Upper Perkiomen Valley Garden Club

05/24/2026

More plant humor

05/14/2026

We had a fun meeting last night with short presentations from Melissa, Phyllis and Joe, followed by our annual Plant/Seed Swap.

05/12/2026

04/23/2026

Making progress on weeding the Butterfly Garden. Ragwort and Golden Alexander are adding early color.

04/07/2026

If you have moved any plants outside, better move them back inside tonight and tomorrow night!

03/29/2026

I am not killing your tree. I am not a fungus, a moss, or a disease.

That gray-green crust on the bark of your oak. The leafy stuff on the branch. The dusty pale coating on the fence post. You've been searching for tree disease treatments for three years.

I'm a lichen. And your tree isn't sick. It's certified.

A lichen isn't a single organism. It's two organisms fused into one — a fungus and an alga living together as one body. The fungus provides structure, protection, and mineral absorption. The alga provides food through photosynthesis. Neither can live like this alone. Together they form something that resembles neither.

I grow on your tree. Not in it. My body attaches to the bark surface. I don't pe*****te the bark. I don't steal nutrients. I don't block light from the leaves. I don't cause decay. I'm using your tree as a surface the same way a bumper sticker uses your car.

Here's why I'm actually a good sign.

Lichen cannot grow in polluted air. Air pollution kills me. If your tree is covered in lichen, the air around your property is clean enough to support me. Ecologists use lichen presence to map air quality — more lichen species in an area means cleaner air. Your lichen-covered oak is a certificate of air quality you didn't know you had.

The tree you think is declining because of me is usually declining because of something else — drought stress, root compaction, pest damage — and I happened to be on the bark when you noticed. I was here before the decline started. I didn't cause it.

I grow a millimeter or two per year. The patch on your oak branch that's the size of your palm has been growing for decades. I was here before the deck was built. Before the house was painted. Before you moved in.

🌿 What to do about lichen on your trees:

- Nothing. Leave it. Lichen on bark is not a problem and removing it accomplishes nothing except damaging the bark surface underneath

- If a tree covered in lichen is declining, the cause is underground or internal — root damage, compaction, drought, boring insects. The lichen is a bystander, not the culprit. Investigate the roots and soil before blaming the surface

- Lichen on a fence post, stone wall, or garden structure is the same organism doing the same harmless thing. It adds texture and character and indicates clean air

- If lichen suddenly disappears from trees in your area where it used to thrive, that's a signal worth paying attention to — it may indicate a change in local air quality

- Lichen on fallen branches is a building material for hummingbirds and gnatcatchers. Both species press lichen flakes onto the outside of their nests with spider silk for camouflage. The lichen on your oak may end up on a nest in your yard

Don't scrape it off. Don't spray it. It's not the problem. It's the proof that the air is clean enough for it to exist 🌿

03/17/2026

You see your yard from five and a half feet. A robin sees it from two hundred.
A migratory bird passing over your neighborhood at altitude makes a landing decision in seconds. She's not looking at your landscaping. She's reading structure.
Mature trees register first. Each large deciduous tree is a potential food source, a nesting platform, and escape cover from hawks. A yard with two oaks reads completely differently from above than a yard with a row of ornamental shrubs — because the oak canopy supports hundreds of caterpillar species and the ornamentals support almost none.
Standing water is the brightest signal in the landscape. A birdbath reflecting sunlight is visible from surprisingly far away. A yard with visible water pulls birds in from a distance that a feeder alone can't match.
Structure diversity is what separates a yard birds land in from one they fly over. A lawn is one habitat type. A lawn plus a garden bed plus a shrub row plus a brush pile plus a wild corner is five habitat types in the same space. From above, each transition between types — lawn to shrub, garden to grass, canopy to open — reads as an edge. Edges are where food concentrates. More edges mean more foraging opportunities per square foot.
Posted by Guardians of Nature
A yard that looks messy from the sidewalk often looks rich from two hundred feet. The wild corner, the unmowed strip, the dead stump you left standing — those are the structural features that register as habitat from above. A perfectly uniform lawn reads as empty from any altitude.
She processes all of this in the time it takes her to cross your property line. Trees, water, structure, edges, cover. Land or keep flying.
🐦 How to score higher from two hundred feet:
- One mature native tree matters more than any other single feature — if you have one, protect it. If you don't, planting one native oak or maple is the highest-impact long-term change you can make
- Add visible water — even a simple birdbath on the ground reflects light upward and signals from a distance. Moving or dripping water is even more visible
- Create edges by letting different areas of your yard do different things — a mowed section next to an unmowed section next to a garden bed next to a shrub row. The transitions between them are where the value is
- A brush pile, a dead stump, or a log left on the ground adds structure that a clean lawn eliminates. These features register as habitat from above
- Dense cover within ten feet of a feeder gives every visiting bird an escape route from hawks — that safety margin is part of the landing calculation
The difference between a yard birds choose and a yard they skip isn't the landscaping budget. It's structure, water, edges, and cover.
She decided in seconds. She chose yours 🌿

03/14/2026

Lawn treatments begin in March --- the worst month for the ecosystem.

03/12/2026

Joseph Romano came to University of Delaware ready to jump into research. Two weeks into his college degree, the Honors plant science major joined Qi Mu’s lab and never looked back. Mu and Romano study the interaction between the fungus-like pathogen Pythium and maize plants.
Pythium root rot causes millions of dollars in annual economic losses to corn production across the United States. At UD, Romano also had the opportunity to conduct his own experiment as part of the UD Envision program, funded by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA).
“Getting the opportunity to design and carry out my own experiment was a dream come true,” said Romano, who graduates this spring after finishing his degree in three years.
Mu says the hands-on research experiences available in the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources are what turn students into scientists.
“Research experiences train students to think critically, ask meaningful questions, and integrate theory with real-world problem solving,” Mu said. “It prepares students to contribute productively to science-driven challenges facing agriculture and society.”

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