Accent on Natural Landscaping

Donna VanBuecken

Running out of Time to “Tidy Up” Your Woodlands

A winter sunrise in a backyard filled with snow.

As we all know, winter is the only time to prune some of our most beloved trees, namely, the oaks and elms.

But winter is also the best time to remove unwanted  trees and brush — native or non-native — to “tidy up” our woodlands. This is the time when plants are dormant so there is less disturbance to the soil.

I think we all know why we need to remove invasive non-native trees and shrubs, but why should we remove non-invasive trees and brush? Reference my recent post on Daylighting. It’s important to get light through the canopy down to the ground where the flowers and other groundcover live. The only way to do that is to remove unwanted trees and brush and their seedlings.

You’ll be amazed by how quickly wildflowers will return once dense shade is removed. Or how struggling saplings will thrive from the increase in sunlight. As we’ve learned from the “circle of life,” sunlight powers the plants, plants feed the pollinators, pollinators feed the bird babies, and on and on.

Removing Unwanted Trees and Shrubs

Before setting about haphazardly pulling or cutting and painting (with herbicide) unwanted trees and brush, consider the ecology of the woodland. Then begin thinning to enhance the remaining vegetation and create the biodiversified community you hope to achieve.

See also Can Your Woods be Too Tidy? It’s a great little article on woodscaping.

 

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Digging in the Dirt — WOFVA Chapter Plant Sale Orders due April 1st

I know it’s difficult to get excited about spring this year, but the snow will eventually melt and then we’ll all really get excited about spring and getting out in our yards. And, one of my favorite things about spring, is digging in the dirt. If you read this blog, I’ll bet it’s one of yours, too — digging in the dirt to plant new plants, trees and shrubs!

It’ll be difficult to wait this year for the soil to get warm enough to dig!!

WOFVA Chapter Plant Sale Orders due April 1st

Cheerful volunteers help get ready for the WOFVA Chapter annual plant sale 2018.

With that in mind, I wanted to remind readers from the Fox Valley Area in Wisconsin the orders for the Wild Ones Fox Valley Area (WOFVA) Chapter’s annual native plant sale are due April 1, 2019. We are again taking pre-Orders for not only native forbs, grasses and ferns, but also trees and shrubs. Pick-up date is May 18th.

Native Pants are Hosts and Food Sources for Insects

Native plants are the host plants and food source for most native pollinators and insects. They evolved together, so it’s natural they would rely upon each other for their preservation. In this day and age of bee colony collapse, monarch butterfly loss and insect eradication, it’s important for all of us to do our part by gardening for wildlife. Without bees and other insects, many of the foods we eat would not be pollinated naturally which means our meals would be a different experience and prepared for a higher price.

Order Form

The Wild Ones Fox Valley Area Chapter’s annual spring native plant sale will be held at the WILD Center in Neenah, Wisconsin on May 18, 2019. Pre-orders are preferred, but there will be more than a thousand extra plants available for purchase on May 18th. Buyers who pre-order should be assured of getting the plants they want, while on the day of pick-up species variety and quantity will be limited. Trees and shrubs are only available through pre-order.

Volunteers sorting pre-orders for WOFVA Chapter’s Annual Plant Sale 2018.

The plant sale order form identifies all plants, trees and shrubs offered as to ecotype (shade, sun, mesic, etc). There are also some pre-designed collections of prairie and shade plants available, and a listing specifically for monarchs and pollinators. Plants are in 4″ pots and are more than reasonably priced. There is also special pricing available for non-profits purchasing plants for their outdoor learning centers and habitats.

Don’t forget to place your order!

Pre-orders are due Monday, April 1, 2019.

Pick up is May 19th from 9AM to 2PM.

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Overwintering Numbers for Western Monarch Migration Alarmingly Down

Reference my earlier post Overwintering Numbers for Eastern Monarch Migration Up. In this post I’m writing that the overwintering numbers for the Western Monarch Migration are alarmingly down. While the Eastern Monarch Migration has declined by more than 80%, the Western Migration has declined by more than 86%.

Graph courtesy of Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation.

The Monarchs overwintering in California travel west from Idaho and Utah and north from Canada and along the Pacific Coast to overwinter in the coastal forests. There they nestle in eucalyptus trees. Blue Gum (Eucalyptus globulus) is the predominant Eucalyptus species. They also use Monterey Pines and cypresses, but the Eucalyptus is their preferred roosting tree. Eucalyptus trees flower from December to May, while the monarchs are roosting and when few other sources of nectar are available from native plant species. 

Surveys done by volunteers with the Western Monarch Thanksgiving Count found only 28,429 butterflies, an 85.2% fall from the previous year—and a 99.4% decline from the number of monarchs in the state in the 1980s.

Western Monarch Call to Action

Monarch Caterpillar munching on a milkweed (Asclepias L.) plant.
Monarch caterpillar on a Butterfly Milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa) plant.

The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation has worked with monarch scientists at institutions across the West to develop the Western Monarch Call to Action, a five-point rapid-response action plan to rescue the western population of the monarch butterfly. According to their website, “the call to action is a set of rapid-response conservation actions that, if applied immediately, can help the western monarch population bounce back from its extremely low 2018–19 overwintering size.”

  1. Protect and manage California overwintering sites — stop the destruction and damage from development and inappropriate tree trimming of the Monarchs overwintering trees. Create and implement a manaagement plan to protect and grow needed habitat for the butterfly.
  2. Restore breeding and migratory habitat in California — plant early blooming native flowers and milkweed to restore breeding and migratory habitat. They use native host and nectaring plants growing anywhere, i.e., gardens, parks, along railroads, right-of-ways, farms, etc so they can lay their eggs and find nourishment after they leave the overwintering sites.
  3. Protect monarchs and their habitat from pesticides — seek out and use non-chemical options to prevent and manage pests in landscaping. Stop the use of neonicotinoids in the commercial production of milkweed plants. Suspend or limit the use in croplands and other commercial applications.
  4. Protect, manage and restore summer breeding and fall migration monarch habitat outside of California — identify remnant areas of native monarch habitat and protect them from development, while at the same time restoring and managing in other areas.
  5. Answer key research questions about how to best aid western monarch recovery — monitor and research overwintering sites to determine what is causing the decline in the western Monarch butterfly population. Is it Oe? Destruction of Eucalyptos trees? Development? Neonics?

So if you live west of the Rocky Mountains, please make an effort to identify and help enhance habitat across the Western States Migration route so Monarchs have a place to feed and breed.

 Click on Western Monarch Milkweed Mapper for more information.

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How to Identify Trees

The Shagbark Hickory tree (Carya ovata) is about the easiest tree to identify in the winter (or anytime) because of its tell-tale shaggy bark.

Have you ever wished you knew more about trees so you could identify their species more readily? I sure have. I’ve gotten to know the trees in our yard and at our hunting property pretty well, but take me away from either of those sites and I’m unable to identify most trees unless I can see their leaves. But that one key element of identification doesn’t help much in the winter time….

Some Resources to Help Identify Trees

I recently ran across an article in the Landscape Management magazine entitled “Step by Step: How to identify trees.” It gave me a couple of resources and I thought I would share what I learned with you.

First, I was surprised to learn there were 23,000 different kinds of trees in the world.

Second, there are a number of on-line resources available:

  • The Arbor Day Foundation has a program to help you identify trees called “What Tree is That?” Unfortunately it relies almost entirely on leaf characteristics which doesn’t help me much during the winter months either.
  • There is a smart-phone resource available called “Leafsnap” developed by researchers at Columbia University, University of Maryland and the Smithsonian Institution which allows you to upload a photo of a leaf. Again not very helpful in the winter months — and I don’t have a smart-phone.
  • There is an Andriod-phone app developed by researchers from the College of Natural Resources and Environment at Virginia Tech called “Virginia Tech Tree Identification.” It goes beyond a leaf and allows you to input info about the trees’ twig. I checked out the companion website and found it to be helpful, but a little overwhelming.

Other Resources

The article intrigued me, of course, so I did some websurfing and found an on-line course on “Identifying Trees by Bark and Buds” by Jay Hayek from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences. It is an excellent resource and his photos are awesome.

Finally, I found one I could handle offered by Tree Bark Identification. It helps you identify trees by keying out the bark and the branching, but it only covers the states east of the Mississippi.

And, then of course, there’s always our friendly WDNR. They have a number of great resources listed, including some of the ones I’ve listed above. The UW-Green Bay’s Herbarium at the Cofrin Center for Biodiversity’s key to the Trees of Wisconsin is the one for me.

All in all, I had a pretty educational morning and I feel really good about what I’ve learned. ‘Hope you will, too.

 

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