Posts in urban landscaping
Stories of Science—Brittany Harris

Brittany Harris is a fellow Ph.D. candidate at Florida International University in the Biology department and a good friend of mine. There has been a lot of concern lately with all of the fires making headlines. Since Brittany studies and works in a fire-dependent ecosystem, who better to sit down with and chat about them? She studies the effects of disturbances on pollination systems in islands. Disturbances—including natural (fire and hurricanes) and human-caused ones (mosquito spray). Moral of the story: We need to re-shape Smokey, starting fires is not good, but not all fires are bad. In order to maintain biodiversity and to prevent bigger fires later, we have to let some fires happen, we can’t control nature.

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Botanical Sexism

An article was posted this week on NPR blaming seasonal allergies on botanical sexism, a term coined by Tom Ogren, horticulturalist and author. He attributes America’s love for male trees to ‘exacerbated allergies’. The article claims that urban forestry is biased towards dioecious male trees. It’s an interesting theory, that cleaning up pollen was thought to be an easier and a fix-all for messy fruits. On the flip-side, if all female plants had been planted instead, there would be no fruits OR pollen. Female flowers can’t set fruits without pollen.

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