Tulips and Daffodils- It’s Spring!

Tulips and Daffodils- It’s Spring! The Trumpet Choir Daffodils at Thanksgiving Point Courtesy & © Mary Heers, Photographer
The Trumpet Choir
Daffodils at Thanksgiving Point
Courtesy & © Mary Heers, Photographer

Daffodil Encore, Thanksgiving Point Courtesy & © Mary Heers, Photographer Daffodil Encore
Thanksgiving Point
Courtesy & © Mary Heers, Photographer

My Favorite Sign Along the Path, Lilja Rogers, Published as Hocus Pocus in the Saturday Evening Post, 1961, Image Courtesy & © Mary Heers, Photographer My Favorite Sign Along the Path
Lilja Rogers, Published as Hocus Pocus in the Saturday Evening Post, 1961
Image Courtesy & © Mary Heers, Photographer

Mary Eating a Tulip, Courtesy & © Mary Heers Mary Eating a Tulip
Courtesy & © Mary Heers

My Favorite Photo Tulips at Thanksgiving Point Courtesy & © Mary Heers, Photographer
More Tulips Thanksgiving Point Courtesy & © Mary Heers, Photographer
Close Up - Tulips Thanksgiving Point Courtesy & © Mary Heers, Photographer
Mix of Tulips Thanksgiving Point Courtesy & © Mary Heers, Photographer
Red Tulips Thanksgiving Point Courtesy & © Mary Heers, Photographer
Red and Yellow Tulips Go Well Together Thanksgiving Point Courtesy & © Mary Heers, Photographer Above Tulips From Rebound Visit
Thanksgiving Point
Courtesy & © Mary Heers, Photographer

When I arrived at the Tulip Festival at Thanksgiving Point I was informed by a guide that the tulips were running late.

“No tulips?” I asked. I had heard they had planted 250,000.

“It has everything to do with the soil temperature,” my guide explained. It was April 14. She wasn’t expecting the tulips to emerge for at least another two weeks.

All was not lost, she hastened to add.

“The daffodils are up.”

So off we went along the paths of the 50 acre Ashton Gardens. Sure enough, hundreds of daffodils were waving their heads in the light breeze. I was especially drawn to a patch that they were intensely yellow, almost orange.

“Those are the ‘Tweety-Birds’,” my guide said.

I knelt down to get a good look at the trumpet shape of the flowers. Wow, I thought. This is the trumpet choir heralding the end of winter and the coming of spring.

So with my return ticket secure in my pocket, I went back to Mendon to wait. Snow was still on the ground.

This gave me time to read up on tulips. I found they were originally from Turkey. Tulip, in Turkish, means turban.

The exotic plant arrived in Holland in the 1500’s., It soon became so popular that the price went through the roof. At the height of the tulip mania, some people were willing to pay the price of a house for a single bulb.

About this time, a friend loaned me a book about this phenomenon, Tulip Fever. It turned out to be a real page turner. Set in 1630, young lovers in Amsterdam concocted an incredible scheme to run away and live comfortably in the colonies – if they played their tulips right.

Back in Mendon, when the snow finally started to melt, my neighbors began to tell me how the hungry deer had come into their gardens and beheaded their tulips. Their daffodils were left untouched.

Time for more research. I learned the daffodils produce a toxic alkaloid, lycorine, which makes them taste bitter. Tulips, however, are not only edible, but delicious.

About this time I noticed a lone tulip popping up next to my apple tree. No one planted a bulb here. This tulip had arrived as a seed. Years ago, the wind, or a bird. or an animal dropped this seed . Tulip seeds only take a few months to germinate. But it can take up to 5 years for the plant to produce a bulb which, in turn, produces the flower.

During WWII, when the German army occupied Holland, a large part of the population found themselves with nothing to eat but the tulip bulbs they had set aside to plant. They survived because a tulip bulb has as many calories as a potato.

I was sharing this tidbit of information with my good friend and neighbor when she reminded me the early Mormon pioneers had staved off hunger by eating the wild Sego Lilies that were growing on the nearby mountainsides.

Then she disappeared into her kitchen. She came back with a flower pot holding a tulip that had already bloomed. She pulled out the bulb and asked me if I wanted to taste it.

Never one to refuse a gift, I peeled off the outer layers and took a bite.

I chewed. She waited. It wasn’t bitter and it wasn’t sweet. I chewed some more. I wanted to say

green. Finally it came to me.

“Celery!”

This is Mary Heers and I’m Wild About Utah.

Credits:
Photos: Courtesy & Copyright Mary Heers, Photographer
Featured Audio:
Text: Mary Heers, https://cca.usu.edu/files/awards/art-and-mary-heers-citation.pdf
Additional Reading: Lyle Bingham, https://bridgerlandaudubon.org/

Additional Reading

Wild About Utah, Mary Heers’ Postings

Tulip Festival, Thanksgiving Point, https://thanksgivingpoint.org/events/tulip-festival/
Tulip Festival: Bounce-back!, https://thanksgivingpoint.org/tulip-festival-bounce-back/ [accessed 5/13/2023]

Pace, Eliza, Tulip festival to return to Thanksgiving Point, KSL TV, March 7, 2023, https://ksltv.com/530567/tulip-festival-to-return-to-thanksgiving-point/ [accessed 5/13/2023]

Stefanaki, A., Walter, T. & van Andel, T. Tracing the introduction history of the tulip that went wild (Tulipa sylvestris) in sixteenth-century Europe. Sci Rep 12, 9786 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-13378-9 AND https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-13378-9 [accessed 5/13/2023]

The Amsterdam Tulip Museum, https://amsterdamtulipmuseum.com/tulip/
Tulip History Outside Of Holland, The Amsterdam Tulip Museum, https://amsterdamtulipmuseum.com/topics/tulip-history-in-many-nations/

Moggach, Deborah, Tulip Fever: A Novel, Dial Press Trade Paperback, April 10, 2001,https://www.amazon.com/Tulip-Fever-Novel-Deborah-Moggach/dp/0385334923

Eating tulip bulbs, Fluwel, https://www.fluwel.com/pages/eating-tulip-bulbs

Brown, Janice, First a Howling Blizard… A Poem by Lilja Rogers, Posted May 31, 2007, Cow Hampshire, https://www.cowhampshireblog.com/2007/05/31/poem-first-the-howling-winds-awoke-us-by-lilja-rogers/

Community Trees

Jack in 560 year old Limber Pine tree 7/27/16 Courtesy & Copyright Hilary Shughart
Jack in 560 year old Limber Pine tree 7/27/16
Courtesy & Copyright Hilary Shughart

Jack and Darren McAvoy measuring the champion Engelmann Spruce at Tony Grove Lake. Jack has identified this tree as a close contender for the state Champion listing Courtesy & Copyright Hilary Shughart, Photographer Jack and Darren McAvoy measuring the champion Engelmann Spruce at Tony Grove Lake.
Jack has identified this tree as a close contender for the state Champion listing
Courtesy & Copyright Hilary Shughart, Photographer

Urban Trees Courtesy and Copyright Ron Hellstern, Photographer Urban Trees
Courtesy and Copyright Ron Hellstern, Photographer

“I think that I shall never see a poem lovely as a tree” Joyce Kilmore. I’m a forest person, my psyche deeply rooted in the forests of northern Wisconsin from my toddler days forward. Now as an octogenarian tree committee chair for Smithfield, Utah, trees have once again invaded my mental space and I feel the mychorrhizal fungi creeping back into my roots.

Arbor Day has come and gone a wonderful opportunity to celebrate these magnificent, towering relatives. As a biology teacher, I would have my students form a circle with each student offering a different benefit we receive from trees. Without any repetition, they never disappointed, each voicing another arboreal gift.

Every dollar spent on planting and caring for a community tree yields benefits that are two to five times the investment. The benefits urban forests provide include jobs, higher property values, improved physical and mental health, pollution mitigation, heat mitigation, lower energy bills, safer streets, flood protection, and biodiversity. Trees connect communities, cultures, and generations. Neighborhood trees have shown the ability to reduce stress, improve overall health and development in children, and encourage physical activity.

Climate change is arguably the greatest challenge facing the health of our planet, which is our health. While it will take many solutions working together to make a difference, trees are the proven, affordable, natural way that can be implemented quickly to pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. Every tree planted is a step in the right direction.

One of the biggest line items in the Inflation Reduction Act’s forestry budget goes to urban forests: $1.5 billion has been appropriated for the Urban and Community Forest Assistance program, which provides technical and financial help to local communities so they can plant and maintain urban trees, educate citizens about tree care, and train tree workers.

“Access to urban green space and trees do a lot of wonderful things for people,” says Rachel Holmes, urban forestry strategist for the Nature Conservancy and co-chair for the Sustainable Urban Forest Coalition. Study after study validates the benefits of urban tree cover: Views of trees outside classroom and office windows can positively influence kids’ test scores and behavior, office workers report significantly less stress and more satisfaction; greener neighborhoods experience less crime.

An excellent resource for all things trees- selecting best tree for your landscape, planting, pruning, watering, mulching, is the Arbor Day website- www.arborday.org Smithfield has the high honor of holding the title “Tree City, USA”. Does your city? If not, the Arbor Day website has the criteria for attaining this esteemed title.

Are trees sentient beings- capable of thought and caring? May I suggest you read “Finding the Mother Tree- Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest” by Suzanne Simard for the answer.

Jack Greene for Bridgerland Audubon Society and I’m Wild About Utah trees!

Credits:

Audio: Courtesy & © Kevin Colver, https://wildstore.wildsanctuary.com/collections/special-collections
Text: Jack Greene, Bridgerland Audubon, https://bridgerlandaudubon.org/
Additional Reading: Lyle W Bingham, Webmaster, Bridgerland Audubon, https://bridgerlandaudubon.org/

Additional Reading:

Jack Greene’s Postings on Wild About Utah, https://wildaboututah.org/author/jack/

Joyce Kilmer, Poetry Foundation, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/joyce-kilmer

Smithfield, Utah Tree Committee, https://smithfieldcity.org/bc-tc

USDA Forest Service Urban & Community Forestry, Inflation Reduction Act, Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO), USDA Forest Service, https://www.fs.usda.gov/sites/default/files/UCF-IRA-NOFO-04122023.pdf

About Tree City USA, The Arbor Day Foundation, https://www.arborday.org/programs/treecityusa/
Inflation Reduction Act News, UDSA News, https://www.usda.gov/ira

Kuhns, Michael, Mooter, Dave, Tree Planting Rules, https://extension.usu.edu/forestry/trees-cities-towns/tree-planting/tree-planting-rules

Tree Browser, USU Extension, Utah State University, https://treebrowser.org/

Ponderosa Pine

Ponderosa Pine Courtesy USDA Forest Service

Ponderosa Pine
Western Yellow Pine
Pinus ponderosa
Courtesy USDA Forest Service

Ponderosa Pine Needles Courtesy US NPS from a US BLM Photo
Ponderosa Pine Needles
Courtesy US NPS from a US BLM Photo

Ponderosa Pine Bark Courtesy USDA Forest Service
Ponderosa Pine Bark
Courtesy USDA Forest Service

Ponderosa Pine Distribution Courtesy US National Parks Service, Bryce Canyon National Park,
Ponderosa Pine Distribution
Courtesy US National Parks Service, Bryce Canyon National Park

I’ve been accused of being a tree hugger over the years, a title I welcome! I’ve hugged many trees, as I’ve hugged many people, especially on Valentine’s Day! One tree that I’m particularly fond of hugging is the ponderosa pine- with its sweet butterscotch aroma meeting my nostrils!

A few weeks ago, I was skiing with friends through a lovely ponderosa forest in Bryce Canyon National Park. The trees had a special beauty with their fresh cover of snow and frost crystal. As my skis and I worked our way through the forest, many questions regarding these magnificent trees arose- how were they being managed by the park, other than controlled burns? It appeared to be a well-structured forest, a multi-aged stand from seedlings to much older members of “yellow bellies”, a name given to mature, older pines whose bark wore a yellowish-gold cast. When was the last fire where I skied?

This dry-land forest loves a good, cleansing burn every so often to keep it healthy and fecund, reducing the fuel load to prevent catastrophic fires that may kill the trees. Often occurring at higher elevation and towering over their lesser neighbors of limber pine, Douglas fir, subalpine fir, and juniper, they serve as highly effective lightning rods. More than 100 feet heights are common for these monarchs. Under ideal growth conditions, they may pierce the sky at 200 feet and over five feet in diameter! The oldest recorded ponderosa is 933 years although they average 300-400 years.

Ponderosa’s are among the highest valued lumber trees in the west. Most of the old growth ponderosas have been cut unless they’ve had special protection in parks and preserves. I’ve found small patches of trees well over 200 years in age, living long before the axes and saws appeared in the western US.

Native Americans ate the seeds either raw or made into a bread and the sweet, edible phloem in the inner bark. They used the pitch as adhesive and waterproofing agent for canoes, baskets and tents. Blue dye was produced from a root extract. The long needles were woven into baskets.

Many species of wildlife are found in these marvelous forests, some completely dependent on them, like the Abert’s squirrel. This squirrel species truffle feeding behavior has a symbiotic relationship with the ponderosa by spreading truffle spores through defecating and burying them, which form mycorrhiza with ponderosa tree roots allowing them to thrive.

There is less canopy cover in a ponderosa pine community compared to lodgepole pine and spruce/fir communities, resulting in more grasses, forbs, and shrubs. The high species richness of the understory makes it preferred by grazing animals such as elk, deer, and moose. A ponderosa forest bird I’m particularly fond of is the communal pigmy nuthatch. Their busy, constant chatter always brightens my day-including winter days in Bryce.

I recently read a delightful book on the ponderosa “Graced by Pines” by Alexandra Murphy, a wonderful read to pass these long winter nights.

Jack Green for Bridgerland Audubon Society and I’m Wild About Utah!

Credits:
Ponderosa Pine Pictures: Courtesy US NPS,
Bark Picture Courtesy US NPS, Rocky Mountain National Park, https://www.nps.gov/romo/ponderosa_pine_bark.htm
Audio: Courtesy & © Friend Weller, https://npr.org/
Text: Jack Greene, Bridgerland Audubon, https://bridgerlandaudubon.org/
Additional Reading: Lyle W Bingham, Webmaster, and Jack Greene, Author, Bridgerland Audubon, https://bridgerlandaudubon.org/

Additional Reading:

Jack Greene’s Postings on Wild About Utah, https://wildaboututah.org/author/jack/

Ponderosa Pine, Bryce Canyon National Park-Utah, US National Park Service, Department of the Interior, https://www.nps.gov/brca/learn/nature/ponderosapine.htm

“The Cheyenne Indians of Montana applied ponderosa pine pitch inside whistles and flutes to improve the instruments’ tone. The Nez Pierce used the pitch as a torch fuel; the Nez Pierce and Crow also used pitch as glue.”
Ponderosa Pine, Range Plants of Utah, USU Cooperative Extension, Utah State University, 2017, https://extension.usu.edu/rangeplants/shrubs-and-trees/PonderosaPine

“Ponderosa pine is unpalatable to domestic livestock but it may browse enough to slow or stop seedling recruitment. Pregnant cows that consume large amounts of ponderosa pine needles show an increased incidence of abortion and other reproductive anomalies.”
Ponderosa Pine (Pinus ponderosa), Poisonous Plant Research: Logan, UT, Agricultural Research Service(ARS), US Department of Agriculture, https://www.ars.usda.gov/pacific-west-area/logan-ut/poisonous-plant-research/docs/ponderosa-pine-pinus-ponderosa/

World’s Oldest Ponderosa Pine Found in Utah Fire Study, Utah Forest Landowner Education Newsletter, USU Extension, Utah State University, Volume 12, No 1, Winter 2008, https://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/fsbdev7_016042.pdf

Journey of the Potato

Journey of the Potato: Potato Harvest Courtesy & Copyright Eli Lucero, Photo Editor The Herald Journal, Logan Utah
Potato Harvest
Courtesy & Copyright Eli Lucero, Photo Editor
The Herald Journal, Logan Utah

Potato Museum: Potatoes Courtesy U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Potatoes
Courtesy U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)

When I walked into the Potato Museum in Blackfoot, Idaho, the first thing that caught my eye was a drawing of a farmer in the High Andes of Peru working the ground with a foot harrow. This is exactly what the Spanish Conquistadors saw when they marched into the area in the 1500’s looking for gold.
What they found instead was the potato. The Spaniards took the potato back to Europe, from where it eventually made its way to North America in the 1600’s. As for Utah, Brigham Young bought the potato here. Richard Jensen, writing for Utah’s LDS historical Society, tells us: “About noon, on July 24, the five acre potato patch was plowed when the brethren commenced planting their seed potatoes. The first irrigation in Salt Lake Valley was for the benefit of the newly planted potatoes.”

What Brigham Young didn’t know was that a small wild cousin of the domesticated potato was already here. In 2017 an anthropologist, Lizbeth Lauderback, was able to dig out the tiny bits of organic matter wedged into the stone grinding tools used by the Native Americans near Escalante. The organic bits proved to be potato starches. The stone tools were 10,000 years old.

But now the domesticated potato took over the field. The hefty Idaho Russet caught the eye of the McDonald food chain. They produced a fascinating video for the museum from inside their factory where the peeled potatoes were dropped in a fast moving water slide, accelerating to 50, 60 miles per hour. And BAM, they hit the slicer and came out the other side as slender, shapely strips now well on their way to becoming fries.

Back in Cache Valley, I was lucky enough to get invited to the Beutler Farm in Dayton to watch the potato harvest. Out in the field a giant harvester was forging ahead, scooping potatoes off the ground, bouncing them onto conveyor belts, and then sending them tumbling out a side chute into the bed of a potato truck keeping step alongside. Just as the truck filled to capacity, another truck sidled up behind and matched its pace with the giant machine.

The whole scene reminded me of the more formal dances in my high school, where couples would glide around the dance floor until another boy would sidle up behind the dancing boy, tap him on the shoulder, and take his place.

Keeping the rhythm of the dance of the potato trucks was the somewhat urgent beat of a ticking clock–potatoes still in the fields after a freeze would be ruined.

Falling in behind a departing truck, I was led to the above ground storage cellar where the potatoes were being piled into a massive wall that towered over my head. The wall was 22 foot high., and the potatoes kept coming. When the cellar was finally full, the doors were closed, the temperature and humidity controls set, and 8 million pounds of seed potatoes were left to wait out the winter at a cool 38 degrees.

The trucks moved on to filling the next cellar.

I was left standing there, marveling at just how many potatoes there were, wanting to sing the praises of all growing things, especially this farm’s successful mix of seed and sweat, of soil, of sun, of rain.

This is Mary Heers and I’m Wild About Utah.

Credits:
Photos:
Featured Audio: Courtesy & Copyright © Friend Weller, Utah Public Radio upr.org
Text: Mary Heers, https://cca.usu.edu/files/awards/art-and-mary-heers-citation.pdf
Additional Reading: Lyle Bingham, https://bridgerlandaudubon.org/

Additional Reading

Wild About Utah, Mary Heers’ Wild About Utah Postings

Idaho Potato Museum, https://idahopotatomuseum.com/

First use of wild potato in N. America Four Corners potato previously unknown part of ancient human diet, University of Utah, July 3, 2017, https://www.ars.usda.gov/ARSUserFiles/274/Bamberg%20Press/Four_Corners.pdf and Morning Ag Clips, https://www.morningagclips.com/first-use-of-a-wild-potato-in-n-america/

Eating a potato with 11,000 years of cultural history, Includes photos by BJ Nicholls, Imagine, The University of Utah, Spring 2021, https://magazine.utah.edu/issues/spring-2020/ancient-spuds/

Davis, James W. and Stillwell, Nikki Batch, Aristocrat in Burlap, A History of the Potato in Idaho, Idaho Potato Commission, December 1992, https://idahopotato.com/aristocrat-in-burlap/online/8

Harwell, William S. and Collier, Fred C., Manuscript History of Brigham Young 1847–1850, Collier’s Publishing Co., Jan 1, 1997https://books.google.com/books?id=u33Szoj3pFQC&pg=PA61&lpg=PA61#v=onepage&q&f=false
and https://www.amazon.com/Manuscript-History-Brigham-Young-1847-1850/dp/0934964041/

O’Connell, John, Idaho potato industry sees good signs for profitable fall crop, Intermountain Farm & Ranch, Post Register (Idaho Falls, ID), Jul 29, 2019, https://www.postregister.com/farmandranch/crops/potatoes/idaho-potato-industry-sees-good-signs-for-profitable-fall-crop/article_e9d4a968-96df-5bf5-9e53-ba6df41c5947.html

Flandro, Carly, From the classroom to the spud cellar: harvest break teaches life lessons, EastIdahoNews.com, September 22, 2022, https://www.eastidahonews.com/2022/09/from-the-classroom-to-the-spud-cellar-harvest-break-teaches-life-lessons/