Canopy Roads of South Georgia

Roots and vines

Twisty roots and vines about the same shape, and Gretchen:

Pictures by John S. Quarterman for Okra Paradise Farms, Lowndes County, Georgia, 2013-01-17.

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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:

Japanese climbing fern, Lygodium japonicum

Japanese climbing fern on native Smilax, and what we do about that:

Gretchen with uprooted Japanese climbing fern
Pictures by John S. Quarterman for Okra Paradise Farms, Lowndes County, Georgia, 20 December 2012.

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Okra for seed

Dried and husked:

Seed:

Pictures by Gretchen Quarterman for Okra Paradise Farms, Lowndes County, Georgia, 2012-11-10.

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Dr. Elsie Quarterman is 102 years old today

Elsie Quarterman is 102 years old today. She was born in Valdosta in 1910, played basketball for Hahira High School, graduated from Valdosta High School, got a B.A. from Valdosta State College, and taught English in Morven, Naylor, Columbus, Lake Park, and Lyons, Georgia.

Dr. Elsie Quarterman got a Masters and a Ph.D. from Duke University in in botany and plant ecology. While studying for her Ph.D., she was a professor at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, where she was one of the first women full professors and was the first woman department chair (Biology). She specialized in the cedar glades of central Tennessee, including one now named after her by the state. There is an annual wildflower festival named after her. She rediscovered the cedar glade Tennessee coneflower, Echinacea tennesseensis, which previously was thought to be extinct, but has since been taken off the endangered species list, partly due to her work. Her wikipedia page has more information about her work and her many honors.

Aunt Elsie still lives in her own house in Nashville, connected to her nephew Patrick's house, where Patrick and his wife Ann live and take care of her.

Here is world traveller Elsie in 2006 leading a family group on the Isle of Skye in Scotland:

Blackberries

Red and black:

Red and black
John S. Quarterman, Gretchen Quarterman, Brown Dog, Yellow Dog,
Pictures by Gretchen Quarterman for Okra Paradise Farms, Lowndes County, Georgia, 2012-07-26.

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Canning Jalapeno Peppers

Picked and washed:

Sliced and canned:

Pictures by Gretchen Quarterman for Okra Paradise Farms, Lowndes County, Georgia, 15 November 2012.

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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.

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Beautyberry

Beautyberries on the bush:

Beautyberries in the pot:

Morning glory in the okra

It's a weed, but it doesn't do much harm, and it's blue:

Blooming morning glory in the okra
Picture by John S. Quarterman for Okra Paradise Farms, Lowndes County, Georgia, 26 September 2012.

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