Category Archives: General Information

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LOUA: https://www.facebook.com/UrbanArboretum/

Pawpaw Festival: https://www.facebook.com/LOUAPawPawFest/

LOUA works hard to make Clintonville a greener place to live. We couldn’t do it without the help of our many members who support us.

If you aren’t already a member of LOUA and would like to show your support for what we’ve accomplished so far, please click on the “How to Help” selection in the main menu above. (https://lowerolentangyurbanarboretum.org/how-to-help/)

Together, we can make a difference!

The 4th Annual
Clintonville Pawpaw Festival

Saturday, September 19, 2015
11-4 pm

Located on Weber Road in the parking lot across the street from Indianola Informal School which is on the north side of Weber.

2015 Bio Blitz Results

I know it’s been a while, but I finally have the results from our last Bio Blitz. ended up recording 240 species this year, with a lot of new species recorded for the ravine. It always amazes me that there are so many things living and growing in our little ravine!

If you’d like to see the list, click on the Bio blitz 2015 for an Excel file listing all the species.

A huge thank you to all of the students and other volunteers who came by Glen Echo on a rainy Saturday at the Green Columbus (coordinated by Danielle Allison) work site to clean out some invasive plants. CERP (Columbus Ecological Restoration Program), from the City of Columbus, was also on hand to chip honeysuckle shrubs and cut down the larger invasives. They were a big help in making the day much more productive, as were the Columbus State Community College students who were there to lend a hand.

Pete would especially like to thank Mike Graziano and Jude Carstensen for coming in on Friday to mark the plants that needed to be removed. It made it so much easier for everyone on Saturday to know what should be dug up. Also, a big shout out to Niagara Water, who generously gave bottled water for all the volunteers. Working as hard as they did, it was greatly appreciated! And a special thanks to Robert Seed of Keep Columbus Beautiful, who provided us with all the tools we needed.

Some of the plants that were removed were multi-flora rose, burning bush, honeysuckle and creeping euyonymus, plants that really can cause havoc to the delicate ecosystem.

It’s been several years since we’ve started this clean-up project, and I really notice the difference in Glen Echo. There are jack-in-the-pulpits, blood root, trout lilly, spotted water leaf and other natives that have really started to thrive. It’s pretty amazing to see.

Until next time!

LOUA Earth Day at Glen Echo West

LOUA’s Earth Day event is just around the corner. Time to get out there and get rid of some invasives!

Saturday, April 25, 2015
9-11am and 1-3pm

Click here to volunteer. Once you open the page, you’ll volunteer by clicking on the date in the box.

BioBlitz 2015

Once again, we are going to survey all the birds, plants, insects, and wildlife in Glen Echo Ravine. This is a great way to learn about what’s living in Glen Echo as well as a way for LOUA to see how our efforts to clean the ravine of invasive plants are making Glen Echo a haven for native species.

Saturday, May 16, 2015
8 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Glen Echo Ravine

Mike Graziano is working on the schedule, which I’ll post as soon as it’s finished. We’ll have the same sort of line up as last year: bird walks, plants walks, and other wildlife.

LOUA’s EARTH DAY EVENT

LOUA has the place, date and time set for Earth Day at Glen Echo West: Saturday, April 25, 2015, 9-11am and 1-3pm. Click here to volunteer. Once you open the page, you’ll volunteer by clicking on the date in the box.

Finally, Spring is here…sort of. We’ve seen a few signs of plant life in our yard: the snow trillium have bloomed as well as the poor hellebores, which looked as if someone had poured hot water on them. We were concerned about one that came from Pete’s Aunt Rose, but it is coming back. We didn’t want to lose that one, as it came from her yard after she died. It has come full circle, because we bought the plant in Columbus, took it to Connecticut, then brought it back to Ohio.

Also, the big news in Glen Echo was a sighting of an American Woodcock. Pete says they are not typically found in urban areas, and this sighting, according to John Finn (of the Glen Echo Bird Club), is the first time this bird has been sighted in Glen Echo Ravine. Of course, it was our own Mike Graziano who saw the bird.

Well, it’s been a long time, I know. I hope everyone is staying warm in this cold, snowy and blowy weather. I don’t recall ever letting my faucet drip so often!

The reason for the delay in my posts was due to my laptop power cord fraying and spraying sparks everywhere. The computer is so old that I couldn’t just go to the computer store to buy a replacement. So my friend at work told me to find one on eBay. That was fun, as most were very inexpensive but had to be shipped from China. The cost of shipping was twice the cost of the power cord! I finally found one online and ordered it. Apparently, my poor power cord had a hard time getting from Texas to Ohio, thinking that the most logical way would be via Michigan. So what should have arrived in five days took nearly two weeks. Then, our modem went out. One store said I couldn’t buy a replacement, that everything had to be done online. That wouldn’t do at all. Then another store said they had a modem that I could buy, which I promptly did. I got that all up and running, only to find that it wasn’t working correctly (incidentally, it was operator error that made it not work…) I’ve finally got everything fixed, but I’m sorry for the long delay!

One of the things I read in the latest issue of Sierra was how palm oil is wiping out millions of acres of the rain forest. Palm oil is in half of all packaged products including processed foods, cleaners, and lipstick. According to the article, “the average U.S. consumer uses about eight pounds of palm oil each year.” It has several other names: vegetable oil, palmate, cocoa butter equivalent, sodium lauryl sulfate, and glyceryl stearate. What happens is that farmers take down the natives trees and vegitation to plant palm oil plantations. Losing those forests, in turn, threatens many species such as tigers, leopards and orangutangs. Also, indigenous peopleare pushed off of their land and have to deal with pesticides in their water supply.

So check those labels for palm oil before you buy.

Until next time!

That The Ohio State University’s football team won the national championship this year. (Pete and I finally watched both games, courtesy of YouTube. We don’t have cable, so we ended up listening to the Sugar Bowl and the championship games on the radio. The Alabama game, we both agreed, was the more exciting. But I must admit that watching a game you know the outcome, with all the commercials edited, was pretty sweet!)

So what does this have to do with trees and the Arboretum?

Well, Ohio State’s Chadwick Arboretum Tree Planting team took home a win of its own in Arlington, TX. Horticulturists from Ohio State, Oregon, Florida State, and Alabama competed to see which team could plant the most trees, with the Ohio State team winning first place. The tree planting, which took place at a new park, was part of The Playoff Green program, a group of sustainability projects developed around the college football playoffs. The program is meant to help offset the environmental impact in Arlington of hosting the college football championship.

Apparently, before they left for Texas, the Ohio State team was featured planting a tree in under 60 seconds on Channel 10. (I searched for a video to embed with no luck…)

Here is a photo of the tree planting team. From the left: Mike Boren (father of the 3 Boren Brothers who all play/played on the OSU football team); Christine Voise (Chadwick Arboretum GIS and Accessions Specialist); Mitch Gatewood (OSU Alumni from DFW area); Mike Pfeiffer (Chadwick Arboretum Horticulturist); Ray Kreutzfeld (OSU Alumni from DFW area); Christy Dudgeon (OSU Alumni and VP of Grass Groomers); Steve Schneider (OSU Landscape Planner and ISA Certified Arborist); and our own Dan Struve (Emeritus Professor of Horticulture and Chadwick Arboretum Volunteer).

All I can say is, we could sure use a team like that for LOUA when we are planting trees!

Congratulations on both Ohio State wins!

Until next time!