Canopy Roads of South Georgia

Native plants in your yard for native wildlife

Nature is not something out there, apart from people. It never was, and nowadays people have built and farmed and clearcut so much that wildlife species from insects to birds are in trouble. In south Georgia people may think that our trees make a lot of wildlife habitat. Actually, most of those trees are planted pine plantations with very limited undergrowth, and in town many yards are deserts of grass plus exotic species that don't support native birds. Douglas Tallamy offers one solution: turn yards into wildlife habitat by growing native species. Since we are as always remodeling nature, we might as well do it so as to feed the rest of nature and ourselves, and by the way get flood prevention and possibly cleaner water as well, oh, and fewer pesticides to poison ourselves.

Douglas Tallamy makes a clear and compelling case in Bringing Nature Home: How You Can Sustain Wildlife with Native Plants

...it is not yet too late to save most of the plants and animals that sustain the ecosystems on which we ourselves depend. Second, restoring native plants to most human-dominated landscapes is relatively easy to do.

Some of you may wonder why native species are so important? Don't we have more deer than we can shoot? Maybe so, but we have far fewer birds of almost every species than we did decades and only a few years ago.

Some may wonder: aren't exotic species just as good as native ones, if deer and birds can eat them? Actually, no, because many exotic species are poisonous to native wildlife, and because invasive exotics crowd out natives and reduce species diversity. From kudzu to Japanese climbing fern, exotic invasives are bad for wildlife and may also promote erosion and flooding by strangling native vegetation.

All plants are not created equal, particularly in their ability to support wildlife. Most of our native plant-eaters are not able to eat alien plants, and we are replacing native plants with alien species at an alarming rate, especially in the suburban gardens on which our wildlife increasingly depends. My central message is that unless we restore native plants to our suburban ecosystems, the future of biodiversity in the United States is dim.

Tallamy had an epiphany when he and his wife moved to 10 acres in Pennsylvania in 2000:

Higher climate temperatures mean more and faster tree deaths

Higher average temperatures mean much more frequent droughts and trees dying faster in droughts because of the temperatures. That plus pine beetles, according to research from 2009. Forestry is Georgia's second largest industry in terms of employment and wages and salaries, more than $28 billion a year according to the Georgia Forestry Commission, plus an estimated $36 billion a year in ecosystem services such as water filtration, carbon storage, wildlife habitat, and aesthetics, not to mention hunting and fishing. Climate change matters to Georgia's forests and to Georgia.

The paper appeared 13 April 2009 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences, Temperature sensitivity of drought-induced tree mortality portends increased regional die-off under global-change-type drought, by Henry D. Adams, Maite Guardiola-Claramonte, Greg A. Barron-Gafford, Juan Camilo Villegas, David D. Breshears, Chris B. Zou, Peter A. Troch, and Travis E. Huxman, 106(17) 7063-7066, doi: 10.1073/pnas.0901438106.

All drought trees in the warmer treatment died before any of the drought trees in the ambient treatment (on average 18.0 vs. 25.1 weeks, P <0.01; Fig. 1A).

They say warmer trees dying faster in drought wasn't due to a difference in amount of water. Instead, they infer the warmer trees couldn't breathe.

Combined, our results provide experimental evidence that piñon pines attempted to avoid drought-induced mortality by regulating stomata and foregoing further photosynthesis but subsequently succumbed to drought due to carbon starvation, not sudden hydraulic failure. Importantly, we isolate the effect of temperature from other climate variables and biotic agents and show that the effect of warmer temperature in conjunction with drought can be substantial.

Our results imply that future warmer temperatures will not only increase background rates of tree mortality (13, 16), but also result in more frequent widespread vegetation die-off events (3, 35) through an exacerbation of metabolic stress associated with drought. With warmer temperatures, droughts of shorter duration—which occur more frequently—would be sufficient to cause widespread die-off.

How much more frequently? They calculated an estimate for that, too: five times more frequently. Of course, that's for the specific kinds of forests they were studying, and the exact number may vary, but the general trend is clear: higher temperatures mean more frequent droughts, like the year-long drought we just experienced in south Georgia.

This projection is conservative because it is based on the historical drought record and therefore does not include changes in drought frequency, which is predicted to increase concurrently with warming (2, 37—39). In addition, populations of tree pests, such as bark beetles, which are often the proximal cause of mortality in this species and others, are also expected to increase with future warming (7, 9, 38).

Bark beetles, such as the ones that bored into this 19 inch slash pine and spread from there to twenty others I had to cut down to prevent further spread of the pine beetles. What happens when pine beetles spread is what you see in the first picture in this post: acres and acres of dead red pine trees. Monoculture slash pine plantations may show this effect most clearly, but look around here, and you'll see red dead loblolly and longleaf pines, too.

The article is saying that if the beetles don't get the trees weakened by droughts that will be much more frequent, the trees will die more quickly of suffocation, because the temperature is higher. Higher temperatures is something that should concern every Georgian in our state where forestry is the second largest industry and our forests protect our wildlife and the air that we breathe and the water that we drink.

-jsq

Dogs in pine straw

Smile, dogs:

Picture by John S. Quarterman for Okra Paradise Farms, Lowndes County, Georgia, 19 October 2012.

The tree behind the dogs on their right is a longleaf four years old; the rest are loblolly five years old.

-jsq

Yellow jessamine root

A couple of French botanists came by to catalog our yellow jessamine. They want some for medicinal purposes. Up in North Carolina they heard it grew hereabouts and drove down. Contacting the Chamber, they were told Gretchen had some. She was in Valdosta and sent them out. I gave them a tour, including use of digging implements.

Pictures by John S. Quarterman for Okra Paradise Farms, Lowndes County, Georgia, 22 August 2012.

-jsq

Plan B to find a lost Android phone

How to find a lost phone in several miles of rough mowing?

After successfully examining the intelligence of a Colinus virginianus, Tractor Naturalist looked for more by mowing between the longleaf rows. The videoing phone liked those middles so much it stayed there. Or somewhere in several miles of mowing. How to find it?

Walking and looking amused the dogs, but didn't find much. Walking and calling it at night in hopes it would light up didn't find it, perhaps because we weren't willing to stomp through the mowed rough in the dark.

So to google! Maybe there's a way to make the phone tell you where it is? With most phones, you need to install an app before you lose it. But for Android phones, there's Plan B, which you can install on your phone after you lose it.

So I did, and it started sending me email, saying it had located itself within 2415 meters, then within 96 meters, then 16 meters, then 6 meters (less than 20 feet). Each time it sent a map, the most recent of which is on the right here. That may look obscure to you, but to those of us who planted and weeded those rows, that green arrow is obviously six rows in and to me who just mowed, it's right where I stopped mowing because I couldn't see where I was going. Not bad, Plan B!

So we went with Gretchen's phone to call mine. It rang! We tried again. She said,

It's under my foot!

She reached down and held it up: phone found. Just like she finds rattlesnakes (but that's another story).

I wasn't thinking quickly enough to borrow her camera to catch her in the phone-finding act, but she took this picture of me and the dogs with the just-found phone:

100 foot dead tree

This tree was struck by lightning almost two years ago and then pine beetles got into it. It's been dead for more than a year, and it was leaning towards the house, so we had to take it down.

Distant
John S. Quarterman, Gretchen Quarterman, Brown Dog, Yellow Dog,
Picture by Gretchen Quarterman for Okra Paradise Farms, Lowndes County, Georgia, 18 June 2012.

Zoom:

Planted Longleaf, Okra Paradise Farms, Lowndes County, Georgia, 17 April 2012

These are the same longleaf planted in 2008, blogged 10 October 2010, burned a second time 16 December 2011, and greening and candling again February 2012.

Pictures of Gretchen Quarterman with the planted longleaf (Pinus palustris)
by John S. Quarterman for Okra Paradise Farms, Lowndes County, Georgia, 17 April 2012.

Almost all of them survived the prescribed burn, and many of them are quite tall. The planted little bluestem and big bluestem are also thriving, along with native verbena, and some less savory invasive exotics, including trash along the road. Plus Gretchen's favorite: dog fennel! And along the fence row cedars, pecans, plums, grapes, wild cherry, and a gopher tortoise. Here's a flickr slideshow:

Longleaf candling at the pond, Okra Paradise Farms, Lowndes County, Georgia, 22 April 2012

We didn't know there were any longleaf at the bottom of the pond, but the white candles are unmistakable:

Pictures of Longleaf pine (Pinus Palustris) by Gretchen Quarterman
for Okra Paradise Farms, Lowndes County, Georgia, 22 April 2012.

The needles are also longer than on the nearby slash pines:

Snake in the oak leaves

Yellow Dog and Brown Dog pointing:

Pictures by John S. Quarterman for Okra Paradise Farms.

Can you see it there, between the wiregrass and the oak log?

 

Greening and candling burned longleaf

Back in December we burned some planted longleaf. Six weeks later, they're greening up and candling. I couldn't find a single longleaf that didn't survive. Even ones that a few weeks ago you would have thought were burnt sticks now have green leaves or white candles or both.

Here's a slideshow.

Longleaf greening after fire, Okra Paradise Farms, Lowndes County, Georgia.
Pictures by John S. Quarterman 29 February 2012.

-jsq