to know the land

A week ago, I got to join the Field Botanists of Ontario on a field trip to the Dufferin County Forest Main Tract site for a mushroom I.D. walk. We saw all sorts of different mushrooms and had a ton of fun.

Scattered in the back of the Main tract there are many American Beech (Fagus grandifolia) trees. Some tall, some small, but they are there amidst the Red Oaks (Quercus rubra) and Sugar Maples (Acer saccharum). If you look close at the branches of these Beech trees you'll find little white fluffy insects dancing about in huge colonies. These are the Wooly Beech Aphid (Phyllaphis fagi) and they are there sucking sap out of the Beech tree. Now when any animal consumes their fill of whatever it is they are consuming, they must release the waste, and so too with the Aphids. This waste, called Honey Dew, is dropped and as it falls lands on the leaves, branches, and ground below. When this happens, the spores of the Honey Dew Eater (Scorias spongiosa) come around and land on the Honey Dew and begin their life cycle.

This weeks show I share some of what I have been reading about in regards to this community but specifically focusing on the life cycle of the Honey Dew Eater fungi.

To learn more :
Mushrooms of Ontario and Eastern Canada by George Barron. Partners Publishing/Lone Pine 2014.
Ascomycete Fungi of North America: A Mushroom Reference Guide by Michael Beug, Alan E. Bessette, Arleen R. Bessette. University of Texas Press, 2014.
National Audubon Society Mushrooms of North America. Knopf, 2023.

Lichens been a draw for me for the last few years. When it comes to a diversity of lifeforms coming together in a fungal structure to draw down nutrients from the atmosphere, to beautify a landscape, to feed some of the largest land mammals down to sheltering some of the smallest arthropods, I’m hooked.

For many of us, the problem has been where to start, how to get into the lichens, how to identify them and how and where do we learn what roles and functions these forms of life have on the land?

In comes Dr. Troy McMullin, lichenologist with the Canadian Museum of Nature, author of dozens of papers on lichens, describer of 10 species new to science, and author of the new book Lichens : The Macrolichens of Ontario and the Great Lakes Region of the United States out on Firefly Books.

A hefty book full of colour photos, illustrated glossary, detailed keys to the 113 genera found in Ontario and some adjacent states, this book is helpful for beginner lichen lovers and for the professional lichenologist. Not only that, Troy came on to talk about his career learning about these unstudied organisms, why they are so important to him and how they can help us understand the changes we are seeing in the climate.

It’s not everyday you get to talk with one of the foremost researchers in a field. I am so grateful for the chance. I got to ask a bunch of questions which I have been wondering for a long time.. some of which are answered fully in the book, some of which it took a conversation with the author. Thanks again, Troy!

To learn more :
Lichens : The Macrolichens of Ontario and the Great Lakes Region of the United States
Troy McMullin’s page at the Canadian Museum of Nature

Last Thursday a call came over the radio at work. “I just want to let everyone know that there are two Walking Sticks mating on the tent”. I can’t really remember what I was doing with the students at the time, but we all dropped everything and made our way, some faster than others. I had seen a couple of Walking Sticks over the Summer, but realized, while jogging through the forest on my way to see these two going at it, that I knew very little about the life cycles, ecology and overall natural history of this species or the order as a whole. I figured I should observe the mating pair carefully, and then research a bunch when I get home.

The species native to my area of Southern Ontario, known as the Northern Walking Stick (Diapheromera femorata), has been making many appearances in my life over the past few years but I still know so little about them. Inspired by the most recent sighting mentioned above, I decided to learn a little bit more about them.

Big thanks to Jen for letting everyone know the Walking Sticks were there.

Resources I pulled from for this episode:
Insects : Their Natural History and Diversity by Stephan A Marshall. Firefly Books, 2006.
Insect Enemies of Eastern Forests by Frank Cooper Craighead. US Department of Agriculture, 1950.
Princeton Field Guides Insects of North America by John C. Abbott and Kendra K. Abbott. Princeton University Press, 2023.
The Complete Insect by David A. Grimaldi. Princeton University Press, 2023. (highly recommended!)
Tracks & Sign of Insects and Other Invertebrates by Charley Eiseman and Noah Charney. Stackpole Books, 2010.

and a blog post of my own : Tracking Journal for 2021.08.15

Animal Forms is a project is all about empathy, about remembering how to be in connection with the other-than-human world. As Miki asks, “aims to explore how we (humans) can imagine ourselves in the place of the other people we share our planet with. How might our thoughts and actions change if we practiced seeing the world through another's eyes?”

Miki Tamblyn has created a project where folks can practice being an other-than-human animal. What does that look like? We are invited to sit in the woods by ourselves with a mask, a journal and pen, a camera, and a mirror and take on being the animal whose face we put on.

We sat down at the site of the project, along the Eramosa River in Guelph to discuss inspiration, project formation, overall response to the project and its goals, as well as the experience of embodiment of another form of life.

There was really so much to say, but you’ll have to listen to hear it all.

To learn more :
Animal Forms page
In depth look at Joanna Macy’s Council of All Beings

In some circles, reciprocate is the new “sustainable”, a hot word which implies a lot but isn’t always doing what we might imagine. But how can we try to actually live up to, and create the reciprocity, the giving back and forth, to that and those who give us so much?

For me, Moth Garden feels like a project trying to demonstrate reciprocity in a real, tangible, replicable ways. Christina Kingsbury and Lisa Hirmer have been researching, planting, growing and shaping a garden with an intention of creating sensory worlds for/of the more-than-human, nourishing spaces planted with food, shelter, and room for transformation and rest; planted for often maligned and misunderstood members of our broad interspecies communities.

With Moth Garden, Lisa and Christina are shifting the focus of attention to not singly acknowledge the diurnal, sun loving species, but to also welcome and include to the night flying beings through all life stages. Our gardens are so often, pretty much nearly always, built for the human eye, to be celebrated during the day, full of sun. Now this garden is still very attractive to my human eye, and obviously requires the Sun, but how does it move away from those conventional relationships and move towards new ones with the night, with other animals, with other senses?

How beautiful and full of care and consideration reciprocity can be.

Big big thanks to the moths, the bees, the plethora of tiny lives that live within and visit this garden. Thanks to the plants which sprout, shoot, blossom and bloom. Thanks to Lisa Hirmer and Christina Kingsbury for creating this space for us to visit.

To learn more :
www.mothgarden.ca
Heather Holm’s book Pollinators of Native Plants

A couple of days after my recent interview discussing Mulberries with Matt Soltys, the Arboretum at the University of Guelph shared a couple of posts on instagram about the Red Mulberry Recovery Program where researchers are looking into how to identify, propagate, and eventually distribute Red Mulberries (Morus rubra) to their partners (mostly conservation organizations). They are also trying educating the public on how the White or Asian Mulberries (Morus alba) can be detrimental to conservation of the Red Mulberries. Immediately I wrote to them to try and set up and interview.

Some of the same questions from the first interview came up, and some new ones as well, but mostly I wanted to hear about the Recovery Program and see how it was being put together, why this conservation of Red Mulberry biodiversity is so important, the effects of a changing climate on Red Mulberries, and how the conservation efforts of the University of Guelph Arboretum can mitigate the harms of human caused habitat loss and fragmentation.

Gratefully Sean Fox, senior research associate at the Arb, took the the time to get into the complexity and nuance of dynamic movements of species and how we can take actions towards conservation of a species which is endemically endangered.

It’s great to have a resource like the Arboretum so close so I can both talk to and learn from the folks doing the research and conservation work, but also to wander and explore the grounds (for free) and learn through my own observation. It’s a great place.

To learn more :
University of Guelph Arboretum’s Red Mulberry Conservation Program

University of Guelph Arborteum's instagram

I have had a long curiosity regarding Water Hemlock (Cicuta maculata) ever since I had heard of them. Perhaps the most toxic plant on Turtle Island/North America. Of course I would be enamoured! I misidentified them for a couple of years thinking I knew who they were, but it wasn’t until the past four or five years that I began taking a closer look, seeking them out, learning the lore, and reading the sometimes sparse literature on the plant. This show is an effort to collect my thoughts and learning, and to make the recent blog post, which has lots of good photographs to assist with proper i.d., more accessible to those who don’t want to read it all but would rather listen to it instead.

It seems my series on plants is growing every week. I promise to get back to some interviews soon, but this one is pretty important to me.

The Serviceberry (Amelanchier spp.) is a widely distributed edible fruit tree which fills my heart as much as my belly. It’s just sweet enough, with berries just big enough, just in reach to make me so happy to come across. Sometimes we happen upon them wandering through the woods, sometimes we go visit our favourite individuals, sometimes we make detailed extensive maps of every tree the city has planted… or maybe I just do that.

To eat something builds relationship in a very particular way, which I appreciate, especially when that edible is shared by many species. We really become part of the broader ecosystem when we participate as other animals do, and if we choose to enter into that relationship in a reciprocal way we can begin to tend and propagate the ones we care for.

Serviceberries, Juneberry, Shadbush, Saskatoon, whatever we call them, our affinity with them grows as we get to know them more. That’s what this episode is all about - learning some of those more meticulous details to compliment our own personal relationships with the plants we hold so dear in our hearts… and bellies.

To learn more :
Fruit and Seed profile of AmelanchierShrubs of Ontario by James H. Soper and Margaret L. Heimburger. Royal Ontario Museum, 1982.
The Book of Forest and Thicket by John Eastman. Stackpole Books, 1992.
American Wildlife & Plants : A Guide to Wildlife Food Habits by Alexander Martin, Herbert Zim, and Arnold Nelson. Dover, 1951.
Growing Trees from Seed by Henry Kock. Firefly Books, 2016.
Botany in a Day by Thomas J. Elpel. HOPS Press, 2006.

Mulberries are a well known and popular wild urban edible that a lot of foragers come to know early in the development of the craft. They are easily identifiable, taste great, and prolific in urban and peri-urban environments which means lots of people can get to know them. Not only are there an abundant of Mulberry trees out there, each fruit producing tree makes buckets of fruit that litter the sidewalks for a month if the birds, squirrels, Raccoons and humans don’t get at them first. And while Mulberries don’t seem like a political focal point in the world of conservation, I am learning that they can be as well.

I got to visit with my friend Matt Soltys (The Urban Orchardist) to discuss Mulberries and their ecology. We sat in a small backyard cabin adjacent to his Mulberry tree to keep out of the rain and got into some big questions : How many species actually grow around the Great Lakes bioregion? Where does hybridization come in clutch in the context of global change and massive anthropogenic disturbance of the landscape? Are conventional conversations around conservation xenophobic and colonial or do they uplift and support decolonial efforts to retain ancestral cultural and land based relations? While we don’t have the answers, I think these are important questions to be asking.

Additionally, near the end of the podcast we discuss Sam Thayer’s new book Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants of Eastern and Central North America⁠ out now from Forager’s Harvest.

Big thanks to Matt Soltys of The Urban Orchardist for taking the time to be on the show and sharing his research and ideas.

To learn more :
The Urban Orchardist
Matt’s Instagram
Sam Thayer's Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants of Eastern and Central North America

In the previous post I mentioned that I had been watching a specific Chokecherry (Prunus virginiana, or the Anishnaabemowin name asasawemin) looking at Eastern Tent Caterpillar (Malacosoma americanum) egg masses and how the caterpillars had emerged. I ended up taking a closer look at the Chokecherry in the days following as my interest had been piqued.

Chokecherry is a role model. How can we be in good relationship with so many different life forms, transform degraded and barren anthropogenic landscapes in preparation for new life? Yes, there is a note of caution to be had, an awareness of potential hazards, but the overall theme of this shrub appears to be regeneration, repair and creating spaces for life to flourish again.

This episode is a long form exploration of the Chokecherry ecology. I hope it works for you as much as it works for me!