In the 1986 science fiction thriller Aliens, a party of soldiers and advisors has an encounter on a far distant planet with the movie’s monsters. This encounter makes clear to them that these creatures are virtually unstoppable by ordinary means. The main character advocates that they “dust off” and nuke the entire area from orbit. “It’s the only way to be sure…”, she demurs. Some problems have easy solutions.

At Burpee’s Fordhook Farm outside of Philadelphia, with warmer weather at hand, the brown marmorated stink bug—Halyomorpha halys (BMSB)—is on the move again. BMSB is an alien, invasive insect native to deep western Asia that is thought to have been brought here on shipping crates from China sometime in the mid 1990s. BMSB was positively identified only in 2001, but it is a strong flier and good at hitching rides on cargo and vehicles and has rapidly spread from its point of entry in eastern Pennsylvania. It may not yet have resident breeding populations everywhere it’s been recorded, but so far it’s been spotted in 33 U.S. states and several Canadian provinces (see https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-8hW06DporNY/TWqMR-Gd2PI/AAAAAAAAAGQ/DLYfuk2c2BI/s1600/BMSBasof24Feb2011v4_2.JPG).

The initial complaints about BMSB were home invasion. Looking for warmth as temperatures cooled in fall, they come indoors and make themselves at home—and a nuisance throughout winter. They will not damage structures or bite humans or pets, but there can be lots of them in a home. They seek places to hide—behind picture frames and in attic spaces. But on warm days particularly, they fly into windows and lights, drop onto dinner tables during meals, and stink when startled or killed.  However, beyond the great nuisance factor, which should not be minimized, there’s an even bigger problem.

Entomologists at federal, state and private organizations all agree that BMSB populations will explode this summer in the mid Atlantic region. Peach generally suffers stink bug damage, and peach growers there are in for a tough summer. But peach growers will not be alone. Anyone trying to grow almost anything worth growing—apples, pears, grapes, berries, tomatoes, peppers, corn (sweet or field), soybean, hawthorn, butterfly bush, roses, redbud, dogwood, maple, basswood, catalpa, and elm (the list goes on)—is going to have a hard time of it. BMSB turns out to be a significant agricultural pest.

The brown marmorated stink bug, so called because of its marbled or streaked coloration, looks in size and form much like its North American cousins. As adults, their shield-shaped body is almost 0.7 inches long. They exhibit shades of brown or gray with mottling, and the antennae have alternating dark and light bands (for images see http://www.invasive.org/browse/subthumb.cfm?sub=9328).

Stink bugs are sucking insects that extract plant fluids by means of a proboscis that is inserted into fruit, stem, or leaf. They feed on sweet plant juice that is predigested by the enzymes they secrete that breakdown and kill plant tissue, which results in rotten or sunken areas where the feeding took place.

There are some 250 stink bug species that are native to North America, and three of them have traditionally been pests of peach and other fruit crops as well as some ornamental plants. But BMSB has an advantage over our native stink bugs: it is essentially invisible to North American stink bug predators. And because it has no natural enemies here and will feed on (apparently) almost any plant (60 species growing in North America have been indentified so far), its population is unchecked and it is expected to continue spreading to new habitats.

In homes, the best way to control BMSB is to keep it out in the first place. In older homes that are a little leaky, this may be next to impossible. But whatever ways there are to exclude it should be tried—sealing cracks around windows, doors, chimneys and siding; assuring that screens are intact; and removing window air conditioners as cool weather approaches are some examples. These stink bugs tend to congregate on south and west walls of structures in fall. Insecticides can be used around suspected entry points such as windows and doors. Scientists at Rutgers University have tested lots of insecticides against adult BMSB; they found that cyfluthrin, bifenthrin and deltamethrin were effective against BMSB in laboratory tests. Timing of insecticide application is important though. If used too early, the insecticide may breakdown; if applied too late, BMSB may already have invaded your house.

Once inside a house, BMSB should be removed by hand or by means of a vacuum. Use of insecticides inside a house is not recommended.  This is because BMSB that die within walls or in other unreachable places invite a new infestation of pest in the form of dermestid or carpet beetles that will come to feed on the BMSB carcasses.

In the home garden, cyfluthrin, bifenthrin and deltamethrin are insecticides that gardeners can use on ornamentals and some vegetables. Follow warning labels, however, and check with county agricultural agents for more information. If the garden space is not too big or the infestation not too severe, there’s always hand picking. And there is a pheromone trap that has just become available (http://www.agbio-inc.com/index.html). It is said to “work” and to have been developed “…in close association with leading universities and the USDA/ARS.” This may well be a great product. And it is certainly worth trying, but traps for Japanese beetle (Popillia japonica) work well in attracting the pest but seem to attract more beetles than they capture, leaving the rest to feed in your garden.  And killing BMSB by hand is a very unpleasant task:  you have to squeeze them firmly and quickly before they spray.  I know someone who got hit with the mildly acidic and horrid substance on the hand, wrist and forehead.  Yuck!

The most important natural enemy of BMSB in northern China has recently been identified as the small solitary wasp Trissolcus halyomorphae. This wasp parasitizes the eggs of BMSB, affecting up to 70% of them and killing as much as 50% of the potential annual BMSB population. The wasp is currently being studied as a possible biological control agent for BMSB but is not now found in North America. Before it can be released here into nature, it must first be demonstrated that the wasp itself is not an invasive pest. It likely is not, and in the future, management of BMSB populations in and around commercial orchards and other large-scale agricultural operations will almost certainly combine a biological control agent, such as this Chinese wasp, with pesticides and cultural practices.

BMSB is a pest so recently introduced and identified here that scientists are still scrambling to determine the extent of the problem and to evolve solutions. “Nuking it from orbit” will obviously not be among the solutions, and it is not going away. What solutions ultimately settle out will likely be costly, drawn out, and imperfect.

J. P. Morgan, the celebrated financier, famously observed, “If you have to ask the price, you can’t afford it”. I’ve always viewed this quote as a sort of anti-proverb along the lines of “You can’t be too rich or too thin” and “Living well is the best revenge”. These are members-only bromides to comfort the comfortable and disconcert everybody else.

Mr. Morgan made his famous utterance when asked about the cost of maintaining his yacht. But he might as well have been referring to the costs of Old Master paintings, gems, mansions or railroads—all of which he acquired in abundance. I doubt the plutocrat was thinking of the cost of purchasing fresh tomatoes, red peppers or lettuce.

But even J. P. might have paused at the prices on view in today’s grocery produce aisle. “Surely, you jest”, I imagine him thundering. “What species of priceless vegetables might these be? Virtuoso Faberge´ fancies? A still life by the Flemish master Martinus Nellius? Alas, at these mad prices, include me out!”

As I write, U.S. prices of fruits and vegetables are rising at an alarming rate. Yet in January the government’s Economic Research Office and the U.S. Department of Agriculture confidently estimated a modest rise in U.S. grocery prices—a mere 2-3 percent, up from the .8 percent increase in U.S. food prices from 2009 to 2010.

The estimated increase was hardly likely to precipitate howls of outrage from TV’s talking heads or have editorial writers pummeling their keyboards to produce fevered polemics. So, no worries, right? Wrong.

The Associated Press reports February’s increase in wholesale food prices represents the biggest jump in the 36 years. Retail food prices, meanwhile, rose 3.9%, the most since November 1974.

Government economists overlooked a few variables. Take corn, an obvious factor. For starters, there were Iowa’s unseasonably warm July 2010 nights, causing the corn crop to mature too early, resulting in diminished output and higher prices. With rising gas prices, there is increased demand for corn-based ethanol—which already accounts for 12.5% of the U.S. corn production—again lifting prices. And corn reserves are the lowest they’ve been in over 15 years.

The economists must have been blinded to the 15 percent spike in global food prices from October 2010 to January 2011, and the 30 percent price rise in the past year—the biggest jump since the UN started tracking food costs in 1990.

And—no disrespect to Iowa—let’s not forget weather’s impact on global food output. The last year has not just seen a perfect storm or two, but a perfect storm of storms. Devastating droughts and floods in Australia and Russia. Floods in Canada. Low rainfall in Europe and South America. Excessive rain in India. Record-shattering winter freezes in California, Mexico and Florida.

Up to now, America has been insulated from the more extreme food price gyrations. For one thing, Americans spend only 10% of their income on food, while in less developed countries food costs can devour 50% of a family’s budget. Americans have another advantage, too; world food prices are reckoned in dollars and our country remains the world’s leading food producer.

Take the briefest stroll through your local grocery and the folly of the government’s food price projections is apparent in every aisle. Food prices are rapidly increasing. Produce prices have doubled in some parts of the country.

Fresh fruits and vegetables are the most volatile of items in the supermarket. Many foods in a supermarket’s main aisles are more processed food products, than food per se. They are manufactured, rather than grown in a field. Reckoned in real dollars, the prices of fresh fruits and vegetables have doubled since 1980 relative to other grocery items, which have budged only a little.

What’s the sticker-shocked consumer to do? My fellow Americans, the answer to rising food costs is right there in your own back yard. The savings you can realize by starting your own home garden will astonish you.

Let’s talk tomatoes. Right now, medium-sized tomatoes at my local grocer’s are priced from 80 cents to $1.20. A single tomato plant in your home garden will, at a conservative estimate, produce 40 to 50 medium to large fruit in a summer—a bounty that would set you back anywhere from 32 to 48 dollars at the supermarket.

It gets better. A seed packet contains 25 guaranteed seeds out of 30 total. We set the average plant yield at 40 dollars, and multiply it by 25. Your little tomato patch yields you a thousand dollars worth of store bought tomatoes from a seed packet that costs you three or four dollars. Your return on investment? 250 to 1 or 25,000 per cent. J. P. Morgan would not pass up that kind of opportunity.

And your homegrown tomatoes are ruby red, juicy beauties, bursting with just-picked flavor and fragrance—everything those store-bought “virtual tomatoes” aren’t.

The home gardener can reap extraordinary savings on every fruit and vegetable. Your garden of bargains produces a healthy harvest of culinary pleasure, serenely wholesome recreation and out of this world savings. As J. P. might put it. “If you have to ask the price, grow your own.”

The house where we’re staying is located on California’s central coast, which has a subtropical, Mediterranean climate characterized by warm, dry summers and mild winters. It never gets cold here, and in my limited experience along the coast, it never really gets hot; the air temperature is rarely above 75°F. But the sun is intense. Standing without shade directly in the rays of the sun even in late March (let alone early July), your brain seems to boil.

This is an ideal climate for most plants and crops—everything from cut flowers to premium wine grapes to citrus and avocado thrives here. But I planted beet (‘Detroit Dark Red’) and chard (‘Fordhook Giant’) last spring, vegetables that are quite happy in any midwestern or northeastern garden. Here, they never grew to a size worth harvesting. Both cultivars I’ve successfully grown more than once (elsewhere); the poor growth I think was the result of a cool, foggy summer and a garden plot poorly placed in the shade of a nearby tree. With the advent of spring, the days have grown longer and warmer and the sun hotter, and I have expected my beets and chard to bolt, go to seed, and die. They did not and have not. This puzzled me and worried me the way the memory of a mostly forgotten dream lingers and comes back at intervals.

Then it came to me. Many tropical plants flower more or less continuously and their seeds fall to the ground and germinate essentially immediately. This makes good sense in the tropics where the growing season is in effect the whole year long. But temperate plants would not long persist following this strategy and have evolved mechanisms that allow them to tell time by environmental cues. These cues help them coordinate flowering with the growing season and prevent flowering before spring has actually arrived. My beets and chard are still waiting; they never got the message.

Part of my perplexity was that I’d forgotten that beet and chard are the same plant, so why would they not behave in the same way? They differ at the subspecies level only (beet—Beta vulgaris subsp. vulgaris and chard—B. v. subsp. maritima); their different forms reflect breeding that emphasized different plant parts—roots for beet and leaves for chard. More to the point, though, they are winter annuals, or biennials, and complete their life cycle over two growing seasons with an intervening cold period (winter). To flower, they need to experience an adequate period of cold exposure. In this climate, they have not had that and they will not get.

This period of cold exposure would have assured my beets that spring had indeed arrived and that it was safe to flower. It would have induced the physiological process that we call “vernalization”. Vernalization occurs at low (but above-freezing) temperatures, with an effective temperature range that depends on plant species typically between 36 and 50°F. But this can vary. Some grasses are vernalized by temperatures as low as 22°F, and olive can become vernalized at temperatures as high as 55°F. The duration of the required cold period also varies with species but is commonly 30 to 90 days long. Vernalization does not cause flowering; it makes plants ready to flower. Other cues such as lengthening or shortening days are needed to actually bring about flowering.

Vernalization is a metabolically active process that can be disrupted or reversed by periods of warmth. But once it has been established, vernalization represents a cellular change, or a “memory of winter”, as it’s been colorfully called, that is irreversible and stable throughout the life of the plant. This memory dies with the plant and is not passed on to the seed of the next generation. If it were, beet and other winter annuals would not long maintain that growth habit but would become summer annuals and complete their life cycles in the same season that their seed germinated.

The difference between summer annuals and winter annuals, though, is not always hard and fast. There are species in which both growth habits exist. Beet is one of these, and the genetics of the beet biennial growth habit had been worked out by 1936 and shown to be conferred by a single recessive locus. It would be possible to select for genetically identical plants that would differ at this locus only and would behave as winter annuals at one location and as summer annuals at another with a different climate.

An interesting sidebar to vernalization is the derivation of the word, which is attributed to Ukrainian–Soviet agronomist Trofim Lysenko (1898–1976). Lysenko became prominent after the famine and paltry crop harvests that resulted from the forced peasant collectivization in the Soviet Union in the early 1930s. Two types of wheat exist, one with a summer annual growth habit (spring wheat) and the other with a biennial habit (winter wheat). In years with little snowcover, winter wheat crops, sown in the fall, are often severely damaged. Lysenko claimed to have developed a new procedure for cold treating winter wheat that would significantly increase yields as well as cause winter wheat to behave as spring wheat. Furthermore, he falsely claimed that the summer annual trait that his treated winter wheat exhibited was carried over to subsequent generations of seed. Lysenko coined a word for his process that is based on the Russian word for spring wheat; the translation is the English word “vernalization”.

Lysenko’s contention that the environment, rather than genetics, shaped the nature of his wheat fit well with Marxist principles. He became popular with the Soviet press and Stalin appointed him head of the Academy of Agricultural Sciences of the Soviet Union. Under Lysenko, Mendelian genetics was denounced as a bourgeois science and officially abandoned. Scientists who did not subscribe to Lysenko’s ideas, many of which today seem frankly nutty, were censured, sent to the Gulag, and/or executed. Ultimately, Lysenko was debunked, but that did not occur before Soviet cereal production had dropped sharply and an entire generation of Soviet crop breeders had been lost.

Back to my beets: it’s my guess that they would live forever as vegetative plants, their development arrested; it’s the equivalent of eternal youth. But with almost two growing seasons and a “winter” to bulk up, I think they’ll be ready to eat before long.

This story begins earlier this year, just as the very first crocuses peeped from the frosted ground. One cold bright morning, George Ball, the Proprietor of W. Atlee Burpee, the gardening company, discovered a curious-looking green envelope in his mailbox. He noticed the pages gave off a distinct bouquet: verdant, earthy and curiously intoxicating. The letter read:

Salutations, Mister Ball,

Over the years you have proved yourself a steadfast friend of the vegetable community. So it is to you we turn to help broadcast our important new declaration to the community of humans.

Recently, we convened a Congress Of Vegetables, with each of the four main families— the podded , the fruited, the leafy and the rooted—represented. We invited our powerful tuberous cousins, as well as our rare and exotic relatives, the stalks. As you can imagine, Mister Ball, we are a large and colorful clan, greatly varied in size, shape, flavor and texture.

You might observe, Mister Ball, we have been inspired by the American Constitution. Thomas Jefferson was, after all, an avid cultivator of vegetables, as were many of his cosigners. They found inspiration in vegetables—and they likewise inspire us.

It is our duty and our privilege to once and for all declare our Bill Of Rights as vegetables. For too long we have maintained a dignified silence in the face of human neglect, abuse and outright insult bordering on the libelous.

For 10,000 years we have nourished ungrateful people with uncountable harvests of delectable, nutritious food. Humankind must now grant vegetables the respect, consideration and care we merit.

For far too long humans have relegated us to the side dishes of life. In the theatre of cuisine, vegetables serve as supporting players with mere walk-on roles, rather than the culinary stars we surely are.

The Congress of Vegetables hereby claims our God-given rights, and demands that people at last respect us for not only our nutritional value, flavor and texture, but also our distinctive personalities and panoply of colors and shapes.

Our human friends must acknowledge the indispensible role vegetables have played in their history and survival. Consider this: were it not for annual vegetables, people would not exist. Chew on that!

THE RIGHT TO RECOGNITION

Humans have an unhappy propensity for viewing vegetables as mere things, commonplace objects on offer in the produce department.

In the pantheon of human culture, we make a poor showing indeed. Where are the monuments, museums, poems, novels, films and symphonies inspired by vegetables?

Your Proust wrote several long, elaborate novels inspired by the bite of a madeleine—a cookie. Imagine how much greater his opus would be if he had dined on an artfully prepared eggplant.

What if, in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” the Prince’s soliloquy was addressed to an artichoke? Why not? Is the fear the artichoke would eat up the scenery? Or that Hamlet would eat up the artichoke?

In your entertainments, humans anthropomorphize—imbue with human traits—every kind of thing or creature. In ancient fables and today’s cartoons, humans take on the guise of all manner of creature—woodpeckers, rabbits, rodents, cats, spiders, elephants, dogs, chipmunks and sponges—all, evidently, plausible vehicles for human expression.

The names of your venerated sports teams are inspired by giants, birds, brigands, snakes, metals, jungle creatures, warriors and meat-packers. In vain we look for the California Cauliflowers, Tucson Turnips or New York Yams. Cruelly, inexplicably, you refuse vegetables entrée to the garden of the human imagination.

Your diminution of vegetables diminishes all of us. So build temples to vegetables. Enshrine the role of vegetables in heroic legend. May a conqueror have the dignity to confess, “Were it not for vegetables, defeat would have been inevitable.”

THE RIGHT TO RESPECT

In so-called industrial western societies, vegetables play an ever-smaller role in people’s diet. Adults and children consume a fraction of the vegetables their bodies demand—a development with significant health and economic consequences.

Food manufacturers and restaurant chains apply considerable expense and ingenuity convincing the public to eat un-nutritious fat-laden products unworthy of the designation “food.”

Can it be difficult to convince the public of the appeal of us vegetables—which benefit your waistline, improve your appearance, enhance your well-being and prolong your life?

In the widespread agonizing over America’s obesity crisis, rarely mentioned is the problem’s antidote: Eat More Vegetables.

In the endless bickering over health insurance, did a legislator stand up in Congress to wax eloquent on wax beans and their vegetable cousins? Not that we remember. Looking for highly affordable health insurance? Remember this: “V for Vegetables!”

THE RIGHT TO CREATIVITY

Helping bring about vegetables’ wretched showing in the human imagination and daily diet is the way we are prepared.

In fact you humans don’t prepare vegetables, so much as abandon us to a merciless pot of boiling water or the brutality of the broiler. Our adieu is swift and unsentimental. Thanks to culinary creative destruction, you sacrifice our luscious color, sensuous texture, voluptuous flavor and spectrum of succulent sensations. Still worse, your children come to regard vegetables as flavorless, lifeless things.

Today, it is true, vegetables enjoy a new vogue in culinary circles. At chic and expensive restaurants, we are transitioning from side dishes to entrées created with nuance and artistry.

Perhaps, for once, vegetables are escaping the stigma of being a duty, the anti-charisma bestowed on all things “good for you.” For once—for once!—we are being regarded as sensual, pleasurable and worthy of temptation. “To the ramparts!”

On this first day of spring, these are the dreams—and the rights—of the undersigned: a vegetable patch in every home, schoolyard and community garden.

Signatories:

THE BULB VEGETABLES

Chives, Garlic, Leeks, Onions, Scallions, Shallots, Water Chestnuts

FRUITED VEGETABLES

Avocados, Chayote, Cucumbers, Eggplant, Melons, Okra, Olives, Peppers, Squash, Tomatoes, Tomatillos

INFLORESCENT VEGETABLES

Artichokes, Broccoli, Cauliflower

LEAFY VEGETABLES

Arugula, Brussels sprouts, Cabbage, Chicory, Chinese cabbage, Collards, Cress, Dandelion nettles, Endive, Lamb’s lettuce, Lettuce, Nasturtium, Purslane, Radicchio, Savoy, Sea kale, Sorrel, Spinach

PODDED VEGETABLES

Beans, Peas

ROOTED VEGETABLES

Beets, Burdock, Carrots, Celeriac, Malanga, Parsnips, Radishes, Rutabaga, Salsify, Turnips

STALK VEGETABLES

Asparagus, Bamboo, Cardoon, Celery, Chard, Fiddlehead, Fennel, Kohlrabi

TUBEROUS VEGETABLES

Cassava, Crosne, Jerusalem artichoke, Jicama, Potato, Sweet potato, Taro, Yam

Wilson Ramsay recorded this moving version of the traditional song “Motherless Children”. I say “traditional” only because, regardless of who wrote it first, the song has passed through many hands. Although Ramsay’s is my favorite, its influences can be heard somewhat in the recordings of Blind Willie Johnson and Reverend Gary Davis.

Johnson was a gospel singer who performed on street corners, often accompanied in vocal harmony by his wife. He was a brilliant slide guitar player and very powerful vocalist, as was Davis, who incidentally was also blind.

In fact, I believe Davis was one of the greatest blues and gospel vocalists who ever lived. Yet his guitar playing was so great that folks admire him today mainly for his elaborate finger-style playing and complex syncopated beats to his many songs. Also, I relate to him in a personal way since one of my maternal great grandfathers lived a few miles from where he was born and raised in western South Carolina. Davis moved to North Carolina only after he had become a young man. There is a lot of yelling required in street singing, which Davis also did; but there is also a lot of it in general in the piney woods of rural South Carolina. I used to hear it frequently as a child.

Wilson Ramsay, who taught me music in the 1980s, uses the same general format: voice and guitar. However, he doesn’t use a slide, though he is so good that the very end sounds almost like one.

He plays a simple inexpensive “000” Martin guitar from about 12 years ago (it was recorded in September of 2002). We set up three or four professional microphones in an old horse barn here at Fordhook Farm that happened to have great acoustics. Forge Recording Studio in Oreland, Pennsylvania helped produce the recording. Fellow employee and musician Don Zeidler was the producer of the session. However, no one was in the room.

Wilson found a special spot in the floor where his shoe tip tapped with just the resonance he wanted. He makes also a thump with his hand on the bridge of the guitar. He did it in one take, and it is a “live” recording. He plays his heart and soul out. In my opinion, it is equal to the Johnson and Davis versions, at least.

The reason I post this, our first pod-cast, on St. Patrick’s Day is to remember the orphans created by the Irish Potato Famine, as well as orphans everywhere. In a sense, we all become orphans when we lose our mothers, but none suffers as much as a child. The famine was caused by a rare strain of a fungus from an isolated valley in Mexico that arrived on a lumber ship, first from Mexico and then from—of all places—Philadelphia. “The Great Famine” caused the collapse of the potato crops of not only Ireland but also Scotland, England, Holland, Belgium, Germany, most of Scandinavia and as far east as western Poland. However, the Irish used the potato as their main staple. Bread was too costly and, ironically, not as nutritious. You can read more at ‘Owed ToThe Spud’, a blog entry from awhile ago. Redcliffe Salaman wrote a great book on the potato which I recommend, ‘The History And Social Influence Of The Potato’.

I wish to thank my friend and mentor, Wilson Ramsay, for allowing us to feature this song on our blog site. You can hear him on YouTube as well, where he demonstrates his superb artistic skills on both the harmonica and the guitar. His performance of the solo harp (with his son Roger on guitar) song ‘Slow Train Coming’ is phenomenal. This is not the Bob Dylan song. ‘Slow Train Coming’ is a reference to the Proviso freightyards of Chicago, the largest in the world. Wilson grew up two miles west of the ‘yards and is no stranger to freight trains.

Wilson Ramsay recorded one album in 1963 on the Mercury label when he was 18 years old. Long out of print and extremely rare, it is called “Stu Ramsay Loves Banjo, Guitar, Harmonica and Dobro”. (Stuart was his first name back then.) He told me that if he hadn’t had fingerpicks that day, he would have bled to death from his fingertips. Such is the awesome power of youth combined with rare talent. Maybe the album will be reissued one day. Wilson also played in many concerts with Big Joe Williams for over 18 years, accompanying the composer of ‘Baby Please Don’t Go’ and other fine songs, on the harmonica.

Mr. Ramsay is married (to a gardener!) and is the proud father of three children and grandfather of five. He resides in Elmhurst, Illinois, where he gives private lessons in guitar and harmonica.

New president of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, Drew Becher, had some large and magical shoes to fill—those of Jane Pepper, who transformed the PHS, both its annual indoor flower show and its urban horticulture project, into the nation’s largest and most effective. Jane Pepper’s leadership was also larger than life and spanned most of her adulthood until she retired last year. So far, the smart and hard-charging Becher has acquitted himself admirably in the tough twin arenas of continuity and innovation. The PHS board of trustees should be thanked for making the bold decision in favor of the latter, which the previous board did when it hired the utterly remarkable Mrs. Pepper.

On with the Show. Its director, Sam Lemhenny, gets better and better making improvements with the challenging space and inherent difficulties of a dark, cavernous interior, since the show is entirely indoors. We aren’t talking glass here, either. This year, Lemhenny exceeded even my infamous expectations everywhere, but especially around the main display, a recreation of the foundation of the Eiffel Tower. The Eiffel Tower posed a problem: its aesthetic value is the tower, not the bottom. Thus, it looked remarkably as much like the Thames Tower Bridge as the base of the Eiffel Tower. The structure was handsome and the lighting was magnificently done. The distinctive lattice-like ironwork of the Paris landmark was itself beautifully spot-lit, but the triumph was the colored spots that bathed the convention floor in a dynamic criss-cross of spectacular, tasteful flower-colored tones.

While the grand entrance peacock did not look much like a peacock, and the lion had no face—odd as could be—the giant cricket and especially the ostrich were quite striking and great crowd-pleasers. There were many tulips (which caused some gossip, but, as Lee Dorsey sang, ‘People Will Talk’). The tsk-tsk about the dominance of tulips was entirely wrong. The French adore tulips more than any other nation and Paris in spring is cheerfully festooned with elegant beds of them in virtually every park, large or small. However, the French plant more diverse spring annuals among them to a confetti-like effect. Yet tulips dominate, so their use at the PHS show was both lovely and horticulturally pitch-perfect. I might have wished for more variety—myosotis and chieranthus—but I’m not in Paris. Also, the “French painting” display—complete with painters painting “en plein air” was a big hit, as was Le Salon des Fleurs, full of huge extravagant floral displays, an opulent interior setting and timeless French furniture. The French invented style.

The next staged area after the Eiffel was a seemingly enormous carousel stage—well designed since it was actually rather small. Another popular exhibit, it featured periodic performances of an ensemble doing modern traditional French songs. The lovely chanteuse had a gorgeous voice and a classic female Gallic nose. The guitarist played hot, but wasn’t mic’d high enough. The floral carousel animals were “genial”, a superbly crafted snail, dragonfly and rabbit.

I found it very interesting that, as I walked around the show, the soft background music—all French recordings—sounded curiously like either Dolly Parton or Hank Williams. I was amused. Both Parton and Williams grew up in and around Louisiana, singing and being sung to by Cajuns—more French than the French. Check it out sometime.

The nearby “Timeless Paris” exhibit was intentionally dark and therefore dull. Plus, its design seemed to result from a struggle between light and dark as well. The allegedly timeless sculptures were drab repros of banal figurative marbles and stone. However, since they had no texture, their gray color was flat. Also, the blue tone chosen for the vertical columns was oddly garish, too bright and not sufficiently suggestive of “French blue”. With the water pools and channel the darkness was reflected and the result was a bit depressing. Perhaps the design was too ambitious. Nice try!

Across the path, the French flower market, while welcome, was too small and suffered from having no credit given to the great painter, Alphonse Mucha, whose iconic panel designs and female portrait atop the display was its most attractive—and historically important—feature. Mucha! Mucha! Mucha!

The arch, minimalist designs by Moda Botanica, so cherished by showgoers during the past three years, left me a bit cold. I confess that I do not like minimalism or archness, so perhaps I should “recuse” myself from reviewing this year’s strange exhibit. I think I understood the erotic, lozenge-shaped glass “spectacles” as well as voyeurism suggested. It felt a little like I was looking at a “cage” of the sort they used in early 20th century Paris bordellos. (Brassai photographed them.) But why “gild the rose”, so to speak? White roses mainly. “I got it, I got it”, I said to myself. But its edginess was spooky and disconcerting like the last scenes of the astronaut in ‘2011 A Space Odyssey’—all white and sterile. Perhaps that was the point—to deconstruct beauty. It was very compelling, but incomplete and unresolved. The designers designed a design, so to speak. To their credit, this is an element of French philosophy and aesthetics. And this one was certainly ambitious. I can’t wait to see what Moda Botanica does to Hawaii, next year’s extremely challenging show theme.

Suddenly, amidst the mild boredom, there appeared the best exhibit of the show. It was wonderful how it crept toward me as I approached it. The hands-down best display in every conceivable sense—amidst some tough competition—was Flowers By David’s enchanting French “dream catchers” exhibit. A lavish and inviting double bed, off to one corner, was both eerily and elegantly surrounded in a wide foreground space and sides by gently rotating and utterly inspired French style Native American dream catchers, those popular ‘90s car windshield mirror and female bedroom items woven with yarn and feathers. But Robin Heller of F.B.D., a true genius, reimagined them, enlarged them, hybridized Native American forms with French style, and made them slightly deceptive by hanging them at odd angles (12°, 30°, 45°, et al). The effect was, literally, dream-like. The exhibit stood unique in both space and time. No joke! Lyrical and narrative at once, and understated yet oddly lush, it was perfect.

Other highlights included a “Chef’s Garden”, which was less garden and more kitchen, but was one of the phenomenal crowd-pleasers. The lighting in the kitchen display was excellent and the espaliers were attractive and well made. I’m not a “foodie”, yet I found it inviting. Kudos to Stoney Bank Nurseries. Well done!

I wish the QVC people would disappear. But I do not watch television so I suppose I should “ferme la bouche”. In fact, there was too much branding in general this year—too many large logos. In this matter of the show I’m a purist’s purist. I don’t think there should be any logos within sight of the exhibits, but there were several this year and the effect was distasteful. Garden designs and logo designs do not mix. There was nothing wrong except the proximity. I admit the Convention Center is a tough space. And the logos certainly bring in money. But I suggest that PHS push them away from the artistic endeavors.

Also, I know that blueberry devices, cell phones, mini-cameras, et al, are becoming pervasive. But they destroy public space, interpersonal dynamics of crowds, and negate the beauty of the human figure. However, the telecom lobby is so powerful, they will resist more regulation of their use. On the other hand cell phone cameras create memorable souvenirs of the show. So I guess nothing is thoroughly negative, even the annoyance of people unconsciously playing “bumper cars” with their bodies.

The American Orchid Society made a shockingly good, four square display that was well designed—variable and textured—and full of a wide assortment of truly gorgeous exotic as well as common orchids. It was a small exhibit that I spent about 20 minutes inspecting, which is an extraordinary amount of time at the show. And I wasn’t alone.

In conclusion, the 2011 Philadelphia Flower Show was more interactive everywhere you turned. Demos were emphasized. And the main PHS area where they feature their charitable work in the city and state seemed larger and more attractive. Great PHS signage with witty and exciting messages hung overhead. They grew a lot more vegetables to promote the City Harvest program. They even grew a block of sweet corn, first I’ve seen at any flower show.

I got to say hello to our good friends at Cobrahead. Noel, Geoff and the spritely Annaliese had a booth 50% larger than last year, promoting their excellent tools. I got to see my Ethiopian Christian parking lot attendants again, since I never go to conventions at other times of the year. They work at the first $25.00 per car lot on the corner off the expressway. I think an Albanian owns it. I got to say hello to my friend at the small Chinese Christian Church a block down from the parking lot. This is a great country, isn’t it?

Finally, the PHS gave both Heronswood and Burpee a few opportunities to promote our new items in concert with Tourism Ireland, and in the lecture series I even got laughs at my speech. So “everyone was zoomin”, as we used to say. The show was “up”. I’m sure Jane is proud of the continuation of her legacy.

Flowering plants are the insects of the plant kingdom. They dominate every terrestrial environment except the northern coniferous forests, and they make up almost 90% of all plant species. It’s no wonder then that most people think of little else when they think of plants.

But their older, less prominent cousins, an example being the liverworts, are worthy subjects for interest too and by contrast give us clues to the successes of flowering plants (and their first cousins the gymnosperms). I recently found a trove of liverworts while searching for a rather lovely flowering plant, the snowdrop bush. I believe my liverworts are Marchantia polymorpha, which is probably a good guess because this liverwort is the most widely distributed one on Earth, occurring from the tropics to the arctic. Liverworts get their common name from the Anglo-Saxon lifenwyrt; the root lifer means “liver” and wyrt means “wort” or plant. The name has been commonly used for these plants because their “leaves” resemble the shape of the animal organ, liver; traditionally liverworts have been used by herbalists to treat problems of the liver.

“Snowdrop bush, Styrax redivivus”

Finding these ones was a little lucky, not because they’re rare but because they’re so small and (apparently) unremarkable that they’re easily overlooked. They are located on a hillside that faces due north on a mineral soil that’s quite moist this time of year and that 18 months earlier experienced a wild fire. A trail runs for 1000 feet along this hillside, which does not vary much in its slope or orientation to the Sun or, as far as I can see, in its flora, soil or moisture. The liverworts are scattered along the trail in moist, sheltered nooks generally in association with small mosses.

“Misty trail in morning”

“Redheart or greenbark ceanothus, Ceanothus spinosus and dead California bay, Umbellularia californica”

Liverworts are primitive plants. There are somewhere in the neighborhood of 6000 to 8000 species (compared with around 260,000 flowering plant—angiosperm—species). Most of them live in the tropical zones. All are found in moist environments; almost all of these are terrestrial, though one genus is aquatic. Liverworts will colonize areas disturbed by natural occurrences such as fire, often as a confluent mat, and so they aid in reducing soil erosion. But they can be a nuisance when they invade gardens and lawns. They are related to mosses and hornworts; all three have traditionally been considered members of the same plant division (Bryophyta), but recent taxonomic changes have relegated the three to their own divisions.

In the annals of life on Earth, liverworts are probably one of the first plants to have moved from the oceans to colonize the land, not quite 500 million years ago. As plants, they long ago evolved the ability to harvest the Sun’s energy and convert it to simple sugars and then to whatever biochemical building blocks their metabolisms require. But life on land has different demands than life in the sea. Land plants must cope with variations in temperature, light level, and moisture; and they need to be able to anchor themselves to the soil and extract water and minerals from it.

Liverworts, unlike higher plants, have no leaves or stems and no true roots. Their most prominent feature is an above-ground, leaf-shaped structure called a “thallus” that has on its upper surface a waxy cuticle layer that protects it from drying out. It also has epidermal pores that are analogous to the stomata found in higher plants that absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen during photosynthesis. The undersurface of the liverwort thallus has root-like structures called “rhizoids” that help anchor the plant to the soil. But liverworts have no vascular system (no xylem, no phloem) and so no means of actively absorbing water and minerals and no means of translocating the products of photosynthesis to other parts of the plant.

“Liverworts, Marchantia polymorpha”

“Liverwort thallus”

“Liverwort thallus”

Liverworts produce no flower, seed or fruit. Their life cycle is an alternation between the vegetative (thallus) stage and a (sexual) reproductive stage. The sexual stage is relatively short lived and occurs after specialized male and female structures that produce sperm and egg grow on the thallus. The sperm is motile and must swim to the egg to fertilize it. When fertilized, the egg ripens to form many spores with potentially novel traits. These spores are then released to the wind and deposited near or far from their origin, and liverwort life then begins anew as the spores germinate to generate new plants. The thallus can also produce “gemmae” cups that contain cells that develop into new plants that are exact clones of the mother plant. The parasol-shaped bodies in the photos are the female reproductive structures (archegonia); male reproductive structures (antheridia) and gemmae cups are not present.

“Archegonium emerging from liverwort thallus”

“Three archegonia”

“Group of archegonia”

Liverworts were not a stepping stone in the evolution of flowering plants. We know this from chloroplasts, the light absorbing bodies where photosynthesis occurs. All plants have chloroplasts, and all chloroplasts have the same genes, and these genes control the same essential functions. But in the liverwort chloroplast, the physical order of some genes is different from that of flowering plants (and all the other groups of plants). Additional molecular evidence also points to the conclusion that liverworts are an ancient, lone group that represents an evolutionary deadend.

But from an evolutionary standpoint, liverworts are a pretty fair first attempt. They still exist today and do everything they need to do to survive on land; they just don’t do it very well. Their lack of roots and a vascular system places critical limitations on them. To acquire sufficient water, they must wait for it to seep into them (by diffusion and capillary action). This essentially dictates that they remain forever small and inhabitants of moist areas only, restricting their ability to colonize new, dryer habitats as well as compete with more genetically plastic plants. Vascular plants, in contrast, in nearly every shape and size imaginable, have colonized nearly every terrestrial habitat on Earth. And the liverwort life cycle that requires the spore to swim to the object of its desire is anything but efficient or elegant. Consider the apple flower and fruit. Could there be a better scheme? Motivated flying animals pollinate the flower and others harvest the fruit and sow the seed. If the liverworts made it to first base, the apple (and by extension, the flowering plants as a whole) made a home run.

“Liverworts in the undergrowth (Stelaria media?).”

The Internet has rapidly changed the way we do everything from banking and booking reservations to seeking advice from fellow gardeners. Certainly, it is a very convenient place to retrieve information and share ideas.

However, there is a danger to the rapid exchange of unverified information, which few seem to mention:  the spreading and accepting of misinformation from false sources.  Perhaps the folks who spread lies, consciously or unconsciously, were not taught to check their source. Perhaps they don’t care to take the time.

This brings me to the heart of my post.  I and others at Burpee are asked frequently about our alleged connection to Monsanto and whether we sell GMO seed.  We have even been accused of being owned by Monsanto on the Internet.  I’ve decided to address these questions and false allegations formally with the hopes that someone out there in cyberspace may refer back to this blog post for information on these issues—straight from the source.

For the record, I own W. Atlee Burpee & Co.  Burpee is NOT owned by Monsanto.  We do purchase a small number of seeds from the garden seed department of Seminis, a Monsanto subsidiary, and so do our biggest competitors. We do NOT sell GMO seed, never have in the past, and will not sell it in the future.

Recently I was called on the telephone by a blogger from Chicago named Mr. Brown Thumb.  This was a “first”.  Most bloggers fancy themselves to be journalists.  Yet, oddly, they steadfastly ignore the rules of  journalism, such as contacting sources and checking facts.  Not so Mr. Brown Thumb. His diligence in taking the time to do research for his blog is highly commendable.  Despite the ambiguous title of his post, I greatly appreciate that he had the courage to ask hard questions and took the time to study my answers.

With a few exceptions—minor errors of names and dates— Mr. Brown Thumb (Ramon Gonzalez) got it right.  He is “the real deal”.  Please read him at http://www.chicagonow.com/blogs/chicago-garden/2011/02/can-you-trust-burpee-seeds.html.

I shall add some background.  Our genius founder W. Atlee Burpee innovated vegetable seed and plant selection for the US continent—versus old varieties from Europe that were growing badly in such a different summer climate—from the 1870s to his untimely passing in 1915.  Many years later his son David lost a great asset in the exodus of  Oved Shifress, a key tomato and squash breeder to Israel during the late 1940s.  He hired a new plant breeder named Howard Peto, a second generation immigrant from Canada.  Mr. Peto bred many fine tomatoes, peppers and melons during his five years with the company.  David Burpee moved him to California to open a year ’round breeding center for the US western climate and to economize research and stock (parent)  seed production by avoiding the Pennsylvania winter.

Soon after setting up Burpee’s new operations in California, Mr. Peto decided to divide his time between home garden breeding and breeding for the so-called truck market, medium to large-sized farmers who transport their farm produce by truck to urban markets.  He wished also to breed for juice and canned tomatoes.  However, Mr. Burpee did not wish to breed for any consumer other than the home gardener and the small, local farmer.

Therefore, Mr. Peto quit the Burpee Company in the mid 50s and started up his own company.  His first tomato was ‘Wonder Boy’, an inferior knock-off of ‘Big Boy’, which is the famous home garden hybrid bred in 1948 by Oved Shifriss of Burpee, whom Mr. Peto replaced.  Undoubtedly Mr. Peto used his “garden knowledge” to get his California commercial tomato seed business going.  Nevertheless, he left the Burpee Company amicably.  These were “the old days” when agreements and disagreements were commonly settled with a handshake.

Mr. Peto’s replacement at Burpee was Paul Thomas who bred many fine home garden tomatoes during the late 50s and early 60s before also leaving for California to join Mr. Peto.  Thus, “Petoseed” became a supplier of some high quality open-pollinated as well as hybrid garden vegetable seeds.  (However, all varietal candidates had to be tested at Fordhook Farm in Doylestown, PA, which continues to be the case today.)  Soon many more garden seed companies bought from not only Burpee but also from Petoseed, companies as diverse as Ferry-Morse, Park’s, Gurney’s, Johnny’s, Northrup King and Comstock-Ferre.  Burpee and Petoseed together dominated vegetable breeding for the home garden consumer during the 60s.  The sole difference between the two companies was that Petoseed bred also for the West Coast commercial farm growers, whereas Burpee adhered to a strict focus on the home gardener.  But, by industry tradition in those days,  in a “blind trial” the best tasting tomato wins, and often Mr. Burpee bought varieties from Mr. Peto, as well as, of course, bred tomatoes himself and with Mr. Thomas’ replacement, John Mondry.

Then, Petoseed was purchased in the late 60s (1968, I think) by my uncle, G. Victor Ball, assisted by my father G. Carl Ball, his vice-president at George J. Ball—or “Ball Seed” as it was known at the time—a company founded in 1905 by my grandfather, a very enterprising flower breeder.  Our small flower seed company suddenly became a large flower and vegetable seed company while I was in boarding school.

The late David Burpee, who I met as a teenager while working on a seed farm in Costa Rica, then did business with my uncles and later my father, after my last uncle semi-retired.  Today my sister Anna Ball owns this company, now known as Ball Horticultural.  So that is the background of facts.

However, the past that some folks are extremely focused upon has to do with my father’s desire to sell Petoseed, with his brother’s (my uncle’s) approval, as well as that of many relatives such as a brother, sister, aunts and cousins, to an entrepreneur from Mexico named Alfonso Romo Garza.  Mr. Romo, as he is called, began in baked goods and then branched out into packaging, cigarettes, beer and insurance.  He even founded a business school in Monterey in the late 90s modeled on Wharton—all before reaching the age of 40.  He was, and remains, an impressive entrepreneur who, at that time, wanted to diversify from cookies, crackers, beer, tobacco, et al, into vegetables, fruits and grain.  He was profiled on page 1 of the Wall Street Journal shortly before the mid 1990s transaction (about ’94-’95).  His vision was to help the burgeoning population of small and medium sized farmers primarily in Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America.

Nevertheless, throughout these changes of ownership, Petoseed was always the same—an extremely well-run company, composed of many ex-Burpee breeders and executives, and headquartered in Ventura County in Southern California.  It remains so to this day.

In 1994 I was asked by my father, the late  G. Carl Ball, to assist in part of the transition by serving on the board with him of the new Mexican company—Seminis—composed of Petoseed and several other free-standing companies Mr. Romo  bought, from a small watermelon breeding company in Texas to the large corn breeder, Asgrow, of Kalamazoo, Michigan.  I served about a year and then left to focus my energies on Burpee, which I had bought, first with my family in the early 90s, and then from my family, in the late 90s.  Naturally, as the president of Burpee, I continued to produce seed, as I have done my entire career, but also bought from any company that could do better than I, including my old friends—and  former colleagues—at Petoseed, now called Seminis.  (This is the core of my business philosophy: sell only the best.)

In the early 2000s Mr. Romo decided to divest himself of all his non-Mexican seed holdings for reasons of his own, and sold Seminis to first one investment bank, which then sold it to another investment bank, which then sold it to Monsanto in the mid 2000s, about ’04 or ’05.

This sale took place long after Petoseed began in the mid 1950s by an ex-Burpee tomato breeder, some of whose tomatoes are still loved by home gardeners nationwide, such as Paul Thomas’ ‘Better Boy’.  The list of companies that buy from the garden seed department of  Seminis, now a very tiny business activity of Monsanto, is long and includes most of the high quality seed sellers, as well as Burpee.  We at Burpee never reject serving our customers the best quality home garden vegetable varieties we can either grow or find, and some of the latter include varieties from Seminis.  All are still tested at Fordhook Farm in Pennsylvania.

Finally, it is extremely important to note that when Monsanto acquired Seminis, neither Burpee as a company nor I, George Ball as its owner, had any financial ownership or interest in either company.  It was that way when Monsanto purchased Seminis and remains that way today.  Burpee continues as a privately owned company and, as I wish to emphasize, along with other leaders in the home gardening industry, we seek out suitable seeds from Seminis and other companies that adhere to the rigid guidelines we maintain and require of all our suppliers to you our valued home garden and small farmer customers.  If we cannot breed and produce the seeds or plants ourselves, we find those that can.

On behalf of the entire staff of W. Atlee Burpee & Co., thank you for 135 years of patronage, and for your future consideration of our many fine vegetable and flower varieties, whether bred by us or by our treasured suppliers the world over.

Ever since Europeans began colonizing North America about 400 years ago, apple has been an important crop, used fresh or cooked and as cider and farm animal feed. In 1905, S.A. Beach, of the New York Agricultural Experiment Station at Geneva, published The Apples of New York, in two volumes. This book exhaustively catalogues and describes (with many color illustrations) the hundreds of apple varieties grown in North America at that time. Most of them had been developed from native North American stock or European seed brought with them by emigrants, but some of them were stable European varieties that, in Beach’s time, were already several hundred years old. Many of the varieties that lacked desirable characteristics have disappeared from cultivation, but a number that Beach rated favorably are familiar to us today and are exact genetic copies of the trees he described.

Plants are reproduced by two general means: sexual (by seed) propagation and asexual (vegetative) propagation, in which the plant is replicated by division, cuttings, layering, buds, scions, and so forth. During seed formation, rearrangement of the genes contributed by both parents occurs and the progeny can exhibit infinite variations in characteristics, including size; form; disease susceptibility or resistance; foliage, bark and buds; growth habit; time of flowering and fruit ripening; and fruit color, flavor, size and shape. There are exceptions to this, but in general, progeny produced by seed are different from their parents. In annual plants, to produce seed that maintains the desired characteristics (the parental variety), careful breeding is required for each growing season. This is not practical or economical for woody plants that may take many years to mature, so some form of vegetative propagation is utilized. For most woody horticultural plants and fruit- or nut-producing plants, grafting is the obvious and best choice.

In grafting, a “scion” (a section of stem with leaf buds or a bud alone) taken from the plant you wish to propagate is inserted into a wound made in another plant that has an established and healthy root system. This plant is generally closely related to the scion. In the case of maintaining a specific variety, the scion is usually grafted to the stem of the host plant a few inches from the ground. When the scion has begun to grow, the majority of the host plant is removed, leaving only the stump—or “rootstock”.  If all goes well, scion and rootstock will become a single, actively growing plant composed of two genetically distinct parts.

Grafting is an ancient technique. How ancient is not known. But there are references to grafting cultivated olive to wild olive trees in the New Testament (Romans 11:17–24), and Alexander of Macedon (the Great) is reported to have brought back apple varieties on rootstock from Asia Minor in 300 BC. So grafting as a horticultural practice goes back that far at least. The initial purpose for grafting would have been to maintain varietal integrity, but it would have soon become clear to the nurserymen of the time that there were other benefits (and problems) associated with particular rootstocks.

Alexander’s apples are supposed to have been on size-controlling or “dwarfing” rootstock. Not too many home gardens can accommodate a full-size fruit tree, so fruit trees are commonly sold on dwarfing rootstock at retail nurseries. As a result, this type of rootstock is most familiar to most people. But there is not a single dwarfing rootstock that has a single effect on its scion. There are lots of dwarfing rootstocks and more are always being developed. There are rootstocks that dwarf to varying degrees. In apple, for instance, there are 10 size classes of trees determined by rootstocks, in which “1” is a dwarf just 3 feet high (with pruning) and “10” is a standard-sized tree with no dwarfing.

Tree size is an important characteristic, but it is only one of a multitude of traits that rootstocks impart to their scions. Rootstocks are selected for their rooting ability (anchoring); resistance to diseases, nematodes, insects and environmental stresses such as drought; nutrient acquisition ability; and tolerance to particular soil types—heavy, nondraining clays, for example. They are selected also for qualities that are positively expressed mostly by the scion: vigor, hardiness, yield, precocity and fruit characteristics. For the commercial grower of anything from woody horticultural plants to various nuts to pome fruit, olive, citrus, avocado and grape, there are an abundance of choices of rootstock that can, in essence, be tailored to the requirements of the grower.

Choices should be considered well. A case in point is that of grape phylloxera, a serious pest of commercial grape worldwide. Phylloxera is a minute insect native to eastern North America, where it infests common grapes but without much effect; its galls can be seen on the undersides of grape leaves in fall. On susceptible grape varieties, though, it feeds on roots and leaves, stunting and killing the vines. In the mid-19th century, phylloxera was brought inadvertently to Europe on samples of North American grape. In the 1880s, it nearly destroyed the European wine industry. The epidemic was curbed only when vintners adopted the novel practice of grafting their varieties onto recently developed phylloxera-resistant rootstock.

About eighty years later, much of California’s wine-grape crop (75% in Napa and Sonoma counties) was grown on a popular and adaptable rootstock (AxR1) that was a cross between a phylloxera-susceptible French variety and a resistant American one. The rootstock had been developed in France in the early 20th century, but its phylloxera resistance had soon broken down in Europe and Australia. Despite this and the availability of other sources of resistance, AxR1 was recommended to California growers, and when resistance failed in California, the vineyards growing grapes on it were devastated. Many of these vineyards are still being replanted. There are now many more choices of phylloxera-resistant rootstock, which is the only effective means of controlling phylloxera in severely infested areas; these rootstocks are based on sources of resistance found in North American grape varieties.

Were we to resurrect Beach, he might not be surprised to see many of the old apple varieties he worked with 100 years ago, but he would be astonished by the gains we’ve made in rootstock development and the plethora of traits that are available in them. Retail consumers have fewer choices in rootstocks and must rely on what mail order and local nurseries offer. If you’re planning to plant fruit trees this spring, almost certainly what you buy will be on dwarfing rootstock. But for interest look up the particular rootstock and see what other properties it possesses.

Organisms (animals, plants, or microbes) living outside their historical natural ranges are termed “exotic”, and only rarely is this applied as a positive attribute. But importing exotic species is as old as human travel. Most gardens are teeming with exotic plants, and at least half of all woody plant species offered in U.S. wholesale grower catalogs are exotic to North America. Many exotic species that have become naturalized to North America have enhanced, not degraded, our environment.

But not all exotics are equal; contrasts range from seed of non-shattering rye to rats bearing fleas that in turn bear the bacterium that causes Black Death. Some exotics brought here by design or by accident are inherently highly adaptable and have a high reproductive ability. They have no natural enemies here in their adopted land, having evolved elsewhere, and they flourish, displacing or parasitizing our native species as their populations explode, unchecked. These are not merely exotic species; they are exotic, invasive species. And they pose a real threat to native North American fauna and flora and, ultimately, us.

The list of these invasive species is long, and many are familiar. Take garlic mustard. A native of Europe, first reported in North America in 1868, it’s now naturalized to most U.S states and Canadian provinces. It out competes and displaces native plants and threatens the animals that depend on the plant communities wherever it now grows. You may not know the fungus Cryphonectria parasitica, which is thought to have been brought to the USA from China on lumber around 1900, but you know Chestnut Blight, the disease it causes that essentially wiped out American chestnut (arguably, at that time, the most important North American tree) in its range, from Maine to Georgia and west to Ohio and Tennessee, all in about 40 years.

As travel and commerce have become more global, the importation of exotic, invasive species has become more inevitable. A recent addition to our list is a small, rather lovely, metallic, blue–green beetle called emerald ash borer (EAB, Agrilus planipennis), also thought to have been introduced on wood from China. It burrows under the bark of ash trees (Fraxinus spp.) and feeds on the phloem, cambium, and xylem tissues, girdling and ultimately killing the tree. EAB was first identified as the cause of ash tree decline and death in the Detroit area in 2002, but it had probably been there since the mid-1990s. EAB has since killed as many as 50 million North American ash trees and has spread to at least 13 U.S. states and parts of eastern Canada (see 2011 infestation map).

Ash is an important tree in North American mixed deciduous woodland habitats. According to the USDA–Natural Resources Conservation Service, it is present in most Canadian provinces and every U.S. state except Idaho and Alaska. The fruit is eaten by birds and small mammals; it is browsed by deer. White ash trunks form cavities that are used and improved by various woodpeckers and once the woodpeckers move out, by such creatures as nuthatch, squirrel and owl. There are 16 ash tree species and some 7 billion individual trees in North America. The wood is hard, strong and flexible and has many commercial uses. It’s also an excellent firewood and a major landscape tree, in both residential and urban settings.

Early detection of any infestation or disease is critical. With EAB, this is tricky because symptoms are not distinct and are so similar to those caused by many other pests. Initially, Federal and State agencies scrambled to develop strategies to cope with EAB. Early on, they recognized that while EAB adults fly well, the pest’s most efficient means of travel is on ash nursery stock, unprocessed logs, firewood and other ash products such as crates or pallets. Federal and State quarantines were thus established (and are enforced to the degree that is possible). These quarantines remain one of the most effective tools we have.

In Asia, where EAB is endemic, pest population outbreaks are rare and seem to be related to environmental stresses such as drought that weaken ash trees and predispose them to EAB infestation. When outbreaks do occur, the damage to ash is much more limited than here in North America. The reasons for this are unclear. Almost certainly, though, Asian ash trees, having coevolved with EAB, have a degree of resistance to it that our trees lack. In addition, there are EAB predators in Asia that are not present here and that help keep EAB populations under control. USDA has identified and cultured several small, wasp-like insects from Asia that parasitize EAB larvae. Two have been released in nature, and they have successfully reproduced and survived the U.S. winter. Biological control of such invasive insect and weed pests as gypsy moth, Japanese beetle and purple loosestrife has been utilized with some success in the USA for almost 100 years. So this is certainly promising, if only preliminary.

Less promising is the reality that urban trees in most North American cities are typically limited to a few species; this lack of arboreal diversity leaves us vulnerable. Recall that at one time, American elm was a dominant tree in North American cities and towns. Images of its cathedral-like boughs sheltering American streets are an almost iconic reminder of a bygone era before Dutch elm disease (caused by another exotic and invasive fungus), in little more than 50 years, killed essentially all American elm. The loss was so devastating and pronounced because we had overplanted American elm, but we repeated our mistake and filled the void with mostly maple, ash, honeylocust and basswood. With EAB already across our threshold (and other pests such as the Asian longhorned beetle, a potential threat to maple and several other common trees, at the door), this has the makings of a disaster. For the future, a principle we should adopt is to plant no more than 5% of one species, 10% of one genus, and 20% of one family. This applies to urban as well as residential landscapes.

From a forestry point of view (and this includes urban forestry), a tree infested with EAB is a dead tree. For residential trees, if infestations are caught early, there are systemic, EPA-registered insecticides that have varying degrees of effectiveness against EAB; consult an arborist or county agricultural and extension agents for more information.

Will ash trees in North America go the way of the American chestnut and the American elm? That’s an open question. It’s true that we are far more sophisticated than we once were and that we have many more resources and strategies for dealing with a pest like EAB. Still we cannot eradicate it, and effectively trees that are attacked are killed. Currently, the best we can do is adapt tactics that slow or contain EAB’s spread, control its population density, and reduce its impact on ash trees.