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Posts Tagged ‘mangrove’

Strange Trees

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on June 9, 2016| 4 Comments »

Straight from Maria Popova’s wonderful Brain Pickings blog, a review of an illustrated book on strange trees.

“In Strange Trees and the Stories Behind Them (public library), French author Bernadette Pourquié and illustrator Cécile Gambini choreograph an illustrated tour of the world’s greatest arboreal wonders, from species that have witnessed the dinosaurs roam this Earth to exotic marvels like Brazil’s ‘Walking Tree’ (Red Mangrove) and the Philippines’ ‘Rainbow Tree’ (Mindanao gum tree) to underappreciated procurers of human delights, such as the sapodilla tree that gives us chewing gum and the cocoa tree without which there would be no chocolate.

“Alongside each imaginative illustration, partway between botany and fairy tale, is a one-page autobiography of the respective tree, describing its natural and cultural habitat in a short first-person story fusing curious science facts, history, and local customs.” Read more.

I hope that John is reading this post. He’s officially on his town’s tree committee — promoting the value of trees in urban and commercial areas as well as residential — and he is leading a town tree inventory that was launched yesterday.

 Illustration: Cécile Gambini 

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Mangroves Protecting Coasts

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on November 7, 2012| 5 Comments »

Johann Earle at AlertNet (“the world’s humanitarian news site”) has a timely article on efforts to protect mangroves along coasts.

“Keeping coastal mangrove forests intact or replanting them is cheaper than building man-man structure to protect coastlines threatened by climate change, according to the head of the International Union for Conservation for Nature (IUCN).

“ ‘Our message is,”Don’t assume that man-made or engineered solutions are the only ones to protect our coasts and rivers and to provide drinking water. We are not against engineering in the absence of natural solutions, but look at what nature has to offer,” ‘ ” urged Julia Marton-Lefevre at the recent World Conservation Congress in South Korea.

“Preserving mangrove forests can help regulate rainfall patterns, reduce the risk of disasters from extreme weather and sea level rise, provide breeding grounds for fish and capture carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to slow climate change, she said. That suggests preserving them will be essential to fighting climate change and protecting lives and livelihoods in the face of climate shifts already underway.

“ ‘Standing trees help us with inevitable climate change,’ she said. ‘Keeping mangroves intact on the coast is not only good for capturing and storing carbon but also very useful for protecting the coast in times of extreme weather conditions and acting like nurseries for fish to ensure people have protein to eat,’ she said.” More here.

Any chance of planting mangroves around Manhattan Island? How about Fire Island? We need something comparable in cooler climes.

Photograph of a mangrove plant on the shore in Cancun, Mexico: REUTERS/Gerardo Garcia

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