The Firefly Atlas is a collaborative effort to better understand and conserve the diversity of fireflies in North America. Launched in 2022, the project aims to advance our collective understanding of firefly species’ distributions, phenology, and habitat associations, as well as to identify threats to their populations.

Although the Atlas tracks all species described from the US and Canada, we are currently prioritizing efforts for a subset of 13 threatened and data deficient species found in three focal regions of the US: the Mid-Atlantic, Southeast, and Southwest. These priority regions were chosen based upon having a high number of threatened species and/or a high number of data deficient species. - What is the Firefly Atlas?

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Shrubs and Smaller Trees

• Allegheny Serviceberry 
• American Hornbeam 
• American Persimmon 
• American Plum 
• Eastern Redbud 
• Elderberry 
• Flowering Dogwood 
• Highbush Blueberry 
• Swamp White Oak 
• Sweetbay Magnolia 
• Washington Hawthorn 
• White Fringe Tree 
• Winged Sumac 
• Witchhazel 

Larger Trees

• American Beech
• Bald Cypress
• Basswood
• Black Cherry
• Black Gum
• Black Locust
• Eastern Red Cedar
• Honey Locust
• Northern Red Oak
• Pin Oak
• Red Maple
• Sycamore
• Willow Oak

• April 15: Red Hook Farms(Red Hook, Brooklyn)
• April 15: Wyckoff House Museum and State Senator Kevin S. Parker (Canarsie, Brooklyn)
• April 29: I.S. 318 Project Roots Community Garden and Councilmember Lincoln Restler(Williamsburg, Brooklyn)
• May 6: BPL Marcy Library and Councilmember Chi Ossé(Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn)
• May 13: BPL Brownsville Library(Brownsville, Brooklyn)
• May 20: Citizens(Brooklyn Heights, Brooklyn)

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Originally published as a Guest Rant on Garden Rant, November 4, 2009. Recovered from the Internet Archive. I replaced the photo snapshot with a link to the high-res photo on Flickr. I've replaced archive links with current, active links where possible. Those that have since link-rotted are noted.

Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) has been making the news rounds for a few years now. It's old, if still current, news. Dire outcomes from the loss of honeybees have been proffered. For example, PBS recently introduced an online "ask the expert" feature with this:

Since the winter of 2006, millions of bees have vanished, leaving behind empty hives and a damaged ecosystem. [1]

Really? The ECOSYSTEM?! Did they not notice that honeybees aren't part of the ecosystem?

Honeybees are livestock. They are animals which we manage for our uses. We provide them with housing and maintenance. We even move them from field to field, just as we let cows into different pastures for grazing.

Perhaps, if CCD can neither be prevented nor cured, disaster would come to pass. However, the underlying cause would not be the loss of the honeybees but our dependence on them as a consequence of unsustainable agricultural practices.

The old ways of farming include hedgerows, uncultivated areas between fields. The biodiversity of these patches provide substantial habitat for native pollinators, as well as other beneficial insects. When even these rough “unproductive” patches of land are cleared, we set the stage for the patterns that have come to dominate agriculture: more herbicides, more pesticides, more machinery. All of these also damage the soil food webs that support both soil fertility and agricultural ecosystems. Although manufactured inputs provide temporary relief, they reduce the ecological functions of the land, requiring more and greater inputs to achieve the same effect. This is the definition of addiction, and it’s a clear sign that this way of doing business is unsustainable.

Why do we need to ship and truck pollinators around? There are plenty of native pollinators to do the job, where we haven't decimated their habitats. There are 4,000 species of bees alone in North America. 226 species are known in New York City. Many of them visit my gardens in Flatbush, Brooklyn; some have even taken up residence [2]. Many native bees are ground-dwellers which need only some open ground in which to dig their nests. When every patch of ground is cultivated, plowed under or paved over, native pollinators disappear. Suddenly, we “need” honeybees for pollination.

I care about the honeybees. I like my honey and beeswax candles. I support efforts to legalize beekeeping in New York City. But not at the expense of the biodiversity that is all around us, even in the city, if only we care enough to look for it, value it, and nurture it.

Dig Deeper

Notes

End of original guest rant.

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Maybe I am more like Demeter, weeping for the hold darkness has over others, while reaching and hoping for a time when we can bring everyone back into the light.
- Standing Still 2021: Demeter Waiting

Related Content

• 2021: Standing Still 2021: Demeter Waiting
• 2018: Standing Still in 2018
• 2016: Standing Still 2016
• 2015: Standing Still
• 2014: The Sun stands still
• 2010: From Dark to Dark: Eclipse-Solstice Astro Combo
• 2009: Standing Still, Looking Ahead
• 2008: Stand Still / Dona Nobis Pacem
• 2007: Solstice (the sun stands still)

Links

• Winter solstice
• Persephone

As in past years, I'm limiting this list to northern North America for two reasons:

1. Restricting this list geographically is in keeping with my specialization in plants native to northeastern North America.
2. There are many more tropical plants, and plant extinctions, than I can manage.

In 2020, this paper:

Vascular plant extinction in the continental United States and Canada

caused me to expand my list from 6 to 59 species, including 7 extinct in the wild. The summary is terse, and grim:

Given the paucity of plant surveys in many areas, particularly prior to European settlement, the actual extinction rate of vascular plants is undoubtedly much higher than indicated here.

Extinct

• Agalinis caddoensis, Railroad near Shreveport, Louisiana. last observed 1913
• * Astilbe crenatiloba, Roan Mountain false goat's beard, Roan Mountain, Tennessee, 1885
• Astragalus endopterus, near Cameron, Coconino County, Arizona. Last observed 1947
• Astragalus kentrophyta var. douglasii, Washington/Oregon?, 1883
• Astragalus robbinsii var. robbinsii, Vermont, 1894
• Atriplex tularensis, California, 1891
• Blephilia hirsuta var. glabrata, Manchester, Bennington County, ermont, 1932
• Boechera fruticosa, Yellowstone, Wyoming, 1899
• Brickellia chenopodina, Grant County, New Mexico, 1903
• Brickellia hinckleyi var. terlinguensis, Brewster County, Texas, 1937
• Calochortus indecorus, Sexton Mountain, Josephine County, Oregon, 1948
• Calochortus monanthus, Yreka, Siskiyou County, California, 1876
• Calystegia seium ssp. binghamiae, Santa Barbara, California
• Castilleja leschkeana, Point Reyes, Marin County, California, 1947
• Castilleja uliginosa, Pitkin Marsh, Sonoma County, California, 1984
• Cirsium praeteriens, Palo Alto, Santa Clara County, California, 1901
• Corispermum pallidum, Washington, 1931
• Crataegus austromontana, Sand Mountain region and Cumberland Mountains, Alabama and Tennessee, 1916
• Cryptantha aptera, Grand Junctino, mesa County Colorado, 1892
• Cryptantha hooveri, California, 1939
• Cryptantha insolita, north of Las Vegas, Nevada, 1942
• Dalea sabinalis, Texas, 1950s
• Digitaria filiformis var. laeviglumis, Hillsboro County, NH, 1931
• Diplacus traskiae, near Avalon, Santa Catalina Island, California, 1901
• Eleocharis brachycarpa, Tamaulipas, Mexico (1959) and Texas, 1834
• Elodea schweinitzii, New York and Pennsylvania, 1832
• Erigeron mariposanus, California, 1900
• Eriochloa michauxii var. simpsonii, Florida, 1966
• Govenia floridana, Miami-Dade County, Florida, 1964
• Hedeoma pilosa, Old Blue Mountain, Brewster County, Texas, 1940
• Helianthus nuttallii ssp. parishii, Orange County, California, 1937
• Helianthus praetermissus, Arizona (likely) or New Mexico, 1851
• Isocoma humilis, Washington County, Utah, 1971
• Juncus pervetus, Lewis Bay, West Yarmouth, Barnstable County, Massachusetts, 1927
• Lechea lakelae, Collier County, Florida, 1987
• Lycium verrucosum, Arroyo Cliffs, San Nicolas County, California, 1901
• Marshallia grandiflora, North Carolina, 1919
• Micranthemum micranthemoides, Mid-atlantic United States, 1941
• Monardella leucocephala, California, 1941
• Monardella pringlei, San Bernardino County, California, 1941
• * Narthecium montanum, Appalachian Yellow Asphodel, East Flat Rock Bog, Henderson County, North Carolina, 1919
• * Neomacounia nitida, Macoun's shining moss, Belleville, Ontario, 1864
• * Orbexilum macrophyllum, bigleaf scurfpea, Polk County, North Carolina, 1899
• * Orbexilum stipulatum, large-stipule leather-root, Falls-of-the-Ohio scurfpea, Rock Island, Falls of the Ohio, KY, 1881
• Paronychia maccartii, Rio Grande Plains, Webb County, Texas, 1962
• Plagiobothrys lamprocarpus, Grants Pass, Josephine County, Oregon, 1921
• Plagiobothrys lithocaryus, Mayacamas Mountains, California, 1899
• Plagiobothrys mollis var. vestitus, Petaluma, Sonoma County, California, 1880
• Polygonatum biflorum var. melleum, Lake St. Clair, north of Detroit, Michigan and Windsor, Ontario, 1937
• Potentilla multijuga, South Coast Ballona Marsh, Los Angeles County, California, 1893
• Potentilla uliginosa, Cunningham Marsh, Sonoma County, California, 1947
• Proboscidea spicata, Rio Grande, Texas, 1967
• Quercus tardifolia, Chisos Mountains, Brewster County, Texas, 2007
• Ribes divaricatum var. parishii, California, 1980
• Rumex tomentellus, Willow Creek, Mogollon Mountains, Catron County, New Mexico, 1954
• Sesuvium trianthemoides, Kenedy County, Texas, 1947
• Sphaeralcea procera, Deming, Luna County, New Mexico, 1943
• Tephrosia angustissima var. angustissima, Pine Rocklands, Florida, 1947 (1985?)
• * Thismia americana, banded trinity, Lake Calumet, Cook County, Illinois, 1916

Extinct in the wild (IUCN Red List code EW)

• Arctostaphylos franciscana, Central Coast, San Francisco County, California. Last observed in the wild 2009
• Crataegus delawarensis, Delaware, 1903
• Crataegus fecunda, Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri, 1930s
• Crataegus lanuginosa, Webb City, Jasper County, Missouri, 1957
• Euonymous atropurpurea var. cheatumii, Dallas County, Texas, 1944
• * Franklinia alatamaha, Franklin Tree
• Prunus maritima var. gravesii, beach plum, groton, New London County, Connecticut, 2000

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• Asarum canadense, wild ginger
  
• Athyrium filix-femina, lady fern
• Carex, sedges, hundreds of species, e.g.: Carex pensylvanica, Pennsylvania sedge
  
• Chrysogonum virginianum, green-and-gold
  
• Geranium maculatum, wild geranium
  
• Heuchera americana (sunnier)
• Heuchera villosa (shadier)
• Onoclea sensibilis, sensitive fern
  
• Pachysandra procumbens, Allegheny spurge
  
• Packera aurea, golden ragwort. Many other species native to North America.
  
• Phlox subulata, mosspink, for sun.
  
• Phlox stolonifera, creeping phlox, for shade.
  
• Sedum ternatum
• Thelypteris noveboracensis, New York fern
• Thelypteris palustris, marsh fern
• Tiarella cordifolia, hearttleaf foamflower
  
• Zizia aurea, golden alexanders. Also Z. aptera.
  

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Biodiversity Loss

Climate Change

COVID-19

9/11

AIDS

Miscellaneous

Sunday, May 22nd 6th, I will be hosting and facilitating a workshop on gardening for habitat with native plants in my home garden. The workshop is from 12noon to 2pm. Space is limited, so please register at the Eventbrite link below.

Learn how to garden with native plants to create wildlife habitat, even in small urban gardens. In this interactive garden tour and workshop, Chris will use his garden to highlight the importance of native plants for sustaining urban wildlife, and how to create and maintain a garden for its ecological value. With nearly 200 NYC-native plant species, and over 400 documented insect visitors, you are sure to learn something new and find inspiration for improving habitat wherever you garden.

Presented by Chris Kreussling. Chris is an urban naturalist and advocate for urban habitat gardening with native plants. He has led numerous native plant and pollinator walks and workshops, for NYC Wildflower Week, Wave Hill, the High Line, and others. His garden is a registered habitat with the National Wildlife Federation, Xerces Pollinator Society, and other organizations. He’s documented this ongoing transformation on his gardening blog, Flatbush Gardener and on Twitter as @xrisfg.

- Eventbrite

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The annual City Nature Challenge (CNC) is this weekend, from Friday April 29 through Monday May 2. I put together a presentation on Slideshare with a brief overview of New York City's participation in CNC.

I'm one of the Brooklyn Borough Captains for the NYC Battle of the Boroughs, a friendly inter-borough competition among the boroughs to promote CNC participation across NYC. Following is a list of all the planned events and participating greenspaces in Brooklyn. You can also find this list on the Brooklyn CNC 2022 iNaturalist Project Journal.

Friday, April 29, 2022

Saturday, April 30, 2022

Sunday, May 1, 2022

It's a busy season for me this Spring! NEXT WEEK is New York City NYC's GreenThumb community gardening program annual conference, known as GrowTogether:

Part 2 of the GreenThumb GrowTogether conference will be hosted in-person in community gardens in all five boroughs in celebration of Earth Week. Join us for workshops about growing food, healthy eating, native pollinators, flower arrangement, planting seeds, screen printing garden swag, volunteer projects, and more. All the activities are free and open to the public!

... The theme of this year’s GrowTogether is “Deeply Rooted: Growing Community Connections.” Community gardeners from across New York City have been gathering at the GrowTogether conference each spring since 1984 to celebrate the start of the garden season with a day of learning, networking, and reconnecting with friends. - Ibid.

- 38th Annual GreenThumb GrowTogether Conference Part 2 Conference Guide

As noted above, all GrowTogether workshops are open to the public. Please register, as some workshops have limited capacity.

This is my first time participating in GrowTogether. I'll be giving two different workshops on how to use iNaturalist, Friday in Brooklyn, and Saturday on Staten Island.

Using iNaturalist for Community Gardens and Gardeners

iNaturalist is a community/citizen science platform where anyone can record their observations – photos or audio recordings – of any living thing anywhere in the world. Community gardeners and visitors can use iNaturalist to document and keep records about their gardens, such as flowering and fruiting times; identify and keep track of common weeds; and identify insect visitors, whether pests, predators, or pollinators.

In this workshop, we will use iNaturalist “in the field” to make observations of plants and insects and upload them to iNaturalist, creating a record of the biodiversity in a community garden. If you have access to a smartphone, please download the iNaturalist app in advance and bring it to the workshop!

Meet and Greet New York City’s Native Pollinators

New York City is home to hundreds of species of pollinating insects. While butterflies and bumblebees are easily-spotted inhabitants of our community gardens, meet a few of New York City’s lesser known pollinators—including wasps, flower flies, and specialist bees— during this workshop with Sarah Ward from National Wildlife Federation and Chris Keussling (aka Flatbush Gardener). During a walk through the garden, participants will learn tips and tricks for observing pollinators and welcoming them into our gardens. Participants will also learn how to use the community science app iNaturalist to identify pollinators and contribute valuable data about pollinators in New York City.

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For more information, or to register, for either/both workshop:

• Using iNaturalist for Community Gardens and Gardeners, Friday 4/22, 11:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m., Vernon Cases Community Garden, Brooklyn
• Meet and Greet New York City’s Native Pollinators, Saturday, April 23rd, 11:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m., Hill Street Community Garden, Staten Island

I am proud to announce that I will be co-presenting, with Zihao Wang, a Lecture of the Torrey Botanical Society on Wednesday March 30 at 6pm. The title of the talk is "City Nature Challenge (CNC) 2022: For Plant-lovers and Botanists Alike."

Note that the information we present will be applicable to iNaturalist users and City Nature Challenge observers and identifiers anywhere in the world! So, whereever you are, please join us if you can.

Abstract

Unlike most other citizen science platforms, iNaturalist allows anyone to record their observations of any living thing anywhere in the world. As it approaches 100 million Observations worldwide, it has become increasingly important to botany and other biological sciences. City Nature Challenge, based on iNaturalist, engages community members in cities and urbanized areas around the world to make observations, and provides opportunities for taxonomic experts to identify them, all over the world. Last year over 400 cities participated, with over 50,000 people documenting over 45,000 species with over 1.2 million observations, the largest bioblitz in the world. In this Torrey Talk, two iNaturalist experts will show how you can participate in iNaturalist and this year’s upcoming City Nature Challenge.

Registration

The talk will be recorded and made available on the Torrey YouTube channel sometime after the event. Please subscribe to our channel and enable notifications so you get updated when we publish new recordings!

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I could probably talk about Amelanchier until my voice gave out (at least an hour!). It's such a great multi-season plant in the garden, and brings so much value to wildlife, as well. It's also a great example of how native plants convey a "sense of place" that is not imparted by conventional, non-native plants in the garden.

Although the Genus is distributed across the Northern hemisphere, the greatest diversity is found in North America. As you can see from the BONAP distribution map, Amelanchier diversity is the greatest in the Northeast. New York State hosts 14 species, varieties, natural hybrids, and subspecies. And New York City is home to 6 of those.

Amelanchier in my garden

Amelanchier was one of the key plants I included in my backyard native plant garden design in 2009. To fit my design, I needed a tree form with a single trunk and broad canopy.

Most of the species grow as multi-stemmed twiggy shrubs. In my design, I specified A. arborea, the only species that would normally grow with a single trunk. But straight species are difficult to find in the horticultural trade. Even nurseries specializing in native plants are unlikely to carry this species. I would likely need to find a "standard": a plant grown with a single trunk that normally wouldn't.

In Spring of 2010, I went hunting for a specimen for my garden. I found one at Chelsea Garden Center on Van Brunt Street in Red Hook, Brooklyn. It was the second most expensive single plant I've ever bought. But worth it!

What I found is Amelanchier x grandiflora 'Autumn Brilliance', a selection of a horticultural hybrid of two species: A. arborea and A. laevis. So arborea is in there somewhere! This cultivar was selected for its vividly colored autumn foliage. But any of the species will have beautiful fall color.

Their peak bloom in our area is just weeks away, before the ornamental cherries, and the dreaded callery pear. We'll follow the seasons, starting with where we are right now, Winter.

Winter

This is Amelanchier 'Autumn Brilliance' in my backyard, as viewed from a bathroom window, after our January snowstorm.

Winter into Spring. Here's a lengthening and expanding bud on my backyard Amelanchier, which I shared last week. It still looks like this. These terminal buds will become the flowers.

Bud break. The emerging inflorescence is covered in dense silvery hairs, which offer protection from late frosts. The leaves will emerge later from separate buds along the stems.

Spring

The big show is coming soon! It's the first woody plant to bloom in my garden, early April or even late March in warm Springs. Two common names refer to its bloom time. Shadblow, because it would bloom when the shad are running. And serviceberry, because it bloomed when the ground had thawed enough to bury winter's dead.

Over the next few weeks, these distinctive furry flower buds continue to expand.

As they mature, the inflorescences start to turn more upright and the pedicels lengthen. The whole tree turns a little less furry and fuzzy.

Finally, the buds start to open, revealing the bright creamy white of the petals. At this stage, they almost look like flowering peas.

When the flowers are fully open, they reveal their true nature. Amelanchier is in the Rosaceae, the rose family. Here you can clearly see the five-fold symmetry of rose relatives. At this stage, the leaves just start to emerge.

In full bloom they are spectacular and conspicuous in the landscape. This is when you are most likely to notice them, if you haven't been stalking their progress all along, as I might do. Even at highway speeds, they are recognizable when flowering. There's a line of them along the McDonald Avenue border of Green-Wood Cemetery. My commuter bus drove down this road on the return trip from Manhattan. I would sit on the right side of the bus to soak them in.

NYC is home to many bee species — especially mining bees, Andrenidae — that specialize in flowers of the Rosaceae. Most of our bees are solitary bees, and many of them nest in the ground. They are only active and visible for a month or so, as the females prepare new ground nests and provision their eggs with pollen balls. The rest of the year, the larvae and pupae are underground, slowly maturing, or aestivating through the winter, waiting for next year's Spring.

Summer

Juneberry is descriptive: Berries ripen in the summer, typically June. Ripening berries on my backyard Amelanchier in 2011. They turn dark reddish purple when ripe, but good luck getting to them before the birds and squirrels. Technicaly edible, this cultivar's fruit are mealy and seedy, better left for wildlife. Other species are used for making jams, or enjoyed right off the bush.

When we first bought our house, our next-door neighbors had an old, failing apple tree in their backyard, next to our shared fence. The fruit never ripened. Monk parakeets loved to munch on the apples.

They were also visited by cedar waxwings, another bird I had never seen before They seemed to love picking insects off the flowers in spring, presumably to feed to their young, as much as they enjoyed the fruits in summer. After our neighbors had their tree taken down, we rarely saw the monk parakeets, except when they flew overhead. And we never saw the waxwings again. I hoped another Rosaceae would bring them back.

This intent has been successful.

The berries are enjoyed by many different birds in my backyard.

Fall

Amelanchier's autumn foliage is brilliant, after all. This is from its second Fall in my garden, a year and a half after planting.

This is from November 2014, four years after planting.

Related Content

• Woodland Garden Design Plant List, 2009-02-18 
• Native Plant Profile: Amelanchier x grandiflora, 2010-05-08

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Observing the diversity of life that coexists in one place is one of the rewards of visiting the same natural area over a long period of time. My garden not only offers myself and passersby such an observatory. It's also a laboratory in which I can research how insects engage with their environment - both biotic and abiotic - and imagine, design, and create habitat to better provide for their needs.

I use iNaturalist to document the diversity of life in my garden. Although I only posted my first iNaturalist Observation in 2017, my garden Observations now span more than a decade. As of this year, I've documented over 400 insect species making use of my garden.

This biodiversity, and my documentation of it, is intentional. And although all of this is by design, all I can do is uncover the latent urban biodiversity in and around my garden. Each new species I find is a surprise to me.

Native Plants

As I explained in last year's Home of the Wild, native plants have been a significant focus of my gardening since we bought our home and I started the current garden in 2005. I'm always researching and experimenting with new species. And, like any avid gardener, I'm always killing things off, too.

I do my best to track my acquisitions, and failed plantings, in a spreadsheet. I categorize the species by whether they are native to the five counties of New York City, native to the NYC region - e.g.: within two counties - or are some other species native to eastern North America.

This chart summarizes the increase in native plant diversity in my garden over the years. Stacked columns, plotted against the left axis, show the number of species I acquired each year: blue for NYC-native, red for NYC-regional, and green for eastern U.S. native plant species. The large undated bar on the left represents plants I brought with me from prior gardens, or for which I've lost track of when or how I got them. The lines, ploted against the right axis, show the total number of species: blue for NYC-native plant species, and green for everything else.

2014 stands out as an exceptional year for plant acquisitions. That was my first year visiting the Native Plants in the Landscape Conference in Millserville, Pennsylvania. It has an enormous accompanying native plant sale with vendors from all over the mid-Atlantic, of which I took full advantage.

I maintain a Wish List of plants I want to try to grow in my garden. (Anyone know of a NYC-regional source for dwarf prairie willow, Salix occidentalis?!) The past few years I have targeted species for their ecological value in my garden:

• Fill in plant families that are missing, or under-represented, in my garden, such as Apiaceae, e.g.: Zizia aurea.
• Extend the flowering season, especially early in the year when native plant blooms are scarce. For example: Packera is the earliest-blooming Asteraceae I've found, so I'm trying to establish that in my garden.
• Grow more plants to support specialist flower visitors, such as bees.

As of this year, I'm growing nearly 300 species of native plants, over 200 of which are native to New York City. With that increase in plant diversity, there's been an increase in insect diversity (though habitat needs more than having the right plants).

Insect Species

Most of the insects that have visited my garden over the past decade fall into one of six groups:

1. Diptera, flies: 103 species
2. Wasps. i.e.: other Hymenoptera, excluding bees and ants: 70 species
3. Coleoptera, beetles: 57 species
4. Epifamily Anthophila, bees: 55 species
5. Lepidoptera, butterflies, moths, and skippers: 55 species
6. Hemiptera, bugs: 43 species

That's where things stand today. But this didn't happen all at once. This chart shows how I've accumulated species records in my garden for each of these groups over time. We can see that the slope of the lines increased sharply over the past three years, from 2019 through 2021.

It's a little easier to see which taxa contributed most to the increases if we look instead at just the new species, instead of the total number of species. This stacked column chart shows the number of new species I've found each year in my garden, for each of my six focus taxa. Again, the last three years stand out as being responsible for most of the increase.

The color codes of the stacked column segments are the same as the lines in the previous chart to make it easier to draw comparisons between the two:

1. I've seen most of the fly species in just the past two years.
2. It's the same for the wasp species.
3. Beetles saw a spike in new species observed in 2017 and again in 2020. Otherwise, a fairly steady uncovering of new species each year.
4. Bees have seen a remarkably steady discovery of new species over the years. The first few years found lots of new species. More recent years not so much. 
5. Butterflies, moths, and skippers have also shown up mostly over the past three years.
6. Most of the bug species were found during the three year span from 2018-2020. Not so much this past year.

I believe that at least some of these increases reflect success in creating habitat for diverse insect species. But my observing behaviors have not been consistent over the years. Am I seeing more species just because I'm spending more time looking for them? And — if so — how much observation do I need to do to be confident I'm adequately sampling my garden?

Insect Observations

I ramped up my Observations the past two years - 2020 & 2021 - to increase my contributions to two iNaturalist Projects:

• Home Projects Umbrella, a collection of iNat "Home Projects" from aronud the world.
• The Empire State Native Pollinator Survey (ESNPS), and its Collection Project.

As mentioned above, I wrote about the first Project, and the history of my garden as insect habitat on my blog last year. ESNPS was originally scheduled to run only three years, from 2018 through 2020. Of course, the pandemic changed those plans; they decided to extend the iNaturalist portion another year, into 2021.

By concentrating on these two efforts, I increased my Observations in my own garden by a factor of 8. This year, I also invested in better macro equipment. So I was spending a lot more time in my garden, and was able to capture many more individuals with photographs good enough for identification.

The Empire State Native Pollinator Survey includes bees and Syrphidae, flower and hover flies, among its focal taxa. Although my increased observation found more of everything, bees and flies took up a greater proportion of the total observations.

How many observations do I need to make to have high confidence I have found most of the species present in my garden? This chart compares the number of species observed against the number of observations for the four most diverse taxa: flies, wasps, bees, and beetles. I've added labels for the two most recent years, to highlight that not only did they have the most observations, they are also the years I found the most species.

Last year was not a pace of observation I can sustain indefinitely. There's a lot of effort in taking high-quality, identifiable macro photographs of insects in the garden to uploading them as verifiable observatinos in iNaturalist. Some days it took most of my waking hours, spread over multiple days, just to process all the photographs from a single day of observation.

My iNaturalist activity the past year was artificial, driven by the gamification offered by the two Projects in which I was actively "competing". But this past year gave me a strong foundation for continuing to make effective observations. I look forward to being surprised by future discoveries in my garden.

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Today is the December solstice: the winter solstice in my hometown Northern hemisphere, summer in the Southern.

Persephone and her Pomegranate

The millenia-old story of Persephone and her pomegranate, in all their incarnations, strikes me as a deeper analogy this Winter. Persephone was abducted, held hostage in hell, and starved. Only under this extreme duress did she eat anything she was offered: a few seeds of the pomegranate to stave her hunger.

I can relate to "being held hostage in hell". I feel as though I've endured six years of it. I know others do, as well.

While our personal histories may provide us with tools and resources to endure, so much of our resiliency is shaped by systemic forces. Conservative forces of this country have worked for decades, all my adult life, to destroy all social supports - health care, housing, education, food, transportation - that should be our common responsibility, "privatizing" them into for-profit enterprises available only to those who can afford it, and parasitizing what should have been our collective wealth into the hands of fewer and fewer.

The past six years has broken people.

Endurance trauma takes unique forms in all of us. We can become numb. We can become paralyzed by fear. W might take risks we would not have accepted before. We may lash out, seeking targets for our rage. It can lead us to embrace the dark places. I have lost friends and colleagues to those places throughout all this, especially over the past year.

Maybe I am more like Demeter, weeping for the hold darkness has over others, while reaching and hoping for a time when we can bring everyone back into the light.

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In a guest post on the ASLA's "Dirt" column, Alden E. Stone, CEO of Nature Sacred, writes:

[Our new report] is part research and part practical guide, and shares key insights gained through having co-created more than 100 Sacred Places across the country in communities, many under-resourced; in prisons, at universities, and in hospitals. A handful of these sites were also implemented as part of an expansive, decade-long design, build, and research project. ...

For the research portion of this paper, we focused our attention on four domains: nature’s impact on individual, community, economic and ecological health. ...

for many of the individual and community health benefits to kick in, people must engage with nature. Spend time in the green space. And this is where Nature Sacred has spent a lot of energy over the past two decades — looking at how to best engage the community and how to best design so that the community embraces, and spends time in, their green space.

She describes four "design elements":

• Portal
• Path
• Destination
• Surround

These design patterns recur in many different types of gardens, whether intentionally healing/sacred or not.

My backyard embodies all four elements. What follows is an exploration of the history of my backyard, from inception to its current state, viewed through the frame of those four design elements.

2005

My first sketch of the backyard, just after we bought our house. You can see portals/transitions, paths, seating as destinations, and the surround of enveloping plants. (Even though we had just moved in, I was also fantasizing about changing out the whole back of the house and adding a rear porch to better connect it with the backyard. That never happened.)

2006

By our second Spring, I better understood how light and shade shifts over the garden throughout the year. The plan is refined and made more specific, less conceptual. The Gardener's Nook is now defined. The driveway-backyard portal shows up: the garage and house both connected and separated by a fence and trellis through which one would pass to enter the backyard from the driveway.

Using the sketch as a guide, the loose circle shown in the opening photo gets tightened up, better defined. Bringing the sketch to life, the desination Gardener's Nook - the upper left of the sketch directly above - makes it first appearance with a pair of Adirondack chairs and some decor. Plants in containers begin to define the surround. An umbrella substitutes for the missing tree canopy.

2007

A year after that, things are really coming together. A trellis establishes the portal entrance from the driveway into the backyard. This filters the line of sight into the backyard, which beckons one to venture through, and past.

The center of the circle gets filled in. A table both provides central desination, and defines a circular path around itself, echoing the initial concept sketch. Logs double as seating and a layer of surround. The plants are now getting large enough to provide a second layer. My rear neighbor thankfully provided a fence, closing off the backyard and completing the surround.

2009

Winter 2009: My Garden Design class final project is my backyard, striking a balance to maximize planting area - a deep surround - while retaining space for people. Curved borders echo the original spiral.

Although the built environment of that design is never realized, the plan and its rough dimensions inform all later changes. Later that year, I transplant a large shrub. This gives the backyard a sense of enclosure, the "surround".

2010

I plant an "understory" tree which will provide overhead enclosure, a vertical surround. As I had specified in my garden design, I selected an Amelanchier, which goes by many wonderful phenologically evocative common names. It serves as a replacement for the old apple tree my north-side neighbors had in their backyard, adjacent to our shared fence. Eventually, it brings back the cedar waxwings I enjoyed seeing amongst its flowers.

2011

The portal/entrance to the backyard gets a major makeover. I register with the National Wildlife Federation (NWF) as a Backyard Wildlife Habitat. My garden itself becomes a destination, and welcomes its first public visitors.

2014

The garden hosts a wedding, its first use as an intentionally sacred space.

2016

Five years later, the shrubs and other plantings have matured, and the surround of enveloping greenery and flowers has been realized. The Gardener's Nook is now a fully-sheltered spot, a desination tucked into the larger embrace of the garden.

2018

This garden continues to be a sacred/healing space for many over the years. It was sanctuary for our dear friend David. After he entered home hospice, he would call a car service to deliver him to the garden. Here he is in the Gardener's Nook two weeks before he died.

2021

Today, 16 years after that first sketch, the backyard has realized its final form. Visitors say they feel like they've walked into the woods, the highest praise.

Portal, path, destination, surround - all embodied, and felt, in the garden.

Related Content

Links

Alden E. Stone, New Research and Roadmap for Creating Healing Green Spaces, ASLA Dirt Guest Column, 2021-12-14

Nature Sacred

• Report: The Power of Sacred Places

As in past years, I'm limiting this list to northern North America for two reasons:

1. Restricting this list geographically is in keeping with my specialization in plants native to northeastern North America.
2. There are many more tropical plants, and plant extinctions, than I can manage.

Last year, this paper:

Vascular plant extinction in the continental United States and Canada

caused me to expand my list from 6 to 59 species, including 7 extinct in the wild. The summary is terse, and grim:

Given the paucity of plant surveys in many areas, particularly prior to European settlement, the actual extinction rate of vascular plants is undoubtedly much higher than indicated here.

Extinct

• Agalinis caddoensis, Railroad near Shreveport, Louisiana. last observed 1913
• * Astilbe crenatiloba, Roan Mountain false goat's beard, Roan Mountain, Tennessee, 1885
• Astragalus endopterus, near Cameron, Coconino County, Arizona. Last observed 1947
• Astragalus kentrophyta var. douglasii, Washington/Oregon?, 1883
• Astragalus robbinsii var. robbinsii, Vermont, 1894
• Atriplex tularensis, California, 1891
• Blephilia hirsuta var. glabrata, Manchester, Bennington County, ermont, 1932
• Boechera fruticosa, Yellowstone, Wyoming, 1899
• Brickellia chenopodina, Grant County, New Mexico, 1903
• Brickellia hinckleyi var. terlinguensis, Brewster County, Texas, 1937
• Calochortus indecorus, Sexton Mountain, Josephine County, Oregon, 1948
• Calochortus monanthus, Yreka, Siskiyou County, California, 1876
• Calystegia seium ssp. binghamiae, Santa Barbara, California
• Castilleja leschkeana, Point Reyes, Marin County, California, 1947
• Castilleja uliginosa, Pitkin Marsh, Sonoma County, California, 1984
• Cirsium praeteriens, Palo Alto, Santa Clara County, California, 1901
• Corispermum pallidum, Washington, 1931
• Crataegus austromontana, Sand Mountain region and Cumberland Mountains, Alabama and Tennessee, 1916
• Cryptantha aptera, Grand Junctino, mesa County Colorado, 1892
• Cryptantha hooveri, California, 1939
• Cryptantha insolita, north of Las Vegas, Nevada, 1942
• Dalea sabinalis, Texas, 1950s
• Digitaria filiformis var. laeviglumis, Hillsboro County, NH, 1931
• Diplacus traskiae, near Avalon, Santa Catalina Island, California, 1901
• Eleocharis brachycarpa, Tamaulipas, Mexico (1959) and Texas, 1834
• Elodea schweinitzii, New York and Pennsylvania, 1832
• Erigeron mariposanus, California, 1900
• Eriochloa michauxii var. simpsonii, Florida, 1966
• Govenia floridana, Miami-Dade County, Florida, 1964
• Hedeoma pilosa, Old Blue Mountain, Brewster County, Texas, 1940
• Helianthus nuttallii ssp. parishii, Orange County, California, 1937
• Helianthus praetermissus, Arizona (likely) or New Mexico, 1851
• Isocoma humilis, Washington County, Utah, 1971
• Juncus pervetus, Lewis Bay, West Yarmouth, Barnstable County, Massachusetts, 1927
• Lechea lakelae, Collier County, Florida, 1987
• Lycium verrucosum, Arroyo Cliffs, San Nicolas County, California, 1901
• Marshallia grandiflora, North Carolina, 1919
• Micranthemum micranthemoides, Mid-atlantic United States, 1941
• Monardella leucocephala, California, 1941
• Monardella pringlei, San Bernardino County, California, 1941
• * Narthecium montanum, Appalachian Yellow Asphodel, East Flat Rock Bog, Henderson County, North Carolina, 1919
• * Neomacounia nitida, Macoun's shining moss, Belleville, Ontario, 1864
• * Orbexilum macrophyllum, bigleaf scurfpea, Polk County, North Carolina, 1899
• * Orbexilum stipulatum, large-stipule leather-root, Falls-of-the-Ohio scurfpea, Rock Island, Falls of the Ohio, KY, 1881
• Paronychia maccartii, Rio Grande Plains, Webb County, Texas, 1962
• Plagiobothrys lamprocarpus, Grants Pass, Josephine County, Oregon, 1921
• Plagiobothrys lithocaryus, Mayacamas Mountains, California, 1899
• Plagiobothrys mollis var. vestitus, Petaluma, Sonoma County, California, 1880
• Polygonatum biflorum var. melleum, Lake St. Clair, north of Detroit, Michigan and Windsor, Ontario, 1937
• Potentilla multijuga, South Coast Ballona Marsh, Los Angeles County, California, 1893
• Potentilla uliginosa, Cunningham Marsh, Sonoma County, California, 1947
• Proboscidea spicata, Rio Grande, Texas, 1967
• Quercus tardifolia, Chisos Mountains, Brewster County, Texas, 2007
• Ribes divaricatum var. parishii, California, 1980
• Rumex tomentellus, Willow Creek, Mogollon Mountains, Catron County, New Mexico, 1954
• Sesuvium trianthemoides, Kenedy County, Texas, 1947
• Sphaeralcea procera, Deming, Luna County, New Mexico, 1943
• Tephrosia angustissima var. angustissima, Pine Rocklands, Florida, 1947 (1985?)
• * Thismia americana, banded trinity, Lake Calumet, Cook County, Illinois, 1916

Extinct in the wild (IUCN Red List code EW)

• Arctostaphylos franciscana, Central Coast, San Francisco County, California. Last observed in the wild 2009
• Crataegus delawarensis, Delaware, 1903
• Crataegus fecunda, Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri, 1930s
• Crataegus lanuginosa, Webb City, Jasper County, Missouri, 1957
• Euonymous atropurpurea var. cheatumii, Dallas County, Texas, 1944
• * Franklinia alatamaha, Franklin Tree
• Prunus maritima var. gravesii, beach plum, groton, New London County, Connecticut, 2000

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Our dear cat Annie passed away less than an hour ago.

We adopted her from Sean Casey Animal Rescue at the age of 5 or 6 months in September 2009. We brought her into our home to be a companion for our elder rescuer cat Ripley. She was a good little sister to him for several years before he died in 2015.

She had a recent health scare last month for which we took her to veterinary emergency care. She was there for a few days and was stable before we brought her home.

She started having the same symptoms earlier today, but she deterioriated quickly today. John and I discussed it and decided that, if it was her time, she would be better off with us than putting her through that stress again.

It was the right decision.At least one of us was with her all evening so she would not be alone. When she died, both John and I were by her side. She took her last breath while I was petting her.

2021-11-15

This morning I brought her body to the vet for pet cremation. She was always so skinny. But today she was heavy.

She liked to get in bed with me when I went to bed, yelling at me if I stayed up too late. I missed her the past two nights.

These nights are the hardest. It's when I feel her absence the most. She's not coming to me to tell me to go to bed. She won't stalk me until I get under the covers, then join me, laying her body against mine, finding her niche beween me and the pillows.

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I'm an active contributor to iNaturalist. While I'm not a "super-observer", I expect to surpass 11,000 Observations by Halloween, two days away.

Insect-Plant interactions are the majority of my iNaturalist Observations. I use the Observation Field: Interaction->Visited Flower Of to record which flowers insects are visiting, or lurking upon. Roughly 1/3 of my Observations use that field.

Both the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and Global Biotic Interactions database (GloBI) automatically import iNaturalist Research Grade observations with an appropriate Creative Commons license. I'll use one of my iNaturalist Observations as an example to show how it all works together.

In August I photographed an Eastern bumble bee, Bombus impatiens, on New York ironweed, Vernonia noveboracensis growing in my garden in front of my garage. Check out those bustling pink corbicula (pollen baskets)!

I uploaded that to iNaturalist as an Observation, and added the Observation Field "Interaction->Visited flower of: Vernonia noveboracensis New York Ironweed".

To make my Observations accessible for import into scientific databases, I assign the Creative Commons License Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) to my iNaturalist Observations. Since enough time has passed since it reached iNaturalist Resarch Grade status, the Observation has since been imported into both GBIF and GloBI.

The iNaturalist Observation becomes a GBIF Occurrence. All fields are transcribed from iNat to corresponding GBIF fields, with some values interpreted, e.g.: GPS coordinates are rounded, GBIF Occurrence Status = "PRESENT".

To also make it into GloBI, the iNaturalist Observation also has to have one or more Observation Fields that GloBI recognizes. Per GloBI's "Contribute" page, their GitHub repo maps iNaturalist Observation Fields to GloBi's "Interaction Type". Any of the listed iNat Fields show up in GloBi with the corresponding "Interaction Type". There are already >170!

For example, Row 45 of that table shows that the iNaturalist Observation Field "Interaction: Visited flower of" corresponds to the GlobalBiotic Interaction Type "visits flowers of".

The GloBI link on my original iNaturalist Observation lists all iNat obs showing that:

• Bombus impatiens
• visits flowers of
• Vernonia noveboracensis

I seem to be the only person to have documented this interaction on iNat!

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Data Sources

Collections Management

Data Standards

• develops, ratifies and promotes standards and guidelines for the recording and exchange of data about organisms
• and acts as a forum for discussing all aspects of biodiversity information management through meetings, online discussions, and publications.