Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow . There is a huge push to grow native plants in an effort to help pollinators. But don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater – some of our most beloved non-natives are important food sources, too. Right now, camellias are coming into their glory. The cultivars that have single or semi-double flowers, that means they have functioning stamens and pistils, are used by European honeybees as a source of winter food – both

Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow . My friend Ann Nolte lives in a family house near St. Matthews with a yard full of old camellias. She sent me a photograph she took in mid-December after cold weather had damaged the beauty of the flowers that were opened when the night time temperatures dropped below freezing. Although the blossom wasn’t lovely to the human eye, it was dramatically attractive to a foraging honey bee. The single or only slightly

Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow . Fellow Extension agent Chase Smoak and I like to learn new botanical words (he already knows a lot more than me). But I had a good one for him the other day. Poikilohydry is the process that occurs in lichens, mosses and liverworts which absorb moisture from their surroundings. When they dry out, they stop photosynthesizing, but when they rehydrate, start using sunlight to make carbohydrates again. Moses and

Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow . If you have lichens growing on in your yard, be delighted. They’re considered indicators of healthy air. They lack roots and get their carbon dioxide, water and all nutrients, except the carbohydrates the algal partner manufactures, from the surrounding atmosphere. As a result, air-borne pollutants become concentrated in them. The Forest Service has a program called the National Lichens and Air Quality Data Base to

Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow . A northern relative of our southern reindeer mosses, which as far as I can tell no creatures eat routinely, is an important food in the arctic regions. Lichens can survive in that harsh part of the world as they stop physiological processes in winter, when there’s no liquid water. When snows and ice thaw in spring, this organism, a combination of a fungus and an alga, hydrates and photosynthesis and growth start

Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow . When going to the landfill in Calhoun County, I pass through an area with extremely sandy soils. The roadsides are practically covered with a particular lichen we’ve always called reindeer moss. However, lichens are not mosses, which are in the plant kingdom, but are placed in the Kingdom Fungi. A lichen is an example of a mutualistic relationship between a fungus and an alga or cyanobacteria. The fungus makes up the

Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow . Often people call the office and tell us that lichens are killing their plants. Lichens however, live independently of the surface, or substrate, they’re growing on-- they don’t have any root-like structures to extract nutrients. When growing on woody plants, they’re simply using them as a way to be in the sunlight. Lichens can be just as healthy growing on tombstones, walls, or rocks. In older landscapes, where

Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow . Although our eastern American mistletoe does do harm to our urban trees and our timber industry, the fact that it can only grow on hardwoods spares our pine plantations, and its seeds must be spread by animals. Out west, however, dwarf mistletoe species, in the genus Arceuthobium, grow and parasitize certain conifers including pines. And their ripe fruits actually develop hydrostatic pressure and forcibly eject the

Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow . Our Eastern American mistletoe has the scientific name Phoradendron leucarpum. The first name comes from Greek words – phor meaning thief and dendron meaning tree – and it is parasitic -- taking nutrients from the host tree. The transparent white fruits are covered with an extremely sticky substance called viscin; when birds feed on them they often try to scrape them off their bills on branches or they expel the

Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow . Our Christmas custom of hanging mistletoe in our houses dates back to Norse traditions and more recently to Victorian times. It’s amusing when you learn that the name has Anglo Saxon origins meaning dung on a stick. All mistletoes, which are found nearly worldwide, are dioecious, with male and female flowers occurring on separate plants. The female plants with their transparent white fruits are preferred for