While attending the opening of the Wild Medicine Exhibit at the New York Botanical Gardens, we were pleasantly surprised to have our eyes stumble upon the gorgeous sculptures of acclaimed Spanish artist Manolo Valdés. Created specifically for Garden’s plant collections, Valdés…
You have just a few days left to see Manolo’s ladies before they scamper off.
“Whodunnit” of Irish potato famine solved
It is the first time scientists have decoded the genome of a plant pathogen and its plant host from dried herbarium samples. This opens up a new area of research to understand how pathogens evolve and how human activity impacts the spread of plant disease.
Phytophthora infestans changed the course of history. Even today, the Irish population has still not recovered to pre-famine levels. “We have finally discovered the identity of the exact strain that caused all this havoc”, says Hernán Burbano from the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology.
For research to be published in eLife, a team of molecular biologists from Europe and the US reconstructed the spread of the potato blight pathogen from dried plants. Although these were 170 to 120 years old, they were found to have many intact pieces of DNA.
“Herbaria represent a rich and untapped source from which we can learn a tremendous amount about the historical distribution of plants and their pests - and also about the history of the people who grew these plants,” according to Kentaro Yoshida from The Sainsbury Laboratory in Norwich.
There are so many reasons why herbaria, like the NYBG’s William and Lynda Steere Herbarium, are important, and now there’s one more!
But first a reminder of what a herbarium is: It is a physical record of the plants of the world. Each specimen has been gathered in the field by a scientist who has also taken detailed notes and photographs, as well as notes on the plant’s location and the time of year. The specimens are brought back to the herbarium where they are described and indexed. Herbarium specimens have been gathered and stored for centuries.
Herbarium specimens are used to describe new species and to determine species relationships. Technology is having a huge impact on herbaria, including genomics which is helping to sort out some sticky cladistic situations. And now, herbaria are providing fascinating new research materials for geneticists and historians working on the history of agriculture, disease, and human migration. Seriously good stuff. ~AR
The peonies are looking spectacular right now and want you to visit them!
It’s Tuesday’s peek into the archives!
A botanical sketch used in creating the Grant caribou diorama in the Hall of North American Mammals, which first opened in 1942.
Pictured: Buck brush and fire weed
(c) AMNH Library
Buckbrush is a plant in the genus Ceanothusthat is native to the United States and commonly eaten by deer. Fireweed is Chamerion angustifolium, and can be found around the world north of the Equator. ~AR
We’re mostly moving away from specific plants this week, in terms of what’s beautiful now, in favor of landscapes. Bright, pulsating, incredibly dramatic, gorgeous, stunningly beautiful landscapes, to be specific.
That said, there are a few standout flowers that you should look for, including that peachy peony and her friends, lily of the valley, and ‘Hinomayo,’ one of the most outstanding shrubs on our grounds.
So what about those landscapes? First there’s our new exhibition, Wild Medicine: Healing Plants Around the World, Featuring The Italian Renaissance Garden in the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory. Nearby in the Conservatory Courtyards (also home to The Four Seasons) you’ll find the hardy waterlilies bursting open in these first warm days of spring.
In the Perennial Garden tulips are making way for charming garden plants like bleeding heart and irises. Walk up the path for the charmingly idyllic Rock Garden, then walk around the bend for the wild beauty of the new Native Plant Garden, and then just a little further to the bombastic pinks and reds of the Azalea Garden.
Everywhere you turn there’s a sight to behold and a perfume on the breeze (just watch out for the Davidia). The lilacs are holding strong, the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden is slowly coming along, and the Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden looks like a patchwork quilt of greens and earthtones.
Things are definitely settling into a pattern here in terms of what’s beautiful. If you check last week’s report, and even the report from two weeks ago, many of the same gardens are holding strong. What can we say? It’s been an extraordinary spring!
So come visit us in the Bronx! You can plan your visit here. For day-to-day updates on what we’re seeing around grounds, be sure to follow us on Instagram and Twitter where we post daily updates from our staff and visitors. Also, need help getting around? Our iPhone app can help out there. It’s free and available in the App Store. ~AR
New York’s Outstanding Urban Gardens | New York Botanical Garden
So pleased to be included in this list along with fellow Bronx institutions Wave Hill and the Bartow-Pell Mansion Museum!
What’s beautiful now? If you ask our horticulturists they’ll say one thing: rain. It’s been a pretty dry spring, and while we have the ability to water deeply, there’s just nothing a plant loves more than an old fashioned rain storm. And like the adage says: May showers bring May flowers …. er, or something.
Just in time for Mother’s Day, we’re seeing a real turn towards the later spring flowers now, away from the cherry blossoms and daffodils of early spring. This week is all about flowering shrubs like lilacs, azaleas, and tree peonies. And then there are the tulips. Oh sooooo many tulips! In an absolute riot of color all over the Home Gardening Center.
In the newly opened Native Plant Garden things are a little more subdued, but still so lovely. Expect lots of beautiful dogwoods and gorgeous drifts of foam flower, Tiarella cordifolia. In the Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden, the Otto Pizza Garden beds, part of Mario Batali’s Kitchen Gardens are looking unmistakably pizza-like.
What’s still beautiful from last week? The Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden has another bloom every day. On Tuesday it was Rosa nutkana. By this weekend there should be a handful more in bloom. The Azalea Garden just gets better with each passing day, and the Native Plant Garden is just awesome, the perfect place to celebrate your mom on Sunday.
So, ready to come hang out with us in the Bronx? Here’s everything you need to know. For day-to-day updates on what we’re seeing around grounds, be sure to follow us on Instagram and Twitter where we post daily updates from our staff and visitors. Also, need help getting around? Our iPhone app can help out there. It’s free and available in the App Store. ~AR
Have you ever dreamed of paddling down the Bronx River, New York City’s only freshwater river? Then come out this Saturday, May 11th and support the Bronx River Alliance at the new Starlight Park! There will be festival fun, canoe rides and all proceeds go to the on-water programming to over 1,000 children and families this season! The Bronx River Alliance is one of the Garden’s vital partners in caring for this important waterway and the land surrounding it. Please support them in this incredibly fun way if you can! ~AR
It was a terribly kept secret, if it was ever a secret at all; the Garden is a fantastic place to go for a run. Our 250-acres are full of hilly paths, paved roads, and soft woodland trails that just scream to be jogged upon, and jogged upon they are; by staff, by Fordham students, by Members, by people from the community, and, apparently, by New York Times reporters. Brian Fidelman recently laced up his sneakers and came for a run here and declared it, “the most scenic and tranquil run in the city.”
What Fidelman does reveal is a secret we haven’t been trying to keep, but that seems to keep itself: You can enter the Garden as early as 6 a.m. with a special pass or level of membership!
So strap on your sneakers and come run with us! Mornings and evenings are, in my humble opinion, the best times. There are fewer Trams to negotiate, fewer people, too. And after 5 p.m., you’re likely to run into me and my colleagues huffing and puffing up the hills. Wave hi! ~AR
(via The Roving Runner: The New York Botanical Garden - NYTimes.com)
City Hall Park in bloom
Do you know the history of City Hall Park? From 1653 to 1699, the area that is now the park was known as the Commons and served as a communal pasture ground for livestock. The park’s western boundary was a Native American trail that later became Broadway.
For more visit http://on.nyc.gov/11BUTVH.
New York City history with a side of blossoming trees is always appropriate reblogging material. ~AR
The tulip impresario of Park Avenue has humble beginnings and an abiding love for the most famous flower of his homeland: Holland. This is a wonderful story of hard work and its sometimes rich payoff. New York City really is home to a million daydreams. It’s amazing how many of them can come true! ~AR
The Zoo for Plants
May is here, and the list of What’s Beautiful Now is longer than ever.
It is thrilling how the early flowers continue to persist thanks to this wonderful, gradual spring that has been free of those pretty normal, intense hot days that are so common in New York City in April (and last year in March).
Daffodils are still around in some spots, and there are a few magnolias still holding on, but mostly we’re beginning to see the flowers that signify the heart of spring: lilacs, azaleas, dogwoods, crab apples, tree peonies, and, the very earliest roses!
This weekend marks the grand opening of our newest garden, the Native Plant Garden! Native wildflowers tend to be a little smaller, a little less showy than their cultivated brethren, so we have been making time to introduce you to some of them on our blog Plant Talk.
There’s really not a bum spot in the Garden right now. Every place you turn, it’s beautiful! And the weather is supposed to be spectacular this weekend, so come hang out with us and enjoy the amazing plants across our 250-acres.
What’s still beautiful? Last week’s tulips, for sure, though most of the flowering cherries of two weeks ago are now just a memory. I should point out, however, that there are many different kinds of flowering cherries, and the most classic, robust ones are in full bloom right now (for proof, check out the photo up top that looks like a fluffy pink Tribble).
Ready to plan your journey to the Bronx? Here’s everything you need to know. For day-to-day updates on what we’re seeing around grounds, be sure to follow us on Instagram and Twitter where we post daily updates from our staff and visitors. Also, need help getting around? Our iPhone app can help out there. It’s free and available in the App Store. ~AR
The tree peonies above the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden are just beginning to bloom and they are amazing!
“Mixed Emotions”
NYBG; April 21, 2013
Artist Philip Haas installation of the Four Seasons in the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory Courtyard at the NYBG (New York Botanical Garden)....
Imagined conversations from bygone times
What do we want?
A robust variety of naturally-occurring flora in bloom for campus beauty and...
Botanical Gardens, Bronx, NY.
People just accept that I love the New York Botanical Garden and look at the pictures of the pretty things.
BTW NYBG I love the new Native Plants...
Rosemary (in NYBG pot) and friend
Love you, Mom <3
Happy National Public Gardens Day! A female carpenter bee visiting the pea vines yesterday. She’s California’s largest bee.
