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There are few things less appealing than razor wire, but then I suppose that's the point. Razor wire speaks volumes -- it says, "keep out" with sharp edges, but also suggests indifference and uncertainty. Because razor wire is cheap and ugly. It is the manifestation of urban neglect. It's what makes people cross to the other side of the street.
But what happens when nature takes over, enveloping the cruel metal with tangles of green vines, transforming the spiraling razor wire into a trellis? I'm awed by this phenomenon. As we 
know, the woods have long represented an escape from the complexities and ugliness of urban civilization. To me, the vines are an envoy of the woods, shielding us from the harshest of realities, softening the sharpest of edges.
I've never had a Christmas tree before. However, raised in a loving, nondenominational household, I always had a proxy to fulfill my desperate urge to decorate in the holiday season. In early childhood, I made a succession of two-dimensional construction paper trees with removable paper ornaments. My parents finally broke down and bought me a small plastic tree from CVS, which I lovingly draped with origami ornaments. Last year, I greatly enjoyed the irony of hanging small glass ornaments from my tropical bonsai tree, a specimen that droops without a heat lamp in Brooklyn's winter climate. Poor thing.
This year, my boyfriend begged for a real Christmas tree. Although he had an upbringing similar to mine, he always had a Christmas tree. His entire family would trudge into the wilderness of Massachusetts (or drive to a Christmas tree farm; whatever, it's all weird to me) and chop down their tree themselves. How rugged.... As much as I love my boyfriend, I just couldn't do it. I could not have a dead tree in our apartment. So, I compromised: I bought a live, three-foot-tall Blue Dwarf Spruce (Picea glauca 'Haal').
Perhaps like many environmental enthusiasts, I didn't exactly think this one through. Evergreens go into a dormancy in cold weather. If they are brought indoors for an extended period of time, they come out of this dormancy and begin to grow. Once this happens, taking them back outdoors can shock them. Even if they don't emerge from this dormancy, one needs to have had the foresight to dig a hole in which to plant them before the ground freezes. Given the recent snow fall, I'd say that's no longer an option. Looks like I've got a new houseplant!
I have always been a die-hard Batman fan, and one of my favorite characters besides the Bat himself is Poison Ivy. The origin story goes like this: Pamela Isley, a shy but attractive botany grad student, is seduced by her professor, who later poisons her. She survives and finds she has developed an immunity to all natural toxins. A supervillain is born. Yet this supervillain has a cause: Poison Ivy is a environmental preservationist turned fanatical bio-terrorist.
A friend of mine recently gave me a sweetly sinister little book by Amy Stewart titled Wicked Plants: The Weed that Killed Lincoln's Mother & Other Botanical Atrocities, which details some of the "unfathomable evils [that] lurk within the plant kingdom." Stewart posits that plants should be approached with a guarded respect, noting that "we all benefit from spending more time in nature -- but we should also understand its power... [plants] can nourish and heal, but they can also destroy."
In an episode of Batman the Animated Series, Ivy poisons Gotham's DA, Harvey Dent, in revenge for his destruction of nature in the pursuit of civic development. She reasons, "Plowing up a field of beautiful wild flowers for that silly penitentiary of his." "This little rose," she adds, gesturing to the poisonous agent, "would be extinct today if I hadn't saved my precious from those horrible bulldozers. The blood of those flowers is on his hands!"
It's hard not to like to Poison Ivy. She understands the power of nature and defends it, albeit in a twisted way. As the scales of the built and natural environment continue to tip in my Gotham, there's a small part of me that fantasizes about donning a green unitard and kicking some ass in the name of plants everywhere. But I'll settle for more reasonable methods. Persistence is key. As Ivy says when vanquished, "They can bury me in the ground as deep as they like, but I'll grow back. We always grow back!"
This week, the Times picked up an AP story about US cities removing perfectly healthy ginkgo trees because of the "stink bomb" seeds they drop this time of year. A forester (a forester!) in Iowa City commented that these seeds present a sanitation problem, noting, "No matter what we do, two seconds after we leave, there are more on the ground and somebody can step in it." I find this absolutely ridiculous. It's nature, people! God forbid you get your Manolos messy walking down the sidewalk. (Do people wear Manolos in Iowa City?)
Ginkgo trees are amazing. First off, they are one of the few species of trees in this country that is dioecious, meaning it is distinctly male or female (it's the females that drop the "stink bombs"). They are also incredibly hardy and resilient trees, making them uniquely suitable as urban street trees. As the AP article points out, there were some ginkgoes that survived the atomic blast in Hiroshima. And they are beautiful, as evidenced by this grove of female ginkgoes in Fort Greene Park.
So, watch your step, but don't cut down healthy trees.
At a backyard barbeque in Gowanus this summer, I complimented my host on his spectacular tree (pictured below), to which he responded, "It's a weed." I didn't understand at first, thinking of dandelions and stammering, "But it's so pretty!" Then I realized he meant the tree was an invasive species, one that (often non-native) is able to outgrow and edge out others by monopolizing resources. While I know that I shouldn't like invasives because they detrimentally impact native ecosystems, I can't help but admire their pluck.
It occurred to me that this tree might, in fact, be the fabled tree from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1943) by Betty Smith. Used by Smith as a metaphor in the book for the protagonist's perseverance despite every disadvantage, this tree "grew in boarded-up lots and out of neglected rubbish heaps and it was the only tree that grew out of cement." This tree knew how to overcome obstacles and would be a sure thing in the Nature vs. Pavement arena. Further Internet research revealed that many people believe Smith's tree is an Ailanthus altissima, which looks a little different, but I have been unable to definitively identify my host's tree. Whatever it is, those pink pom-pom flowers are fabulous!
I thought I’d start with a snapshot of New York City's urban forest. According to the Department of Parks & Recreation (DPR), there are currently 5.2 million trees in the city. Through the 2006 tree census performed by DPR staff and over 1,000 volunteers, at least 168 different tree species were identified in NYC. The most predominant type of tree planted along the city’s streets is the London planetree (Platanus x acerifolia), easily recognizable by its peeling bark.
5.2 million trees is a lot of green, but there is room in our city to expand the urban canopy. Mayor Bloomberg’s PlaNYC initiative has set the goal of planting one million trees across the city over the next ten years. I had the pleasure of personally planting about 30 trees, mostly Pin Oaks (Quercus palustris), in Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx last fall. If you are interested in getting involved, you can go to the milliontreesNYC website. Here, you can volunteer to plant, as I did, donate money, or simply give DPR’s Forestry division a heads-up about streets in need of trees.
I’m what you’d call a city girl, but I was lucky enough to attend a progressive grade school when I was a kid that based our education in the classroom on experiences both in the urban environment of Center City Philadelphia and the wilds of a nature preserve in Upper Roxborough. My school’s tenet was and still is City, Country, Classroom.
Until recently, my life experience led me a-stray from this well-rounded educational foundation. Misery in a de facto suburban high school caused me to insist that my roots were set firmly in concrete, certainly not in lawn.
And while it is true that I will never again be persuaded to go camping and will never, ever pee in the woods, I realize now that I find joy and curiosity in the natural environment present and growing in the built environment of New York City, my home for the last eight years.
My hope for these posts is to focus on subjects such as the historic ecosystem, current civic endeavors to green and clean the urban environment, fun things to do and see in the city’s parks, and things you can do to help the environment on an individual level. I hope also to hear from you, as I am by no means an expert and am eager to learn more.
There are few things less appealing than razor wire, but then I suppose that's the point. Razor wire speaks volumes -- it says, "keep out" with sharp edges, but also suggests indifference and uncertainty. Because razor wire is cheap and ugly. It is the manifestation of urban neglect. It's what makes people cross to the other side of the street.
know, the woods have long represented an escape from the complexities and ugliness of urban civilization. To me, the vines are an envoy of the woods, shielding us from the harshest of realities, softening the sharpest of edges.
