. American Beech, Blue Ash, two varieties of Hickory, and Honey Locust were not here when we moved in. My inadvertent "arboretum" didn't exist here until I made room for it. The wind and the wildlife did the planting, I've just nudged things in the right direction.