Fine Fertilizer, Those Dollar Bills

Category(-ies): Other Botanical Gardens

Anne Raver of The New York Times writes about the new garden shop at New York Botanical Garden:

“In some ways, this is a wonderful extension of the service and education the garden has provided since its first garden classes in 1917, because the books and art and plants have been judiciously selected... But is this what a botanical garden should be doing?”

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Posted by Daniel Mosquin at 11:24 PM

Ginkgos removed due to stench

Category(-ies): Plants in the Landscape

USA Today reports that the University of Iowa is removing several mature Ginkgo biloba trees, partly because of the stench caused by the fruit.

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Posted by Daniel Mosquin at 10:48 PM

An Appetite for Destruction

Category(-ies): Plant Conservation , Plants, Food and Medicine

The harvesting of fungi, mosses and plants for gourmet food dishes and natural-material crafts is a cause for concern in Britain; unsustainable picking and wasteful practices threaten species and habitats. Some areas in British Columbia have a similar problem, for example with the picking of salal (Gaultheria shallon) for floral greens.

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Posted by Daniel Mosquin at 11:42 PM

Forests of Borneo on the brink

Category(-ies): Plant Conservation

Three more years. If trends continue, that's the estimate of when all of the lowland forests of Borneo will be stripped bare, including forests within the borders of national parklands. A team of American and Indonesian scientists have analyzed the loss of forests using satellite, GIS and field data from 1987 to 2001 and concluded that forest area declined by more than 56% (over 29000 square kilometers).

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Posted by Daniel Mosquin at 9:30 PM

Pollen and shipwrecks

Category(-ies): Novel Uses of Plants

French ecologist Serge Muller of the University of Montpellier II has published a paper in the Journal of Archeological Science entitled, "Palynological study of antique shipwrecks from the western Mediterranean Sea, France." Pollen grains embedded in the resin used to seal the joints between wood on ships can be recovered from shipwrecks and "matched" with local floras to suggest a place of origin of the ship.

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Posted by Daniel Mosquin at 9:13 PM