Speaking of First Nations Arboriculture...

"As mankind continued to chip his chert for stone warfare at the end of the Stone Age, he became very interested in the nut as food. It is thought that the movement of a nut called hazel or Corylus across the world was due almost entirely to mankind's fondess for its flavour. Indeed in North America, the mesolithic practice of the grand savannah design came into being primarily as a nut pasture to amplify game. This was a design centered around the open solar exposure of a nut-bearing canopy, whose wild grass pasture was flash-fired in April and November. This ashing of the soil produced fertilizer, pest management and increased herd capacity all rolled into one. The real gold came later on in the fall as crops of nuts. These were called pekan, or nut, throughout the length and breadth of the continent by an aboriginal culture that knew what it was doing and why it was doing it."

Diana Beresford-Kroeger, Arboretum Borealis, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor. 2010. P43.

ALUS: farmers & stewardship

For folks interested in how rural agriculture + natural heritage restoration / conservation can support each other, and profitably too, well, i keep directing my out-of-town friends over to the Norfolk Alternative Land Use Service Pilot Project (ALUS).

Currently I only know of ALUS in Norfolk County Ontario (as i like to say, "they have a mature stewardship culture there"), but i like to hope ALUS will become an Ontario-wide Alliance. Especially since, as that page says, "the vast majority of land in southern Ontario is owned by farmers, especially in the Carolinian zone where 97% of land is maintained by farmers."

To get a feel for the kind of innovative stewardship work they’re doing, this page lists some of what's going on ALUS's demonstration farms.

No, really. Click through that last link. There are some cool, exciting and encouraging stewardship initiatives in there I haven't heard or read about anywhere else. For example: "1.39 acres of pollinator habitat in the form of Pollinator Hedgerows - perhaps the most groundbreaking effort of the Norfolk Pilot, the pollinator hedgerow is aimed at finding solutions to restore populations of native pollinators.”

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Also, if you (or any of your friends with rural farm properties or stewardship projects) want to learn more about ALUS, here’s an upcoming opportunity:

Friday, March 26th 2010
9:30 am -3:30 pm
ALUS and Ontario's Climate Change Policy: Where does ALUS fit, and why?
Ontario Ministry of Food, Agriculture, and Rural Affairs in Guelph, Ontario

The steering committee of the Ontario Alternative Land Use Services (ALUS) Alliance would like to invite you to attend “ALUS and Ontario’s Climate Change Policy: Where does ALUS fit, and why?” information session. The session will discuss the role of ALUS in the new world of climate change and carbon markets and will focus on how the ALUS Alliance can work within the new policy context of Ontario to make ALUS a provincial program.

The Ontario ALUS Alliance meeting is a free, all day event. Lunch and light refreshments will be provided. The event agenda will be posted shortly on the Norfolk ALUS website http://www.norfolkalus.com so please visit for more details.

Registration is required and will be on a first come first serve basis. To register, contact Kristen Thompson, ALUS Project Coordinator at (519) 426-5999 ext: 2220 or by email at kristen.thompson@norfolkcounty.ca. Please include any dietary restrictions.

2010 Symposium on Sustainable Horticulture

2010 Symposium on Sustainable Horticulture
Living Plants, Liveable Communities

February 16-19th, 2010
Royal Botanical Gardens
Burlington, ON
Canadian Institute for Sustainable Biodiversity

Looks interesting. Check out the timetable. I'm already appreciating that, upfront, the opening keynote address will be "Sustainability in the Built Landscape: Pathway to the Future or Greenwashing at its Worst??" by Dr. David A. Galbraith, Head of Science, Royal Botanical Gardens; because, well, isn't that anyone's first question when they're approached by organized horticulture initiatives?

Always good to see any case when the word "horticulture" isn't being used as a synonym for exotic or invasive landscaping too.

I've been seeing more confluences between conventional and native plant horticulture lately.

"Gardens are a transformation of the naturally occurring environment. While we work to create something of beauty, interest and or practical benefit, we should be aware that we are affecting natural processes. Gardeners select specific plant species and eliminate others, tailoring plots of land to taste. The simple process of selection changes the biodiversity of an area. For good or bad, gardening results in irreversible changes in the evolution of the planet." - Catherine Kavassalis, haltonhelps.org and President Oakville Horticultural Society (2008)

Too much of conventional horticulture is still backed by an avalanche of concerned-for-profit-only marketing associations (aka: where "professional" status is basically purchased, not earned). Still I think gardeners set the pace for a significant chunk the market.

(Reminds me: I've been thinking that someone should start a movement encouraging folks to swear off the-infinite-bounty-of-the-grocery-store-parking-lot. ;) Between the just plain messed-up invasive exotics, non-local and sketchy-source native plants, bark mulch from BC, the illusion of endless bags of peat mossed soils w/ plastic fertilizer pellets, and the way an impulsive plant-freak can hide their addiction in their grocery bill... I think a lot of too-convenient, impulsive, completely unnecessary and just plain bad decisions happen there. I'd really like to know what percent of the horticultural plant market sales happen in those parking lots).

And while we've got a long way to go before what are too often two separate streams are truly "speaking with one voice", ideally there wouldn't be a difference, just a lot of ecologically literate, mindful gardeners and a responsible horticultural industry serving them.

Imagine, ecological literacy not being an "alternative" that needs advocacy. I try to: the goal of every progressive movement is to make itself obsolete right? 'Til then, I'm thinking the best we can do is keep planting, learning and teaching each other more about the natural world around us, having the courage and common sense to call out ecologically devastating practices for what they are (there shouldn't even have to be a symposium on "sustainable" horticulture: that's quite an indictment of what the remainder of mainstream horticulture currently is), and voting-with-our-feet, soils, purchases, hands, minds, questions, support, cameras, workshops and who we choose to trust.

Tomorrow: Join High Park VSP for a Seed Collecting Workshop, with Tallgrass Ontario

Seed collecting Sky-blue asters

Seed Collection Workshop

Sun Oct 18 10:30 AM

High Park Grenadier Restaurant

The High Park Volunteer Stewardship Program has a very special Seed Collection Workshop on October 18th with Gavin Trevelyan, Coordinator for Tallgrass Ontario who will instruct us in the techniques and science behind the efficient and ethical collection of tallgrass prairie plant seed.

Spend a day in the lovely High Park Black Oak Savannah, while acquiring a new skill and making new acquaintances. Help out in the ongoing effort to restore and protect Ontario's threatened tallgrass prairies and savannas.

Meet at 10:30 am in front of the Grenadier Restaurant and we will then go to the Training Centre (or work site). Later on, we will proceed out to the Black Oak Savanna for a hands-on seed collection event. Dress for the weather, rain or shine! Admission is free. Space in this workshop is limited so please RSVP if you wish to attend the workshop. A second seed cleaning workshop may be held in the future if there are enough people wanting one.

If you're not already getting invites like this from High Park VSP email vsp@highpark.org & they'll keep you in the loop!

Like to prime? Here are my picks:

Planting the Seed - A Guide to Establishing Prairie and Meadow Communities in Southern Ontario has super useful seed propagation protocols + plant species and guild info in appendices A and B.

And if you're a S. ON restoration ecology geek, check out Tallgrass Communities of Southern Ontario - A Recovery Plan. Prepared in part for the World Wildlife Fund, this one's a classic. Like native plant gardening, restoration ecology has its trends. When I read this, I finally understood the earlier momentum behind many of the prairie plants and seeds, that passed through even my hands.

I also like An Introduction to Tallgrass Prairie in Southern Ontario. It's written by a former grad student of Larry Lamb's at U. of Waterloo, and yes the spelling needs editing (either get over it or volunteer to fix it?) but it's worth keeping around because he makes some essential concepts easy to understand. For example:

Savannah

Savannah is an ecosystem where scattered trees contribute only 10% to 50% canopy cover. The trees are widely spaced due to competition for moisture and nutrients. In a continuum of ecosystem delineation determined by an increasing requirement for moisture, savannah is the ecosystem that is situated between tallgrass prairie and oak forest. Since the two ecosystems are contiguous, the interdegration between species can be pronounced. As a result of the minimal canopy closure and the resulting abundant sunlight the majority of the understory species are species of the tallgrass prairie. There are however species that are truly associated with savannah. The classic indicator being the False Foxgloves Aureolaria spp. [check out this Downy False-foxglove species report.]

In addition to oak savannah in Ontario, there are also limited areas of cedar savannah in Southwestern Ontario and aspen parkland in Northwestern Ontario.

Savannah is a far more restricted community than prairie in Ontario. This fascinating community is worth of a website of its own.

...and some good lovin' seed-collecting hands too :)

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Update: since we're talking about the historic/rockstar moments in prairie restoration ecology, here's a seminal one I never knew. It's earlier than I would've guessed, even has Ontario connection too:

"Theodore M. Sperry was born in Toronto, Ontario, in 1907. After completing a B.S. in 1929 at Butler University in his hometown of Indianapolis, Indiana, he entered the graduate school of the University of Illinois, where he earned an M.S. in 1931 and a Ph.D. in Botany in 1933. In that same year, Ecology published a condensed version of his dissertation about root systems of prairie plants. At the University of Wisconsin, Aldo Leopold read the article and arranged for Sperry’s transfer to the Civilian Conservation Corps under the National Park Service in Madison, Wisconsin. Under the auspices of Leopold, Sperry was given sixty acres of old farm land near the Madison campus on the University’s research land. Sperry and a small crew were given long-handled shovels and a truck and told to “go make a prairie.” Curtis Prairie became the world’s first restored prairie, and Sperry considered his work and research at Curtis Prairie his greatest professional achievement.

-SERNews, The Newsletter of the Society for Ecological Restoration International Volume 23 No. 3 (October 23 2009)

Native prairie plants - the best option for sustainable biomass / biofuel production?

Photo by P.D. Pratt

Article from Treehugger:
"…Researchers at the University of Northern Iowa's Tallgrass Prairie Center (TPC) are looking at ways to use the state's mixed prairie plantings as a source of renewable energy — as biomass to produce ethanol or to burn for electricity… A study conducted this past year by David Tilman, an ecology professor at the University of Minnesota, had demonstrated the potential for polycultures of multiple grass, prairie and wildflower species to serve as an alternative to switchgrass in producing ethanol. Tilman and his colleagues found that, in addition to producing more than twice the biomass than single-species planting (not less than 238% more than switchgrass), multiple-species plantations restored biodiversity, grew on degraded land and — perhaps most importantly — could be carbon negative. Biofuels derived from this source could also store up to 51% more energy per acre than corn…"

Ok - not my field of expertise, but it immediately sounds better than corn or switchgrass mono-crops. It's also relevant here because if it were successful, it might lead to opportunities for increased awareness about native prairie plant communities, habitats & restoration (& also native prairies as models for sustainable polyculture agriculture too: see the 2nd chapter "How will we feed ourselves?" in Biomimicry - Innovation Inspired by Nature, by Janine M. Bengus, but I'm sure that's a-whole-'nother blog out there).

A spontaneous summary of Native Plant Girl's Toronto & southern Ontario Tallgrass Prairie resources:

• Want to know about southern Ontario native prairies, restoration & stewardship? Tallgrass Ontario is the first place to go!
• Planting the Seed: A guide to Establishing Prairie and Meadow Communities in Southern Ontario
• Former prairie locations and existing remnants in Toronto, check out the map on Page 6 of this High Park restoration management report and its related maps.
• Learn how to find OMNR NHIC Natural Area reports for prairies and savannahs throughout southern Ontario.
• Maps of Ontario Tallgrass Prairie - past and present from U of T Botany 307F.
• if you haven't already, well you just have to see this drawing of Root Systems of Prairie Plants compared to turfgrass.

Local Matters

My autumn issue of Ontario Nature's magazine just arrived today. For folks who aren't Ontario Nature (formerly the Federation of Ontario Naturalists) members & don't receive the magazine, I want to share these excerpts from the "Last Word" column:

LOCAL MATTERS

CONSERVATION MATTERS AT HOME REALLY DO HELP TO SAVE THE PLANET
BY CAROLINE SHULTZ

With every passing year, the environmental maxim"think globally, act locally" takes on added meaning. ...But I wonder how many Ontarians consider the global implications of our actions when it comes to conserving native habitats and species. ..some of these actions are, in fact, a significant contribution to global biodiversity. ...Ontario's some 250,000 lakes contain an astonishing one-third of the world's fresh water. ...Ontarians are stewards to tall-grass prairie and black oak savannah, two of the world's more endangered ecosystems. Less than 1% of North America's pre-settlement old-growth eastern white pine is left today and almost two-thirds of that is in Ontario. We have a substantial global responsibility to protect and steward our native wildlife and habitats. We must continue to protect what is familiar and immediately around us, but we must also keep in mind the contribution we can make to conserving the diversity of life on earth too. - Caroline Schultz is the executive director of Ontario Nature

Tall Green Milkweed - Asclepias hirtella

photo by K.Cedar

Tall Green Milkweed Asclepias hirtella

This milkweed is one of the rarest plants in Canada. Only a single plant is known to exist. Seven different milkweeds have been found at Ojibway.
-From Windsor Ontario's Ojibway Tallgrass Prairie's photos page.
-links to Ojibway and other SW Ontario prairie natural areas

Related: Milkweed species in Ontario & legislation

Root Systems Of Prairie Plants

Fascinating drawing of Prairie Plants' root systems compared to turf grass.