Nature at the Gardner Museum

 By Richard B. Primack

 

“In order to die, you must have first lived.” Henry David Thoreau in his Journal.

 

You can realize new insights about nature during a visit to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. 

 

The exquisite plantings of tree ferns and ornamentals in the courtyard demonstrate the value of nature in creating a sense of peace and tranquility. 

 

Photo 1: The courtyard of the Museum.

 

The highlight of a recent museum visit was an exhibit by Raqib Shaw, who has developed a unique style of painting with brightly colored enamels. 

Photo 2: Shaw’s painting of a summer garden illustrates the great beauty of nature, but a more careful examination shows dangerous creatures lurking in the shadows and a burning city in the distance, suggesting impending menace. 

Photo 3: Shaw’s painting of autumn at first appears to portray a bright and colorful scene, but a closer look shows that the forest is burning and this landscape and its inhabitants will be destroyed.

 

Here is a link to the exhibit:  LINK

The Darker Side of Plants

 By Richard B. Primack

 

“All change is a miracle to contemplate, but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant.” Henry David Thoreau in Walden.

 

Here are three stories from Newton, MA that illustrate some problems involving plants:

 

1.    In an earlier post, I reported on what appeared to be frost damage to beech leaves. It turns out, this damage is actually due to beech leaf disease caused by an introduced nematode. It’s widespread in Newton, and causing severe harm to both wild beech trees and cultivated trees in people’s yards. It is likely that the disease will kill many trees over the next few years. 

 

Photo 1: Beech leaves showing the effects of the disease; initial curling of the leaves is followed by the leaves turning brown and dying.

Photo 2: The arrival of this disease can be detected by striping on the undersides of the beech leaves.

 

2.    Jimsonweed, or Devil’s trumpet, an annual plant with beautiful flowers is rarely seen in Boston, but 10 plants are growing next to the sidewalk of a house in our neighborhood following landscaping work. The seeds must have been in soil brought in for the yard project. This poisonous plant is dangerous to humans, companion animals, and livestock.

 

Photo 3: The Jimsonweed plant with its lobed leaves.

Photo 4: The trumpet-shaped flower only opens in the evening. 

 

3.    While we often describe the many benefits of trees, a huge limb recently fell off a diseased oak tree and severely damaged our neighbor’s house. A few days later the tree was removed. This kind of occurrence is part of the natural cycle of trees in nature, but when it happens near where people live, it can cause property damage and even injuries. 

 

Photo 5: Damage caused by the falling tree limb, which likely weighed a ton or more.  

 

Arnold Arboretum Pollinator Survey

 By Richard B. Primack

 

“Nature will bear the closest inspection; she invites us to lay our eye level to the smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain. She has no interstices; every part is full of life.”  Henry David Thoreau in Excursions.

 

 

During the spring and summer of 2024, a team consisting of Prof. Colleen Hitchcock from Brandeis University, Matty Carrozza from Trinity University, Angela Noyes from Boston University Academy, Treespotter volunteers, and myself are surveying flower visitors to the range of plants growing at the Arnold Arboretum. 

Photo 1: Collen and volunteers survey flower visitors at a shrub of Kolkwitzia amabilis. 

 

Photo 2: Matty, Angela, and Richard survey a bottlebrush buckeye with numerous green sweat bees.

 

In the survey, we note whether visitors are collecting pollen or nectar.

Video 1: Here we see a carpenter bee probing into Buddleia flowers to collect nectar.

Video 2: This miner bee is scrabbling on Spiraea flowers to collect pollen; note the pollen on its legs.

 

Photo 3: We are also learning to recognize many new insects, such as this giant resin bee on a yellow rain tree.

Thoreau on Social Media

 By Richard B. Primack

 

“An honest misunderstanding is often the ground of future intercourse.”  Henry David Thoreau in his Journal.

 

The Integrated Digitized Biocollections (iDigBio) project recently featured our research in their online posts on Facebook & X:

 

Here are links to the postings:

X (Twitter): https://x.com/iDigBio/status/1806024246940070197

 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/5QU7MgqhPQUnMrjN/

Iceland Adventure Part 4: To the Snaefellsnes Peninsula

 By Richard B. Primack

 

“We hug the earth – how rarely we mount! Methinks we might elevate ourselves a little more.” Henry David Thoreau in Excursions.

 

For our final weekend in Iceland, we traveled to the Snaefellesnes Peninsula, which is a 2-hour drive north of Reykjavik. It is sometimes described as “Iceland in Miniature,” due to the concentration of dramatic landscape features including:

Video 1: A volcano and lava fields leading to spectacular sea cliffs. 

 

Photo 1: Lava rocks are covered with a golden moss.

Video 2:  Numerous seabirds are found on the cliffs, beaches, and dunes.

 

Photo 2: Waves crashing against the sea cliffs.

Photo 3: Dramatic rock formations are found along the coast, such as this rock arch. 

Photo 4: Black sand beaches run for miles in places.

 

 

Iceland Adventure Part 3: Field Trips

 By Richard B. Primack

“Only that traveling is good which reveals to me the value of home and enables me to enjoy it better.” Henry David Thoreau in his Journal.

During the conservation biology course at the University of Iceland, we took three afternoon field trips to supplement our classroom work:

Photo 1: On Monday, Jose Alves and Tómas Grétar Gunnarsson showed us their long-term shore bird study in a coastal estuary. 

Photo 2: On Tuesday, the class visited the Reykjavik Botanical Garden. 

Photo 3: Rock gardens were a particular strength.

 

Photo 4: The plant beds were built from stones cut by hand as part of a make-work project during the Great Depression in the 1930s.

Photo 5: On Thursday. Mariana Lucia Tamayo and her students gave us a tour of urban ecology and birds on the University of Iceland campus.

 

 

 

Iceland Adventure Part 2: Teaching

 By Richard B. Primack

“How to live – How to get the most life as if you were to teach the young hunter how to entrap his game. How to extract its honey from the flower of the world. That is my everyday business. I am as busy as a bee about it.” Henry David Thoreau in his Journal.

From May 27-31 this year, I was a Visiting Professor at the University of Iceland teaching a short course in conservation biology for 14 students, a mix of Master’s students and recent grads now working for government conservation agencies. About half were Icelandic and the other half from elsewhere in the world.  

Mornings consisted of short lectures, student presentations, short guest lectures by leading Icelandic conservation biologists, and conversations about papers from the current literature. Students also attended a PhD defense on the population biology of shorebirds in Iceland.

Here are four of the guest lecturers:

Photo 1: Ingibjörg Svala Jónsdóttir carries out long term research on how climate change affects the Icelandic tundra.

Photo 2: Jose Alves described an international effort to investigate and protect migratory shorebirds.

 

Photo 3: Snæbjörn Pálsson investigates the conservation genetics and evolution of animals in Iceland. 

 

Photo 4: Brynhildur Davíðsdóttir assesses the value of Iceland’s nature and landscape. 

As I will describe in the next post, we also went on afternoon field trips.