Wet Weather Tree Problems We are all seeing a lot of crab apples and birches with leaves turning yellow and falling off. Argh! What’s happening?! Please, don’t panic. Stacey Rayer, Lotus’s resident horticultural expert says: “Too much rain has saturated the soil, and no oxygen is available to the roots, which is causing the leaves […]
Greenstreet partners with Lotus Gardenscapes
Greenstreet Tree Care is pleased to announce a partnership with Lotus Gardenscapes. Lotus Gardenscapes is an award-winning landscape design and build firm located in Dexter, Michigan, and owned by environmental artist Traven Pelletier. The Lotus team works closely with clients in the greater Ann Arbor area to create artistic and distinctive landscapes. This collaborative approach ensures each […]
What a difference eight hours can make
7:30 a.m. April 12 and eight hours later . .
A true American chestnut
When I was a young lad growing up in New Jersey, there were still a few big chestnut trees in the neighborhood. When we kids took the “long” unaccompanied one-mile trek to Finnerty’s candy store, we would take a shortcut through a neighbor’s yard with a huge specimen chestnut tree. We took great pains to […]
Surprising Appearance of a Chinese Yellowhorn
Nobody could figure out what it is. A small tree growing across the street from the Jefferson Market in Ann Arbor. Bill Dale, a tree worker employed by the City of Ann Arbor, spotted it and brought a sample back to the office. He and co-worker Steve Goebel Jr were completely flummoxed, and asked for […]
Avoid falling for tree and shrub pest control scams
The following article was released by Michigan State Extension this week. It is the result of a complaint from a certain tree-care worker who was getting tired of responding to calls from worried customers. The customers had been advised by a mega-lawn-care representative that their trees/shrubs had pest issues requiring multiple spray applications. Said tree-care […]
Why it is generally a bad idea to put gravel in the bottom of a pot and how that relates to evolutionary biology
Even experts will sometimes advise putting a layer of gravel in the bottom of a plant pot: “for drainage.” What you get in reality is a smaller pot. Think about it: if a soil is saturated such that it can hold no more water, it doesn’t matter whether the bottom of the medium is a […]
A Modest Geranium Goes Rogue
I probably first encountered the cute little Geranium robertianum on the shores of Lake Huron at Drummond Island. It’s a small-flowered cranesbill, known ‘commonly’ as herb-robert. Historically it was first collected in Michigan on Mackinac Island, and then later along the shores of the Great Lakes. It is a circumpolar species, found in parts of […]
An explosion of helicopters
I doubt anyone knows how or why this happens: all the silver and red maples in the region are laden with so much fruit it is hard to pick out any leaves. How can this phenomenon be coordinated among all the trees? One client called yesterday and asked how to spell the word ‘schizocarp.’ I […]
Birdwatching people-jam in northwest Ohio
I had no idea that the pastime of birdwatching had come to this. We scheduled our early-May visit to Maggie Marsh in northwest Ohio for a Tuesday in order to avoid any weekend crowd. It was quite cool and very windy, far from an ideal day for viewing migrating song birds. No matter. The place […]
