Making It Grow Minutes

Exotic non-native reptiles, especially lizards, are very popular. One has become a serious threat to our native wildlife in South Carolina.

Feel free to bring flowering stems of goldenrod inside your house – its heavy pollen is moved by insects and not wind.

When rubber was difficult to get during World War One, Henry Ford asked Thomas Edison to find a plant native to the US that could be used for rubber production so he could have tires for his cars.

Goldenrod happens to bloom when some of us have start having hay fever – the real culprit this time of year is ragweed.

Seaside or beach goldenrod, Solidago sempervirens., grows up to six feet and has larger flower heads than other goldenrods making it quite attractive.

This plant was used for many medicinal purposes by indigenous people for a variety of ailments.

If you want to enter a competition, you must preregister in order to participate.

New research indicates that insects are involved in pollen transfer for some cycad species.

In Australia, researchers have worked with indigenous people studying how they prepare cycads for eating. Most often the carbohydrate-rich inner kernels are extracted by pounding or crushing the entire seed, either before or after roasting. Then this pulp is made safe by a quick or prolonged leaching in running water.

These plants are extremely toxic to animals, including humans

The State Plant Pest List committee worked with stakeholders and set the ban on this timeline to limit the impact on nurseries or propagation businesses, allow time for the industry and inspectors to receive adequate training, and still try to curb further damage done to our environment by these highly invasive foreign plants.

The first released cultivar of the flowering callery pear was named Bradford and it was easy to grow, pest free, flowered profusely and best of all could not fertilize itself and make viable seeds. But then other cultivars were released into the market resulting in viable pollen being produced and transferred all over the place by insects drawn to those flowers.

Large stands of them taking over fallow fields and roadsides. They crowd out plants that would provide nectar and pollen to a greater variety of beneficial insects over a longer period of time.

It is not and will not be illegal to have Bradford pears growing in your yard. However, they are now on the State Plant Pest list and beginning October first, two thousand twenty-four, nurseries will no longer sell Bradford pears or any other cultivar of the invasive flowering pear, Pyrus calleryanna.

If you’re interested in foraging, you might want to look in the old cookbook Charleston Receipts for the cherry bounce recipe.

Our native black cherry, Prunus serotina, is usually defaced this time of year by a large web of silk that houses several hundred leaf-eating Eastern tent caterpillars.

The wood that comes from our native black cherry tree, Prunus serotina, is the most prized in the forestry/timber industry. The wood has the beautiful deep red color valued by furniture makers, is strong, and is easy to work.

In the south, a fungal disease ruins its timber value, but to support wildlife, this tree should be tops on your list.

If you take a botany class, you learn that the leaves or stems of certain plants have aromatic compounds. Some of the aromas are pleasant, some definitely are not.