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March 4, 2021

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Food and Garden Food-Garden Homepage Food and Garden Food-Garden Portal lead

Adkins Mystery Monday: It Hangs from Sweetbay Magnolias in Wetlands

March 1, 2021 by Adkins Arboretum Leave a Comment

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Happy March Mystery Monday! Today, our eyes turn to a mysterious leafy structure hanging from a sweetbay magnolia in the wetland. Do you know what it is?
The answer to last week’s frozen fruit mystery is red chokeberry (Aronia arbutifolia). Red chokeberry is a native shrub that has beautiful blooms in spring and stunning red fruits in the fall. The fruits remain throughout the winter and serve as a useful winter food source. Red chokeberry can withstand wet conditions and will sucker forming a colony.

Filed Under: Food-Garden Homepage, Food-Garden Portal lead

Yarnstorming Returns to Adkins Arboretum

February 27, 2021 by Adkins Arboretum Leave a Comment

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2020 Yarnstorming. Credit: Kellen McCluskey.

Yarnstorming is back! For the second year running, Adkins Arboretum is partnering with local yarn artists and the Fiber Arts Center of the Eastern Shore (FACES) to create a whimsical and exciting visual experience in the trees around the Arboretum Visitor’s Center.

Also known as yarn bombing, guerrilla knitting, kniffiti, urban knitting and graffiti knitting, yarnstorming is an art form that employs knitted or crocheted yarn in place of paint or chalk. Fiber artists, both veterans and those new to yarn art, will adorn native trees with everything from pompoms to needle felted animals to branch and trunk wraps and hammocks for woodland creatures.

Yarnstorming creations will be on display March 6 through April 3 at the Arboretum, located near Tuckahoe State Park in Ridgely. The public is invited to view the exhibit daily from dawn to dusk. For more information, visit adkinsarboretum.org.

Adkins Arboretum is a 400-acre native garden and preserve at the headwaters of the Tuckahoe Creek in Caroline County. For more information, visit adkinsarboretum.org or call 410-634-2847, ext. 0.

Located in Denton, the Fiber Arts Center of the Eastern Shore is a destination for the area’s many quilt and fiber art enthusiasts, visitors, and residents to view historic and recent works by quilters and fiber artists from Maryland’s Eastern Shore and Delmarva Peninsula. For more information, visit fiberartscenter.com or call 410-479-0009.

Filed Under: Garden Notes Tagged With: Adkins Arboretum, gardens, local news

Adkins Mystery Monday: A Shrub’s Fruit?

February 22, 2021 by Adkins Arboretum Leave a Comment

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Happy Mystery Monday! Frozen fruit anyone? Do you know what native shrub this fruit belongs to?
Last week, we highlighted the prickly pear, Opuntia humifusa, a native cactus! Prickly pear will turn a more vibrant green in the growing season. The yellow flowers give way to a reddish pink fruit in the fall. It is a hardy plant that likes dry, sunny spots. True to its name, the prickly pear has tiny tan bristles that act like little splinters if you brush against it. Best to admire with your eyes (or at least gloves)!

Filed Under: Garden Notes

Adkins Mystery Monday: Birds and Small Critters Love This

February 15, 2021 by Adkins Arboretum 1 Comment

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Happy Mystery Monday! We’ve had quite a bit of cold snowy weather, which leads us to ask you about this plant. This plant has a slightly different (almost “pruney”) appearance in the winter, but in the growing season will turn a brighter green, stand up straighter, and bloom yellow in the spring. Do you know what it is?
Last week, we asked you about the greenbrier! Greenbrier (Smilax sp.) is a native plant often found on disturbed edges. It can have prominent thorns (although some species do not), green stems, and delicate tendrils in the growing season. Look for its inconspicuous whitish green flower clusters in May and June. The black fruits are enjoyed by birds and small mammals.

Filed Under: Food-Garden Homepage, Food-Garden Portal lead

Adkins Mystery Monday: Persist Throughout Winter and Stem Remains

February 8, 2021 by Adkins Arboretum 1 Comment

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Happy Mystery Monday! Last week, we highlighted the snowy footprints of the Eastern Cottontail! These rabbits generally spend their lives in an area of 10 acres or less and can run up to 18 miles an hour.
This week, we ask you, what plant produces these bluish black berries? These berries persist throughout winter and the stem remains green year round.

Filed Under: Garden Notes

Adkins Arboretum Receives Funding to Pursue Indigenous Peoples Perspective Program

February 4, 2021 by Adkins Arboretum Leave a Comment

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Adkins Arboretum has been awarded a Maryland Humanities grant to develop an Indigenous Peoples Perspective program in partnership with Washington College’s Eastern Shore Food Lab (ESFL). The program will employ digital resources in the forms of web profiles, videos and self-guided activities to explore the importance of 21 native plants to the food, craftwork and medicinal traditions of indigenous peoples of the Chesapeake region.

Milkweed (Photo credit: Kellen McCluskey/Adkins Arboretum)

A native garden and plant preserve located in Caroline County, Adkins Arboretum is the only public garden that focuses solely on plants native to the mid-Atlantic coastal plain. Its 400 acres of diverse habitat support more than 600 species of native shrubs, trees, wildflowers, grasses, ferns and vines.

The ESFL at Washington College optimizes personal and community health by drawing upon the dietary past that built us as a species. The Food Lab works to strengthen the ties between environment, society, family and ourselves while addressing issues of sustainability, food access, and dietary and social health. The Arboretum and ESFL have partnered previously to offer foraging walks.

The project seeks to encourage a paradigm shift from land as capital to land as sacred teacher, healer and sustainer. The Arboretum is located in the traditional homeland of the Choptank People, Algonquin-speaking Woodland Indians who lived along the lower Choptank River basin. Before European settlers arrived in the early 1600s, there were approximately 20,000 Choptank living on the Eastern Shore. Less than 150 years later, these native people were driven to near-extinction by illness, fighting and forced migration.

According to the Chesapeake Bay Program, “Tens of thousands of people who identify as American Indian live in the Chesapeake region today. Some belong to state- or federally recognized tribes, others belong to groups with a shared heritage and many others celebrate their ancestry through their immediate family.”

Native American expert Daniel “Firehawk” Abbott will serve as a consultant on the project. A member of the Eastern Shore’s Nanticoke People, Abbott is the principal Native American prehistoric/historic interpreter at Historic Jamestowne Island. While serving on the Board of Directors of the Nanticoke Historic Preservation Alliance, he designed and guided the construction of the Chicone Village at Handsell in Dorchester County. He has partnered with the Arboretum at festivals and on foraging walks.

Through the Indigenous Peoples Perspective project, Adkins Arboretum and ESFL will strive to honor the wisdom of native peoples and their unique relationship with nature by sharing their ecological perspectives, history and traditions. Ultimately, the project seeks to inspire a collective responsibility to shape our future by caring for the land that supports us.

This project was made possible by a grant from Maryland Humanities, with funding received from the Maryland Historical Trust in the Maryland Department of Planning. Maryland Humanities’ Grant Programs is also supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities and private funders. Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this program do not necessarily represent those of Maryland Humanities, Maryland Historical Trust, Maryland Department of Planning or National Endowment for the Humanities.

Adkins Arboretum is a 400-acre native garden and preserve at the headwaters of the Tuckahoe Creek in Caroline County. For more information, visit adkinsarboretum.org or call 410-634-2847, ext. 0.

Filed Under: Garden Notes Tagged With: Adkins Arboretum, gardens, local news

Adkins Mystery Monday: Who Left These Prints in the Snow?

February 1, 2021 by Adkins Arboretum 3 Comments

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Happy Mystery Monday! On this February morning, we ask you who left these prints in the snow next to the meadow?

Last week, we highlighted the tulip poplar (Liriodendron tulipifera)! This large native canopy tree can grow up to about 150 feet! Actually in the magnolia family, the tulip poplar is technically not a poplar. In the spring, it produces beautiful orange and cream colored blooms that produce so much nectar that sometimes it “rains” in the forest. It is a host plant for the larval eastern tiger swallowtail.

Filed Under: Food-Garden Homepage, Food-Garden Portal lead

Adkins Mystery Monday: A Unique Seed Pod Popular with Birds?

January 25, 2021 by Adkins Arboretum 1 Comment

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Happy Mystery Monday! Last week, we highlighted the black locust, Robinia pseudoacacia. This tree has rather large thorns and can grow up to 4 feet each year! It is in the legume family and fixes nitrogen. In May, the mature trees bloom with delicate bundles of white flowers, which turn to long reddish brown seed pods. These seeds are an important food source for bobwhite quail, wild turkeys, and other birds, as well as some mammals.
This week, we ask you: what native canopy tree produces this unique seed pod? These seeds are enjoyed by many birds and small mammals in the fall and winter.

Filed Under: Food-Garden Homepage, Food-Garden Portal lead

Adkins Mystery Monday: Blooms in the Summer and Acts as a Fence

January 18, 2021 by Adkins Arboretum 1 Comment

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Happy Mystery Monday! Last week, we ventured into the world of fungi. Those orangey brown fungi were a type of jelly fungi called amber jelly roll. It is often found on dead hardwood branches.
This week, we ask you what native tree has these massive thorns? It has beautiful blooms in the summer and some people use these trees as living fences.

Filed Under: Garden Notes

Adkins Mystery Monday: What Grows on a Oak Tree

January 11, 2021 by Adkins Arboretum 2 Comments

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Happy Mystery Monday! We found this growing on the branch of an oak tree. What is it?
Last week, we highlighted the black cherry tree, Prunus serotina. Cherries are known for their prominent lenticels, which look like little dashes on the bark. Black cherries are important wildlife trees, providing food and shelter for many insects and birds.

Prunus serotina

Filed Under: Garden Notes

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