Bluebird

Poems lovely as trees

February 11, 2012, 7:00 AM

Mitch Epstein, Tree Stalker

By KATHY RYAN

Mitch Epstein’s series of New York City trees were featured in this week’s Voyages Issue, accompanied by an essay by Michael Kimmelman. His work will be exhibited in March at Sikkema Jenkins. Kathy Ryan, the magazine’s photography director, talked to him about the peculiar challenges of his project.

Mitch Epstein/Sikkema Jenkins & Company, New YorkSilver Linden, Prospect Park, Brooklyn, 2011. More Photographs »

Q.

What inspired you to do the trees?

A.

Trees have long been an interest of mine, and I wanted to do a piece that was in part about New York and also a work that would take me forward from “American Power,” where I spent five years traveling the country looking at sites where energy was produced and consumed. It had long been an idea in the back of my head to photograph trees in New York. A year ago I was traveling in the Everglades, and I had the intuition this was the time to do it. That led me to buying a box of 8-by-10 black-and-white sheet film. I’m essentially a color photographer. But I had this instinct that color would be an interference with the pictures I wanted to make. I really wanted the trees to be a part of the city — to be contextualized by the city.

Q. How does black and white give you a greater ability to contextualize the trees?

A. Well, I wanted the trees to come forward, both in a formal and a conceptual way. I realized there was a lot about the contemporary urban landscape that was colored that was going to become a distraction. Whether it was the yellow streetlights, the cross lights at the intersections, or the color of the red fire hydrant. There was also the potential to fall prey to the sameness of the color, especially in the summer season, when yes, there are varieties of green but the green is what is prevailing. Somehow black and white doesn’t prevail as a palette the same way color does. I wanted the urban populace and the architecture to in some way serve as a stage set and become something that would drop back for the trees, which would become the primary subject — the primary focal point of the picture. I also had the sense that it would be riskier in color because of the pitfalls of the picturesque.

Q. What do you mean by the “pitfalls of the picturesque”?

A. There are certain subjects for photography that are by their nature contrived. It would be hard to make a breakthrough picture of, say, a baby. At the same time, it is hard to photograph fall foliage because it’s so seductive. It takes over. It is hard to penetrate. I didn’t want the color to be intrusive. I didn’t want the color to be a distraction to what was intrinsic to the picture. The way I have moved forward with my photography is to change tools, materials, and subjects in ways that are unfamiliar and often a little bit uneasy. That was all part of the gambit here for me.

Q. How did you choose your trees?

A. I found a list the city drew up in the ’80s designating certain trees in the five boroughs as “great trees.” I also found a resource guide  — “New York City Trees” — a field guide for the metropolitan area by Edward Sibley Barnard. It was also helpful in steering me as well to areas that were rich in parkland and in old groves of trees. Researching on the Internet, I found out about a 300-plus-year-old tree in Washington Square Park. That was the first tree I went to.

Q. Tell us about photographing that tree in Washington Square Park.

Mitch Epstein/Sikkema Jenkins & Company, New YorkEnglish Elm, Washington Square Park, Manhattan, 2012.

A. Before bringing the 8-by-10 camera, I photographed the tree several times with a little digital camera. I spent time with the tree. It was January, and I first had to educate myself as to when the light would be at a favorable vantage point in the sky.

Q. Why did you choose January for this tree?

A. After initially photographing it in January, I went back several times over the course of the winter months, trying to understand the best vantage point to photograph the tree. I wanted the transparency that the bare branches gave the tree, so you could see the buildings through the branches. Once it became spring, the trees began to bloom and suddenly there was no more transparency, because of all the leaves and growth that came with spring. So I didn’t have the opportunity again until the fall. I made several visits in the fall, but it wasn’t until late December, early January that the leaves were all gone from the tree. Not every picture is like that, but in this case it was important for me to find a way to step back, to see the tree in its full scale.

Q. So you went from showing a detail of the tree the first time you shot it, to deciding that the picture had to be the whole tree, with bare branches.

A. That often happens. Often I am making pictures that become sketches for other pictures. With the 8-by-10 camera, there is the opportunity to make pictures that are very layered. The prints of these pictures for the exhibition will be 68 inches high — the size of a human being. You will have the opportunity to step into them and to engage with every detail.

Q. Can you tell us about the gigantic Cottonwood on Staten Island?

Mitch Epstein/Sikkema Jenkins & Company, New YorkEastern Cottonwood, Staten Island, 2011.

A. What was interesting is that an old house by the tree had been torn down, and there were rows of condominiums put in, and before I had even taken the camera out, people in the neighborhood came up to me and began to tell me stories about how the contractor that put up the houses had to tear out a lot of the roots of the tree, and they were concerned about it. The tree was a kind of anchor for the people, and they were disgruntled about it. There was a sense of community ownership of the tree. I’m conspicuous with this big camera, and people are curious, especially today when nobody is using cameras like these.

Q. So when they pulled up the roots of this tree, it looks like it wasn’t enough to hurt it.

A. Well, one doesn’t know. It was within the last decade or so. The tree looks like it’s thriving.

Q. What month did you photograph this Eastern Cottonwood?

A. September 2011. There was a deep fog, and I was thinking, ‘Gosh, I got up at a this early hour, and maybe nothing’s going to happen.’ But I got there, and I photographed the tree. One of the problems that I had during multiple visits to this tree was there were always cars parked on the street, including one in the spot I needed to place the camera for the vantage point I wanted. I asked this one gentleman who was always coming out to walk his dog in the morning whether he would move his car, and he always refused to do so. He had absolutely no interest in the fact I was there. And one day, and it happened to be this day, I got lucky, and he got in his car and he drove off. This was the fixed point from which I could make the picture I’d been striving to make.

Q. You said it was arduous photographing this tree. Why?

A. I’m on a ladder. To decrease the distortion you get up on a ladder so you are not tilting too much. I have certain limitations of depth of field with a large camera like this. By being a little above the ground, I can bring the focus in. When I have a tree that’s 100 feet high, I can get myself at a vantage point which is going to enable me to photograph the lower part of the tree so that it’s not just flat to the ground. I’m always working up against time. The light is changing all the time. With this tree, I was there maybe at 7:15 a.m., but I’ve already been there before, and I know that at 8, this corner is where all the kids congregate to get picked up by the school bus.

Q. Are there trees that you want to photograph that you haven’t yet? Are there still some on your wish list?

A. Yes, there are. Many.

 

My favorite scent

FEBRUARY 2012

 

 

LATimes Mag:

by Denise Hamilton

 

ILLUSTRATION: JOHN BURGOYNE

Vetiver (Chrysopogon zizanioides) is a grassy plant from the tropics and subtropics whose roots have been distilled for their fragrant oil since ancient times. Originating in India—where it is known as khus—vetiver grows wild and is also cultivated in Haiti, Java, much of Asia and the French island of Réunion in the Indian Ocean.

Prized by perfumers for its green, earthy, vegetal, woodsy notes, vetiver is a wonder plant. Its dried grasses, which give off a pleasant odor when sprinkled with water, are woven into mats, curtains and screens, while its deep roots are used by conservationists worldwide to stop soil erosion. The essential oil within is known for healing ayurvedic properties.

In India, it flavors everything from syrups to ice cream, so if Hollywood clubs begin offering $22 ayurvedic vetiver martinis, I foresee a thriving business. But in the scent world, it's actually the Grüner Veltliner of its ilk—cool, wet, crisp, mineralesque and refreshing, with a hint of saline-infused earth.

It is also a staple of classic European perfumery. Guerlain, Givenchy, Lanvin, Creed and Carven have long made traditional vetiver colognes for gentlemen, though some have weathered reformulation better than others. Due to the fixative properties of the oil, vetiver has been used as a heart, or basenote, in women's perfumes since the early 1920s, but it was usually relegated to a supporting role in favor of jasmine, rose, neroli and ylang-ylang.

No longer. Recent years have seen an explosion of fragrances starring vetiver. Almost every niche line today has one, as perfumers strive to put their stamp on this most ancient and yet timeless of notes. And vetiver's brisk, bracing aspect makes it a perfect unisex fragrance for the 21st century. If perfumery had a smart drug—one that made you focus, breathe deeply, stay alert and invigorated—this would be it.

Vetiver also offers perfumers an ideal palette. It can lay against skin, all cool, gray-green and dusty, like Annick Goutal's Vétiver. Or it can turn raw and intense like Etro Vetiver, Maître Parfumeur et Gantier's Route du Vetiver and the ultimate fetishist vetiver, Isabelle Doyen Turtle Vetiver Exercise No. 1 by LesNez—a 2009 limited edition that hit like a snootful of damp soil before turning pungent Galapagos green. It quickly sold out, but cheer up—LesNez Turtle Vetiver Exercise No. 2 just came out last month, so grab a sample while you can.

The scent is clean, green, classic and almost soapy in Creed's classic Original Vetiver, politely sedate in Tom Ford Grey Vetiver and a juicy green explosion in Tauer Vetiver Dance. If paired with warm notes like vanilla, patchouli, amber, root beer, tobacco, tea or fruit, it grows languid.

Natural perfumes like Ayala Moriel's Vetiver Racinettes and Dawn Spencer Hurwitz's Vetyver are available from their sites. If you have a perfume sweet tooth, try Miller Harris Vetiver Bourbon, Serge Lutens Vetiver Oriental, Etat Libre d'Orange's Fat Electrician, Hermés Vetiver Tonka, Etro Shaal Nuur, Molinard Vétyver or L'Artisan Coeur de Vetiver Sacre.

Or if savory is more your thing, vetiver blends well with smoke, incense and marine notes in Lalique's Encre Noire (a steal if you buy online), Chanel Sycomore, Moriel Orcas (nominated for a 2012 FiFi Award—the ceremony takes place just after our presstime) and the Different Company's Sel de Vetiver, which evokes ocean-salty, sun-warmed skin.

Avant-garde perfumer Geza Schoen loves vetiver so much he designed an entire line—his Escentric Molecules 03—in homage to the synthetic molecule etiveryle acetate.

Some forthright versions that approach soli-flores—scents with the essence of a single bloom—are Diptyque's Vetyverio and Vettiveru by Commes des Garçons, while Guerlain's Vetiver cologne is a classic essay in equipoise. One of my favorites, for its plush-pillow intensity, is the cedar, bergamot, cumin, pine and citrus in Frédéric Malle Vétiver Extraordinaire by the brilliant Dominique Ropion.

Don't have $155 to splurge? Choose an upscale bargain like Parfums de Nicolaï Vetyver ($45) or the woods-cedar heavy L'Occitane Vetiver ($48). Or there are Jo Malone's Black Vetyver Café and Red Vetyver by Montale—the latter pairs the cool green root with spices, pepper and patchouli.

Raw vetiver, which is sourced by perfumers as avidly as foodie chefs and winemakers stalk their ingredients, varies by climate and soil. Haitian and Réunion renderings have more floral aspects; plants from India and Java are more woody and rooty. Natural perfumer Anya McCoy down in tropical Florida is even experimenting with growing her own.

As with Jasper Johns' White Flag painting, vetiver's gradations reveal themselves subtly over time. Within its humble, homely beige roots, there lies an entire olfactory world.

Categories: Style / Uncommon Scents

 

 

 

 

 

February 7, 2012, 8:07 AM

Crossed Fingers for a Threatened Butterfly

By JIM WITKIN

Stuart WeissThe Bay checkerspot butterfly, which conservationists are trying to reintroduce in Edgewood Park in Northern California. The insect is viewed as a poster child for the harmful effects of nitrogen on biodiversity, which could be even more profound than the impacts of global warming.

If you stand with your back to the sun and inspect the place on the ground where your shadow is cast, you might spot the tiny larvae of the threatened Bay checkerspot butterfly.

“It takes some practice,” said Stuart Weiss, a conservation biologist from the Creekside Center for Earth Observation. “But when you see a little black object that stays black, that’s usually a checkerspot.”

Dr. Weiss explained the technique as we hiked through the grasslands ofEdgewood Park, a 500-acre nature preserve on the San Francisco peninsula where I have been volunteering.

To reintroduce the checkerspot to the park, Dr. Weiss and his team placed 4,000 larvae, or caterpillars, here last winter. Over the next several weeks, he and several volunteers whom he refers to as “checker spotters” will be searching their shadows for signs of success: a new batch of larvae, descendants from last year’s transplants, that will be transformed into thousands of bright orange and black spotted butterflies in late March.

While the work may seem tedious, especially for an insect whose adult life as a winged butterfly spans a mere 10 days, the study of this tiny creature has far broader implications. The checkerspot, Dr. Weiss explains, “has become the poster child for the effect of nitrogen on the environment.” The impact on California’s biodiversity could be even more profound than that of global warming, many scientists say.

Vehicle exhaust from nearby Interstate 280 deposits up to 15 pounds of nitrogen per acre each year in the park. The interstate runs along the park’s western border, carrying more than 100,000 cars between San Francisco and San Jose on a busy day.

Nitrogen from car exhaust fertilizes the soil just as common lawn fertilizer does and favors faster-growing nonnative plants. “It’s a matter of competitive ability — the nitrogen-rich soil produces a very strong growth response in annual grasses, like Italian ryegrass,” Dr. Weiss said. “They thatch over and smother native plants.”

As native plants disappear, so do the native species like the Bay checkerspot that depend on them. “When you continue to dump nitrogen into the atmosphere, it has all sorts of negative impacts on the ecosystem, on human health, on the air you breathe and the water you drink,” Dr. Weiss said.

The Bay checkerspot once thrived at Edgewood but has not been seen here since 2002. Since then, an aggressive program of mowing and weeding has helped keep invasive plants in check and restore the native grasslands.

Using grant money from the San Mateo Parks Foundation to finance the work, Dr. Weiss and his team collected 4,000 Bay checkerspot larvae last winter from Coyote Ridge park in San Jose, the only remaining habitat for the species. They carried the larvae to Edgewood and placed them over 20 acres on the west side of the park, where its favorite meal, the native California plantain, is plentiful.

During this year’s hunt, which runs throughout February and March, the team hopes to find 4,000 new larvae. A lot depends on the weather conditions, Dr. Weiss said. A wet winter and a cool spring are ideal, as sufficient moisture in the soil helps extend the lifespan of the plants that support the larvae and adults.

Ultimately, the project will be counted a success if 2,000 adults are observed flitting among the wildflowers in late March. Once the adults appear, over the course of about 10 days, they will feed on nectar from the wildflowers, mate, lay their eggs on the native plantain and then die. The annual cycle begins again.

Based on early counts of larvae, Dr. Weiss is optimistic about this year’s outcome, although he expects it will take additional cycles to re-establish the butterfly at Edgewood.

The checkerspot is not the only threatened species that occupies his time. In a remote corner of the park, he points to a few square meters of ground that hold the only known remaining patch of the San Mateo thornmint, an endangered annual wildflower. The plant has also fallen victim to invasive Italian ryegrass, its population dwindling to a few hundred plants by 2008.

Thinning the nonnative grasses and carefully replanting thornmint seeds has brought the population back to nearly 3,500 plants. He is hopeful that the plant has reached critical mass and may now come back on its own without his continuing intervention.

Although the tiny thornmint has not attained the celebrity status of the Bay checkerspot, Dr. Weiss says that nurturing the species is important work. “It’s an utterly unique form of life and we shouldn’t let it go extinct on our watch,” he said.

Jim WitkinStuart Weiss, a conservation biologist,  demonstrating the technique of “shadow hunting” to find Bay checkerspot caterpillars in the grass. Interstate 280 is in the background.  

 

What I want...

Earthly Delights | The Slug and the Squirrel Terrariums

DESIGN

 |

By MADISON SHIMODA

 | FEBRUARY 28, 2011, 4:45 PM

Photographs courtesy of the Slug and the Squirrel

When Sara Moonves, T’s fashion editor, received a terrarium as a holiday gift, the entire office was smitten. This bijou oasis provided a moment of tranquility in the midst of the daily style department chaos. Incredibly low-maintenance (they only need to be watered once), terrariums are just the thing for urbanites like us who are strapped for space and yearning for a patch of greenery. Further inspired by “Nocturne of the Limax maximus,”the artist and landscape designer Paula Hayes’s recent installation of cast acrylic and hand-blown glass containers filled with tropical plants at the Museum of Modern Art, we wanted to know where we could get a mini-garden all our own.

“I was shocked to learn that not everyone makes terrariums!” says the designer Jose Agatep, who grew up making terrariums with his father in their garden. Agatep surprised friends with these handmade flora snow globes, and they wanted more. “People started calling me an artist!” he excitedly recalls.

His terrariums, which he designs under the name the Slug and the Squirrel, come in all shapes and sizes and are a recent addition to Anthropologie’s home décor collection. The containers are welded together from vases, bottles and cups Agatep that finds at flea markets and then embellishes with silver. He fills them with plants from a local Philadelphia flower shop and soil and wood chips from along forest trails and train tracks. (He particularly likes taking components from the outdoors because they come with the bacteria and insects necessary to maintain the self-contained ecosystem, and sometimes they sprout mushrooms, much to his customers’ surprise.) “Everything is so … technology,” he says. “We need the nature. It’s a good reminder of how it used to be.”

The Slug and the Squirrel terrariums ($28 to $398) are available at select Anthropologie stores.

 

In order to thrive, tree murder

December 12, 2011, 3:00 pm Learning How to Kill Trees

By JUSTIN GILLIS

William R.L. AndereggA dead grove of trembling aspen in Colorado’s Grand Mesa National Forest.  

Scientists trying to understand the future of forests on a warming planet have a strange problem: They do not know how to kill trees.

I don’t mean the trees in their backyards. I would bet that the average climate scientist, especially one who studies forests, is better with a chain saw than I would be.

What I mean is that researchers don’t have a particularly good idea of how trees die in the wild, and as a consequence, they have a hard time constructing computer analyses that can accurately predict the future of forests. These programs are fine at running equations that describe the growth of trees and other plants as a function of climate in a particular area. But when it comes to understanding what causes large scale die-backs, the analyses are rudimentary at best.

I encountered this problem in my long article a few months ago on the future of the world’s forests, in which I talked about forests’ displaying disturbing signs of stress, probably as a result of global warming. This is not a problem climate scientists saw coming, which illustrates the importance of getting a better handle on the life and death of trees. So it comes as good news to learn that one of the researchers I quoted in that article, William R.L. Anderegg of Stanford University, has offered substantial new insight into how trees die.

His paper was written with five co-authors and released Monday by a journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In it, Mr. Anderegg and his colleagues focused on the phenomenon known as “sudden aspen decline” that has killed broad swaths of aspen forest in Colorado and other states in recent years. At least 15 percent of Colorado’s aspen forests have died, and Mr. Anderegg, a native of that state, was as shocked as other Coloradans.

“I played as a kid in some of those aspen groves,” he said in an interview. As his research project for a doctorate at Stanford, he resolved to learn what he could about the situation.

Scientists already knew that sudden aspen decline was a delayed response to a severe drought and heat wave in Colorado in the first half of the decade, but they did not know at a systemic level how the trees were dying. In fact, the question has almost never been studied in any forest during a massive die-back.

Mr. Anderegg and his group spent long hours cutting limbs from dying trees to investigate their physiology, imposing a drought on nursery saplings and wild trees, and taking other steps to pin down exactly what was happening. As they did so, they were weighing the two main hypotheses about how trees die.

One of these posits that in a drought or other stress situation, trees close the pores that allow carbon dioxide to enter their leaves and water to evaporate. That would conserve water, but it would also slam the brakes on photosynthesis, and the tree might essentially starve to death for lack of the carbohydrates it usually creates in its leaves to build and maintain its tissues.

The second idea is that in a drought, trees undergo a kind of hydraulic failure, with the fine tubes that take water from a tree’s roots to its leaves filling up with tiny air bubbles. The idea is that this damages the tubes and can lead to problems for the tree even after rainfall resumes.

It turns out that Mr. Anderegg’s findings strongly support the second idea: that trees die of thirst, not hunger. He found plenty of carbohydrates in the roots of dying aspens, but also clear evidence that their water distribution systems had been damaged and could not recover even after the drought ended in 2004. In my interview with him, Mr. Anderegg compared trees to people: we die of thirst a lot more easily than we starve to death.

James Worrall, a scientist with the United States Forest Service who has also studied sudden aspen decline, described Mr. Anderegg’s paper (he was not involved in the work) as significant and the data as convincing. But he pointed out that much of the field work occurred in 2010, late in the aspen die-back, and the results might or might not be characteristic of what happened earlier.

He also said that insects had probably played a role in killing some trees weakened by drought, and the insect populations may have built up enough to kill even trees that had not suffered much in the drought. “Although certainly not the last word on how aspen stands die, this work is an important contribution that will certainly spur further research,” Dr. Worrall said.

Both Dr. Worrall and Mr. Anderegg pointed out that the two ideas about tree death were not mutually exclusive, so while hydraulic failure appears to be the answer in at least some episodes of sudden aspen decline, that does not mean it will be right in every forest die-back. People can die in many different ways — why not trees? So a lot of work needs to be done on other forest die-back situations to establish whether Mr. Anderegg’s results represent a universal pattern or just one among several possibilities.

Unfortunately, scientists may get plenty of opportunities for such research, given the rate at which forests seem to be dying. Mr. Anderegg is finishing his doctoral work at Stanford, and my guess is that he will wind up in one of the laboratories struggling to do a better job of forecasting the future of the world’s forests.

Devious doings

November 12, 2011, 3:15 pm Your Begonia Is Texting You

By DIANE ACKERMAN

 

IT was only a matter of time. Plants have begun texting for help. Thanks to clever new digital devices, a dry philodendron, undernourished hibiscus, or sadly neglected wandering Jew can send its owner a text or Twitter message. Humans like to feel appreciated, so a begonia may also send a simple “Thank-you” text — when it’s happy, as gardeners like to say, meaning healthy and well-tended. Picture your Boston fern home alone placing Botanicalls. But why should potted plants be the only ones to reassure their humans? Another company has found a way for crops to send text messages in unison, letting their farmer know if she’s doing a good enough job to deserve a robust harvest. What is the sound of one hand of bananas clapping? Probes monitoring the soil can send a range of prerecorded messages specific to each plant’s needs.

Ping Zhu

Plants texting humans may be new, but malcontent plants have always been chatting among themselves. When an elm tree is being attacked by insects, it does the chemical equivalent of broadcasting “I’m hurt! You could be next!” alerting others in its grove to whip up some dandy poisons.

If a human kills with poison, we label it a wicked and premeditated crime, one no plea of “self-defense” can excuse. But plants dish out their nastiest potions every day, and we wholeheartedly forgive them. They may lack minds, or even brains, but they do react to injury, fight to survive, act purposefully, enslave giants (through the likes of coffee, tobacco, opium), and gab endlessly among themselves.

Strawberry, bracken, clover, reeds, bamboo, ground elder and lots more all grow their own social networks — delicate runners (really horizontal stems) linking a grove of individuals. If a caterpillar chews on a white clover leaf, the message races through the colony, which ramps up its chemical weaponry. Stress a walnut tree and it will brew its own caustic aspirin and warn its relatives to do the same. Remember Molly Ivins’s needle-witted quip about a Texas Congressman: “If his I.Q. slips any lower, we’ll have to water him twice a day”? She clearly misjudged the acumen of plants. Plants are not mild-mannered. Some can be murderous, manipulative, seductive, deceitful, venomous, unscrupulous, sophisticated and downright barbaric.

Since they can’t run after a mate, they go to phenomenal lengths to con animals into performing sex for them, using a vaudeville trunk full of costumes. For instance, some orchids disguise themselves as the sex organs of female bees so that male bees will try to mate with them and leave wearing pollen pantaloons. Since they can’t run from danger, they devise a pharmacopeia of poisons and an arsenal of simple weapons: hideous killers like strychnine and atropine; ghoulish blisterers like poison ivy and poison sumac; slashers like holly and thistle waving scalpel-sharp spines. Blackberries and roses wield belts of curved thorns. Each hair of a stinging nettle brandishes a tiny syringe full of formic acid and histamine to make us itch or run.

Just in case you’re tempted to rush home and cuddle your passionflower — resist the urge. Passionflowers release cyanide if their cell walls are broken by a biting insect or a fumbling human. Of course, because nature is often an arms race, leaf-eating caterpillars have evolved an immunity to cyanide. Not us, alas. People die every year from accidentally ingesting passionflower, daffodils, yew, autumn crocuses, monkshood, foxglove, oleander and the like. And one controversial theory about the Salem witch trials is that the whole shameful drama owes its origin to an especially wet winter when the rye crop was infected with ergot, an LSD-like hallucinogen that caused girls to act bewitched.

Devious and dangerous as plants can be, they adorn every facet of our lives, from courtship to burial. They fill our rooms with piquant scents, dazzling tableaus and gravity-defying aerial ballets as they unfold petals and climb toward the sun. Think of them as the original Cirque du Soleil. And many an African violet has given a human shrinking violet a much needed inter-kingdom friendship. But they do demand looking after. And we love our social networks. So I expect texting will sweep the plant world, showering us with polite thank-you’s and rude complaints. What’s next, a wisteria sexting every time it’s probed by a hummingbird? A bed of zinnias ranting as they go to seed?

Surely some playful wordsmiths need to dream up spirited texts for the botanicalling plants to send, telegrams of fulsome fawning or sarcastic taunt. Maybe a little soft soap: “You grow, girl! Thanks for the T.L.C.” Or think how potent it would be, in the middle of a dinner date, to receive a text from your disgruntled poinsettia that reads: “With fronds like you, who needs anemones?!”

A version of this article appeared in print on Nov. 13, 2011.

Apple Hill, Ca

Apples up the yin yang in Placerville for pumpkins, wine and apple pie. Beautiful day, in the 80's.

Glads in Red

As I mentioned previously, the Tomcat bought a bunch of Gladiolas, which are glorious and not at all funereal when dipped in a bright red.

Hen of the woods

October 1, 2011, 10:21 am

Urban Forager | Maitake Mushrooms

By AVA CHIN

Ava ChinAutumn tangle: maitake mushrooms and leaves from the oak trees they grow on.

The proliferation of steady rains from August onwards has yielded a stunning crop of mushrooms this fall, both edible and otherwise. Recently, I found a lovely maitake mushroom cluster that weighed over two pounds growing at the base of a giant pin oak near where I was staying just outside New Paltz. The maitake had grown over and around a fallen branch, and there were a few acorns attached to the bottom. I took the whole thing home.

Maitake (Grifola frondosa) also known as hen of the woods, ram’s or sheep’s head, or signorina mushroom, is one of the first signs of early fall in our area. This edible fungus has cascading beige-grayish-brown caps with wavy margins that resemble the multilayered tiers of a flamenco skirt; flip it over and you’ll find a white underside filled with tiny holes the size of pinpricks (it’s a polypore), and a network of lateral stems which attach to an off-center stalk.

Preferring the base of old oak trees, mature maitakes are often large — generally 1 to 2 feet across, though they can grow up to a yard — with a weight of several pounds.

The Japanese call maitake the “dancing mushroom.” In Chinese medicine, it is considered an immunity enhancer. Lookalikes include the black-staining polypore (Meripilus sumstinei) and the umbrella polypore (Polyporus umbellatus), which are varying degrees of edible, so long as they are young. Though Grifola frondosa is rich in vitamins and minerals, it also contains tyramine, which should be avoided by those who are on antidepressant medications.

I first became aware of hen of the woods mushrooms as friends were finding them under city oak trees several years ago. One taste of this delicious wild edible and I was hooked — I could understand why it commanded such a generous price at gourmet markets. Each fall, I’ve seen them growing under oaks and on the stumps of old trees from Kew Forest in Queens to Willowbrook, Staten Island.

I recommend maitake sliced and sautéed in a little extra virgin olive oil and butter, with shallots, garlic, a touch of sherry, and some salt and pepper to taste.

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Ava Chin is a professor of creative nonfiction and journalism at the College of Staten Island. Read other Urban Forager columns.

Growing on trees

Money Trees

As perhaps a companion piece to last week’s skull nickels, here’s yet another thing I had no idea existed. Apparently in several wooded areas around the UK, passersby have been stopping for decades (if not centuries), meticulously hammering small denomination coins intro trees. Most of the trees seem to be in and around Cumbria and Portmeirion, and I didn’t find a single example of a tree like this located outside the UK. According to this recent article by the BBC, the practice might date back to the early 1700s in Scotland where ill people stuck florins into trees with the idea that the tree would take away their sickness. The practice seems akin to love padlocks or Americans collaborative effort of sticking their nasty ass gum all over everything. (photos courtesy shaun whiteman, drew, ken werwerka, rachel bibby, paul moriss, ministry, donald mcdougal, heartbeeps, via lustik and hrtbps)