Vacuum

Holdridge vegetation classification system

Another triangle, this one found in a University of Michigan Global Change lecture on the Tropical Rain Forest, by George Kling. 

The triangle is the "Holdridge triangle", dating to 1947. 

• Holdridge, L.R. (1947) Determination of world plant formations from simple climatic data. Science, 105, 367--368.

All materials © the Regents of the University of Michigan unless noted otherwise.

post-storm mushroom 5/5

post-storm mushroom 5/5, originally uploaded by Edward Vielmetti.

Big storms came through town and dumped somewhere between 2 and 4 inches of rain in the neighborhood. A morning walk showed a lot of mushrooms that came out including these unknown varieties growing on a dead (or partly dead) tree.

Posted by Edward Vielmetti from Flickr.

Sand County Almanac, June: "The Alder Fork - A Fishing Idyl"

We found the main stream to law that the teeter-snipe pattered about in what last year were trout riffles, and so warm that we could duck in its deepest pool without a shout. Even after our cooling swim, waders felt like hot tar paper in the sun.

Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac. This 1989 Oxford Paperbacks edition, ISBN 0-19-505928-X, as an introductory essay from Robert Finch commemorating the 100th anniversary of Leopold's birth.

We see Leopold, the rural sage, tracking a sunk in January, cutting a venerable dead oak, stalking a legendary fish on Alder Fork or an elusive grouse on an abandoned farm, surveying his private unofficial domain before dawn, wrestling with god-like decisions about tree-thinning, or experiencing a "curious transfusion of courage" from his pines in deep winter.

Sand County Almanac is a good book to come back to every month year round.

purple beans for dinner; or, anthocyanin pigmentation in Phaseolus vulgaris

We had purple beans for dinner, from farmer's market.  I heated some olive oil in a pan and cooked them through until they had turned all green, and then salted them a little at the end.

The recipe called for adding chopped almonds but it didn't happen; instead I served the boys tofu that I had cut into cubes and boiled (boiling it improves the texture quite a bit, firming it up more to my liking).

I don't know which variety of purple beans we had.  A search of the net unearthed the "romano purpiat bean" (from Territorial Seed)

60 days. Everything about this purple Romano bean is noteworthy: healthy robust plants, deep violet stems, lilac blossoms, and lustrous purple pods. The 5 inch, flat pods are so tender, crisp, and delicious that we found them irresistible picked fresh from the plant. Cooking the pods turns them a brilliant jade-green with a nearly stringless texture. Remarkably productive plants reach 24 inches tall and tolerate cool, early plantings. Brown seeds.

and Peaceful Valley has the Royalty Purple variety

Phaseolus vulgaris Tender Annual Bush. Purple bushes with short runners and purple flowers. Bright-purple stringless 5"-6" pods cook to dark green. Buff colored seeds germinate in cold, wet soil. Bred by E.M. Meader at the University of New Hampshire and introduced in 1957.

Why are beans purple?  Good question.  I got as far as finding this:

Genetics of flower and pod color in Phaseolus vulgaris

Christian A. Okonkwo, and Carl D. Clayberg
The Journal of Heredity 1984:75(6):440-444
© 1984 The American Genetic Association 75:440-444

A new locus, Prp (purple pod), having five alleles affecting anthocyanin pigmentation of corolla and pod, is described in Phaseolus vulgaris L. The allele Prp produces dark-purple corolla and is fully dominant in this respect over the other four alleles that determine light-purple corolla. In the absence of Ro, Prp is responsible for medium-purple pod when homozygous and light-purple pods in combination with the other alleles. The alleles prp^sh2 and prp^sh give green pods shaded with purple and are codominant with the prp^st allele, which causes green pods to be striped with purple. These four alleles are dominant for pod color over prp, an allele causing green pods when homozygous. The interaction of these alleles with the genes Gri, V, and Ro, which also affect anthocyanin pigmentation of corolla and pod, is described. No linkages among these four loci were observed.

That's from 1984; I don't know enough about bean genetics to go any further.

(Oh, and they are delicious.)

saturday Ann Arbor farmer's market report, u-pick fruit coming up, and what's in bloom

I was at market on Saturday (yesterday) and kept an eye out for fruit and for new things at market.  Here's some details.

Sour cherries were gone; sweet cherries were $5-$6 per quart.
Both Erie Orchards and Sodt's Berry Farm had blueberries for $40 for a 10# lug.
Basil, $1.00 to $1.25 a small bag, or $10/# (organic).
Grandma from Grandma's Kitchen brought 70 dozen eggs and was sold out at noon.

The U-Pick local report from Mark Charles:

Dexter Blueberry Farm's web site says they'll open on July 20. 

Makielski's raspberry farm says "2 weeks"  (about July 25.)

and the field report from the Buhr Park wet meadow from Andy Brush

Today at wet meadow II, I saw the following in bloom:

• Bee Balm
• Black Eyed Susan
• Yellow Coneflower
• Prairie Dack (just getting going)
• Butterfly Milkweed
• Hoary Vervain
• Daisy Fleabane
• Common Milkweed

the violets growing in my yard make me happy

They are nothing special, really, just ordinary lawn violets.  I love them, and I love it when they come out in the spring time.  When they appear I have warm memories of my great aunt Gail Clark who kept violets at home and who was named after the plant.

Candied violets are said to be very easy - dip the violet flower in egg white and then in sugar.

More reading, of course:

• Prodigal Gardens May weblog has information about violets, dandelions, morels and wild asparagus in Wisconsin.
• A Traverse Forest Feast is the title of a My North magazine article about violets, dandelions, morels, ramps, mint, nettles, and wild leeks in the northern Lower Peninsula.
• Sydney Farr in My Appalachia writes that the best time to go morel hunting is when the violets are in bloom after a spring rain.

but best to just be outside

Woody plants - identifying the trees of Michigan

Every year the U of Michigan teaches a Woody Plants class.  I didn't take it when I was in school, but my sister did, and it's one of these legendary courses that people remember for a long time.

Here's the links and notes I could find easily.  It's prompted by the Ann Arbor Chronicle's story about the city of Ann Arbor tree inventory going on now, which I hope will yield a precise map of where all of the public juneberry trees are.

Course listing: NRE 436: Woody Plants Biology and Identification

Woody Plants is an intensive field- and lecture-based learning experience, in which you will learn to identify 160 trees, shrub and vine species that are important in Michigan environments. You will learn about their taxonomy, distribution, habitat associations, and biogeographic history and how to identify them in their leafless winter condition. The lab component consists of weekly field trips in the Ann Arbor area, which include riparian and floodplain habitats, glacial lakes, moraines, bogs, fens and mesic forests. The lectures cover elementary aspects of plant identification, taxonomy and ecology; however, the broader themes include biogeographic history and the assembly of Michigan plant communities, both before and after major glaciations, ecological specializiation, and impacts of global warming and other anthropogenic environmental changes.

Woody Plants - Sitemaker

The required textbook for Woody Plants is Michigan Trees by Burt V. Barnes and Warren H. Wagner. The authors taught the Woody Plants class from 1965 to 2005 and know their topic well. The books are available at Shaman Drum bookshop on 311 State Street.

Burt Barnes home page at SNRE

Undergraduate and graduate teaching in forest ecology; landscape ecology; natural history, and identification of Woody Plants. Research focuses on the theory and application of the landscape ecosystem approach. Studies emphasize spatial mapping of landscape ecosystems as the basis for conserving and managing ecosystems at multiple scales. Research on diversity of ecosystems and biota in upland, riverine, and wetland ecosystems. Specific areas include genetic and systematic studies of aspen species (genus Populus), worldwide and comparative studies of east Asian and North American forests and species of the temperate zone.

An early edition of Michigan Trees, in 1913, as seen on Google Books -

Michigan Trees: A Handbook of the Native and Most Important Introduced Species

By Charles Herbert Otis

Edition: 2

Published by The Regents, 1913

Original from Harvard University

Digitized Apr 11, 2008

246 pages

first frost in Ann Arbor MI 2008 - cover your tomatoes! - warnings

Cover your tomatoes!

Here's this spring's suggestion list for how to protect your tomatoes from frost.  More suggestions welcomed.

First frost warnings for 2008 follow; I got this message via the Emergency Email Network (free).

MIZ069-070-075-076-082-083-

041200-
/O.NEW.KDTX.FR.Y.0003.081004T0600Z-081004T1200Z/
OAKLAND-MACOMB-WASHTENAW-WAYNE-LENAWEE-MONROE-
INCLUDING THE CITIES OF.PONTIAC.WARREN.ANN ARBOR.
DETROIT.ADRIAN.MONROE
1214 PM EDT FRI OCT 3 2008

FROST ADVISORY IN EFFECT FROM 2 AM TO 8 AM EDT SATURDAY.

THE NATL WEATHER SVC IN DETROIT/PONTIAC HAS ISSUED A
FROST ADVISORY.WHICH IS IN EFFECT FROM 2 AM TO 8 AM EDT
SATURDAY.

CLEAR SKIES & CALM WINDS WILL LEAD TO VERY COLD TEMPS
TONIGHT. TEMPS ACROSS EXTREME SE MI WILL DROP
INTO THE LOW TO MID 30S ALLOWING WIDESPREAD FROST TO DEVELOP.
SOME OF THE MORE RURAL LOCATIONS FURTHER AWAY FROM THE GREATER DETROIT AREA
MAY EVEN SEE TEMPS BRIEFLY DROP BELOW FREEZING.

A FROST ADVISORY MEANS THAT FROST IS POSSIBLE. THOSE WITH
AGRICULTURAL INTERESTS IN THE ADVISORY AREA ARE ADVISED TO TAKE
MEASURES TO PROTECT TENDER VEGETATION. SENSITIVE OUTDOOR PLANTS
MAY BE KILLED IF LEFT UNCOVERED.

$$

How to get rid of Japanese Knotweed

We have a patch of land that should be doing something productive but instead is growing Japanese Knotweed.  I'd like to fix that.

The simple description of how to deal with it seems to be to smother the affected area (using tarps or old carpets) and to do container gardening on top of that ground cover.  (ref about.com)

It's time to think about it now, because I know that come May, it'll be growing with wild abandon.

How to plant tomatoes upside down (so that you can move them out of the way of frost)

In the "try this next year" category, here are some designs for a planter for tomatoes where you put the tomato seedlings in a bucket and then hang the bucket upside down. Two advantages are obvious: one, that if there's frost, you can move the bucket out of the way, and two, you can grow in places where you don't have soil.

Three, I guess, is that you can plant something nice in the top of the pot and have it do double duty.

There's apparently television advertising for these things (which tells you how much TV I watch) but these look pretty easy.

without further ado:

from greenthumbs.tribe.net :

My 83 year old dad told me he use to grow upside down tomatoes in an old tin, they would put a small hole in the end of the tin (I guess a paint tin? not sure what type tin they used) and plant the tomato plant upside down and at the top of the tin they would plant a pepper plant. He said they flourished! I have the upside down container that I am going to plant my tomatoes and herbs in this spring...I can't wait!

the Michigan Sportsman Forums thread from Frantz:

I had great success with tomato plants, but peppers did poorly. I drilled a single hole and fed my seedlings up through the bottom. This year I am making the hole a little bigger and putting the plant through the inside of the bucket and using some landscape cloth to gold it all in. Last year the buckets with chives, parsley and basil growing on the top side did better. I think because it held the water in better for the tomato roots.

the comments on a Lifehacker post:

Wow! If I knew there was a market for this, I would have had my grandmother patent it years ago. Since I was a little kid, she always grew her tomatoes upside-down -- by just using a simple plastic bucket & a few strategically placed holes.

And, as an added bonus? She planted azaleas on the top, so it not only looked pretty, but it would keep the bugs & other nasty critters from going after the tomato plant underneath.

We coulda been millionaires.

Instructables has pictures, planting in a coco fiber pot:

You will need the following materials:
-hanging coco basket with a hole in the bottom of the frame
-dirt (more on this later) I used peat moss, manure, and vermiculite
-something to hang it from (I used a Shepard's hook)
-and a tomato plant!!!!

The plant needs to be a baby plant, not one of those huge 1 gallon bucket plants.

Curbly has an illustrated How To Make An Upside Down Tomato Planter

Thank you for your DIY upside down tomato planter. It is the cheapest, most attractive one I've seen online. I planted two with Bush Celebrity Tomatoes and a third one (the one in the middle) planted with Jalapenos. I planted Thai Basil, Italian Parsley, Purple Sage, Sweet Woodruff, Italian Oregano, and Sweet Basil in the top of the planter. I realized that my pots are hanging a too low, so I have to shorten the cord, but I think they came out pretty good! Can't wait to see if my tomaotes and jalapenos will grow good upside down!

There's some art to the companion planting too.