Cactus Blog

It’s good news in the Southern Tablelands of Australia – the amphibians are making a comeback.

“Extinct” yellow-spotted bell frog found after 30 years

OK, so if you read the article, they’re not making a comeback so much as hiding out and doing their best to avoid people.

From CNN we find out a common herbicide used in the US but banned in Europe may be the leading cause of falling amphibian populations.

Atrazine, a weed killer widely used in the Midwestern United States and other agricultural areas of the world, can chemically “castrate” male frogs…

Farmers in the United States continue to use atrazine on crops The herbicide has been a long-standing favorite among corn, sorghum and sugarcane farmers because t is affordable and can eliminate the need for tilling it is affordable and can eliminate the need for tilling the soil. Tens of millions of pounds of atrazine are used each year in the United States.

Life on the Balcony went to Knott’s Berry Farm, the other amusement park in Anaheim, and found green roofed trash cans! She let us post a picture, but I think there’ll be more photos on her blog soon, too.

Here’s another green roof project in Orange County.

The commissioners recently approved funding for a green roof for the Sustainable Technologies Building and a wastewater recycle system to serve that building and the (Central Carolina Community College’s) Chatham Community Library, which is also going up at the campus…. “The commissioners felt that sustainable technologies are a critical part of CCCC-Chatham,”

Of course, that will be Orange County, NC.

Well how about this one, another green roof in Orange County.

it’s Hartford’s Hollander Center, a LEED-EB candidate that recently broke out the first green roof in Connecticut’s capital city.

OK, so this must be from a green company based in Orange, CT. Shall we try one more time? One more attempt at a green roof in Orange County?

Duke Medicine’s commitment to sustainabililty has reached new heights with Duke University Hospital’s recently completed green roof project.

A green roof features vegetation planted over a waterproofing membrane. Besides being nice to look at, green roof vegetation can enhance the energy performance of a building by mitigating heat.

Well, at least they’ve established a succulent farm for new green roof projects in North Carolina.

Last year, Duke Medicine helped sponsor the creation of a local sedum farm in Orange County, North Carolina. The farm is growing the pre-cultivated mats with sedum species more indigenous to our climate.

There’s that Orange County again! Curse you google!

Well, back to California, apparently the Irvine Medical Center has a green roof, but I can’t find a photo.

Could these heavy rains presage even heavier rains to come?

Discovery News has this story of a team of scientists modeling a, “MONSTER ‘FRANKENSTORM’”,

The recent California storms left the state battered and bruised, but that could just be a taster of things to come.

Nice.

And what has a monster storm looked like in California in the past? Like this one:

Oy, that’s not good. The Great California Flood of 1862,

transformed the Sacramento Valley into an inland sea, covering the tops of telegraph poles with steamboats passing over the farmlands to deliver goods and rescue survivors. The Santa Ana River formed two large lakes – one in the Inland Empire and another in the flood plain of Orange County. Probably the only definite high water mark in Southern California is at the Aqua Mansa, just south of the present city of Colton. Hydrologic studies at Aqua Mansa, document a discharge in 1862, three times the magnitude of anything since.

Of course, driving to Sacramento in winter normally the Sacramento river basin is usually flooded and looks like a lake. Even if that hasn’t happened in the last few drought years, it’s not uncommon. That’s why they don’t build houses on flood plains. Or shouldn’t.

Rat-eating plants do exist! Nepenthes attenboroughii.

“The plant is among the largest of all carnivorous plant species and produces spectacular traps.” Co-discoverer Stewart McPherson

And another picture from io9

Growing succulents for green roofs is becoming a big business. We’ve sold some, but you really need to work in large volumes, and we’re too urban for that.

On the other hand, Southern Maryland seems like it would be the perfect place.

John Shepley shows one of the many green roof plants grown on the farm. (Photo by Maryland Newsline’s Lindsay Gsell)

Rows and rows of small sedums, delosperma and other green roof plants sit below, soaking up the sun in their newly insulated home.

These plants have been the sole focus and cash crop of the farm since 1998. Nearly a million of them are grown each year for green roofs around the country, says Shepley, a former electrical engineer who is now co-owner of the business.

The National Aquarium in Baltimore, the Walter Reed Community Center in Washington, D.C., and Radio Shack’s World Headquarters in Fort Worth, Texas, are among the farm’s more than 400 clients.

Wow.

“This review shows that the Obama administration has not substantially improved the dismal record of the Bush administration in providing protection to the nation’s critically endangered wildlife,” said Noah Greenwald, endangered species director at the Center for Biological Diversity….

“Continued delays in protection of these 249 species is a failure of leadership by Interior Secretary Salazar,” said Greenwald….

Florida semaphore cactus: The Florida semaphore cactus has been waiting for protection for six years. It is a large prickly pear cactus from the Florida Keys that was thought to have been driven extinct by cactus collectors and road construction in the late 1970s, but was rediscovered in the mid-1980s. Much of its historic habitat has fallen prey to development, destruction, and fragmentation. Only two populations remain.

Green Roof on their gazebo
(Joe Fudge, Daily Press / September 24, 2009)

Charles Martino , Operations Manager for Cooke’s Gardens stands under the green roof on their gazebo at Williamsburg Botanical Garden in James City County….

The garden is a “green roof” of 250 sedums planted on top of an outdoor pavilion. This fall the sedums are at their peak, covering the 200-square-foot roof with lush greenery. Prolific bloomers like ice plant and portulaca add more splashes of color. All are… succulent(s).

As usual, rather than read the article all the way through to figure out where this Williamsburg in James City County is, I’ll do a lovely little internet search, this time using answers.com – and we have Virginia. No surprise there. I was hoping for Utah, but it wasn’t to be.

From the Telegraph, if you can get the link to work, as it’s a bit wonky this morning, comes a story about home offices – separate small buildings in the backyard.

Some even have a sedum roof, planted with succulents and herbs, to blend in with the surroundings.

Well, that’s enough to create a blog post out of. Now if only they had pictures, then it would be an interesting blog post. Oh well.

To the google!

And I see we have a very exciting Home Office with Green Roof right here on Inhabitat.

Drought tolerant gardens from the 60s in Arizona were a bit more sparse than today’s fine upstanding cactus and succulent gardens.

Green Gravel Lawns, Arizona
Photograph by James P. Blair

Images From the National Geographic Archive

Green gravel lawns dress homes in Sun City, a retirement community that opened in 1960 near Phoenix. Arizona’s 65-and-over population rose 104 percent between 1950 and 1960.

The green roof phenomenon is spreading. Succulents are saving the day, yet again. The Phila. Inquirer writes about local college buildings that have gone green.

Princeton University’s first “green roof” on a dorm (in the newly rebuilt Butler College housing complex) includes monitors for students to track energy performance and storm water runoff compared with coventional roofs….

The sleek, 17-story Millennium Hall is Drexel University’s first green dorm. It features concrete walls that don’t need paint, windows that reflect heat but allow light indoors, and a lobby floor made of recycled tires. A “green roof” (actually on a one-story platform attached to the building) is planted with succulents.

The article doesn’t have pictures, but that won’t stop me. I’m armed with google, photoshop, a text editor, and the fastest fingers to type a blog post in Berkeley.

Engineer returns to lead Butler’s construction. Nick Caputo ’73 on a green roof of one of Butler College’s new dorms.

This residence hall… will incorporate many environmentally sustainable design features, including a 3,000 square-foot green roof to reduce storm-water run-off and heat-island effect and a rain screen panel system envelop to provide solar shading.

The cactus moth, a South American bug that destroys the prickly pear cactus, was recently discovered on Louisiana’s coast….

The biologists want to stop them now, before they get to western cactus-lands where they could devastate environments.

The agriculture agents are also breeding sterile male moths that they will release in areas where other cactus moth is found. The female cactus month mates only once, and if she mates with a sterile male the population will decrease.

More info is here and here.

Larvae inside a prickly pear pad. Photo: Susan Ellis, USDA APHIS PPQ www.forestryimages.org

In Santa Lucia, which is a preserve near Carmel. That means it’s in the Bay Area! Looks private.

First, we have a photo on Nat. Geo.

And we have a closer up photo on green architecture notes.

No notes on what’s been planted, but you can see for yourself.

From the Chicago Botanic Garden Blog we find out that…

The planting is almost complete on the Green Roof Garden North

Yay!

I wonder what it looks like right now?

Yay!

From Design Boom, we have this amazing water-re-using shower system.

Phyto Purification Bathroom Image: Jun Yasumoto

There’s more detail at the link, but I think the image says everything you need to know about this.

I want one.

If green roofs have made there way to Buffalo, you know the fad has now reached trend status.

To see the latest green trend, look up. Dave Lanfear of Brayton Street is among those encouraging people not to overlook their roofs….

Today the roof on the one-story building is a neat, green oasis, planted with an assortment of sturdy sedum, some fine-textured grasses and even a few edibles.

OK, but it must be the only one in all of Buffalo, right?

The Lanfears’ roof, built last spring and summer, is no longer unique in the neighborhood. This year, Urban Roots acquired a small shed with a living roof that was built with recycled materials from Buffalo ReUse for the Junior League Show House.

Who knew? Because you know, I’ve been to Buffalo, and I can’t say it was at the forefront of green trends.

(T)he renovation of West Virginia University’s Brooks Hall began in 2006… A few years later, 85 percent of the roof is vegetated, adding a splash of green to both the downtown campus and the university’s coffers….

The vegetation is known as sedums and succulents. They act as natural absorbents, holding, filtering and easing water into the drainage systems.

Yay! Nice picture.

It’s about time those Stanfordies got with the program and developed a homegrown sedum green roof.

“We were coming from a home with no insulation, and the idea of a green roof — literally a succulent garden growing out of a horticultural mixture spread directly onto the surface – eliminating the need for air conditioning was a huge attraction,” Melissa said….

(They) chose several varieties of sedums and simper vivums, both of which spread, as well as non-invasive miniature ice plants and aloes. “I wanted to create an imitation of a larger landscape,” Schneider said.

“It takes about a year for everything to fill in,”

Alas, no photos. I think they meant Sempervivums, not that there’s anything wrong with simper succulents too.

So I’m reading this article about a wildfire in Arizona that was not a controlled burn, and how it may have damaged populations of endangered cactus. But it’s all good because the endangered cactus had prevented them from starting a controlled burn in the first place, so an uncontrolled burn that damaged the endangered plants was ideal for them. Or something like that.

Since the early 1990s, she said, “We have been unable to (use a prescribed burn) because of the listing of the Pima pineapple cactus.”…

It burned close to the Tohono O’odham’s most sacred site and may have killed some endangered cacti.

It was mostly a good thing, say fire managers.

People really don’t care about endangered species. Anything to get around protecting them.

I like pictures. I’ve been posting mostly just articles with pictures. If they don’t have pictures, then I probably don’t care. I mean, it’s not like I can be bothered to read the actual article, now is it? 

I know, some bloggers not only read the article, but do research, and followup and write actual articles themselves. Well, that’s just not me. I prefer to post articles that have pictures. And this is a good one.

Nice sense of space, wide angle, lots of cactus and kids and an entire city in the background. Good stuff.

What’s the article that goes with it? Well, this is the caption in the LA Times:

Spencer Weiner / Los Angeles Times
In an effort to bring the cactus wren back to Baldwin Hills Scenic Overlook State Park, where it hasn’t been seen in a decade, Dorsey High students are restoring the coastal sage scrub preferred by the bird.

That’s enough for me.