Bees, Toronto Trees, Butterflies and More

It is an ill wind that blows no good. The past winter may have been long and hard with spring late arriving. And while consequent tree and shrub damage was excessive overwintering pest populations were reduced. This is no excuse for reducing vigilance but it does make a gardener’s life a little easier – for the moment at least. As Lubarsky’s Law of Cybernetic Entomology reminds us: There’s always one more bug.

Gaining experience from previous unpropitious events many mass retailers are dropping prices on trees, shrubs, evergreens, roses and other stock they have not sold this spring, rather than wait until fall with dwindling hopes of boosting late season sales. And, in the opening week or so of this month, supermarkets are cutting prices at their temporary ‘garden centers,’ prior to their folding their proverbial tents and stealing away for another year.

Diversion No. 1

Black Thumb? He was so dumb he thought mahogany was a state monogamy

My, oh my, what ever will they discover next? According to Design & Trend, 51% of garden plants purchased at big-name retailers in 18 cities around the United States and Canada contained neonicotinoid, a pesticide that has been frequently tied by experts to bee population decline. Yes gardeners, commercial nurseries are actually using pesticides in their production of trees, shrubs and flowers. Neonicotinoids find particular favour since they are systemic – absorbed into the plant so that when herbivorous pests chomp down on them they are committing, ahem, insecticide.

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Design & Trend says that thanks to this practice, bee-friendly organic gardens found in backyards may actually be harming bees, quelle horreur! This could be a case for a latter-day Sherlock Holmes who retired, you will remember, to become an apiarist. Except for those allergic to bee stings, a bee garden seems a lovely idea. Unfortunately honeybees haven’t heard of this. Researchers have decoded the honeybee’s dance to determine which types of nectar and pollen the insects prefer. Margaret Couvillon and her colleagues at the University of Sussex in the U.K. near to where the great detective retired analyzed more than 5,000 waggle dances. The scientists revealed in a recent issue of the journal Current Biology that the bees preferred tracts of land with greater stewardship, and a nature reserve with abundant wildflowers, to land sown with organic seed mixes and frequently mowed. Enough said.

Diversion No. 2

Never mind their environmental and social benefits, Toronto’s 10 million urban trees are with $7 billion to the local economy according to a study by the TD Bank. The residents of North America’s third largest city save over $80 million a year, or about $125 per family the bank figures. All of which begs the question: why cant the politicos at city hall spend more on the forestry department and less on feel-good social schemes?

It was the satirist Jonathan Swift, he who suggested extracting sun beams from cucumbers, who more practically observed, “Whoever could make two ears of corn or two blades of grass grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind than the whole race of politicians put together.” One at least finally made it. Sanyjaya Rajaram, a crop scientist, is credited with developing hundreds of varieties of disease-resistant wheat adaptable to many climates. He has now received the 2014 World Food Prize, worth a quarter-million dollars. Rajaram, born in India and is now a Mexican citizen, wins the US$250,000 prize founded in 1986 by Norman Borlaug, who was the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for boosting agricultural production in what has become known as the “Green Revolution,” of which he is said the have been the ‘father’ of.

Diversion No. 3

A Brit police force has recruited a set of garden gnomes dressed in full uniforms including helmets in fight against seasonal crime. The 10 ornaments will be at the centre of a new campaign to highlight the danger of summer time crime in Durham. But not everybody is happy: the Taxpayers’ Alliance is calling for real action, not stunts.

Coca-Cola is introducing a reduced calories drink this fall sweetened with a blend of stevia and sugar. The beverage will contain 13 grams less sugar than a regular can of coke – a third less than the standard version. It has apparently been successfully tested in Argentina and Uruguay. The foliage of Stevia, a perennial from tropical and subtropical Central and South America, is over 30 times as sweet as table sugar. An extract from the leaves is up to 300 times sweet. Widely used in Japan for the past half-century, it is widely cultivated there. China also grows and processes vast quantities, producing tens of thousands of tonnes of the extract. Unlike such artificial sweeteners as cyclamate and saccharin, stevia not a suspected carcinogenic. In temperate climates such as southern Ontario’s, it can be raised as an annual crop and was experimentally grown in that province as early as 1987.

Diversion No. 4

Habitat loss on breeding grounds in the United States – not on wintering grounds in Mexico – is the main cause of recent and projected population declines of migratory monarch butterflies in eastern North America, according to research from the University of Guelph published in the Journal of Animal Ecology. The number of milkweed plants in the U.S. Corn Belt, where most monarchs breed, has fallen 20 percent in the past few decades.

This year’s International Herb Conference is being held in Toronto’s Eaton Chelsea Hotel on 19 and 20 July; for more information, visit www.herbsforlife2014.com.