Mom, The Seaweed Truck is Coming! Mom! Mom!

 

 

By Erik Baard

 

One one the many torments my “sainted mother” (as she calls herself) endured from me was a screamingly Pavlovian response to the jingle of the ice cream truck as it rumbled down 159th Street in Flushing, Queens, where I was raised. Little did I know then how intimately my love of the sweet dessert, the salty harbor, and my maternal heritage were bound.

 

A very common, yet fascinating, plant growing in our estuary is bladderwrack seaweed, scientifically known as fucus vesiculosus. Just a few of its other common names are popweed, black tang, rockweed, bladder fucus, seawrack, sea oak, black tany, cut weed, and rock wrack. I snapped the above picture of a healthy mat of its bubble form on riprap rock fringing Roosevelt Island (click to enlarge).

 

Bladderwrack is quite widespread in sheltered bays and inlets in the northern hemisphere, and has ancient pedigree. It’s a close relative of the first plants to colonize land. Of course the distinctive feature of this species is its air sacks, which lift fronds toward the surface, an evolutionary edge in the competition for sunlight for photosynthesis. Today beds of bladderwrack shelter yong fish and crustaceans, and stabilizes intertidal sediment by slowing water movement.

 

You might not realize it, but there’s a very good chance you’ve eaten bladderwrack. Ice cream is one of the most common food products to include bladderwrack seaweed. Mass market foods often list it in the ingredients as simply “kelp” or note the chemicals derived from it separately, especially the thickening gel carrageenan, named for the organism from which it was first extracted, Irish moss, known in Irish as carraig.

 

Iodine, beta carotene, and potassium are also refined from it, and this seaweed has traditionally been used to treat thyroid illnesses and (with less solid evidence) obesity. Recent research also points to applications fighting estrogen-dependent diseases like breast cancer.

 

While some people with certain medical conditions can suffer complications from consuming too many concentrated supplements made from bladderwrack, in Japan the plant is enjoyed as a popular food in its natural state. Sadly, there could be a pollution danger from eating bladderwrack growing in our harbor today (as excited as we are about the estuary’s ongoing ecological recovery). Please consult the Department of Health and Department of Environmental Protection (dial 311) regarding any such culinary experimentation.

 

 

Asian cultures are known for seaweed cuisine, but for thousands of years the Irish have eaten dulaman and dyed fabrics it.

   

I can easily picture that kind of trade in a place like my maternal ancestral home of Sligo, Ireland. And one of Ireland’s favorite traditional songs, about a monger of edible seaweed marrying (perhaps threatening to elope) with a seaweed dye monger’s daughter, makes that fancy all the more vivid. An interesting note on the lyrics is that in Irish, or Gaeilge, the gatherers and sellers of seaweed were addressed by the same noun as the product itself. That lends itself to some playful word-painting, comparing the fair hair and dark cap and black shoes of the suitor (or rogue?) to the top and base of the plant.

 

Dulaman

A ’níon mhín ó, sin anall na fir shúirí
Oh gentle daughter, here come the wooing men
A mháithairin mhín ó, cuir na roithléan go dtí mé
Oh gentle mother, put the wheels in motion for me

Curfá: Chorus:
Dúlamán na binne buí, dúlamán Gaelach
Seaweed from the yellow cliff, Irish seaweed
Dúlamán na farraige, b’fhearr a bhí in Éirinn
Seaweed from the ocean, the best in all of Ireland
Tá ceann buí óir ar an dúlamán gaelach
There is a yellow gold head on the Gaelic seaweed
Tá dhá chluais mhaol ar an dúlamán maorach
There are two blunt ears on the stately seaweed
Bróga breaca dubha ar an dúlamán gaelach
The Irish seaweed has beautiful black shoes
Tá bearéad agus triús ar an dúlamán maorach
The stately seaweed has a beret and trousers

(Curfá 2x) (Chorus 2x)
Góide a thug na tíre thú? arsa an dúlamán gaelach
“What are you doing here?” says the Irish seaweed
Ag súirí le do níon, arsa an dúlamán maorach
“At courting with your daughter,” says the stately seaweed
Rachaimid chun Niúir leis an dúlamán gaelach
I would go to Niúir with the Irish seaweed
Ceannóimid bróga daora ar an dúlamán maorach
“I would buy expensive shoes,” said the Irish seaweed

(Curfá) (Chorus)
Ó chuir mé scéala chuici, go gceannóinn cíor dí
I spent time telling her the story that I would buy a comb for her
‘Sé’n scéal a chuir sí chugam, go raibh a ceann cíortha
The story she told back to me, that she is well-groomed

(Curfá) (Chorus)
Cha bhfaigheann tú mo ‘níon, arsa an dúlamán gaelach
“Oh where are you taking my daughter?” says the Irish seaweed
Bheul, fuadóidh mé liom í, arsa an dúlamán maorach
“Well, I’d take her with me,” says the stately seaweed
Dúlamán na binne buí, dúlamán Gaelach
Seaweed from the yellow cliff, Irish seaweed

(Curfá) (Chorus)
Dúlamán na binne buí, dúlamán Gaelach
Seaweed from the yellow cliff, Irish seaweed
Dúlamán na farraige, b’fhearr a bhí, b’fhearr a bhí

Seaweed from the ocean, the best, the best
Dúlamán na binne buí, dúlamán Gaelach
Seaweed from the yellow cliff, Irish seaweed
Dúlamán na farraige, b’fhearr a bhí, b’fhearr a bhí
Seaweed from the ocean, the best, the best

B’fhearr a bhí in Éirinn

The best in all of Ireland

 

The song has enjoyed many modern interpretations:

 

 Anúna

 

Clannad

 

Altan

 

Celtic Woman

 

A dance remix

 

And fan of the song even gives it the anime treatment.

 

I hope all Irish love their mothers as much as they love dulaman seaweed!

Where is NYC’s Morel Minority?

Editor’s note: Tomorrow I will be busy kayaking north from the LIC Community Boathouse to honor the Amazing Bronx River Flotilla and the great work of the Bronx River Alliance and then hopping around free arts and entertainment events in LIC after that, so Nature Calendar won’t have a Saturday post. So here’s a second Friday entry. I hope you enjoy it.

 

 

 

Where is NYC’s Morel Minority?

 

 

By Erik Baard

 

One extremely rare sighting in New York City is that of Wildman Steve Brill being humbled by a hunt for a wild vegan edible. Let’s make that occurrence even rarer by helping out one of the best friends populist urban ecology will ever find.

 

While reading through Steve’s always fun and educational website, I was a little dismayed to come across this passage:

Living in NYC, I find large quantities of a variety of mushrooms in our many parks, but morels are rare here, or I don’t have the eye for them. We find them only rarely on my tours, and people who know where they grow don’t give away the locations.

At very least we know that morels are to be found in Central Park, as reported by Gary Lincoff, author of National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mushrooms. They can thrive on path edges, especially in the presence of soil with limestone. One reason morels might be rare in New York City is that they aggressively colonize areas of wet ash after forest fires, and particularly love dead elm trees. Our city does all it can to prevent both circumstances. But in other regions they are so common that farming can’t yet compete with foraging even for supplying the commercial market.

  

 

If sympathy for Steve doesn’t move your hard cityslicker heart, let enlightened self interest kick in: sautéed morels are famously delicious (scroll down Steve’s page to the edible wild mushroom section), adding a deep and rich flavor to soups, casseroles, stir fries, and stews. Just make sure you cook them for at least 15 minutes, Steve warns, to avoid getting “quite ill.”

 

As always, please consult with an experienced naturalist before you eat wild finds. So, here’s a fair deal: hunt for morels, and share a sample (or at least a good digital photo) with Steve. If he spares you a terrible, regrettable inedible (or simply gives you the peace of mind of a “bon appetit!), you might return the kindness by not leaving him to stew in the shame of his immorelity. 

Plight of the Bumble Bee: Volunteers Needed!

 

 

by Erik Baard

 

There can be no local foods, community garden, and green spaces movement in New York City without a healthy bee population, and that’s a resource we could lose. Our first defense is simply to look a little more carefully at our backyards and gardens.

 

Bee Watchers 2008 wants to train you to observe bees with free sessions in all five boroughs: at Alley Pond Environmental Center (May 19, 6PM), Central Park’s North Meadow Recreation Center (May 21, 6PM), the Greenbelt Nature Center (6PM, May 20), Prospect Park Audubon Center (May 21, 6PM), and Ranaqua, the Bronx headquarters of the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation (May 22, 6PM). You’ll also be equipped with five native New York flowering plants and a sunflower.

 

For an informative flyer and contact information, click here:

bee-flyer-may-9

 

Being a Bee Watcher is fun, but this is also an urgent mission that has the backing of the Greenbelt Native Plant Center, New York City Urban Park Rangers, and the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation at the American Museum of Natural History.

 

“We’ve already lost some species. At least two bumble bee species that used to be quite abundant haven’t been seen in years,” said Elizabeth Johnson, manager of the Metropolitan Biodiversity Program at the American Museum of Natural History.

 

“At this point we’re trying to drum up business for bee watching,” added Kevin Matteson, a Fordham University biologist conducting the program.

 

A third of human food stocks depend directly on the services of pollinators, which include insects, birds, and mammals. In the northeast, we rely on bees most (like the bumblebee pollinating an East Harlem eggplant in the photo by Matteson above - click to enlarge). New York State boasts about 423 species. 

 

“Most people have no idea that we have so many local species. They’re amazed at the metallic shiny green ones, the blueish ones. It gets people excited,” Johnson said. (If you happen to spot a bee or other insect that fascinates you, drop a note to wildeyed@naturecalendar.com and we’ll share your observations with readers.)

 

While 219 species have been spotted living in NYC (54 in East Harlem and the South Bronx alone), nearly a fifth of those aren’t native, according to Matteson.

 

The mysterious population collapse of the honeybee, a species imported from Europe aboard sailing ships, has gotten considerable media attention, and rightfully so. But habitat destruction and exotic diseases could pose a great threat to our indigenous partners in sustaining edible and flowering local plants.

 

“We don’t know a lot about most of our native bees. Where do they live? What kinds of habitat needs do they have? We have a lot to figure out about pollinator service and it would help to know how quickly bees show up at their plants in the Spring, and how often, and then correlate that with surrounding land use,” Johnson explained.

 

The honeybee is an exceptional species not only for its production of the syrupy sweets, but for its large colony combs, which are occupied for years. They even huddle for warmth in winter. Most bees live in less enduring groups, or even in relatively solitary fashion: a queen might never see her offspring, laying eggs and sealing them off with provisions before moving on. Many burrow underground or bore into wood, crawl into hollow twigs, or even take over abandoned mouse holes.

 

Development often wipes out bee food sources like wildflowers or even invasive flowers. Paving also eliminates burrowing species from an area.

 

Your community garden or backyard is an oasis in the asphalt desert, but you might see fewer flowers, fruits, and vegetables because a building has gone up on what was a weed-strewn lot a block or two away. A green roof with plants that support bees and butterflies might compensate for that loss, but you won’t get it unless you’re armed with data supporting your case.

 

For the sake of your community’s green spaces, join Bee Watchers 2008 by calling Kevin Matteson at 646-3730250 or emailing him at kevmatteson (at) gmail.com.

 

Weekly WildWire: Outdoor Rec Highlights

 

Weekly WildWire: May 7-May 14

 

A new feature of Nature Calendar is our Weekly WildWire. Each Wednesday we’ll compile a selection of fun activities for you to enjoy outside, with an emphasis on free or cheap weekend activities that are sustainable and easily reached by mass transit or bike. We’ll also jot down natural highlights worth seeing on your own. 

 

We’ll include calendar links in our postings so that you can find even more fine options.

 

You might have noticed that we’re cheating today – computer problems delayed us from posting.

 

 

SPECIAL NOTE: Welcome back ClimbNYC!

 

On April 21, the ClimbNYC online forum for bouldering returned after dying of spam a year ago. Climbing is a wonderful way to work out, but why always do it indoors? Outside is better, and you provide a little theater for other parkgoers! Get to know these people and soon enough you’ll be getting to know ancient neighbors like Rat Rock, Worthless Boulder, and Vista Rock. The photo above is from a great guide published by master climber Nicolas Falacci.

 

 

FRIDAY, MAY 9

 

Brooklyn: Bike Rides with Time’s Up!

 

Help calm traffic in Prospect Park and then meld into the joyous Brooklyn Critical Mass Bike Ride. Both rides meet at Grand Army Plaza, the first at 6PM and the second at 7PM. You can also hop into the Critical Mass ride in Prospect Park and at the Brooklyn foot of the Williamsburg Bridge.

 

 

SATURDAY, MAY 10

Bronx: Tree Planting with Friends of Van Cortlandt Park.

Help make Van Cortlandt Park a place of even greater beauty and healthy habitat by planting trees and shrubs and removing invasive plants on the John Muir Nature Trail. This fun work starts at 10AM and ends at 1PM, so get up early and scurry over to the entrance at Moshulu Avenue and Broadway.

 

Bronx: The Amazing Bronx River Flotilla

Celebration the restoration of New York City’s only true river and beaver home, the Bronx River! The Bronx River Alliance has loads more information on its site, but in short: food and fun on the water! Don’t be scared off by weather forecasts in making weekend plans. Plan with optimism and keep your Plan B ready. 

 

Queens: Bike Parade at Socrates Sculpture Park.

New York City’s premier contemporary outdoor sculpture park and on-site studio hosts a bike parade in partnership with a host of great arts, bike, and green spaces groups. Go for the goofy bikes, stay for the skills clinics, performances, and art.

 

 

Staten Island: Wildflower Hike in the Greenbelt.

Hoof through some of NYC’s best-protected ecosystems and see an abundance of wildflowers in bloom. The walk starts at noon, so I highly recommend this as a ferry-bike-and-hike day! Call to register: 718-351-3450

 

SUNDAY, MAY 11

Manhattan: Stroll through the heather garden at Fort Tryon Park

Stroll through Fort Tryon Park’s redbud and dogwood blossoms, and a plethora of other flowers, and take in sweeping Hudson River views.

 

Staten Island: Mother’s Day Greenbelt Hike

Get mom and Mother Nature together for some female bonding, or simply take this day to admire both. Register by calling 718-351-3450.

MONDAY, MAY 12

Manhattan-Queens-Manhattan: Bridge Walk and Picnic with the Shorewalkers.

Be at the Thomas Jefferson Recreation Center at 1st Avenue and 112th Street (6 train to 110th Street or direct by M-15 bus).

The group will cross the 104th Street Footbridge to Wards and Randalls Island (landfill plugged Little Hell Gate long ago to unify them) and then go over the Triboro Bridge to Astoria Park for a picnic (bring your own or buy at a deli en route). The walk then proceeds south through Ravenswood and Dutch Kills to the Queensboro Bridge to return to Manhattan.

 

Compiled by Erik Baard

A Concrete “Press-On Nail” for Roosevelt Island?

 

 

by Erik Baard 

 

One of the most beautiful contrasts in New York Harbor is that of the verdant tip of Roosevelt Island against the sheen of Manhattan’s glass towers. That is in danger of being replaced with what might be described as a $40 million, concrete press-on nail for the island.

 

The sterile, largely paved and walled Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial and Four Freedoms Park designed by Louis I. Kahn would run counter to our city’s progress toward reconciliation with the estuary, restoration of both marine and uplands habitats, and recreational enjoyment of the harbor. One look at the model in the image at top reveals the travesty awaiting the island, one that ends in what is literally a high-walled room.

 

 The future FDR Memorial, as designed by Louis I. Kahn, as it will look in a new Southpoint Park (rendering from the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute).

 

It’s a shame when quite easily the form of the memorial can be reinterpreted through natural forms and materials. The southern point of the island, in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service photo below, doesn’t need much improvement.

 

 

Imagine that key elements of the Kahn design were expressed through natural forms and materials.

 

Native NYC bedrock quarried from construction and tunneling to pave necessary walkways and be incorporated into the monument itself. This would better respect the environment and ground visitors in ubiety. Bedrock would also symbolize the role that the Roosevelt family has played in our city’s culture and civics. Excerpts of the “Four Freedoms” speech could be engraved into inclined slabs that allow viewers to read the immortal quotations while exhilarated by the wide open freedom of the openness around them. It would be sadly ironic to have the Four Freedoms speech carved into confining walls, especially in our overly-imprisoned era.

 

The V-shaped colonnade of trees should be indigenous. This stand could edge the existing landfill hillock, which should be made rich in indigenous meadow wildflowers and grasses. According to the Audubon Society, wild meadow is vanishing without the attention given wetlands. A soft edge, guarded by thoughtfully placed riprap rock would allow harbor birds, tidal pool creatures, and saltwater plants to live. It would also offer safe landings to paddlers in distress.

 

A bit over a week ago I spoke with a prominent young Roosevelt and asked, half in jest, if one could still love the family without loving the memorial. After teasing me about the “one” pronoun deflection, he reassuringly said, “we all love green.”

 

Regardless of the final form of the park, stopping the outdated version of this monument is a goal that people throughout the harbor community should share with the residents of Roosevelt Island, who have expressed their overwhelming preference for a natural restoration for the southern end of the island in repeated polls and a design exercise by the Trust for Public Land.

 

Yet the project boasts mystifying institutional backing – the New York Times editorial department, and local politicians at city, state, and federal levels. Sentiment in some circles of the architectural profession runs in favor of the plan, perhaps because of the biography of the architect behind it. Louis Kahn died in a Pennsylvania Station bathroom in 1974, ending his life deeply in debt and without this vision realized. But it’s incalculably important to bear in mind the dawn that was concurrent with his death: the national Clean Water Act of 1973 stated “wherever attainable, an interim goal of water quality which provides for the protection and propagation of fish, shellfish, and wildlife and provides for recreation in and on the water be achieved by July 1, 1983.”

 

We missed that goal by a decade in NYC, but our increasingly cleaner harbor and resurging ecosystems will afford adventure and beautiful experiences to people for decades to come. Yes, honor Kahn’s life story and work, but also honor the biographies yet to be written. Let children on Roosevelt Island (thousands more of whom are being added with dense, large-scale development) walk out their doors and into a soul-fortifying relationship with nature. Great Egrets have found nearby Long Island City and Mill Rock Island, so why not invite them to Roosevelt Island?

 

Roosevelt Island is full of paddlers and rowers eager to hit the water, and plans for a boathouse are afoot. A hardscape doesn’t fit the new desire for a landscape that invites residents and visitors alike into uplifting green and blue.

 

“It’s called an FDR memorial but it really seems to be a Louis Kahn memorial,” said a Roosevelt Island resident kayaker who asked not to be identified. “It looks like a Soviet era, Eastern European thing. It will impede the views of the UN and surroundings. The focus should be on looking out, not looking in.”

Wild Eyed: Yellow-crowned Night Heron

 

 

 

by Erik Baard

 

I think anything with the word “night” in its name benefits from a bit of mystery by association. As if Yellow-crowned Night Herons needed the help. With gorgeous plumage and reliably picturesque harbor backdrops, these birds are a favorite of NYC Auduban/New York Water Taxi tours and individual birders.

 

Fellow LIC Community Boathouse volunteer Ted Gruber snapped this shot in Steinway Creek, where it was perched atop a collapsed dock. A solitary Black-crowned Night Heron was nearby as well. I’ve found the black-crowned variety to be more common, but having both in view was ample reward for our early start and two crossings through whirl-pool filled Hell Gate. Okay, so I admit I love going through Hell Gate at peak current.

 

Yellow-crowned Night Herons have been spotted at City Island, but I would imagine that Staten Island and its nearby islands in the Arthur Kill would also provide good habitat. Any other recent sightings?

 

We didn’t get to see this bird lunge at a crustacean, insect, mollusk, amphibian, or fish. The action happens in darkness for this species. Instead it (the sexes look alike) simply held its place in a stately fashion. The species is threatened in our area, but ironically it’s also more widely dispersed than before; when the Bermuda Night Heron went extinct, environmental authorities there imported this North American species and plugged it into the vacant ecological niche.

 

Yellow-crowned night herons lay their eggs in overhangs, whether a living bush or a jutting piling or beam. We didn’t see if this one had a blue-green clutch of eggs because getting that close would disturb it. The geese and mallards along the East River shores and on North Brother and South Brother islands had full nests, so perhaps there’s a decent chance that New York City has an upcoming generation of Yellow-crowned Night Herons warming in Steinway Creek?

 

I’ll write a more complete report on the Steinway Creek at a later date. Due to an imminent property sale, the city and state should aid Astorians in seizing a rare chance to ecologically restore the petroleum-despoiled, sewage-filled waterway and its surprisingly verdant southwest bank. Toss in a kayak launch, and you’ll have a constituency to keep it green, blue, and clean for neighborhood youth…human and heron.

High Tea for Your Cattail Sandwiches

(Spicebush in Central Park, photo by Heather Sweeney)

by Erik Baard

 

So, yes, I was negligent or – even worse – trying to stretch material from the same edible plants outing. But sophisticated readers have demanded that I provide foraging tips for their high tea to go along with the recently posted recipe for cattail-on-a-hot-tin-roof sandwiches. All too happy to provide…

 

 

I went back to my best foraging source, Wildman Steve Brill. He advises that those seeking to match the delicacy of the tradition try spicebush leaves (in a photo above by Heather Sweeney) with a hint of ground ivy. Steep in boiling water for 20 minutes, sweeten to taste.

 

The spicebush also produces berries that are dried and ground into what’s often called “Appalachian allspice.” I recently used it for a pawpaw-and-beach plum cake I baked recently for a friend. Well, dear friend — I don’t bake for just anyone!

 

For more of an “Our Town”-soda-fountain-date kind of drink, Steve recommends sassafras tea. Scrub the roots of a sapling and simmer it for 20 minutes. Chill it and add sparkling water and sweetener for root beer! 

 

As always, it’s best to start out as a forager under the guidance of experienced naturalists like Steve. Wrong choices have severe consequences when it comes to eating wild plants! (Then again, Steve added this advice: “Try it on the in-laws first, or, if you’re a kid, your teacher.”)

 

 

Wild Eyed: Osprey Nest on Broad Channel Island

by Erik Baard

A sharp-eyed photographer for The Wave, serving the Rockaways and the south shore of Long Island, recorded the gentle relocation of an osprey nest from a transformer box to a safer place atop a pole. Our thanks to Bernie Ente for passing the tip along.

 

Like many bird species, the osprey was hit hard by massive DDT insecticide spraying in the mid-twentieth century. That chemical, now banned in the U.S., is widely credited with saving hundreds of millions of human lives from malaria. But indiscriminate spraying took its toll on the environment. A critical problem was that DDT, which concentrates in fatty tissue up the food chain, interferes with calcium processing in birds and weakens their egg shells. Embryos died in “omelets.”

 

Biologist Rachel Carson sounded the alarm in her book, “Silent Spring.” She might have overstated her case (while being honest to what she believed and knew at the time), she helped spark an environmental movement for a new generation. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency owes its creation in part to Carson’s advocacy.

 

In osprey population in New York City is rebounding, with nearly a dozen mating pairs in Jamaica Bay. The strange thing about osprey in New York City is that artificial structures like telephone poles have become their standard nesting sites. Sometimes poles capped with “osprey boxes” are erected for them in better locations, like the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge of the Gateway National Recreation Area.

 

I sometimes see these “fish hawks” flying up from the disturbed surface of the water to their boxes with a fish grasped in their talons and barbed foot pads. I haven’t been lucky as often to spot the actual striking dive.

 

If there are young chicks in the nest, they have good reason to hope the hunt is a good one – the clutch hatches on a staggered schedule and older siblings starve the younger ones in lean times. Hey, you don’t have to be nice to be worth protecting.

Strawberries, Blueberries, and Cherries, Oh My!

 

 

Looking for a reason to rush out the door on this gray Saturday? Here are three good, bloomin’ reasons to get off yer butt!

 

And remember, even if these events pass you by, you can still enjoy viewing and growing these blossoms and fruits on your own. Don’t wait to be led.

 

 

Alpine Strawberry gardening (Bronx)

From our friends at Wave Hill garden and cultural center:

 

 

The fruit of the alpine strawberry is much smaller that the familiar “garden” strawberry, but, as many connoisseurs rightly claim, much tastier.  It is a very adaptable plant as it thrives in light and shade and is just as happy planted in a container as it is out in the garden.  If planted now–in the ground, in a pot, hanging basket or window box–alpine strawberries will reward with masses of delicate flowers and delectable fruits from spring right through to autumn.

Horticultural Interpreter Charles Day demonstrates some interesting ideas and helps you plant your very own pot with red and yellow fruited alpine strawberry plants.

Note: And keep in mind that strawberries have been “wildeyed” by a Nature Calendar reader in Rego Park!

 

 

Blueberry blossoms (Staten Island)

From our friends at the Natural Resources Protective Association

 

 

Saturday, May 3, 9:45 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. 39th Annual Spring Ten Mile Walk of the SI Greenbelt — Ten moderate miles at a comfortable pace. See wonderful vistas, beautiful woodlands and the blooming of the Pinxter Azalea, Highbush Blueberry and Canada Mayflower throughout our Greenbelt. Meet at our new meeting place where the parking is easier: the beginning of the blue line trail, at the end of Staten Island Blvd. (at the end of the road right above Petrides School which intersects Ocean Terrace). Bring lunch, beverage and sturdy walking shoes as well as camera, binoculars and field guides. We go in all weather but walk is shortened if high pollution levels occur.

 

For more information call Dick Buegler (718)761-7496 or Chuck Perry (718)667-1393 for more information.

 

 

Cherry Blossom Festival

From the wonderful Brooklyn Botanical Garden Via our friends Gemini and Scorpio.

 

Sakura Matsuri, the cherry blossom celebration at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, is one of the most beautiful annual events in New York City. If you hit the timing just right, you’ll be blown away by the gorgeous trees in full bloom. And the weekend of May 3-4 marks the Sakura Matsuri, the Cherry Blossom Festival, featuring live music and dance, film screenings, and tea ceremonies throughout the gardens. In addition to the below events, there will be Origami Crane Confections in Magnolia Plaza; workshops in doll making, woodblock printing, and Ikebana flower arranging; a Sakura Tattoo Parlor; book signings, green-tea demonstrations, a bonsai display, garden tours, and Japanese food and drink. (Brooklyn Botanic Garden, 900 Washington Ave, 10am-6pm, $8 — photo above by BBG)

 

Note: And keep an eye out this summer for delicious black cherries in the Ramble in Central Park!

Cattail-on-a-Hot-Tin-Roof Sandwiches

by Erik Baard

  

 

Flip Victorian and Edwardian snobbishness on its head with a wild and spicy forager’s. answer to the British cucumber sandwich! With its peppery and garlicky kick, call it a Cattail-on-a-Hot-Tin-Roof sandwich.

 

This recipe isn’t likely to show up on the next International Debutante Ball menu, but it might be perfect for the livelier Billionaires for Bush set.

 

Some culinary historians believe that upper-class Britons chose the blandly delicate cucumber sandwich specifically because it demonstrated that they could afford to spend money on empty calories. The poor put their shillings down for protein and nutrients. We’ll enjoy our version as a little reward for adventurous field work and creativity in the kitchen.

 

Last weekend I joined Wildman Steve Brill for a tasting tour of Central Park (photographed above by Heather Sweeney, getting an early start on his cattail feast). Nature offered up a suite of delicious choices. One highlight was cattails, a freshwater plant with a soft stalk core that tastes very much like cucumber, with what a member of Fuji television crew noted was a hint of celery. It can be found by the Central Park Lake and many other sites, including Inwood Hill Park, Van Cortlandt Park, Udalls Park Preserve, Eibs Pond Park, Clay Pit Ponds Preserve, Kissena Park, Prospect Park, and Alley Pond Park. 

 

 

(Photo of cattails in Central Park by Heather Sweeney)

 

Having sampled garlic mustard (“The garlic taste is the plant’s defense against insects, unless they are Italian insects, in which case it will go extinct,” Steve joked) and lemony sheep sorrel, it occurred to me that we might have the makings to liberate a traditional cucumber sandwich recipe.

 

I strongly recommend that you join Steve or another experienced botanist or naturalist on your early foraging outings. Plant misidentification can bring illness or death.

 

Slice your cattails near the base, but DO NOT uproot them. The roots are edible (and be made into a flour for baking bread), but in fairness to others and local wildlife, grow your own. A cattail corner to a community garden, perhaps fed by roof-collected rainwater, might be a wonderful signature. Check with the Green Guerillas, New York Restoration Project, or Green Thumb to investigate this tantalizing possibility.

 

Bunches of sheep sorrel (named for the sheep’s head look of their leaves) are easily had in moist meadows and grass hillsides, especially near the kinds of ponds where you’ll find cattails. It’s an invasive and common plant, so feel completely guiltless in munching it down.

 

 

(Photo of sheep sorrel in Central Park by Heather Sweeney)

 

Ditto for garlic mustard, which has swept aggressively through woodlands and floodplains.  

 

 

(Photo of garlic mustard in Central Park by Heather Sweeney) 

 

Another key ingredient is wild onion, which has scallion-like tubular shoots.

 

 

(Photo of wild onion and fellow-forager Alex in Central Park by Heather Sweeney)

 

 

Now blend the yummy invaders in the sheep sorrel  spread recipe on Steve’s website (scroll down for recipes).

 

And given that Steve and I are both vegans, please forgive me if I suggest you try a nondairy butter substitute, for the sake of the environment, your health, and a more humane culture. And if you’re a crust-trimmer, earthworms will appreciate your noblesse oblige in tossing them in compost bin.