The Providential Gardener

Trees and Roses ~ Some New RI Websites

If you subscribe to Providential Gardener, you'll know I really love trees and roses. And it's fun to be around other tree and rose lovers ~ very enjoyable.

The RI Tree Council just rolled out their newly redesigned website this week. It's beautiful ~ congratulations to one of Rhode Island's important volunteer groups. [Look around and think what the state would look like without any trees.]

Earlier this summer, Rosarian Mike Chute and Angie Chute published their new rose site, Rose Solutions. Mike gives workshops all over the state on rose care, and in fact he's presenting at Blithewold on Saturday, September 20 at the Fall Gardener's Day. The Blithewold blog, by the way, is one of several very fine gardening blogs produced in the Ocean State.

Trees 2020 Initiative ~ Training Date September 24, 2008

Please pass the word, those of you who live and/or work in Providence

Trees 2020 is a new tree planting initiative that aims to initiate the planting of 40,000 trees in Providence by the year 2020 to improve our environment.  Our tree purchase program offers trees at a sharp discount to Providence property owners to encourage them to plant a tree in their own yards.  A training date for volunteers with or without tree knowledge is planned for Wednesday, September 24, 2008 at 5pm. See below for brief invitation or the flyer and signup form.

From Doug Still, Providence City Forester:

Come be a part of the Tree Team!  Volunteers are needed for Trees 2020, a new program to increase tree cover and improve the environment in Providence by encouraging homeowners and property owners to plant trees.  Whether or not you have experience with trees, we need you!  To learn more and get involved, please read the attached flyer.

TRAINING DATE for Site Assessment volunteers:

When:     Wednesday, September 24, 2008 from 5:00 - 6:30 pm.
Where:    Chamber of Commerce auditorium, 30 Exchange Terrace (downtown)
Given by:    Doug Still, Providence City Forester

Send us your volunteer signup form, or contact Ray Perrault at 351-6440 x14 or by email.    Our website www.trees2020.org will be on-line in late September.

T-Shirts and much appreciation for all volunteers!

This is a joint effort of the City of Providence and Groundwork Providence, funded by the Helen Walker Raleigh Tree Care Trust and the Rhode Island Foundation.

Not Much Time Left for Naked Tree ID This Season!

How many trees can you identify in the winter? There's a challenge for you. You're outside, walking from here to there, bundled up in your coat ~ driving along tree-lined streets ~ what kinds of trees are you passing? It will be easier once the leaves burst out, but it's a fun game to see how many tree you can identify in their naked states.

There is one more opportunity to walk the woods with an expert from the RI Wild Plant Society on Saturday, April 5th. Here is the info from What Grows On in Rhode Island Calendar:

Buds, Twigs and Bark - Learn to identify local trees.
Saturday, April 5, 2008 - 1:00-3:00 p.m.
Tri-Pond Park Nature Center, Asa Pond Road, South Kingstown, RI

As spring emerges, learn to identify local trees and shrubs through their bark and buds. After some indoor exploration of samples and their characteristics, we will walk a short trail at Tri-Pond Park Nature Center to try our skills. Spring will be in the air -- an ideal time to learn before using your knowledge later on walks in the woods. Bring pencil and paper for notes.

Leader: Frances Topping, a naturalist interested in the interactions of plants and animals, including humans. Frances holds a BS in Botany and Zoology from Sheffield University, England and a Graphic Design degree from Rhode Island School of Design.

Registration required. Contact Frances at 401-364-8002. Fee $8.00 RIWPS members, $10.00 non-members.

I went on the Audubon Naked Tree ID walk in February and made a dent in my ignorance of this subject. I generally love the architecture of trees ~ that's why I especially love beeches and elms. They are noble at any time of the year. Tulip trees have the remnants of the tulip-shaped flowers in the winter, and their architecture can also be grand ~ angular. There are some huge tulip trees along Blackstone Boulevard in Providence. That mile and a half strip of park is tended by The Blackstone Parks Conservancy, by the way.

On the other hand, some bare trees in winter look like they've just been scared to death, like zelkovas ~ no grace or elegance in my opinion, so I personally don't like them as a replacement for American elms that have been devastated by Dutch elm disease over the last few decades. Maybe when they're fully mature they'll have that majestic shape...? And some street trees are completely ramshackle due to encounters with power lines and the other stresses such as their positions along curbs. Nevertheless, tree architecture is interesting once you start thinking about it. How do those branches stay on the trees? How are they supported? Quite a bit of natural engineering in those trunks.

Here is the most important hint for deciduous tree identification, with or without leaves:

• MADHorse ~ Maple, Ash, Dogwood, and Horsechestnuts have opposite branches, NOT alternating. [The link on MADHorse is to a very good explanation of the memory device with illustrations of opposite and alternating branches].

I'll give you a couple of things to look for when you're out and about in New England in the next two or three weeks. The top photo is a tulip tree ~ click on the photo to enlarge it, and note the distinctive tulip shapes on the branches. By the way, you can see that the branches on this tree alternate. The second photo in this post is of the dogwood near the Audubon HQ in Smithfield. The photo doesn't show the opposite branching that well, but it does show the distinctive onion-shaped buds that soon will open as flowers.

It's not hard to pick out either of these trees in winter. So, how many tulip trees and dogwoods do you usually walk or drive by each day?

Tree Trends, Tenders, & Trackers (Part 2)

Notes from the 15th Annual Rhode Island Tree Council Conference, October 12, 2007

See earlier post on Tree Trends ~ Climate Change in the last 21,000 years.

Tree Tenders

"Arborists & Tree Care in a Changing World" was addressed by arborist Melissa LaVangie, President of Trees New England. She aims to make ARBORIST and ARBORICULTURE household words as she consults on all aspects of tree care and educates the public about trees.

Tree care is one of the most dangerous occupations. Homeowners need to realize that professional arborists should be certified, insured, licensed (in New England, only RI, CT, and ME license arborists), observe regulations, and invest in their workers by, for instance, insisting on their wearing personal protective equipment (PPE). You don't want someone to get hurt on your property. The website, www.treesaregood.org, explains why it's important to hire a certified arborist.

Here are some useful links for tree care:

• PLANTING: Fall is an excellent time to plant trees and shrubs.
• PRUNING: Homeowners may be tempted to prune trees now, but do some research before you cut. Young trees and mature trees have different issues.
• MULCHING: Know the difference between good and bad mulching practices, and don't let your landscaping service harm your trees and shrubs. One of my first posts on this blog was "No, No, Volcano!" For some reason, this plague of mounding up mulch around the base of trees is still prevalent. This harms trees, and your trees are valuable. Take a page from nature and read this page from the International Society of Arboriculture (ISA) consumer website on mulching trees.

Melissa became an arborist a bit late because she had not heard about career paths in arboriculture until a few years after college. ISA has info on career choices for arborists. Jobs for arborists are in both commercial businesses and municipalities, and of course utility companies employ a lot of arborists.

Most fun of all, though, is ISA's Tree Climbing Championship Contest. Melissa successfully competes in the ISA-New England and New York Chapter's Women's Tree Climbing Championships. ISA has sponsored this event since the 1970's.

Tree Trackers

The third presentation of the conference was John Parry's (of the USDA Forest Service) Introduction to Storm Preparedness and Response ~ Planning, Response, Recovery, & Mitigation. Many communities never think specifically about what happens to trees and because of trees during storms until they're faced with thousands of households without electricity due to tree damage. But public officials can get help and be prepared by using the Tree Emergency Plan Worksheet.

The following links are from the USDA's Northeast Area Urban & Community Forestry Resources Webpage:

Storm Preparedness and Response:

• Storms Over the Urban Forest: Planning, Responding, and Regreening--A Community Guide to Natural Disaster Relief - Soft cover book
• Trees and Ice Storms: The Development of Ice-storm Resistant Urban Tree Populations 
                    2nd Edition (4.6MB pdf) - Booklet
• Tree Emergency Manual for Public Officials - Booklet
• Tree Emergency Planning Worksheet - Worksheet  
• Storms Media Kit - Press releases
• Storm Preparedness and Response - Website
• Storm Damage Assessment Protocol - tool and public domain software 

Does your community have a Tree Emergency Plan? Send your city/town council representative and/or your mayor this link.

Tree Trends, Tenders, & Trackers (Part 1)

Notes from the 15th Annual Rhode Island Tree Council Conference, October 12, 2007

As usual, Rhode Island Tree Council organized an informative and enjoyable conference in a great location ~ by the Bay this year, at the Aldrich Mansion in Warwick. The conference is a great networking opportunity, and it provides a comprehensive view of issues affecting Rhode Island's forests, urban forests, and tree species. Attendees include members of local planning boards, state forestry employees, professionals in landscaping and arboriculture, tree wardens, and some of the more than 550 people who have taken the semiannual Tree Stewards class. Following are a few notes from the presentations:

Tree Trends

How about putting climate change in a 2100-year perspective? That is the viewpoint of paleoecologist, Thompson Webb III, who gave the keynote address for this conference with the theme, “Impact of Climate Change on Our Tree Resources.”  His presentation was actually called “Climate Change and Vegetative Dynamics,” based on many years of research at Brown University. His studies of the distribution of pollen grains from cores of lake sediment using radiocarbon dating give perspective on vegetative changes in North America as the glacier, which at one time was 10,000 feet high, receded.

Click on the Pollen Viewer and you can see how vegetation changed, as well as how fat North America was (as the glacier receded, there was a 300-foot drop in sea level), at the website, Vegetation Animations at Brown University. It's like the land is going on a diet. Experiment with this ~ you can see that where spruce, beech, grasses, and several other trees and types of vegetation grew has varied significantly over thousand-year periods. Key reasons for the changes are temperature, of course, but also moisture. During the last ice age maximum, it was only 10 to 12 degrees colder than at present.

Another website that helps us compare temperature change is NOAA's National Climate Data Center. The U.S. Climate at a Glance website enables you to see temperature changes since 1900. For instance, the mean temperature for Rhode Island was 30.1 in January 1900, but in January 2007 it was 32.8. Remember that these two bits of data are random selections and cannot necessarily indicate a trend, but accurate temperature records have been kept throughout the United States for many years, and here is one place to see the data. Ponder away.

The U.S. Forestry Service Northern Research Station has data on future tree trends in the U.S., which you can view in their Tree Atlas.  Rhode Island's predicted winners and losers over the next several decades include Northern red oak, white oak, white pine (it will be drier here), and sweetgum (winners) and sugar maple, red maple, and spruce (losers).

Trees and, in fact, all vegetation, are not only affected by climate change, but also by pests and air pollution, so it is important to develop complex models that take all factors into account. Modern transportation is rapidly spreading many insects, animals, plants, and microorganisms, which throw off the natural balance of species wherever they land. And air pollution clearly alters the landscape as it weakens trees, decimating some species in our Eastern forests.

I have more notes on the other two conference speakers, and some news as well. Stay tuned for more posts on Rhode Island Tree Council's recent conference.

How Dry They Are ~ Stressed Plants & Trees in Rhode Island

Yes, we got some rain ~ at last! ~ on Tuesday, September 11, but rainfall can vary around the state, and maybe there wasn't a lot where you live. I had two inches and a beetle in my rain gauge.

Until Tuesday, though, there had been not a drop since August 14th in most of Rhode Island. The reservoir levels are down, and so are a lot of leaves off shrubs and trees. Grass is dormant (we hope), and unless you have been watering your flowers and vegetables, they may not look so great either.

At North Burial Ground in Providence, the new trees we planted this spring, as well as other trees planted in the past two years, are showing signs of great stress. If you have shrubs, trees, and perennials you have planted recently, be sure to give them extra water each week this fall to help them weather this drought. Plants need about one inch of rain a week ~ of course if we get that much or more in a day, it won't be necessary to water. It's also possible to drown plants by overwatering. But unless we get the deluges again like we had two years ago in October, remember to give some extra drinks to any newly planted trees, young or stressed street trees near your home or business, perennials, & shrubs.

What is a "Certified Forest Ally"?

The Providential Gardener scans the Providence Journal regularly for their reporting on "what's growing on" in Rhode Island and posts the article titles, with occasional comment. You can find all of these posts under the category PROJO DIGEST. While this is derivative rather than original research, there's no point in reinventing the wheel, and the Providence Journal is reporting on many environmental issues the public needs investigated. When I can, I'm adding some further background on news stories reported elsewhere so Rhode Islanders will be even better informed.

This news brief [scan down the page] was in the Projo on June 20, 2007, and that's how I came to read about the "chain of custody certification" program of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). According to the FSC,

Chain-of-custodý is the path taken by raw materials from the forest to the consumer, including all successive stages of processing, transformation, manufacturing and distribution.

The first U.S. engraving company to earn this certification is just over the border: Artcraft Company is located in North Attleboro, MA. This company also has earned the Rainforest Alliance's SmartWood certification program. There are four Smartwood certifications. These function for wood products somewhat like fair trade coffee certification does, assuring consumers that products have been tracked from their origins to retail outlets and have met the criteria the certifications specify. A Providence resident, Vincent Standley, wrote a 2005 article at the National Geographic Traveler comparing coffee and wood certification programs: " Where Fair Trade Certification works to ensure fair wages and labor practices, Rainforest Alliance Certification works to transform land-use and business practices as well as consumer choices to protect ecosystems."

Are any Rhode Island companies seeking Smartwood certifications? And what about Rhode Island forests and their products? As with most issues, there is substantial background to master. Blog posts can hardly scratch the surface. But here are a few starting points for further research if you are interested in seeing such programs develop in Rhode Island:

• Heidi Hausman wrote her 2003 senior thesis at Brown on this topic. See her summary slides, "The Future of Certification for Rhode Island Forests and Forest Products."
• Sustainable Forestry Initiative is another certification program Heidi Hausman compares with Smartwood
• Evaluation and Assessment of Sustainable Forestry Initiative
• Analysis: Sustainable Forestry Initiative.... ~ This report appears to be critical - website is named "dontbuysfi.com"

Lots of knotty issues here. Forestry folks, RI Tree Council members, and companies involved in wood products need to understand all the aspects of such certifications. Many of them probably already do. Contact the DEM Forestry Division and ask your questions about our state forests.

ProJo Digest ~ May 30, 2007

May 30, 2007 ~ Here is what you saw (or missed) in The Providence Journal today. Page numbers refer to the Providence City Edition. If you read another edition with other articles, I invite you to add brief references in Comments to this posting. Articles may become harder to find as this date recedes into the past, so I am not linking to any articles (Buy the paper!). Any references to EXTRAs on the web may also get lost over time, but these special additions and supplements to the printed paper are very informative and great visual resources. I think readers of The Providential Gardener should know about ProJo articles, so here goes:

• A1 ~ Creepy news ~ Forest tent caterpillars, soon to be followed by gypsy moth caterpillars make the front page. EXTRA: learn more about tent caterpillars at www.projo.com. ProJo also asks, Have the tent caterpillars invaded your neighborhood? You can send them word through the ProJo website. Also see the photo gallery of tent caterpillars. Your boy children will love it, even if you don't.
• B1 ~ Clearing spaces and building buildings can destroy others' homes. Did you know it is illegal in Rhode Island to remove a bird's nest from a tree? Last week someone inadvertently took down a tree with a red-tailed hawk nest in it. See EXTRA at www.projo.com.
• G1 ~ Support Grows for National 'Green" Standards'
• G3 ~ Business Digest: State of CT Department of Agriculture Farm Reinvestment Grant Program awards 18 grants to farms for capital improvements
• G8 ~ "Business Embracing 'Greener Packaging'"

Liberty Trees: Arbor Day 2007

A new Liberty Tree, propagated from the last original Liberty Tree, a grand tulip poplar that lived more than 400 years in Maryland, was planted on April 27, 2007 at the Roger Williams National Memorial on North Main Street in Providence, RI. It's just down the road from the site of Rhode Island's original Liberty Tree, an elm chosen by the Sons of Liberty in 1768 that stood on the north side of Olney Street and North Main. The RI Department of Environmental Management posted a press release with details of today's ceremony, including the list of nine winners of $30,000 in America the Beautiful grants. An excerpt:

"The Roger Williams National Memorial, a unit of the National Park Service, was selected as the site to receive this historic Liberty Tree due to Roger Williams' nationally significant story of liberty of conscience and its connection to the founding of the principles of freedom in the United States. The memorial's close proximity to the location of the original Rhode Island Liberty Tree, and the protection its landscape provides, will allow the tree to flourish in scale and stature."

I'm adding a national organization, American Forests, to the Providential Gardener's lists of organizations today in honor of Arbor Day. And I'll add a photo, but at the moment it's pouring rain outside.

Part of the last liberty tree lives on in other ways as well. A 2002 article, "The Sweet Sound of Liberty," in American Forests magazine tells the story of how Taylor guitars are made from Maryland's liberty tree.

Arbor Day Activities, April 2007

The Rhode Island Tree Council is aiming to have Arbor Day festivities in all 39 towns and cities in Rhode Island this year. Some towns have more than one! Some day, they all may be as grand as the sycamore maple (I think it is) near the Betsey WIlliams Cottage in Roger Williams Park.

Also note that many other organizations are having special events in honor of Arbor Day. Just heard from Kris Green at Blithewold about their Family Fun Arbor Day Celebration, and I'm sure there are more. Kris sent a COMMENT, and I hope more readers will send me emails and add comments as appropriate to postings. It's one of the special features of a blog. And speaking of blogs, check out Blithewold's new blog as well. It is terrific!

Trees are worth a lot of money, and homeowners ought to calculate their replacement cost when they survey their properties. Mature trees are worth thousands of dollars. Mighty acorns, you know.

And this tree also has a beautiful flare. The root system must be enormous to keep this giant upright. I hope it stands for many more years, even if we get the strong winds again that ripped through the East Coast this week. Now, how about some leaves out there? This April 18th, 2007, it's cold outside, baby, and the trees are biding their time.

The Rhode Island Tree Council has more info about Arbor Day, including the Arbor Day Poster Contest winners created by school children in RI. Also see the Arbor Day website for further background.