Tyler Chapter Newsletter January 2005
Ruth Loper, Director Lynn Sherrod, Director Jim Showen, President 3312 Gail Tyler, TX 75701 jimshowen@aol.com Anne Brown, VP Membership Sonnia Hill, Secretary/Treasurer Elizabeth Parks, VP Field Trips Kay Fleming, Newsletter Editor
Directors &
Officers
THOUGHTS AND TRAVELS OF OUR CHAPTER PRESIDENT
As
some of you know, I bid on the bale of hay offered in the silent auction at our
2004 Annual Symposium. I had already bid about $50 on the bale, when a couple
of women from Dallas and Ft. Worth placed a bid 50 cents higher. The bale was
reportedly cut from a tract of land east of Columbus that reputedly had never
been plowed nor overgrazed. It was therefore full of the seeds of the original
prairie. Being a sore looser, I contacted the woman who had provided the bale
and offered to pay the same amount for another bale. She readily
agreed and we exchanged email addresses.
Astute
lawyer that I am, I paid the auction fund and agreed to work out the logistics
later. The woman, who shall remain unnamed in this tale, lives in Houston.
A couple of weeks after the symposium, I learned that I would be in Houston
taking a course in my required continuing legal education. I emailed the woman
and asked whether we could meet in Houston so she could give me the hay. I
heard nothing until the week before my trip to Houston. She said she was sorry
she hadn't answered sooner, but that she had been in California. She indicated
that she would bring the hay to Houston and for me to meet her at her house.
She said she would be home "late Saturday afternoon." My seminar
in Houston was on Friday and I was going down on Thursday. I had
additional plans down in La Porte that Saturday.
I
wrote her back indicating I would just as soon pick up the Hay in Columbus than
fight Houston traffic on Saturday and I ask who had the hay in Columbus. Silence.
She evidently had called me on Friday, but I don't have equipment to check my
voice-mail at long distance.
So,
after the seminar and the trip to La Porte, we killed Saturday at the Houston
Museum of Natural History until late in the afternoon and found our “hay
woman's” house. She wasn't there and neither was the hay. Her husband was there
but he didn't want to talk about it. His only comment was "I'm just
married to her." Well, the next week she sent the address and phone number
of the person in Columbus (or its vicinity) with the hay. We finally drove to
Columbus and received two bales of hay. Tell me what the moral of this story is
and I will share some of the hay. Jim Showen
JANUARY
PROGRAM
Our
January program will be a presentation by Dr. Lynn Sherrod on "Shade Trees
for East Texas: The good, bad, and ugly.” He will also offer a brief
overview of Arbor Day.
For
new members who do not know Lynn, he is our past president of the Tyler
Chapter, Botanical Advisor for NPSOT, and botany professor at the University of
Texas – Tyler. Back in 1997, he peaked a resurrection of my interest in native
plants when I took his Plant Taxonomy course. The rest is history! Kay
Fleming
FIELD
TRIPS
Even
though it's hard to think about field trips with the cold, blowing, rain we've
been having; it's like curling up with the seed catalogues and dreaming of what
is to come. Next spring, I am hoping that we are able to visit some of these
areas: Briarwood near Nachitoches, Louisiana; areas in Jasper and Newton
County; Kountze; Gus Engeling Wildlife Management Area; and Camp Tyler.
If
you have a place in mind that you would like for the group to visit, please let
me know. We have been to some of these places before, but we have new
members that have not had the opportunity. There are always more fun
places to explore than we have time in the spring, but we will do our best with
what we've got! Elizabeth
Parks
ANNOUNCEMENTS AND EVENTS
The
Tyler Chapter of NPSOT is planning a joint meeting with the Tyler Chapter of
Master Naturalists on February 3rd at 7:00 PM.
This meeting will occur on a Thursday instead of our usual Monday. Mr. Dick Pierce is scheduled to educate us
with a presentation on “Permaculture.”
It
is becoming more and more apparent to the American populace that we need to
continue to find better ways to grow healthier food while reducing or
eliminating the use of herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers. Caring for our land, air, and water is an
essential component in our quest for more wholesome and nutritious foods as
well as our entire lifestyle. But what
if there were a way that we could not only grow vibrantly healthy foods, but
also do so while serving many other benefits at the same time? This is
what permaculture is all about. It is the art and science of ecologically
designing our place in the environment. It is about the care of people and
the planet, and the commitment to produce no pollution by turning all
byproducts or our excesses into something that can be used by either plants or
animals. It marries indigenous wisdom with scientific understanding. Does it sound simple? It is simple.
All that is missing is information, desire, and commitment. The practical nature of a permaculture
design system leaves one wondering why everyone on earth does not implement
these principles in their daily lives. Elizabeth Parks
SYMPOSIUMS AND LECTURES
February
26th, 8:00 am to 5 pm: Native
Plant Spring Symposium, Those Other Native Texas Plants - Grasses, Ferns, Cacti
& Their Allies. The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, Austin
Early registration: $55 per
person, received by Jan. 25, 2005; $65 per person after Jan. 25. Concurrent
afternoon sessions & box lunch included with registration fee.
Hosted
by the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center & the Native Plant Society of
Texas, the Spring Symposium will include a plenary session reviewing native
Texas grasses, ferns, cacti and their allies, and the use of organic gardening
practices in native plant landscaping, followed by in-depth,
concurrent related afternoon sessions. Afternoon session themes
will address topics on plant identification, propagation, plant rescue, species
availability in the nursery trade and sustainable methods for gardening with
“those other Texas native plants.”
Presenters include:
Baron Rector & John Snowden (grasses) Steve Bridges & Sam Slaughter (organics)
David Mahler & Walt Hesson (ferns) Pat
McNeal & Dr. Charles Allen (sedges)
Dr. Bob Barth, Bob Crabb & Lico
Miller (cacti & allies)
The
Botanical Research Institute of Texas Distinguished Lecturer Series
Co-hosted
by the Fort Worth Botanic Garden and the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center. Nature's
Pharmacy, Medicinal Plant Use by Pacific and Neotropical
Peoples
Experts in the field will give
lectures on the pharmacopeias of Pacific and New World Tropical Peoples, the
plants these peoples learned to use over the millennia for maintaining health
and treating disease. Lectures are free and are held in the Leonhardt
Auditorium, Fort Worth Botanic Garden. A public reception is held at 6:30 pm
and lectures are at 7 pm.
3
February, 2005 (Fort Worth)
“Ethnobotanical Insights into Neurological Disease” Speaker: Paul Alan
Cox, Ph.D.
Executive Director, National Tropical Botanical Garden, Kauai, Hawaii
3 March,
2005 (Fort Worth)
“The Use of Plants for Medicine in the Dreamtime: Australian Aboriginal
Traditional Medicinal Plant Use” Speaker: Glenn Wightman, Ph.D. Parks and
Wildlife Commission of the Northern Territory, Australia
7 April,
2005 (Fort Worth)
“Exploring Ancient Wisdom and Traditional Healing in Micronesia"
Speaker:
Michael Balick, Ph.D. Head, Institute of Economic Botany, The New York
Botanical Garden
5 May, 2005 (Fort Worth)
"Use of Medicinal Plants Among the Maya in the Chiapas Highlands"
Speaker: Brent Berlin, Ph.D.
Department of Anthropology, The University of Georgia
FARKLEBERRY FOLLIES
By Kay M. Fleming
Anyone who has ever spent much time with me outdoors
knows I am an avid wild plant smeller, feeler and taster. A lot of my plant
identification is derived from these three senses. Sometimes this works out
well and other times it causes problems. I have been rewarded eating the white
petals of the Louisiana Yucca and painfully penalized for examining the
intensity of toxin in our stinging nettles.
One
plant that I sample each fall is the farkle-berry or sparkleberry. (I’ve always
thought it “farkled” more than it sparkled.) This normally small tree or shrub
is common throughout dry to mesic, sandy-loam uplands of northeast Texas.
Sparkleberries are common throughout East Texas and most of the southeastern
States. I don’t know if this is still true, but the State record farkleberry at
one time was growing at Texas Parks and Wildlife Department’s Nature Center
east of Tyler. This large specimen had grown into a 25-foot tree that redefines
its grandeur. The USDA indicates that the National champion has a 1.4-foot
breast high diameter.
The farkleberry, Vaccinium arboreum, is
a member of the Ericaceae or Heath Family.
Vaccinium is the classical name for blueberries and arboreum
refers to its tree-like appearance. Its fruit are about as big around as a
pencil’s eraser and shiny, black in color when ripe. It shares a sweet taste
similar to that of the blueberries we enjoy cooked in our pancakes and muffins;
however, it has a preponderance of seeds that limits its use as a food source.
You quickly find yourself spending more time spitting seeds than eating berries
but I refuse to accept winter until I have tasted the ripe farkleberry.
Webster’s New World Dictionary indicates it is non-edible and other sources
indicate the fruit is “rather tasteless” but what does Webster know about
farkleberries? The fruit are eaten by numerous bird species and I suspect they
get most of the berries long before I start my fall harvest.
The
delicate, waxy, white or pinkish flowers of the farkleberry are small and
bell-shaped. They are about ½ inch long with very little aroma that I can
detect. It is the latest flowering of the Vacciniums. (Just a thought - Isn’t it funny how such a white flower can
produce such a black fruit!)
The
bark of farkleberry is gray or grayish brown, thin and smooth with narrow
ridges shredding into large plates. Its leathery leaves (unlike the adjacent
photo) are almost always spotted and tinged with a rust color. These leaves are
persistent, seldom shedding like other deciduous East Texas trees and shrubs.
While
studying about the plant, I read that a root-bark extract reportedly has been
used medicinally to treat diarrhea. (Isn’t it strange how most plants either
cause or prevent diarrhea. Go figure!) The only economic uses noted for
farkleberry is that its bark is used in leather tanning and its wood for making
sturdy tool handles. Farkleberry’s dense; reddish brown wood is close-grained
and hard, weighing 48 pounds per cubic foot. This matches the density of many of
the oaks. White oaks average weight is only about 46 pounds per cubic foot.
Somehow,
we usually try to justify a plant’s worth by its human utilization? Probably
the most important utilization of farkleberries is by birds as they migrate
south in the fall. Its sweet fruit has to be a great find for our wing-weary,
feathered friends as they try to escape the ice and cold winds of winter. The
tiny black berries of the farkleberry will always be tasty fall treat to both
the birds and old men like me, as we wander through the East Texas woodlands.
Isn’t East Texas great?
Contributions to Newsletter
Members
are encouraged to submit articles for publication in the newsletter. Contributions will be considered on the
basis of interest, suitability, and available space. Grammar and spelling corrections will be made at the discretion
of the editor. Send your articles and announcements to the editor at
kfleming@mycvc.net or mail to Kay Fleming at 809 E. Clinton, Athens, TX 75751. If you are able to receive your newsletter by
Email, please send Kay your Email address. This will save the Chapter mailing
expenses.
If
you have never attended one of our meetings, and you are interested in learning
more about native plants and their habitats, we invite you to give us a visit.
We have a good time! Our meetings are normally held at the Walter Fair United
Methodist Church in Tyler on the first Monday of each month, September through
May. Walter Fair United Methodist Church
is located just off 5th Street
(Highway 64) at 1712 Old Omen Road, east of Loop 323.
NPSOT, Tyler Chapter
c/o: Kay Fleming
809 E. Clinton
Athens, TX 75751