by TRC_Admin | Jun 15, 2021 | Nature, Trees
Photo: Mangrolife FB
“Jonah Basi may be 16 years old and a junior at St. Thomas Aquinas High School, but he’s got a big vision for what he wants South Florida to look like in the future.
‘I want to see huge green mangroves all along the seawalls that I know are contributing to that cleaner water,’ he says. ‘A blue waterway that’s reflecting the sky and not reflecting the toxins and everything that’s in it. And a waterway that’s not filled with trash.’
And he’s not waiting for anyone else to do it. Basi, who founded the nonprofit MangroLife, is getting his hands dirty and being the change he wants to see in the world.
‘This is the most important fight there is for me,’ he says. ‘This is the topic of my college application essays. This is all I talk about.’
Heartbroken to see the constant garbage and pollution clogging the Fort Lauderdale waterway behind his family’s new home, he decided to do something about it — not just collecting trash, but seeds of life.
Propagules are the seeds produced by red mangroves. Basi finds them floating on the water, and since last fall he’s been planting them, first along the seawall behind his home, then growing them in tanks and replanting the seedlings in pots as they grow.
‘But those ones, instead of keeping them on our property we’ve always had the intention to transplant them,’ he says.
And that’s how MangroLife was born. Baby mangroves, nurtured by Basi in his backyard until they’re big and strong enough to be replanted where they’re needed most — along the shorelines and seawalls, near ailing waters desperate for the good they bring.”
— Louis Aguirre, Local 10 News, Fort Lauderdale
Read entire article
by TRC_Admin | May 22, 2021 | Trees
Photo: Volusia Country
“It worked last year. Why not do it again?”
“Last week, the Florida State Parks Foundation reached its goal of raising $100,000 in one year to plant 100,000 new longleaf pine trees in our state parks. So why not run it back? The foundation announced Thursday that it is launching a new challenge to raise another $100,000 for 100,000 more trees by Earth Day next year.
‘This campaign has really resonated with the public, and so we have extended it for one more year with the goal of planting another 100,000 seedlings by April 2022,’ foundation president Gil Ziffer said in a press release…
The country’s longleaf pine population is now just a fraction of what it once was, because of development, the use of its wood for timber and storms. According to the foundation, the trees help support more than 30 endangered and threatened animal species…”
— Cooper Levey-Baker, Sarasota Magazine
Read entire article in Sarasota Magazine
Long Leaf Pine Preserve
by TRC_Admin | Mar 31, 2021 | Planting, Trees
Photo: Pebb Capital, Sun Sentinel
“Pine Grove Elementary School in Delray Beach was recently beautified with the addition of 200 trees on its campus.
The newly planted trees are part of a citywide tree relocation program created by Sundy Village and Pebb Capital in collaboration with Community Greening, an urban forestry nonprofit based in Delray Beach, that involves planting 205 trees in areas that need it the most such as rights-of-way, public parks, schools and neighborhoods in Delray Beach, according to Todd Benson, principal of Pebb Capital.
‘We proudly stand behind our corporate social responsibility and want to give back to the community by providing benefits such as better air quality, water filtration, soil stabilization, shade and aesthetic beauty through added foliage.’
The newly planted trees at Pine Grove consist of 50 from Pebb Capital and the rest from the city of Delray Beach, said Mark Cassini, co-director/co-founder of Community Greening…
According to Cassini, Southeast Florida is losing its tree canopy because of storms, diseases and more people moving here.
And planting more trees provides many benefits such as reducing energy usage, lowering the temperature, cleaning the air and reducing flooding, he said…br>
In addition to the tree relocation program, Cassini said that city of Delray Beach funded a tree-planting campaign to plant 10,000 trees in five years. The hope is to increase the city’s tree canopy from 23% to 28%…
The trees planted for this project are Florida native trees such as live oak, red maple, crabwood and South Florida slash pine that have ecosystem and wildlife.”
— Jennifer Shapiro-Sacks, Sun Sentinel
Read entire article
Visit Community Greening for more information on their programs.
by TRC_Admin | Feb 3, 2021 | Landscaping, Planting, Trees
Photo: Meghan McCarthy, Palm Beach Daily
“Putting on gray work gloves and yellow helmets, students from local elementary schools Thursday morning helped celebrate Florida Arbor Day by planting a kapok tree at Phipps Ocean Park in Palm Beach.
‘This is hard work. But it’s real good to plant a tree,’ said Ryder Lazzaro, a third-grader at Palm Beach Day Academy.
The 13-foot-tall seedling, planted just east of the Little Red Schoolhouse at the park south of Sloane’s Curve, could grow to more than 100 feet tall and live more than 200 years.
The fast-growing trees, like the one on Lake Trail on the grounds of the Royal Poinciana Chapel, are known for luxurious canopies and thick buttress roots.
The Garden Club of Palm Beach organized the annual event, which was smaller this year because of the pandemic, said Garden Club President Mary Pressly.
‘We’re hoping to inspire students to help their community. Planting trees and watching them grow may motivate them to go into fields like conservation and botany,’ said Pressly, who was among about 40 other town officials, club members and students who gathered under cloudy skies for the event.
While the national Arbor Day observance is in April, Florida and other states celebrate the day to reflect their best planting time…”
— Bill DiPaolo, Special to the Daily News
Read entire article
by TRC_Admin | Feb 3, 2021 | Landscaping, Planting, Trees
Photo: Coral Gables Garden Club
“The Coral Gables Garden Club members voted unanimously to dedicate “Project Canopy” to our dear Life Member, Sallye Jude.
The City of Coral Gables honored the Coral Gables Garden Club and Sallye Jude for her environmental work by proclaiming September 22nd, 2020, Project Canopy Day. Sallye, who joined the garden club in 1983, has a long history of promoting environmental causes in South Florida. Sallye is a member of the Sierra Club, a Fellow at Fairchild Botanic Garden, a past Board member of the Fern and Exotic Plant Society, the South Florida Palm Society, and the Tropical Flowering Tree Society. Plus, she has been a major supporter of the Royal Poinciana Fiesta for many years, which celebrates our magnificent Royal Poinciana tree. Her love and interest in trees are well known throughout the South Florida and Coral Gables communities. It is with the deepest admiration that this project is dedicated to her.
She is our “Johnny Appleseed!”
— Coral Gables Garden Club
Visit the Coral Gables Garden Club to learn more about Sallye Jude
Visit Scenic Florida
by TRC_Admin | Dec 30, 2020 | Trees
Photo: AP in Tampa Bay Times
“Scientists estimate that longleaf savannas once covered an area bigger than Germany. By the 1990s, less than 3 percent remained in scattered patches.
When European settlers came to North America, fire-dependent savannas anchored by lofty pines with footlong needles covered much of what became the southern
United States. Yet by the 1990s, logging and clear-cutting for farms and development had all but eliminated longleaf pines and the grasslands beneath where hundreds of plant and animal species flourished.
Now, thanks to a pair of modern-day Johnny Appleseeds, landowners, government agencies and nonprofits are working to bring back pines named for the long needles prized by Native Americans for weaving baskets. The trees’ natural range spans the coastal plain, nine states from eastern Texas to southeast Virginia and extending into northern and central Florida.
Longleaf pines now cover as much as 7,300 square miles — and more than one-quarter of that has been planted since 2010.
‘I like to say we rescued longleaf from the dustbin. I don’t think we had any idea how successful we’d be,’ said Rhett Johnson, who founded The Longleaf Alliance in 1995 with another Auburn University forestry professor.
That’s not to say that the tall, straight and widely spaced pines will ever gain anything near their once vast extent. But their reach is, after centuries, expanding rather than contracting…
Of the 1,600 plant species found only in the Southeast, nearly 900 are only in longleaf forests, including species that trap bugs as well as fire-adapted grasses and wildflowers.
The forests harbor turkeys and quail — but also about 100 other kinds of birds, nearly 40 types of animals and 170 reptile and amphibian species found only among longleaf. One is the gopher tortoise whose burrows shelter scores of animal species including mice, foxes, rabbits, snakes, even birds, and hundreds of kinds of insects…
Because most longleaf acreage is privately owned, 80 percent to 85 percent of the planting so far has been on private land, said Carol Denhof, president of The Longleaf Alliance.
Another 5,160 square miles must be planted or reclaimed from stands overly mixed with other tree species to meet the initiative’s 2025 deadline, she said. ‘I’m hopeful we can get there but … we have a lot of work to do.’…
About 400 acres of land returned to longleaf were planted by the Alabama-Coushatta Tribe of Texas, for their needles. But branches from most of the first planting are now too high to reach. So Gesse Bullock, the tribe’s fire management specialist, said he is pushing for another planting on the 10,200-acre reservation.
Basket weavers include the tribe’s realty officer, Elliott Abbey. ‘When I was younger,’ he said, ‘I thought it was work — something my aunts made me do,’
Now, Abbey said, ‘It strikes me in the heart that this could die out.'”
— Janet McConnaughey, AP, Tampa Bay times
Read entire article
