Bewitching

It's the week of Halloween and I thought I'd tell you something about witches...witch's brooms, that is. I took my first class in horticulture at Ohio State in the spring of 2005 and it was a bit of a learning curve - a determined journey to learn about plants. Tackling the identification of some 200 plants, their common and botanical name was pretty overwhelming. I knew some plants, but not their botanical name. Luckily, I had some folks mentoring my beginning efforts in learning these plants and eventually it became less intimidating.

In December of 2006 I discovered a mass in a pine on campus. It was located near the ROTC building and next to the OSU ice rink.. I got closer for a look and it seemed to be a tight wad of pine branches with miniature cones - sort of like a Mugo Pine growing out of a limb some 12' up in the air. What's is this?

I learned it was a witch's broom - a strange thing that occurs on woody plants where a disease or deformity occurs and limbs shoot out of a point on a branch. This bundle of twigs supposedly looks like a witch's broom, but it still looks like a Mugo pine on steroids to me. Cuttings can be taken from the "clump" and grafted onto rootstock to sometimes grow an unusual, even appealing tree. This is how new cultivars are sometimes discovered. An example would be, Picea orientalis 'Tom Thumb Gold'. I made some cuttings for my professor and he attempted to make this work. A noisy squirrel had chosen the branch clump as his habitat and he fussed at me for messing with this. I don't believe the grafting took on the rootstock. However...

Recently I was driving westbound on Ackerman Road near the Red Roof Inn and saw something out of the corner of my eye. I did a double take to the pine where a mass of branches thickened in an area. I turned at the next street into the OSU student family housing complex to find the tree. I thought, it's got to be a witch's broom.

I wonder if there is some golden opportunity here?


OK, you hort people....graft this!

Several days later I went in search of witches broom plants in the OSU Chadwick Arboretum where I volunteer. Adri had tipped me off to brooms in the Conifer Garden along Lane Avenue. She gave me the accession number and plant name so I went on a hunt. I needed to document more plants and dedicated benches and trees in that area anyway.

The Picea pungens 'St. Mary's Broom' is quite the small thing next to the collection of blue spruces with the OSU Schotteinstein Center backdrop.
And the Picea orientalis 'Shadow's Broom' - Oriental Spruce is also quite a small thing. These are new plantings and need protection (hence the cages) from critters that might nibble the needles. These small witch broom conifers grow slowly and stay small.

The Pinus densiflora 'Rata' broom is a lovely little plant that actually looks like a broom. It is a Rata Japanese Red Pine witches broom.

I wonder if it bewitched from one of my favorite pines in the arboretum, the Japanese Red Pine, Pinus densiflora. This one is located near the Agriculture Engineering building. It shimmers on the landscape and gets lovelier with age.

There's another one of these in the Conifer Gardens with the Arena as a backdrop.

Directing the resource of storm water to a perfect use.

Recently I discovered a rain garden swale at the Credit Union of Ohio Hilliard location.

Somewhere in all that, a drain outlet comes from the street curb storm water drain to direct storm water to the swale area and recharge the watershed.

This area is near a traffic circle or roundabout where it seems that in all directions the storm water funnels to swale areas that are full of wildflowers. There's an initiative in Franklin County to put in rain gardens of all kinds. It's needed as we have enough developments aka asphalted parking lots and roads, that shed the water to storm drains and when there's a lot of rain, the volume and velocity of storm water overtaxes the system. The rain gardens act as a filtration system to remove pollutants from street storm water runoff.
Another rain garden is located at the Ohio Department of Wildlife offices on Route 33.

The garden is a combination butterfly, hummingbird and rain garden.



Rainwater collected from the roof is directed from the downspout to the dry stream bed to flow towards the garden.
Signage information directs your knowledge about plants that serve as hosts, nectar or seeds sources by certain species.

New Audubon Center in Columbus

Grange Audubon Center Metro Park Opens

Columbus, Ohio - August 2009

The Whittier Peninsula is located just south of downtown Columbus. Audubon Ohio has built a nature center that will provide vital educational services to central Ohio – especially the city of Columbus and its public schools. Audubon increases environmental awareness through education, but also will provides cross-curricular nature-based education designed to improve the academic performance of students and schools in all areas.

The Grange Insurance Audubon Center is the first in the country to be built so close to the heart of a major city- only one mile from downtown Columbus. It is the focus of a major urban reclamation and redevelopment project that involves Audubon, the City of Columbus, and Franklin County Metro Parks. The facility will be located within a new public park, The Scioto Audubon Metro Park, on the Scioto River.

The center will act as a community gathering place for those who live and work downtown, as well as everyone in the Central Ohio area.

The Audubon Center will also serve as a model for sustainable design thereby promoting the economic, health and aesthetic benefits of green building. Students and visitors alike will learn first-hand the benefits of “going green.” Plans for the Center depict a green facility of 18,000 net usable square feet built with recycled construction materials. Heating and Cooling will be provided by alternative energy sources.

http://grange.audubon.org/

Where you see the water tower there was once a large Lazarus Warehouse where we bought our Amana refrigerator. The warehouse primarily housed furniture and electronics and stored department store displays. This is located close to downtown Columbus and we are excited about having this in an urban, somewhat neglected, area. The City of Columbus has yet to move their impound lot from the area. When that lot is cleared and environmental concerns are addressed, the park can expand. If you enlarge the water tower photo, you can see where a climbing wall is under construction.

The Grange Insurance Audubon Center is an agent of conservation. The Scioto Audubon Metro Park is housed in the Sioto River-Greenlawn Important Bird Area (IBA). This designation requires us to protect and enhance the ecosystem to sustain critical bird species.

http://grange.audubon.org/About_Conservation.html

Patterns on the glass hopefully will deter birds from collisions.

Approaching the building, the rain from the roof is directed in several ways to rain gardens or wet areas with water loving plants. Large rocks provide stepping stones over the ponds, but the park is handicap accessible. The red-orange downspouts funnels the water underneath the sidewalk to the retention pond.

The Scioto River flows through downtown Columbus and the Audubon Center is located on the river. A deck overlooks birding, fish, dragonfly, turtle and other wildlife activity.

Egrets and great blue heron fish.

A bike path runs between the river and the building.

One person biked there from Clintonville.

I don't know much about bike trails, but there is an interesting website at:

http://www.bikely.com/listpaths/country/254/region/157/city/10278

A large mulberry tree was saved providing great shade.

A number of groups were invited to participate at the opening.

Franklin Park Conservatory focused on edible gardens with samples of sprouts.

Columbus Audubon focused on habitat and the work they do.

SWACO provided recycling information.

OSU Chadwick Arboretum & Learning Gardens set up was in a windy, remote spot but our tent shaded us from the sun. We laid the display on the table as the wind kept blowing it over. Information was available on the arboretum and gardens and samples of coleus to pot up provided hands on activity. I worked the Saturday afternoon shift.

Next to us - Franklin County Master Gardeners set up. Even with tie downs, it blew down.

Friends of the Scioto River set up a display, but I neglected to capture it. I was distracted by their recycled pencils, fossils and mollusks.

A chain directs rain water to the rocks.

Metro Parks had children's activities on a shaded deck.

Recycled plastic Adirondack rockers for the deck.

The downspout directs rain to a small pond.

A bird feeder near the pond is a lookout spot from viewers inside.

The ceiling is decorated with birds to know.

A site map indicated ecologically sustainable areas of focus to serve as an educational tool for visitors. Of course the green building was user friendly and educational itself.

Green design focused on a number of energy construction features.

The Audubon store was inviting.

Nice classrooms! AV friendly and a catering kitchen!

This rain garden is the largest I've seen to date.

Parking lots had pervious pavement, a large rain garden between them and signage indicating who could park in the closest spots.

What a great place to take visitors and show off our great new Columbus addition!