The Metropolitan Field Guide - Ideas, thoughts and resources for the design of urban wildlife habitat

Interview with Julie Feinstein

Posted by Kelly Brenner at 7:00 am Interviews

May 212013

Cover copy Julie Feinstein is a Collection Manager at the American Museum of Natural History. She lives in New York City and writes about urban wildlife on her blog, Urban Wildlife Guide. She has recently published a fantastic book (which I’ll be reviewing soon) titled Field Guide to Urban Wildlife. You may remember her from her guest post about House Centipedes in the ‘On Being Misunderstood’ feature. She was good enough to answer some questions about her inspiration, experience and knowledge about urban wildlife.

What does a collections manager at a natural history museum do?

In addition to exhibits and educational displays, natural history museums maintain collections of specimens like meteors, pinned insects, animal skeletons, archeological artifacts, and more, behind the scenes. Scientists visit to study the collections, or request loans from them for study. Collection managers curate specimens in their care, arrange study visits, prepare loans, and catalog new acquisitions.

The collection I manage, the Ambrose Monell Collection for Molecular and Microbial Research, at the American Museum of Natural History, is an archive of frozen biopsy specimens and DNA from animals from all over the world that are used for genetic analyses. Continue reading »

Stinging Nettle Poster

Posted by Kelly Brenner at 7:00 am Wildlife Plants

May 152013

In honor of Be Nice to Nettles Week in the U.K., here is a poster highlighting the benefits of Stinging Nettles. I plan to make more of these posters in the future.

For more information about this plant, see Wildlife Plant:: Stinging Nettle.

Stinging Nettle Poster

The Virtuous Weed:: Common Groundsel

Posted by Kelly Brenner at 7:00 am Weeds

May 092013

Common Groundsel

The Virtuous Weed is a new feature on The Metropolitan Field Guide inspired by The Weeds in My Street on the Cryptoforestry blog. The definition of weed is a highly complicated and controversial affair as Richard Mabey discusses in his fascinating book, Weeds: In Defense of Nature’s Most Unloved Plants. Are they simply plants in the wrong place or defined as such for another reason; because they’re invasive, or toxic or disturbing agriculture, or because we disapprove of their behavior? Weeds often spark many debates on forums and blogs among various groups. What is behind all of this? I intend to get down to the basics of each plant I feature, where it came from, how it grows, why it’s disliked and what benefits it may offer. The Virtuous Weed borrows its name from a quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson, only one sentence of which is well known, but an interesting quote overall from Fortune of the republic:

Our modern wealth stands on a few staples, and the interest nations took in our war was exasperated by the importance of the cotton trade. And what is cotton ? One plant out of some two hundred thousand known to the botanist, vastly the larger part of which are reckoned weeds. And what is a weed ? A plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered, every one of the two hundred thousand probably yet to be of utility in the arts. As Bacchus of the vine, Ceres of the wheat, as Arkwright and Whitney were the demi-gods of cotton so prolific time will yet bring an inventor to every plant. There is not a property in nature but a mind is born to seek and find it. For it is not the plants or the animals, innumerable as they are, nor the whole magazine of material nature that can give the sum of power, but the infinite applicability of these things in the hands of thinking man every new application being equivalent to a new material.

Common Groundsel

A common weed throughout North America, native to Eurasia, Common Groundsel (Senecio vulgaris) is very successful due to it’s prolific seeds, as many as 25,000 produced by a single plant. However, despite being an annual, once it goes to seed that’s not necessarily the end of this plant for the year, it can go through three generations in a single year. Just to be on the safe side, it has one further trick up it’s shoots; even if it’s cut down, the flowers will still mature and germinate seeds. All this is important because the seeds are relatively short lived, only being viable for about a year. Continue reading »

The Urban Garden of Keith Geller

Standing on the sidewalk, looking up a steep slope towards the home of Landscape Architect Keith Geller, you know you’re about to enter a special landscape. Over the past 30 years, Geller has transformed a bare, grassy slope into an forested urban haven. His yard has been featured in magazines, books and newspapers stories and [...]

Friday Film:: What Plants Talk About

Today’s Friday Film is ‘What Plants Talk About’, an episode of Nature from PBS. When we think about plants, we don’t often associate a term like “behavior” with them, but experimental plant ecologist JC Cahill wants to change that. The University of Alberta professor maintains that plants do behave and lead anything but solitary and [...]

Native Plants and Wildlife Gardens Post:: 5 Great Parks – Seattle Edition

This is an excerpt from my latest post at the Native Plants & Wildlife Gardens blog. Click the link below to visit the full post. Every city has parks, however not all parks are created equal. Many are used primarily for recreation, others for dogs, but some are devoted to nature. Seattle is lucky to [...]

Urban Species Profile:: River Otter

While many species may come to mind with the term ‘urban wildlife’, otters are not likely among the first to come to mind. Despite this, they can be seen in urban areas. In fact in three of the last cities I’ve called home, I’ve seen River Otters in two of them. River Otters can be [...]

Friday Film:: An Original DUCKumentary

This week’s Friday Film is An Original DUCKumentary, from Nature on PBS. Ducks are some of the most common and visible of urban wildlife. this episode will reveal much about these birds. From the PBS website: Masters of the water and air, they have conquered the globe. From deft dabblers to great divers, these are one [...]

Foragings:: The latest news, resources, designs and more

News Experimental Landscapes: Alexander Felson on Ecology and Design:: A very interesting interview with ”Alexander Felson, an assistant professor at Yale in both the School of Foresty & Environmental Studies and the School of Architecture, is a different kind of urban ecologist. In his research and his design work, he calls for an ecological practice that moves from [...]

Wildlife Plant:: Stinging Nettle

Stinging Nettle (Urtica dioica) may be considered a painful weed by most, but it is a complicated plant with many hidden virtues ranging from a valuable wildlife plant to making beer. While most people are well aware of the evils of Stinging Nettle, not many are familiar with the good. The complexities of the Stinging Nettle [...]

Book Review:: Ecosystem Services Come to Town

The most important objective in the management of the environment must the the maintenance of biodiversity and the habitats that support it, because without this we cannot survive. When a book has a quote like this, it’s a must-have for me. Ecosystem Services Come to Town: Greening Cities by Working With Nature is a new [...]

Native Plants and Wildlife Gardens Post:: How to Collect Native Plants

This is an excerpt from my latest post at the Native Plants & Wildlife Gardens blog. Click the link below to visit the full post. Finding native plants can be hard work. Here in Seattle, there are a handful of nurseries which carry a few odd native plants. There are native plant nurseries, but nearly [...]