April 23, 2021

Katie Stuble Co-Author’s Paper in Ecosphere

Holden Scientist and Research Department Chair, Katie Stuble, is a co-author on a paper titled “Abundance of spring-active arthropods declines with warming.” This paper is in the April issue of Ecosphere and can be read here.

April 15, 2021

Beech Leaf Disease Workshop Includes Research from Holden

A recent workshop on Beech Leaf Disease included a talk by Holden’s Vice President for Science and Conservation, David Burke. The workshop was organized by the USDA Forest Service and reached over 500 people, including land managers and researchers. David’s talk was titled “Optimizing Rapid Detection Methods for the Nematode Litylenchus crenatae, the Associative Agent of Beech Leaf Disease.”

April 11, 2021

Na Wei Co-Author’s paper in Oecologia

Holden Scientist Na Wei is a co-author on a paper titled “Diversity and composition of pollen loads carried by pollinators are primarily driven by insect traits, not floral community characteristics.” The paper is in the April issue of Oecologia and can be read here.

April 9, 2021

Research from the Burke Lab Published in Special Issue of Plants People Planet

David Burke, Sarah Kyker, Adam Hoke, Charlotte Hewins, and former summer intern, Catherine Chervanek have published research on mycorrhizal fungi that colonize root mats in the forest of Pierson Creek. Research on these root mats, which are dense tangles of mature tree roots just underneath the litter layer in the forest, began during Catherine’s summer internship. The research is published in a special issue of Plants People Planet on “Mycorrhizas for a changing world: Sustainability, conservation, and society” and can be read here.

April 1, 2021

Holden Awarded a Landscape Scale Restoration Grant

David Burke (Vice President for Science and Conservation) and Katie Stuble (Research Department Chair) were partners with Holden’s Conservation Department on a grant funded through the Landscape Scale Restoration Program. The project, titled “Making a Young Landscape Old: Landscape-scale forest restoration to promote biodiversity and resilience to environmental change,” will be conducted in the natural areas of Stebbins Gulch.

April 1, 2021

Alexa Wagner Receives Student Restoration Research Grant

Holden graduate student, Alexa Wagner, has received a Student Restoration Research Grant from the Society of Ecological Restoration, Midwest Great Lakes Chapter. The grant will go towards funding Alexa’s research in restoration practices at The Working Woods.

March 19, 2021

Holden Scientists and Volunteers Gear Up for Spring in the Forest

By Katie Stuble, PhD, Scientist

I had a moment of panic last week. It was the crocuses that did me in, if you can believe it!  Well, the crocuses and climate change. I’m a scientist, and an experiment was on the line.

This year will mark four years of spring phenology monitoring in Bole Woods. Phenology is the study of the timing of natural events, and we’ve been monitoring the timing of the spring greening of Holden’s forests. This sort of monitoring helps us understand how species may (or may not) be able to track the changing climate, and anticipate potential changes in our natural world.

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March 15, 2021

Alexa Wagner Selected as a Botany in Action Fellow at the Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens

Alexa Wagner (graduate student at Holden) has been selected as a Botany in Action Fellow at The Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens. This program provides support for emerging scientists aiming to promote plants, biodiversity and sustainable landscapes through research, scientific outreach and education.

March 12, 2021

Holden Scientists were Wildly Curious about Wild Leek

By Sarah Kyker, PhD, Postdoctoral Research Associate

The old growth remnant forests in Stebbins Gulch are locations at Holden Arboretum that David Burke and his lab have been studying for years. Burke first began hiking to the old growth portions of Stebbins Gulch back in 2006. One thing that he and Charlotte Hewins noticed every spring was the immense cover of wild leek (Allium tricoccum) on the forest floor. “Come April when the leeks are fully emerged, there is nowhere to step that isn’t completely covered in them,” Hewins once told me. In April of 2008, I saw it for myself and it took my breath away. Forest floors were supposed to be brown and covered in decaying leaves. But, the forest floor of Stebbins Gulch that April (and every April after) was green due to numerous wild leek leaves unfurling toward the sun!

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March 1, 2021

Caleb Lumsden Receives Fellowship from the Garden Club of America

A former summer intern, Caleb Lumsden, has received the Fellowship in Conservation Horticulture from the Garden Club of America in collaboration with the Botanic Gardens Conservation International – U.S. The fellowship will bring Caleb back to Holden to conduct research on the hemlock woolly adelgid during the summer of 2021.

February 19, 2021

Detecting Changes in the Natural World

By Katie Stuble, PhD, Scientist

The Holden Arboretum is a stunning place to explore with its beautiful gardens and forests. I love to hike the trails with my family and watch the gardens transform over the seasons. But, as a scientist who studies the impacts of climate change, the Arboretum is also a treasure-trove of information. Natural areas like the ones protected by the Arboretum are increasingly rare and hugely important not only as sanctuaries for wildlife, but also as spaces in which to study it. And, given the stresses currently placed on the Earth, this role is perhaps more important today than ever.

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February 12, 2021

A Lady’s Slipper Update on the Eve of Orchids Forever

By Connor Ryan, MS, Rhododendron Collections Manager

A lot of science and conservation is learning by doing, so I would like to provide an update on our lady’s slipper orchid conservation project. This is our first time growing orchids from seed. On December 11, 2020, Field Station Specialist Jing Wang and I sowed seeds of Cypripedium reginae, the showy lady’s slipper, collected in a Holden natural area. Details of the first steps can be seen in a previous blog entry here. It has now been nine weeks since we sowed the seeds, and we have good news to report. We have germination!

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February 5, 2021

Biotic Homogenization – Changes in biodiversity with urbanization in vacant lots

By Megan Herrmann, Graduate Student, Cleveland State University

The current biodiversity crisis seen in headlines has many overarching implications for ecosystems worldwide. Humans frequently aid in the dispersal of non-native species through both accidental and intentional introductions. Urban areas, as hotspots of human activity and disturbance, are thought to contribute to the spread of non-native species and create similar environmental pressures worldwide. Altogether, urbanization is thought to contribute to the increasing similarity of biotic communities, a process known as biotic homogenization.

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January 26, 2021

Stuble Lab Receives Invasive Plants Research Grant

Holden Scientist, Katie Stuble, and graduate student, Alexa Wagner, have received funding from the Ohio Invasive Plants Council. Their project, titled “Determining dynamics responsible for plant community responses to overstory thinning and invasive species management,” was awarded funding for $1,500. This support will help efforts to quantify the impacts management in Working Woods has on the survival and growth of young invasive species, as well as, the reproductive success of adult shrub species. This information will hopefully help predict restoration outcomes and inform management aiming to reestablish native plant communities.

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January 22, 2021

The Life Beneath the Snow

By Sarah Kyker, PhD, Postdoctoral Research Associate

The month of January, with its freezing temperatures and leaf-less trees, is a time when it’s easy to think of nature as dormant. While this might be true for deciduous trees and hibernating animals, this is far from true for soil organisms, such as fungi. These decomposers are very active during the winter decomposing the leaf litter that fell just months prior! Snow cover is beneficial for this decomposition because it insulates the ground and keeps the soil from freezing. Snow cover does more than just keep the soil from freezing, it keeps soil temperatures stable. The soil ecology lab at HF&G has been monitoring soil temperatures in the forests of Stebbins Gulch since 2006. Soil temperature loggers record soil temperature every 8 minutes throughout the year. Year after year, soils in the winter are stable and typically just above freezing. Once the spring arrives and the snow cover is no longer constant, soil temperatures become much more variable. The now exposed soils can more easily freeze with cold night-time air temperatures and then thaw with the warmer air temperatures of the day.

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January 15, 2021

Meeting the Grand Botanic Garden Challenge at Holden Forests & Gardens

By Juliana S. Medeiros, PhD, Plant Biologist

When we consider the major challenges facing humanity today, it is exciting to think that plants can provide a myriad of sustainable solutions. Problems with water quality, our dependence on fossil fuels, food insecurity, and even emerging human diseases can all be addressed, if only we can find the right plant for the job. Plants have amazing capabilities to alter ecosystem function and soothe our ailments, and over evolutionary time they have adapted and acclimated to inhabit nearly every environment on earth, with their ability to capture energy from sunlight forming the basis of life as we know it.

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January 8, 2021

How do deer and forest edges shape Northeast Ohio forests?

By Alexa Wagner, Doctoral Graduate Student

One of Northeast Ohio’s most charismatic consumer of plants within our forests is the white-tailed deer. Perhaps you’ve even noticed their impacts in your own backyard garden. As yards and people take up more space, there are fewer large tracts of intact forests to support predatory animals (e.g., bear or bobcat) relying on those habitats. This lack of predators combines with an abundant supply of food for deer (possibly the hostas planted in your backyard), to drive high numbers of white-tailed deer in most Ohio forests (and beyond).

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December 11, 2020

Sowing Orchid Seeds In Vitro

By Connor Ryan, MS, Rhododendron Collections Manager

Orchids are among the most ornamental and diverse groups of plants in the world. We often think of them as epiphytes, growing on trees in the tropics. Many would be surprised to know that there are orchids native to Ohio and that they do not grow in trees. Our native orchids grow in the ground and are called terrestrial orchids. Ohio has approximately 47 native orchid species, and of them, the lady’s slippers may be the showiest.

Ohio has 5 native species of lady’s slippers (genus Cypripedium) and one naturally occurring hybrid. Holden has three of these species growing in our natural areas. Lady’s slippers are characterized by a modified sepal, or labellum, that is shaped, you guessed it, like a lady’s slipper. This labellum serves to attract pollinators, mainly bees, to the orchid. Once a lady’s slipper is pollinated, a fruit called a capsule forms and maturity splits open to disperse thousands of tiny, dust-like seeds.

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December 4, 2020

The Biodiversity Belowground: Celebrating World Soil Day

By David J. Burke, PhD, Vice President for Science and Conservation

When we think of all the organisms on Earth, it’s soil that holds a substantial portion of this biodiversity. In just one teaspoon of clean, uncontaminated soil there can be up to 1 billion bacterial cells and close to 1 million different microbial species. Soils can harbor tens of thousands of species of fungi that can help plants acquire essential nutrients, decompose organic matter, and fight pathogens belowground. Antibiotics, such as streptomycins and tetracyclines, are produced by soil bacteria and fungi. Soil biota can be essential for bioremediation, a process where pollutants are degraded and ecosystems are cleaned. Soil bacteria and fungi, along with a number of invertebrates, decompose organic matter, such as rotting logs and fallen leaves; this decomposition may be key for sequestering carbon belowground and helping to mitigate the effects of climate change.

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November 20, 2020

Bridging the Diversity Gap in Plant Science Internships

By Juliana S. Medeiros, PhD, Plant Biologist

On November 18th Dr. Juliana Medeiros was invited to make a presentation about the Holden Research Internship Program for The Morton Arboretum virtual workshop: Bridging the Diversity Gap in Plant Science Internships. This workshop represents the first steps in building a network of science-based institutions that provide research internships, with the goal of promoting and enhancing diversity in the STEM workforce.

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November 13, 2020

Our Workhorse Forests and Acid Rain

By Katie Stuble, PhD, Scientist

Our forests are not only beautiful, but also environmental powerhouses, pumping out oxygen, filtering runoff, and storing carbon that would otherwise collect in the atmosphere and contribute to global warming. In fact, forests are our most promising tool to naturally mitigate climate change. But, not all forests are created equal and they vary in their ability to take up and store carbon.

Last week, Holden scientist David Burke introduced you to an amazing and long-running experiment manipulating acid rain deposition within Holden’s forests. This experiment, running for 11 years now, deacidifies the soil in large forested plots at Holden to explore how forests likely functioned before the impacts of acid rain. David and his team have explored everything from tree growth and nutrients, to soil microbes in response to these experimental treatments. But, what might these sorts of chronic changes in our forests mean for their ability to store carbon, and ultimately mitigate climate change?

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November 6, 2020

Ecological Paths Through a Yellow Wood

By David J. Burke, PhD, Vice President for Science and Conservation

It’s that time of year when the woods turn yellow – or orange and red depending on where you live – and shine with the vibrance of fall color. This perennial autumn display represents the process of nutrient recycling and recovery by trees before they lose their leaves for the season. A process that results in the recovery of nitrogen and phosphorous, major plant nutrients that can be costly to obtain from soil, from dying leaves. This process of recycling is what reveals the yellow, orange and red pigments normally masked by the green plant pigment chlorophyll. But not all nutrients within a leaf can be recycled and many are lost when they drop from the tree onto the forest floor. This presents an opportunity for other organisms to use those nutrients lost by the trees (a process called decomposition which we’ll explore next week) and also an opportunity for plant scientists to explore how human change to our environment affects and alters tree biology. And that is the subject of this week’s post.

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October 30, 2020

Holden Scientists Publish Commentary in New Phytologist

October 30, 2020 – Holden Scientist, Juliana Medeiros, and Postdoctoral Scholar, Randy Long, have published a commentary in the new issue of New Phytologist. The commentary discusses how studies of root traits and their influence on water transport in plants need to include the evolutionary history of the plant species. The commentary can be read here.

October 23, 2020

Curating a Collection

By Connor Ryan, MS, Rhododendron Collections Manager

As Rhododendron collections manager at Holden Forests & Gardens I wear many ericaceous hats, but at the core of my job is curating the Holden Rhododendron Collection. This role differs from most of the other folks in the Holden Research Department, who are actively trying to create new knowledge and solve problems. My job is to build a plant collection that facilitates this.

Having one person to curate a collection of one group of plants is a unique role at a public garden, but it makes sense for us. Between the David G. Leach Research Station, Helen S. Layer Rhododendron Garden, and the Eliot and Linda Paine Rhododendron Discovery Garden, HF&G has nearly 60 acres dedicated to Rhododendron collection and display. When we think about building a collection, we think about four main institutional focuses: research, conservation, education, and display.

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