33\u00a0 bar steep rise 30.06 5mph N dewpoint 22 Spring<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waning Gibbous Moon of Growing<\/p>\n
The workshop I attended today had two co-sponsors, The Institute for Advanced Studies <\/a>(UofM) and the Arboretum<\/a>(UofM).\u00a0 This was the culminating workshop in a two-year long effort by the Institute for Advanced Studies to explore time from many perspectives.\u00a0 Today we examined time in three different, but related, botanical areas:\u00a0 phenology, paleobotany and time from the perspective of trees.\u00a0<\/p>\n The phenological, by definition, is the chronological study of events in nature.\u00a0 This strikes me as an odd definition since it seems to impose a human mental construct, linear sequencing, on what is cyclical.\u00a0 The notion is a good one, though, since it involves paying close attention to changes in the natural world, day by day, and making a record of them.\u00a0 Phenologists know when the ice goes out lakes, the first robin returns,\u00a0the dates that various\u00a0spring ephemerals like the bloodroot, snow trillium and scylla bloom.\u00a0<\/p>\n Over several years I’ve tried my hand at phenology.\u00a0 It is something an amateur can do.\u00a0 So far, I’ve not had the discipline to continue my observations day after day, year after year.\u00a0 Perhaps as I get older and slow down a bit this will come to me.\u00a0 I hope so.\u00a0 The woman who was our teacher for phenology was a lively Cantonese woman named Shirley Mah Kooyman.\u00a0 A Smith graduate in Botany she has a direct and engaging teaching style.\u00a0 Shirley took us outside and showed us the spring ephemeral garden they have planted.\u00a0 It gave me ideas.\u00a0 Our field was cut short by blowing winds, snow and cold.\u00a0 On April 26th.<\/p>\n Over\u00a0 the long lunch break I wandered the bookstore and picked up books related to aspects of permaculture I want to pursue in more depth:\u00a0 pond building, fruit and nut trees and landscape design.<\/p>\n In the afternoon Tim started us out with segments of trees so we could tree rings.\u00a0 This lead into a discussion of the time and stories that a tree knows, sometimes revealed in its growth rings.\u00a0 He showed an amazing graphic created by an arborist who actually dug up tree roots and followed them, painting them white as he went so he could measure accurately.\u00a0 He discovered that almost all trees have relatively shallow, but very broad root systems.\u00a0 I learned, as did Tim, that tree roots stop at the dripline and that what’s below the tree roughly parallels what’s above in size.\u00a0 Nope.\u00a0 We measure a double centurion outside the learning center.\u00a0 You measure at breast height, compute the diameter with everybody’s favorite mathematical constant;\u00a0in this case it was 52 inches,\u00a0then multiplied by a factor for white oaks, 5.\u00a0 This gives a rough estimate of 260 years for the trees age.\u00a0 Cutting back a bit for optimal growing conditions, experts feel this oak is 225 years old.\u00a0 That means it was an acorn in 1780!\u00a0 Whoa.<\/p>\n The last session focused on the evolution of plants.\u00a0 In some ways this was weakest session, yet in another it astonished me.\u00a0 Randy Gage, the guy in charge of school groups for the arboretum, took a trip to Australia to investigate the Wollime Pine.\u00a0 Here are some fast facts from the Wollemi Pine website<\/a>:<\/p>\n Fast Facts<\/span>
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