Petersham Grange No. 95 will begin its 2014 season on Tuesday, March 4 with a program about agriculture in Paraguay. Lynne Amsden of Holden, a Grange member and Crop Volunteer, will present a show of slides from her visit to that country. The Grange meets at 7:30 pm in the Congregational Church Hall on North Main Street in Petersham. The program is open to the public, and there will be coffee and refreshments after the meeting.
Led by Emerald Necklace docent Barbara Balasa, this informal talk on Sunday, March 2, from 1 – 2:30, focuses on all things coniferous and will feature a hands-on exhibit of a variety of cones from North America, including the infamous “widow-maker.†The program begins at the Shattuck Visitor Center located in the Back Bay Fens across the street from the Museum of Fine Arts, and is free and open to the public. Image from www.travelinggardener.com.
Come to the Bourne United Methodist Church on Sandwich Road in Bourne on Monday, March 10 at noon and meet Les Lutz, new director of horticulture at Heritage Museum and Gardens. He will use a PowerPoint presentation to introduce us to bonsai, followed by a demonstration of how to start with nursery stock and end up with a beginning bonsai specimen. The free program is sponsored by the Aptucxet Garden Club.
The Garden Club Federation of Massachusetts will present a horticultural morning with Betty Saunders on Monday, March 3, beginning at 10 am at South Church, 41 Central Street in Andover. Garden keeper of Massachusetts Horticultural Society’s bountiful vegetable garden at Elm Bank, Betty shows us how to grow delicious vegetables. $5 payable at the door. For more information contact Betsy Williams at 978-470-0911 or email betsy@betsywilliams.com.
Explore how ecology can inform landscape design – creating environments that are rich, ecologically sound, and “of their place” – while they are dynamic systems that change over time, on Wednesday, March 5, beginning at 7 pm at the Cambridge Public Library, 449 Broadway in Cambridge. The lecture is free and is sponsored by Grow Native Massachusetts.
Darrel Morrison, the speaker, has been inspired by Jens Jensen, Aldo Leopold, and the native landscape with its patterns and processes. Learn about his exceptional projects: the Native Plant Garden at the University of Wisconsin Arboretum, the recent Native Flora Garden Extension at Brooklyn Botanic Garden, and others.
The 2014 regional meeting of the Northeast Dragonfly Society of the Americas, to be held June 26 – 29 in Binghamton, New York, recalls one of the earliest US meetings, an informal gathering hosted by Nick and Ailsa Donnelly the weekend of 4 July 1982. That meeting drew 21 participants plus families (a large fraction of the odonatists in North America at the time!), with participants coming from as far away as Florida and Oklahoma. Nannothemis bella (Elfin Skimmer) and Cordulegaster obliqua (Arrowhead Spiketail) were added to the already large Broome County list, and we hope to continue this fine tradition.
The Broome County area (including parts of Chenango and Cortland Counties, and Susquehanna Co., Pennsylvania) has a rich odonate fauna, but there are opportunities to find additional species. The Susquehanna River close to Binghamton was the place where Ophiogomphus howei (Pygmy Snaketail) was found in 1967, after having “disappeared†for 43 years following the 1924 find of the original male in Massachusetts and female in Pennsylvania. The river has a rich ode fauna, is easily accessible, and will be one of the main features of the meeting.
One of our prime spots will be Jam Pond, one of the finest bogs in the state. Although having one of the longest lived colonies of Aeshna subarctica (Subarctic Daner) in the United States, it has never yielded any species of Somatochlora, though a few have been seen over the years. Late June will be a prime time to find abundant Enallagma annexum, all intergraded with Enallagma vernale (Vernal Bluet). (However, we will not find A. subarctica, which flies from mid August until late September.)
Another site is Wier’s Pond, in northern Pennsylvania, which is a Nature Conservancy property featuring both Lanthus vernalis (Southern Pygmy Clubtail) and L. parvulus (Northern Pygmy Clubtail), and has apparently stable colonies of Coenagrion resolutum (Taiga Bluet) and Gomphaeschna furcillata (Harlequin Darner). There are numerous additional sites: The Chenango Valley State Park (where Aeshna mutata was recently found), Otselic Bog (another fine kettlehole bog), Geneganslet Creek, where three species of Calopteryx can be found together; Hawkins Pond and Greenwood Park (Broome County Parks) with several species of interest, such as Boyeria grafiana (Oscellated Darner) and Enallagma traviatum (Slender Bluet) (we are in the zone of intergradation between subspecies traviatum and westfalli).
ORGANIZERS: Ailsa and Nick Donnelly and Bryan Pfeiffer
REGISTRATION: You must register by March 1, 2014 in order for organizers to obtain necessary permits. To register send an email to Bryan Pfeiffer (bryan@bryanpfeiffer.com).
Lodging options in the Binghamton area, including camping, will be available to registrants.
The Friends of Copley Square, a non-profit organization that provides funding to assist the City of Boston with the preservation, maintenance, and beautification of the Copley Square, will host its fourth annual Mardi Gras Celebration on Friday, February 28, 2014 at 7:30 p.m. The event will be held at The Fairmont Copley Plaza.
The evening will bring the feeling of the French Quarter into the heart of Boston’s Back Bay. The event will include a New Orleans dinner buffet, live music by The Bo Winiker Band and the Slippery Sneakers Zydeco Band, dancing, and auction prizes. Guests are encouraged to come in festive Mardi Gras attire, including masks if desired.
Individual tickets are $175 per person. For revelers who want to make a night of it, guests may purchase two tickets to the event, as well as accommodations on the evening of February 28 donated by The Fairmont Copley Plaza and The Lenox Hotel, for $400 per couple. Hotel availability is limited so guests are encouraged to buy tickets early.
To purchase tickets, please visit www.friendsofcopleysquare.org. All of the proceeds from the event benefit The Friends of Copley Square. The organization’s activity includes maintenance of the fountain, care of the trees and the development of programming to create a vibrant park for all to enjoy.
For more information on The Friends of Copley Square or to make a reservation, visit www.friendsofcopleysquare.org or email friendsofcopleysquare@gmail.com. The Friends of Copley Square is a registered 501(c)3 organization.
Quabbin Reservoir played a vital role in the reintroduction of the Bald Eagle to Massachusetts. Join Andrew Vitz, State Ornithologist with Mass Division of Fisheries and Wildlife, for a presentation on the extirpation of Bald Eagles and their steady increase since their reintroduction up through the 2013 breeding season. This event is located at the Quabbin Visitor’s Center in Belchertown, which is handicapped accessible. The talk is from 2:00 – 3:00 P.M. and is open to the public. Below is a picture of Governor Duval Patrick banding an eagle at the Reservoir.
On Thursday, March 6th, from 7 – 10, The Esplanade Association and Marathon Sports invite you to join them for The Final Stretch – a party that celebrates the arrival of spring and Marathon season in Boston. Whether you love to run or just want to cheers to the end of a long winter, everyone is welcomed to join in the festivities. The party will take place at Dillons Restaurant & Bar located at 955 Boylston St., Boston.
Don’t miss a great night of socializing, drinks, dancing, and fundraising for the Charles River Esplanade, home to Boston’s most popular running route. Event tickets* are $25 and all proceeds will benefit The Esplanade Association.
Visit The Final Stretch web page to purchase tickets and get additional information about the event, including 2014 Committee Members and Event Sponsors. Proceeds from the evening will benefit the restoration and enhancement of the Charles River Esplanade.
*Ticket price includes 1 drink ticket and an array of appetizers. Must be 21 or older to attend.
We received the following news from the Arnold Arboretum, and know our readers will be interested to learn more about this famous scientist in our midst. We wish him all the best. For the complete story visit http://arboretum.harvard.edu/saluting-a-paragon-of-plants/.
Throughout its 140-year history, the Arnold Arboretum has advanced our understanding of biodiversity through the work of some of the most significant people in plant science. Among this select group is Senior Research Scientist Peter Del Tredici, who retires from the Arboretum in January 2014 after 35 years. Over that time, Peter has made many indelible contributions to the stewardship and study of the living collections as well as to the fields of plant morphology, plant exploration, public horticulture, urban ecology, and the science of climate change. A uniting theme in his work has been to bridge the gaps that traditionally separate the fields of landscape design, horticulture, and ecology.
Peter began his career at the Arboretum in 1979 as an assistant propagator in the Arboretum’s Dana Greenhouses. Over three subsequent decades at the Arboretum, Peter has been recognized for his research on an array of plants and plant families, including Ginkgo biloba, conifers and dwarf conifers, magnolias (Magnolia spp.), stewartias (Stewartia spp.), and hemlocks (Tsuga spp.). Since 1984, Peter has also curated the Larz Anderson Bonsai Collection, conducting extensive research into their origins and leading a comprehensive restoration effort to return them to their traditional design. He has won numerous awards including the Jackson Dawson Memorial Medal from the Massachusetts Horticultural Society in 1986, the Arthur Hoyt Scott Garden and Horticultural Award in 1999, and the Veitch Memorial Medal from The Royal Horticultural Society in 2013.
Deeply interested in the Arboretum’s historical work in Asia and the introduction of Asian plants, Peter participated in eight collecting expeditions to China for the Arboretum: Hubei Province (1994), Zhejiang Province (1989 and 1995), Jilin Province (1997), Guizhou Province (2002), Jiangxi Province (2004), Sichuan Province (2005), and Chongqing Province (2007). He has also collected a wide variety of plants in various parts of North America. The author of more than 150 scientific and popular articles, Peter has contributed extensively to the Arboretum’s journal, Arnoldia, as writer of more than 60 articles, member of the editorial committee, and as editor from 1989 to 1992.
From 1992 to 2003, Peter served as Director of Living Collections, stewarding the care and expansion of Arboretum plant holdings and contributing to efforts to improve plant health and to embrace more sustainable methods of landscape maintenance. Through his leadership, the Arboretum renovated its 100-year-old drainage system to improve the hydrology of the landscape, redesigned Chinese Path in what is now the Explorers Garden, and redesigned the summit of Peters Hill.
In recent years as Senior Research Scientist, Peter has turned his attention to the study of adaptive plants in urban environments. In addition to teaching Harvard students on this topic at the Graduate School of Design, he championed the establishment of the Arboretum’s Bussey Brook Meadow as a preserve for the long-term study of urban ecology and organismic succession in disturbed landscapes. His 2010 book Wild Urban Plants of the Northeast: A Field Guide is considered a seminal work in the study of emergent vegetation, providing an objective reassessment of the critical role that naturally-occurring plants play in the health and ecological cycling of urban environments.
