#long-leaf sugarbush

[thebotanicalarcade]

n590_w1150 by Biodiversity Heritage Library Via Flickr: The botanist's repository, for new, and rare plants :. London :Printed by T. Bensley, and published by the author ... :1797-[1815]. biodiversitylibrary.org/page/36003835

[toldnews-blog]

New Post has been published on https://toldnews.com/science/syrup-is-as-canadian-as-a-maple-leaf-that-could-change-with-the-climate/

Syrup Is as Canadian as a Maple Leaf. That Could Change With the Climate.

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PAKENHAM, Ontario — By 9:30 a.m. the line for Fulton’s Pancake House and Sugarbush had snaked out the door and down the driveway toward the parking lot, like the day a new iPhone goes on sale.

But the restaurant, roughly 40 miles southwest of Ottawa, isn’t brand-new. It’s in its 50th year, and its star attraction, maple syrup, is much older. It was invented by Native Americans long before Europeans arrived in the Americas.

“Maple is a social crop,” said Shirley Fulton-Duego, the owner. “It’s the first crop of the year and a sign that spring is here.”

Fulton’s sits on 400 wooded acres in Southern Ontario, and Mrs. Fulton-Duego is a fourth-generation maple syrup producer. Her children help her run the business, and three of her grandchildren are already making their own syrup and selling it under the label Triple Trouble.

But should the Triple Trouble generation have grandchildren one day, it’s not clear they’ll be able to take over the family business. A growing body of research suggests that warming temperatures and loss of snowpack linked to climate change may significantly shrink the range where it’s possible to make maple syrup.

In fact, climate change is already making things more volatile for syrup producers. In 2012, maple production fell by 54 percent in Ontario and by 12.5 percent in Canada overall, according to data from the Canadian government, because of an unusually warm spring.

Canada produces roughly 70 percent of the world’s maple syrup. That was worth about $370 million in 2017.

Warm weather can hurt syrup production because the process depends on specific temperature conditions: daytime highs above freezing with nighttime lows below freezing. This specific variation — which tends to happen as winter turns to spring, and fall into winter — causes pressure differences in the trees that allow the sap to flow. And it’s the sap that the farmers boil to create maple syrup.

To release the sap, maple producers make a small hole in the tree and insert a tap that allows it to spill out. But there’s only a small window of time when conditions are right.

“You’re really only talking six to eight weeks,” said Mark Isselhardt, a sugar maple expert at the University of Vermont. “Everyday that you don’t get sap flow has the potential to really impact the total yield for that operation.”

But because of climate change, some years those key temperatures are more elusive.

Instead of six or eight weeks to produce syrup in 2012, the Fultons had just 13 days. “We started the 8th of March and finished the 21st of March,” Mrs. Fulton-Duego said.

“That type of condition will happen more often and it can have an impact like the impact it had in 2012,” said Daniel Houle, a biologist at the Quebec Ministry of Forests, Wildlife and Parks.

In addition to the shorter tapping window, spring is also arriving earlier. The phenomenon is called season creep and it means that fall ends later as well.

That creates more headaches for producers, and not only in Canada, because the timing of putting in taps is crucial. “I’m in my sixties,” said Helen Thomas, executive director of the New York Maple Producers Association and a syrup producer. “When I was a kid, my dad had the rule that you tapped around March 15th.” This year, they were tapping in late January.

At first glance, the scene Fulton’s sugarbush corresponds perfectly with the bucolic picture typically associated with maple syrup. There are sleigh rides and children, their faces stained with maple taffy, squirming with energy across from the sugar camp where the alchemy that transformed maple sap into syrup was performed.

Production techniques, though, are thoroughly modern. For now, that has helped the farm to adapt.

While many imagine sap collecting into metal buckets attached to trees, the Fultons and most other syrup producers now use plastic taps connected to long lines of food-grade plastic tubing. The tubes zigzag through acres of forest from tree to tree before pouring out into collection tank. Because the system is cleaner than older methods, it allows producers to tap earlier without fear that the trees will plug the holes, the way a scab covers a cut, before the sap begins to flow. On the Fulton’s sugarbush, the taps were in the trees weeks before the sap ran.

To help coax the sap out of the trees, producers use vacuum pumps. “We’ve seen that you get basically double the amount of sap when you use vacuum,” Mr. Isselhardt said.

But the weather conditions still need to be right. And, of course, you still need trees.

Maples need to be about 40 years old before they can be tapped, though they don’t come into their prime, according to Ms. Thomas, until they’re about 90 years old. “If I planted maple trees today, it would be my grandchildren that would be harvesting the sap from them,” she said.

But a recent study suggests that the changing climate is a threat to that process of growth and renewal. Andrew B. Reinmann, an ecologist at the City University of New York, along with colleagues at Boston University and the United States Department of Agriculture, looked at what happens to trees when snowpack declines.

Snowpack is important because, when temperatures dip, it acts as a blanket over the ground that prevents the soil, and the tree roots that reside in it, from freezing. By scraping off snow from some of the forest plots at the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest in New Hampshire during the first four to six weeks of winter, Dr. Reinmann and his colleagues were able to mimic the delayed snowfall that is predicted by century’s end in the National Climate Assessment.

“After the first year of snow removal, growth rates of the sugar maple trees declined by 40 percent or so, and growth rates remained suppressed between 40 and 55 percent below their growth rates prior to the start of the experiments,” Dr. Reinman said.

Dr. Reinman has also been running a separate experiment where he heats up the soils to see if the increase in warmer temperatures linked to an earlier spring would offset losses from frost damage. So far, his results suggest that it doesn’t.

Diane M. Kuehn, a professor at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry, has researched the perceptions of climate change by maple syrup producers. “What I heard frequently from people was that they’re not concerned about themselves during their lifetime,” she said, “But they are concerned about future generations and their families.”

That appeared to be on the mind of Mrs. Fulton-Duego. “Most sugar makers are family farms and those family farms hold this land and hold this space for the next generation,” she said.

[junecsea]

for the botanical asks: baby's breath, foxglove, and sugarbush, pls. 😊

baby’s breath: 5 things you associate yourself with:Uhh... Great Blue Herons, bagpipes, long-leaf pines, the constellation Cassiopeia, and dog-eared pages.

I guess that’s what this question meant. 

foxglove: what is your favorite color and in what shade?

Hmmm. The kind of light blue/purple the sky is at dusk? Also really fond of deep, dark greens. 

sugarbush: do you have sweet tooth? if yes, what’s your favorite sweets? if no, why?

Oh boy. Yeah, I do. 

I really love jellybeans and samoa girl scout cookies.

Thank you for the ask!!

[biofunmy]

Syrup Is as Canadian as a Maple Leaf. That Could Change With the Climate.

Want climate news in your inbox? Sign up here for Climate Fwd:, our email newsletter.

PAKENHAM, Ontario — By 9:30 a.m. the line for Fulton’s Pancake House and Sugarbush had snaked out the door and down the driveway toward the parking lot, like the day a new iPhone goes on sale.

But the restaurant, roughly 40 miles southwest of Ottawa, isn’t brand-new. It’s in its 50th year, and its star attraction, maple syrup, is much older. It was invented by Native Americans long before Europeans arrived in the Americas.

“Maple is a social crop,” said Shirley Fulton-Duego, the owner. “It’s the first crop of the year and a sign that spring is here.”

Fulton’s sits on 400 wooded acres in Southern Ontario, and Mrs. Fulton-Duego is a fourth-generation maple syrup producer. Her children help her run the business, and three of her grandchildren are already making their own syrup and selling it under the label Triple Trouble.

But should the Triple Trouble generation have grandchildren one day, it’s not clear they’ll be able to take over the family business. A growing body of research suggests that warming temperatures and loss of snowpack linked to climate change may significantly shrink the range where it’s possible to make maple syrup.

In fact, climate change is already making things more volatile for syrup producers. In 2012, maple production fell by 54 percent in Ontario and by 12.5 percent in Canada overall, according to data from the Canadian government, because of an unusually warm spring.

Canada produces roughly 70 percent of the world’s maple syrup. That was worth about $370 million in 2017.

Warm weather can hurt syrup production because the process depends on specific temperature conditions: daytime highs above freezing with nighttime lows below freezing. This specific variation — which tends to happen as winter turns to spring, and fall into winter — causes pressure differences in the trees that allow the sap to flow. And it’s the sap that the farmers boil to create maple syrup.

To release the sap, maple producers make a small hole in the tree and insert a tap that allows it to spill out. But there’s only a small window of time when conditions are right.

“You’re really only talking six to eight weeks,” said Mark Isselhardt, a sugar maple expert at the University of Vermont. “Everyday that you don’t get sap flow has the potential to really impact the total yield for that operation.”

But because of climate change, some years those key temperatures are more elusive.

Instead of six or eight weeks to produce syrup in 2012, the Fultons had just 13 days. “We started the 8th of March and finished the 21st of March,” Mrs. Fulton-Duego said.

“That type of condition will happen more often and it can have an impact like the impact it had in 2012,” said Daniel Houle, a biologist at the Quebec Ministry of Forests, Wildlife and Parks.

In addition to the shorter tapping window, spring is also arriving earlier. The phenomenon is called season creep and it means that fall ends later as well.

That creates more headaches for producers, and not only in Canada, because the timing of putting in taps is crucial. “I’m in my sixties,” said Helen Thomas, executive director of the New York Maple Producers Association and a syrup producer. “When I was a kid, my dad had the rule that you tapped around March 15th.” This year, they were tapping in late January.

At first glance, the scene Fulton’s sugarbush corresponds perfectly with the bucolic picture typically associated with maple syrup. There are sleigh rides and children, their faces stained with maple taffy, squirming with energy across from the sugar camp where the alchemy that transformed maple sap into syrup was performed.

Production techniques, though, are thoroughly modern. For now, that has helped the farm to adapt.

While many imagine sap collecting into metal buckets attached to trees, the Fultons and most other syrup producers now use plastic taps connected to long lines of food-grade plastic tubing. The tubes zigzag through acres of forest from tree to tree before pouring out into collection tank. Because the system is cleaner than older methods, it allows producers to tap earlier without fear that the trees will plug the holes, the way a scab covers a cut, before the sap begins to flow. On the Fulton’s sugarbush, the taps were in the trees weeks before the sap ran.

To help coax the sap out of the trees, producers use vacuum pumps. “We’ve seen that you get basically double the amount of sap when you use vacuum,” Mr. Isselhardt said.

But the weather conditions still need to be right. And, of course, you still need trees.

Maples need to be about 40 years old before they can be tapped, though they don’t come into their prime, according to Ms. Thomas, until they’re about 90 years old. “If I planted maple trees today, it would be my grandchildren that would be harvesting the sap from them,” she said.

But a recent study suggests that the changing climate is a threat to that process of growth and renewal. Andrew B. Reinmann, an ecologist at the City University of New York, along with colleagues at Boston University and the United States Department of Agriculture, looked at what happens to trees when snowpack declines.

Snowpack is important because, when temperatures dip, it acts as a blanket over the ground that prevents the soil, and the tree roots that reside in it, from freezing. By scraping off snow from some of the forest plots at the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest in New Hampshire during the first four to six weeks of winter, Dr. Reinmann and his colleagues were able to mimic the delayed snowfall that is predicted by century’s end in the National Climate Assessment.

“After the first year of snow removal, growth rates of the sugar maple trees declined by 40 percent or so, and growth rates remained suppressed between 40 and 55 percent below their growth rates prior to the start of the experiments,” Dr. Reinman said.

Dr. Reinman has also been running a separate experiment where he heats up the soils to see if the increase in warmer temperatures linked to an earlier spring would offset losses from frost damage. So far, his results suggest that it doesn’t.

Diane M. Kuehn, a professor at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry, has researched the perceptions of climate change by maple syrup producers. “What I heard frequently from people was that they’re not concerned about themselves during their lifetime,” she said, “But they are concerned about future generations and their families.”

That appeared to be on the mind of Mrs. Fulton-Duego. “Most sugar makers are family farms and those family farms hold this land and hold this space for the next generation,” she said.

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Australia's National and State Flowers

01 of 10

Waves of Color Across the Country

Australia is covered with the glorious and varied colors of an abundance of wildflowers. Each state and territory has its own flower, and Australia has its own national flower. As you drive through the Australian countryside, you are sure to spot many of these native flowers.

Continue to 2 of 10 below.

02 of 10

Australia’s National Flower: The Golden Wattle

Image from Scott Gibbons/Getty Images

You'll find the golden wattle, or Acacia pycnantha, growing in the wild in many parts of Australia, such as in South Australia's Eyre Peninsula, western Victoria, and southern inland areas of New South Wales. It typically grows to about 13 to 26 feet.

Acacia is the largest genus in the family Mimosaceae, the Mimosa family, which is mainly tropical and sub-tropical. Mature golden wattle plants are said to be reasonably frost- and drought-tolerant. The specimen here was planted in the Royal Botanic Gardens Sydney in 1987.

Because native golden wattle grew naturally in the Australian Capital Territory and had other desirable features including design potential, it had popular support to be Australia's national flower. It was proclaimed Australia's national flower in 1988, the year of Australia's bicentenary. In 1992, Sept. 1 was formally declared National Wattle Day.

Continue to 3 of 10 below.

03 of 10

Australian Capital Territory: Royal Bluebell

Simon Foale/Getty Images

The royal bluebell, Wahlenbergia gloriosa, is the floral emblem of the Australian Capital Territory. It's native to the region, and that was the main criterion for choosing it as the floral emblem. But other desirable features of the royal bluebell include horticultural merit and design potential, both in naturalistic and stylized representations.

Wahlenbergia gloriosa belongs to the Campanulaceae family. It is a small perennial herb with oblong leaves about an inch long. The leaf margins are conspicuously waved.

The violet-blue flowers are up to an inch or so in diameter and often appear to have a paler center because of the light blue base of the petals combined with the purple style, which ends in two white stigmas. The flowers may be erect or nodding and are carried on long, slender stems.

A related species belonging to the Campanulaceae family is the great blue lobelia, also known as the cardinal flower.

In the Australian Capital Territory, the royal bluebell can be found in sub-alpine woodland. It is a legally protected plant throughout its occurrence in the wild.

Continue to 4 of 10 below.

04 of 10

New South Wales: Waratah

Auscape/UIG/Getty Images

The waratah, Telopea speciosissima, is the state flower of New South Wales. It belongs to the Proteaceae family, which includes the protea or sugarbush.

It is fairly widespread on the Central Coast and nearby mountains and grows mainly in open forest as a shrub up to 13 feet tall. It also grows and flourishes in gardens.

The waratah is distinguished by a mass of deep red flowers grouped in rounded heads two to four inches in diameter surrounded by crimson bracts. It was proclaimed the official floral emblem of New South Wales in 1962. The waratah flowers from September to November with nectar-seeking birds acting as pollinators.

Telopea is derived from the Greek telopos, meaning “seen from afar.” Speciosissima is the superlative of the Latin speciosus, meaning “beautiful” or “handsome.” Waratah is the Aboriginal name for the species.

Continue to 5 of 10 below.

05 of 10

Northern Territory: Sturt’s Desert Rose

TED MEAD/Getty Images

Sturt's desert rose (also known as Sturt desert rose), Gossypium sturtianum, is the floral emblem of Australia's Northern Territory.

The specific and varietal names, sturtianum, honor Australian explorer Capt. Charles Sturt (1795-1869), who first collected the species “in the beds of the creeks on the Barrier Range” during his journey to central Australia in 1844 to 1845. Gossypium belongs to the hibiscus family, Malvaceae, which is widespread in tropical and temperate regions of the world. It is related to the cotton plant, which also belongs to the Malvaceae family.

Sturt's desert rose forms a relatively compact shrub about 3 feet with dark green round-to-oval leaves usually with black stipples. The flowers have mauve petals about two inches long with red bases forming a contrasting center.

Sturt's desert rose has also been known as Darling River rose, cotton rosebush, and Australian cotton.

It can be found on stony or rocky slopes or in dry creek beds around Alice Springs and in the southern part of the Northern Territory, northeastern South Australia, western Queensland, western New South Wales, and parts of northern Western Australia.

Continue to 6 of 10 below.

06 of 10

Queensland: Cooktown Orchid

Getty Images/Grant Dixon

The Cooktown orchid, Dendrobium phalaenopsis, is the state flower of Queensland. Originally thought to be Dendrobium bigibbum, the correct botanical name for the Cooktown orchid has been the subject of speculation and debate.

In fact, when the Cooktown orchid was proclaimed the floral emblem of Queensland in 1959, it was under the botanical name of Dendrobium bigibbum var. phalaenopsis. But it appeared that when British botanist John Lindley (1799-1865) named the plant, it was not to be found near Cooktown, the north Queensland town after which the orchid was named.

In 1880, New South Wales Surveyor-General Robert FitzGerald described Dendrobium phalaenopsis as “obtained near Cooktown.” A color plate of the orchid, which he published in December that year, is said to clearly illustrate the plant now known as the Cooktown orchid, which FitzGerald described as “obtained in northern Queensland.”

The generic name Dendrobium comes the Greek dendron (tree) and bios (life). Many species of this genus are to be found on tree trunks and branches. The specific name phalaenopsis comes from the Greek phalaina (moth). The flower of the Cooktown orchid resembles a moth.

The plants grow to 32 inches tall and have three to 20 flowering canes with three-to-six lance-shaped leaves. Each stem has up to 20 flowers that are shades of lilac and sometimes white. It flowers during the dry season. 

The Cooktown orchid is found in its natural habitat in northern Queensland, from Johnston River near Innisfail south of Cairns to Iron Range in the Cape York Peninsula.

Although found in tropical districts with very high summer rainfall, the Cooktown orchid is not a rainforest species. It grows in exposed situations usually attached to tree trunks.

Continue to 7 of 10 below.

07 of 10

South Australia: Sturt’s Desert Pea

Getty Images/Steve Waters

Sturt's desert pea, Swainsona formosa, is the state flower of South Australia. It was adopted as the state's floral emblem in 1961.

First discovered by the English explorer William Dampier on his 1688 visit to islands off the northwestern Australian coast, the plant's presence was noted by Australian explorer Charles Sturt in 1844 in areas between Adelaide and Central Australia. The flower was named after Sturt to commemorate his exploration of inland Australia.

Sturt's desert pea was formerly called Clianthus formosus and is also known as Willdampia formosa (named after Dampier). The specific name formosa is Latin for “beautiful.”

Sturt's desert pea is a slow-growing, creeping plant with stems and leaves appearing soft gray because of a covering of fine hairs. The flowers stand upright on fleshy stalks, up to 12 inches tall. The large pea flower can be in various shades of red, with a base of deep red to purple to black.

The genus name Swainsona honors English botanist Isaac Swainson, who maintained a private botanic garden near London in the late 18th century. The former name, Clianthus, is now thought to be confined to New Zealand.

Sturt's desert pea can be found in arid woodlands and on open plains, often as an ephemeral after heavy rain. It is able to withstand temperature extremes in inland deserts, and established plants can tolerate light frosts.

A protected species in South Australia, Sturt's desert pea flowers and plants must not be collected on private land without the written consent of the owner. Collection on Crown land is illegal without a permit.

Continue to 8 of 10 below.

08 of 10

Tasmania: Tasmanian Blue Gum

Getty Images/Auscape/UIG

The Tasmanian blue gum, Eucalyptus glololus Labill, is Tasmania's floral emblem.

The Tasmanian blue gum flowers, larger than those of other Tasmanian eucalypts, usually occur singly in the axils of the leaves. Up to three-quarters of an inch in diameter, the flower buds have coarse ribs and are closed by an operculum, or cap, of sepals and petals.

When the blue gum blooms in early summer, the cap is shed, revealing large numbers of white stamens arranged in several rows near the outside. A thick nectar-secreting disc extends partly over the top of the ovary.

Found throughout the Australian island state of Tasmania, including the historic Royal Hobart Botanical Gardens, the Tasmanian blue gum grows largely in southern and eastern Tasmania and in the middle reaches of the Derwent River. It can grow up to 200 feet tall.

It has been introduced in other parts of the world and can be found in California, the Mediterranean region, parts of Africa and India, Chile, Argentina, and New Zealand.

Continue to 9 of 10 below.

09 of 10

Victoria: Common Heath

Getty Images/Auscape/UIG

The common heath, Epacris impressa, has the distinction of being the first flower to be officially proclaimed an Australian state floral emblem.

It was agreed at a meeting in 1951 by representatives of interested government departments, societies, and individuals to name the common heath as the floral emblem of Victoria. The official proclamation of Victoria's state flower was made in 1958.

The generic name Epacris comes from the Greek epi (upon) and akris (hill) and refers to the elevated habitat of some of its species. While the flower is certainly impressive, particularly when blooming en masse, impressa is Latin for “impressed” or “indented” and refers to five dimples on the outside of the basal part of the floral tube.

The flower has a number of color forms: pure white, pale pink, rose pink, crimson, scarlet, and rare double-flowered forms. The pink form is the official state flower of Victoria.

The flowers are tubular and sometimes densely packed around the stem in the leaf axils. This gives the flower cluster a cylindrical, brush-like appearance.

A slender, upright shrub growing to 3 feet or so in height, the common heath flowers from late autumn to late spring, peaking in winter.

In Victoria, the common heath is found in coastal regions and nearby foothills, the Grampians, and the Little Desert. It also grows in New South Wales, South Australia, and Tasmania.

Continue to 10 of 10 below.

10 of 10

Western Australia: Red and Green Kangaroo Paw

Getty Images/David Messent

The red and green kangaroo paw, Anigozanthos manglesii, is Western Australia's floral emblem. Plants of the genus Anigozanthos have an inflorescence bearing a resemblance to the paw of a kangaroo.

The specific name, manglesii, honors an Englishman, Robert Mangles, who raised the red and green kangaroo paw in his Berkshire garden in the 1830s from seed sent from Australia.

The red and green kangaroo paw is a low shrub growing from an underground stem, with leaves about two-to-four feet long. The flowering stem grows to about three feet tall. 

The stem and the bases of the flowers are usually deep red and covered with wooly hairs. The color then changes abruptly to a brilliant green for most of the length of the flower, which splits open to show a smooth, pale green interior.

The red and green kangaroo paw flowers in its natural habitat between August and October. It occurs naturally in Western Australia in heath on sandy soil from the Murchison River in the north to Busselton and Mount Barker in the south and Lake Muir to the east, and on gravel type soil of lateritic origin in the Darling Range.

Sources: The Royal Botanic Garden Sydney, Parliament of Tasmania, and Australian National Botanic Gardens

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