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Having spent 20 years using an "exception" in the Endangered Species Act (just for plants), and with the official recovery plan and actions still refusing to experiment with poleward "assisted migration" of this "glacial relict", Connie was inspired to produce another video — the day after Fred Bess (Cleveland, Ohio) delivered a portion of his new seed harvest to her in Ypsilanti, Michigan.
VIDEO EPISODE #38 is an hour long on youtube:
"DOGE for Endangered Plants - Cut costs, get results, follow our lead (Torreya Guardians)"
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Open the VIDEO caption and see the time-coded table of topics. Key POLICY suggestions for the new federal administration:
25:13 CORE SECTION OF THE VIDEO: Elements of the POLICY SHIFT Connie proposes, and how a 2023 regulatory change that eliminated "HISTORICAL RANGE" as a constraint for locating "experimental populations" opens the way.
32:15 SUMMARY OF THE 2-PART POLICY SHIFT proposal: (1) Require SEED DOCUMENTATION annually by institutions in charge of the ex situ orchards of wild genetics and (2) OFFER EXCESS SEEDS (and no money) to others for experimental populations. Importance of recording "negative results." The group has proven that any planting at or south of CLEVELAND OHIO is likely to succeed.
35:40 Another POLICY FOR IMPLEMENTATION: Create a category to expedite experimental populations for PLANTS designated as "SPECIAL NEEDS SPECIES." Three thresholds: (1) Listed for 2 or more decades; (2) Recovery actions haven't worked; (3) Declining in historical range. The SE region of FWS is best place to start evaluating.
• November 2024/ Bill Brodovich / New Torreya Guardian in southern Michigan (Ann Arbor)
Autumn of 2024, Connie Barlow gave 21 seeds from the pot of 238 seeds she was keeping for a second winter of stratification of seeds from Fred Bess's 2023 harvest of seeds in Cleveland, Ohio. She gave these to a conifer specialist, Bill Brodovich, in Ann Arbor, MICHIGAN
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I planted the Torreya seeds on November 4. I planted one seed in each of 21 one-gallon containers, and then buried the containers in the ground in my yard. Each container has a numbered tag.
As an experiment, I added 1 cup of lime (calcium carbonate) to 2 containers, half a cup to two containers, and a quarter cup to 2 containers. Since the species is native to limestone bluffs, so I thought it would be interesting to see if the additional calcium affects their growth.
I buried two of the seeds 2 inches deep, and all the rest 4 inches deep. I then covered the containers with fencing to keep the squirrels out.
Now I have to wait out the winter — that is, if we get a winter. I can't believe how mild this fall has been. Some trees in my neighborhood are still hanging on to their brilliant leaves.
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• November 2024/ Joe Facendola / New seed cleaning method for the ~1,250 seeds collected in North Carolina
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Since 2019, Joe Facendola (of Wilmington NC) has been collecting seeds at two homes in North Carolina: Clinton and Mt. Olive. He then prepares them for shipping and planting by volunteers.
LEFT: Approx. 600 cleaned seeds collected from the pair of torreya trees in Mt. Olive. They are sitting in a half-inch mesh screen tray. Remnants of the sarcotesta that were squished off, then rinsed with the hose, are below the screen frame.
METHOD: I first soak the collected whole seeds for 2 or 3 days, changing the water daily. Next I dump them out onto a .5" wire screen. I use a gloved hand to squish them around to remove the softened sarcotesta, and blast them with a jet of water from the hose while shaking the screen. They get dumped back into the bucket and rinsed with a jet of water from the hose again before getting one final rinse on the screen.
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• November 2024/ Joe Facendola and Connie Barlow/ New growth-form experiment launched in coastal North Carolina
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JOE FACENDOLA began planting torreya seedlings in his backyard in Castle Hayne (a suburb of Wilmington) in 2023.
His plants receive a lot of sunlight in his backyard, and they have no competition because they are planted on mowed lawn.
Joe is the first Torreya Guardian to experiment with planting clumps of seedlings in sets of 3, each about 6 inches from the others (photo). Will this planting prove feasible for all three to grow together into a tree form? Will such clumping reduce herbivore damage to the leaders and inner branches? And once they become old enough to attract buck deer antler rubbing, will this form also reduce such damage?
In November 2024, Joe planted an additional two clumps like this (photo left) in his mowed backyard, each about 10 feet away from the others. There are a total of 9 plants now, in 3 clumps.
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• November 2024/ Mike Heim/ Status of 16 young torreyas in northern WISCONSIN
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I just finished mapping the 16 T. taxifolia in the woodland exclosure.
One is a rooted-cutting planted last year. The 15 young seedlings emerged from seeds harvested in Clinton and Mt. Olive NC in November 2020. Those seeds were direct planted in Wisconsin that same month, beneath a deciduous canopy and within a fenced deer exclosure.
Just 3 of total had shown up as seedlings during 2023. The other 12 showed above-ground growth for the first time this year.
These findings thus document that, in northern Wisconsin, wild-planted seeds take more than the usual 2 summers to appear as seedlings. Some required 3 summers; most required 4.
LEFT: Freezing nights have arrived in Wisconsin.
• Mike's torreya page.
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• November 2024/ Fred Bess/ Parma, OHIO, photos of seed harvest from 3 female stems
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Fred reports, "I harvested this year's seeds on November 2, after noticing that they were beginning to fall."
Seed production was reduced from the amount in 2023, but still quite high.
ESTIMATED COUNT: "Around 40 from the twin tree female, 30 from the cutting-grown female, and my big girl likely has around 800."
• Fred's torreya page.
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• November 2024 / Connie Barlow / HISTORIC GROVES map and page updated for SITES OF NEW SEED PRODUCTION by Torreya Guardians
Exactly 20 years after the late Paul S. Martin and I published in Wild Earth magazine our advocacy paper, "Bring Torreya taxifolia North — Now", two more sites of Torreya Guardians northward plantings have been documented as producing seeds.
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The TWO NEW SITES are shown on this segment of map as B4 and B5 — with PINK signifying "Mature Trees Producing Seeds". (WHITE are sites fully "naturalized" because they are old enough to have offspring establishing in their surrounds. YELLOW are old and thus mature trees, but with no documented seed production.)
That new plantings in North Carolina by Torreya Guardians are now producing seeds is not surprising. Notice the 5 WHITE sites in North Carolina that were planted and producing seeds before our group got started.
The B1 pink site at CLEVELAND OHIO (planted by Torreya Guardian Fred Bess) is still our banner site. Seed production there began in 2018. Even that far north is proven suitable for assisted migration of our country's most famous "left behind" glacial relict: Florida Torreya.
Visit our Historic Groves page, and see the new seed photos taken by Torreya Guardian Joseph Guite at B4 (Cowee Valley, NC) and at B5 (Tessentee Bottomlands Preserve).
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• October 2024 / Joseph Guite / Visited 3 TORREYA GUARDIANS PLANTINGS in western NC and documented SEED PRODUCTION at two of them.
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JOSEPH GUITE is one or our newest Torreya Guardians.
He happened to be visiting in North Carolina when Hurricane Helene hit. While using his own truck for transporting relief supplies to the flood victims, he took a quick side visit to our 2008 plantings at LAKE JUNALUSKA. Four torreyas are still alive there, with the tallest being the Thoreau tree (photo at left). See more of his Lake Junaluska torreya photos.
On his way to wintering in Florida he visited two more plantings in North Carolina by Torreya Guardians.
PHOTO BELOW LEFT: Our Cowee Valley planter, Lamar Marshall, had already reported first seeds in 2023. Joseph photo-documented the 5 full-sun trees there, with seeds on 3 of them.
PHOTO BELOW: Joseph made the first documentation of seed production on some of the 30 torreyas planted in 2012 at the Tessentee Preserve.
See all his photos of torreyas at Cowee Valley and
Tessentee Preserve.
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• October 2024 / Russell Regnery / Documentation of Florida Torreya at Highlands Biological Station NC
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Highlands Biological Station, in Highlands NC, is associated with Western Carolina University.
Specimens of Florida torreya had apparently already been planted onsite before Torreya Guardians in 2015 served as a conduit for donated seeds (of wild genetics) from one of the two official ex situ orchards of the species in northeastern Georgia.
Russell Regnery (Torreya planter near Franklin NC) had partnered with Jack Johnston (Torreya planter in NE Georgia) in 2022 as volunteers to safely transplant existing scattered specimens at the station into one area, where cross pollination could eventually occur.
Russ returned in 2024 to check on the health of transplanted specimens and to photograph the tallest among them (LEFT). There is no documentation yet of seed production.
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• September 2024 / Don Thomas / Photos of California torreya seedlings in shade v. full light
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Although this website began with a focus solely on FLORIDA TORREYA, distinct pages have been added pertaining to CALIFORNIA TORREYA.
Don Thomas is the founder of TorreyaGuardiansWest, for which the main page is here: here. He sent us these two photos of an experiment he is doing at his home in San Jose, California.
The differences are striking in LEAF ADAPTATIONS in full sunlight (and thus also heat) v. the usual flat leaf orientation of subcanopy shade. What is also striking is the color difference. |
• September 2024 / Connie Barlow / INDIANA now has a photo page on our website
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SITE DESCRIPTION: Forest edge, Indianapolis
TIMING: After 2 winter stratifications (of seeds harvested November 2021 at Clinton and Mt. Olive North Carolina) followed by no germinations, the seeds were assumed to be duds and were tossed into the duff at the owner's forest edge summer of 2023.
Surprise! September 2, 2024 this photo was taken by a volunteer planter near Indianapolis.
Clearly, this is first-year growth of vibrant young seedlings in a sunny location.
This photo is thus another confirmation that it can sometimes take 3 winter stratifications for seeds to germinate.
Note: During the the 2024 growing season, we added 3 new states as page links from the Torreya Guardians homepage: Illinois, Missouri, and Indiana.
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• August 2024 / Connie Barlow / MISSOURI now has a photo page on our website
This website has state-by-state pages that can be accessed via our homepage. We have distributed seeds to some states in eastern USA that are not listed there, however. This is because, as webmaster, I only create a unique webpage for a state if someone provides a photograph of their torreya planting. However, I just added a photo and text for a MISSOURI page — because:
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MISSOURI BOTANICAL GARDEN has online very detailed and complete tabular documentation of all Torreya taxifolia accessions. Data include for each specimen current status (alive or dead), provenance, and garden location.
PHOTO: The earliest acquistion that is STILL ALIVE onsite came from one of the two plants received in 1992 from the Biltmore Estate in NC.
Much later, in 2018, they received from Atlanta Botanical Garden a total of 43 "plants" plus 6 "seedlings." All seedlings (2018-0053) were put into the "Greenhouse outdoors" and are listed as dead. Of the 43 "plants" from ABG in 2018, 26 were put into the "Greenhouse indoors" and all are now listed as "Transferred." Of the remaining 17 plants from ABG listed in various places onsite, 5 are listed as ALIVE.
Of course, the only possible plant at a reproductive age would be the 1992 Biltmore acquisition, as in the PHOTO here. None of the other specimens have photos linked.
Go to our MISSOURI page to access more information about torreya propagation at the Missouri Botanical Garden. Notably, this institution suggests that this species is "probably hardy to Zone 5" — which is significantly north of Florida! |
• August 2024 / Mike Heim and Court Lews / Status reports from Wisconsin and Tennessee
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FAR LEFT: Photo by Mike Heim of Hayward WI, of his third newly emerged seedling this summer.
All three hail from seeds harvested in Clinton and Mt. Olive NC in November 2020 and direct planted in Wisconsin that month, beneath a deciduous canopy and within a fenced deer exclosure.
This photo thus documents that some seeds may take 4 winter stratifications (rather than the usual 2 or 3) before any growth shows above ground.
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ABOVE MID: Photo taken by Court Lewis of Unicoi TN. 2015 was the final year that superabundant seeds from the ex-situ torreya orchard at Blairsville in northern Georgia were donated to Torreya Guardians. Hence, they are wild genetics, and thus extraordinarily important for eventual seed production. The tallest is 9-feet and the photo shows how full-sun sites (requiring mowing) offer fastest growth.
• August 2024 / Connie Barlow / An Update on TorreyaGuardiansWEST
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In 2022, TorreyaGuardiansWEST was founded by Don Thomas. As shown in the WIKIPEDIA screen capture here, California torreya is not a listed endangered species. It is therefore a lot easier for them to obtain wild genetics seeds for their own assisted migration of this endemic California tree northward (as far as British Columbia). Learn more on the California torreya page on this website.
This past week has been a flush of information-sharing emails, focusing on the ablity of the Torreya genus (in California and Asia) to attain great age and size — but always in the mountains and usually on steep slopes.
Torreya is more closely related to COAST REDWOOD than it is to any pine. And in our discussion this month (including one of the lead academics in redwood research in California) we learned of more similarities between the two.
Another of the participants was the person who found and photographed the champion-size Calif torreya that I then inserted into the official wikipedia page of that species.
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• August 2024 / Jim Thomson and Connie Barlow / Update on torreya planting in Cullowhee, NC
CONNIE WRITES: In preparation for submitting a status report last month to USF&WS on our citizen plantings (see directly below), I queried our planters in order to update those who had sent in enough photos and reports in past years for me to have created site-specific pages of their projects. Sadly, one planter (Nelson Stover in Greensboro NC had died), and one other in NC (older than me!) who had reported a year ago of first seed production has not responded to two of us who tried.
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As a citizen group, our own plantings are almost always limited to private properties — and thus transfers in ownership have been accruing since our first plantings exactly 2 decades ago in North Carolina.
In the case of Jim Thomson who sent updated PHOTOS of his torreyas in Cullowhee NC, the new owners, fortunately, are aware of the plants and will try to preserve them.
These photos (LEFT) reveal typical growth form differences between plantings under a full forest canopy vs. plantings on or next to mowed lawn (which can access more direct sun).
PHOTOS of all 5 torreyas, plus photos and descriptions from previous years, are found on the Cullowhee, NC webpage.
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• July 2024/ Connie Barlow/ I submitted a 22-page "comment" to provide info and suggested actions for the Florida Torreya recovery plan now being updated
The second and third post below are entries about: (June) announcement that the recovery update begins and (July) a new "3-part framework" that the Fish & Wildlife Service is using this time. ("SSA means "Species Status Assessment"). Comments are being accepted through August 5, but I got mine in early.
Access my full COMMENT in PDF. Below right is my cover letter to the 22-page, highly illustrated, document:
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I, Connie Barlow, founded the citizen group Torreya Guardians in 2005, and I have been its webmaster and chief networker ever since. We have no formal organization, so I write here as an individual. I draw upon two decades of experience in what we have learned about best practices for assisting the northward migration of an ESA listed endangered tree: Florida Torreya. Learn about Torreya taxifolia Natural History on our website.
Torreya Guardians is the first group credited with implementing the long-distance "assisted migration" of a climate-endangered plant.
I am a retired science writer, who specialized in evolutionary ecology (4 books). My bio and publications are on a different website. I am also on Researchgate.
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Because governmental agencies do not like citations that go to regular web format, I converted 26 webpages on the Torreya Guardians website into PDF format that are all downloadable. Because my comment features the actual experiences of our volunteer planters and those among us who have been documenting the old historical groves in North Carolina, 13 of the total PDFs entail the highly illustrated, site-specific pages of our most successful planters (especially those who send me photos and ongoing results). Additionally, I made and referenced in my document the PDFs made from 2 WIKIPEDIA pages: Torreya taxifolia and Torreya Guardians.
• July 2024/ Connie Barlow and Jake Wells/ First photo documentation of a successful freeplanting of Torreya seeds in Illinois
For the past two years I (Connie) have delayed distributing to volunteer planters the annual fall harvests of Torreya seeds from Cleveland (Parma) OHIO and two homes in central NORTH CAROLINA. Instead, I distribute seeds the following year or even the next. This is because Torreya seeds almost never germinate after a single winter stratifiction. About 3/4 of the viable seeds will germinate after two winters, and the remainder after three. By my stratifying them safely together, this reduces opportunities for rodents to find and dig them up.
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PHOTO LEFT: This is the first germination of the 40 seeds that Jake Wells planted in late July of 2023. The seeds came from the 2022 fall harvest in Clinton NC (where we were granted permission to collect beginning in 2013).
Jake Wells, who lives near Alpha ILLINOIS, has initiated an experiment. Instead of waiting to see a seedling emerge before caging, he chickenwired each site right after planting the seed. This is very labor intensive!
We already know that caging is crucial to prevent browsing by deer, which can devastate young seedlings. But we do not know how much early herbivory is by rabbits or woodchucks. And even if seeds are planted 4 inches deep, we cannot be sure that squirrels, chipmunks, or tunneling voles won't find them. Chickenwire supported by wooden stakes certainly keeps rabbits, woodchucks, and squirrels away. Jake's experiment will teach us whether early caging is worth the effort.
JAKE wrote, "I am very proud to be part of this grand experiment. The fact that I have been given the chance to help save a species is a privilege. And now that I have a torreya growing, it is even more special. I am so excited to be the first in Illinois to have a documented torreya growing with photos — and to put Illinois on the map!" (Details are on the new Illinois page.) |
• July 2024/ Connie Barlow/ New "3-Part Framework" for recovery planning offers Torreya Guardians collaborative possibilities
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A google search for how USF&WS recovery planning is done led me to a new webpage. This 3-part framework may finally induce the agency to value what our citizen group accomplishes.
No longer will the two participating botanical gardens in Georgia have the power to veto experimentation in "assisted migration" poleward (which is what happened in 2010). This is because "working groups" are a thing of the past.
Instead, comments received from everyone during the update process will be considered by agency staff in writing just the basic statutory elements required in a "recovery plan." These include targets for rises in population numbers that will constitute success for downlisting and delisting. Also included will be categories of actions for moving toward success.
But a lot of elements that are in the official plans now will be shifted into two flexible and updatable documents. This is where our group can shine. They are:
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• The SPECIES STATUS REPORT (SSA) for Florida torreya: Here we can offer agency staff documentation of (a) the geographic inventory we completed of Historic Groves of old horticultural plantings, (b) results of our own volunteer torreya plantings (including seed production in Ohio) and (c) our ever-growing sense of best practices for propagating, siting, and nurturing this species in a variety of states and habitats northward of this glacial relict's tiny historical range.
• RECOVERY IMPLEMENTATION STRATEGIES (RIS)
will for the first time be authorized for the agency to develop separately with each participating institution. Thus the agency could explore a separate RIS to be carried out by our group. So long as experimentation in assisted migration is included as an action category in the official recovery plan update, the agency will be free to explore this option. Our willingness to engage in supportive actions for Florida torreya without needing any funding is likely to make us very attractive as an RIS collaborator.
• June 2024/ Connie Barlow/ Florida Torreya Recovery Plan Update begins — Opportunity for Torreya Guardians to comment
We've got until AUGUST 5 to post comments. I alerted the main group of planting volunteers right away. Meanwhile I am trying to have a phone conversation with a relevant staffer to accomplish two things:
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(1) Gain assurance that several of us will be invited to partipate officially in the Working Group for Florida Torreya. We are stakeholders no less than the park managers, private landowners, and botanical gardens who are attempting to help this species in its "historical range" in Florida and Geogia.
(2) How might our collaboration be most helpful? What specific information and discoveries we have made might be most useful to include in our comments?
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• June 2024/ Connie Barlow/ "Latent pathogen" discoveries could help Torreya Guardians advocacy
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At timecode 01:46:04, a 2-minute section of a long forestry video is where MY QUESTION is read to the guest speaker: "Do you recommend assisted migration, northward, upslope, or onto north-facing slopes?" His response was generally positive. "I don't see anything wrong with it. It's happening already.... In the Sierra Nevada, trees are moving upslope."
As the lead forest pathologist in the state, Prof. Matteo Garbelotto had talked about the scale and causes of the shockingly unexpected and sudden tree deaths happening in the San Francisco Bay area — all unquestionably attributed to the recent extremes of heat and drought. These, in turn, empowered native fungi to kill previously healthy trees.
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HOW CALIFORNIA'S EXPERIENCE COULD HELP FLORIDA TORREYA: Torreya Guardians have long been conducting our own "assisted migration" experiments northward by using seeds produced from horticultural plantings in the Appalachians and northward. However, the two botanical gardens who control the ex situ wild-stock plantings in northern Georgia have stalled in collecting and distributing the prolific annual seed production — out of fear that the newly named Fusarium torreyae (which is present in all tissues, including seeds) might be able to harm other native trees. In his talk, Prof. Matteo Garbelotto (U.C. Berkeley) used the term "latent pathogens". These are native fungal and bacterial "endophytes" that are always present within tree tissues, "possibly beneficial", but then turn lethal when their host trees become climate stressed.
In contrast, when the globally known fungal disease Fusarium lateritium that has long been identified with root necrosis and/or stem cankers in Florida Torreya was renamed in 2013 as a new species, Fusarium torreyae, the fear arose that it might not be a native disease (triggered by Holocene warming to kill a left-behind glacial relict). Rather, it might be from another continent, introduced by the horticultural trade mid-20th century, as that is when the massive deaths of torreya trees began. Now consider: "Latent pathogen" is another name for a commensal or mutualistic microbial member of the "plant microbiome" that turns deadly when its host is stressed. This is especially true of the subset of fungal mutualists that normally pass their own descendants forward as part of the SEED MICROBIOME. Scroll down to this entry to learn more about the possibility that Fusarium torreyae may actually be mutualistic with Florida torreya in northward climates: • December 2023/ Connie Barlow/ Botany papers reveal that Fusarium torreyae is actually a mutualist, only becoming pathogenic when the host plant is stressed.
• May 2024 / Buford Pruitt/ Squirrels can be helpful — if one has hundreds of seeds
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May 28 email from Buford Pruitt in Brevard NC:
"... Fred Bess had also sent me seeds to be scattered in natural habitat, some of which I put 4 to 6 inches deep into the ground and others I merely placed within the leaf litter.
Two of those seeds germinated this year and are currently 6+ inches tall (see photo).
They came up at the edge of my picnic table area — way too close to the table for me to have placed them there. Their needle-tipped leaves are not needed at picnics!
So, I believe squirrels found them in the leaf litter and planted them. I plan to relocate them."
Note: A year ago Buford contributed a 3-page analysis of the range of ways in which squirrels provide seed dispersal services in the wild.
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SEE ALSO:
See the DECEMBER 2019 entry by Clint Bancroft on his torreya page: evidence that a squirrel carried and planted a seed some 200 feet distant from the seed pot it had worked its way into!
QUESTION: Has anyone tried putting CHILE FLAKES just below the soil surface when covering up a deep-planted seed?
• May 2024 / Russell Regnery and Connie Barlow / Unlike Florida Torreya project, Wollemia tree project encourages citizen plantings
CONNIE writes: Russ Regnery (Torreya Guardian NC) alerted me to this 2022 paper, "Home gardens contribute to conservation of the critically endangered Wollemi Pine: Evaluation of a botanic garden-led horticultural release programme", by Catherine Offord and Heidi Zimmer,
published in Plants, People, Planet.
In the late 2010s a new charge was launched against us: that we might inadvertently be spreading northward an allegedly exotic fungal disease by moving torreya plants (and even just their seeds) north. Even though professional botanists are now recognizing that fungal species routinely found within the seeds of a host plant are a strong sign of mutualism (becoming pathogenic only when the host is too stressed to produce seeds), the botanical gardens are still letting their ex situ seed production in northern Georgia go to waste. Accordingly, they criticized our group for continuing our own distribution of horticulturally grown seeds and thus our northward planting projects. At least one professional is still speaking of Fusarium torreyae as an exotic fungal disease and as a danger to other tree species in the eastern USA — even though the scientific papers did not document an exotic source. As well, there are no peer-reviewed published papers documenting dangers to other tree species. Inoculations of potted plants of other species by a graduate student in laboratory settings in Florida cannot determine susceptibility of those same tree species when supported by climate and mutualists of their own natural ecological settings in the Appalachian Mountains.
• April 2024 / Connie Barlow / Superb forest slope of new torreya planter in Illinois
After 1 winter stratification here in the ground in Michigan, I sent seeds from Fred Bess's 2023 harvest (Cleveland, Ohio) to 5 new torreya planters, including our first planter ever in NEW JERSEY. Photos above are where our new planter in Peoria ILLINOIS will be putting his torreya, following germination and growth into seedlings after maintaining the seeds safely for a second winter stratification. The steepness of the slope, with lots of Christmas ferns under a deciduous canopy, look like ideal habitat. Caging against deer browsing will be put in place if necessary.
• March 2024 / Mike Heim and Connie Barlow / Torreya survives a crazy winter in northern-most planting
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Back in February, Mike Heim contributed photos of 5 of his torreya seedlings during a winter of relatively little snow in Wisconsin. A springlike week in February is the photo left. Snow arrived again in March (right).
Mike reported that the coldest temperature this winter was -16F (not bad for northern Wisconsin!). Fortunately, the seedlings were covered in snow then. He reported "-6F is the coldest they've been exposed to."
You'll see lots more photos on Mike's Wisconsin Torreya page.
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Now, compare the Wisconsin Torreya to a Torreya Guardians planting in the panhandle of Florida below. That's quite a climate span for a species to cope with! Such experiments are extremely useful in this time of rapid climate change.
• March 2024 / Chris Larson / Photo of seedling at Shoal Sanctuary in the Florida panhandle
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MARCH 20, 2024: Chris Larson sent this photo of one of the remaining Florida Torreya seedlings, 9 years after the seeds were "freeplanted" directly into the forest.
Notice the creek in the background.
The topographically rich and forested land in this region of northern Florida contains the same kinds of "steephead ravines", with small creeks at their bottoms, that provides crucial habitat in the original relictual range eastward in the panhandle. |
IMPORTANT: Notice the absence of deer herbivory on this perfect seedling. (The seedlings have never been "caged".) Hunting is a normal activity in this very rural part of Florida — in contrast to prohibition of hunting in Torreya State Park, where herbivory has been severe.
• March 2024 / Connie Barlow / Estella Leopold dies at age 97 (she told Torreya Guardians about a Miocene Torreya fossil in Washington state)
New York Times posted an obituary of Estella Leopold (last surviving offspring of Aldo Leopold) on March 5. She was 97. I was scheduled to meet her in Seattle in 2017, while I was volunteering there for the "Valve Turners", but she had to go to the hospital for a lung condition, so that never happened. Earlier she and I had engaged in e-correspondence about Torreya taxifolia and her team's finding a Miocene torreya fossil in Washington state. I am grateful that I kept and posted the Leopold-and-Barlow correspondence.
• March 2024 / Connie Barlow / Three Torreya Guardians report germination after 3 winters
(1) End of February 2024, Mike Heim of Hayward WI sent me photos of the 5 torreya seedlings that had emerged Summer of 2023 from NC seeds that Mike had planted directly into his deer exclosure right after the Fall harvest, November 2020. Thus, it took 3 winters in the ground before those seeds produced seedlings.
(2) Early March 2024, Connie Barlow in Ypsilanti MI decided to check on how the NC seeds from the 2021 harvest were doing, after spending a third winter stratifying. She was shocked and delighted that of the 45 seeds that had not germinated (as many do) after their second winter stratification 34 had already germinated by early March after their third winter. Indeed, the roots had already lengthened so much (see photo left above) that they could easily break during shipment or even during careful planting here in Michigan. Statistics: 45 total seeds, of which 34 had germinated, 4 were dark gray (no longer healthy brown) and upon dissection were confirmed dead, 1 had a white wormy insect larva emerging from its round depression near the tip, 2 had the triple crack that precedes germination, and the remaining 4 had the customary thin slit at the tip that precedes the triple crack. The experiment now continues with the remaining 6 healthy brown seeds.
(3) Mid December 2023, Paul Camire of Capac MI was surprised that he still had a neglected bag of November 2021 harvested NC seeds in his refrigerator. So he pulled out the bag and put it in his basement. Connie's early March report that her third-winter stratified seeds had already germinated prompted Paul to check his bag of 2021 seeds. He found that two had just started to germinate (photo above right).
• December 2023/ Connie Barlow/ Botany papers reveal that Fusarium torreyae is actually a mutualist, only becoming pathogenic when the host plant is stressed.
Using Google Scholar, and also aided by the PLANT MICROBIOME page on wikipedia, I encountered a raft of recent botany papers concluding that fungal propagules regularly found in seeds entail the SEED MICROBIOME. Even beneficial fungal partners, however, may express pathogenically if a plant host becomes too stressed to produce seeds.
IMPLICATIONS AND QUESTIONS: Might this explain why Fusarium torreyae had first been detected in stem cankers within the historical range, yet subsequent observations had also detected it in all seeds produced in northern Georgia? Might the professionals in charge of torreya seed policy not be aware of these recent papers — which entail a marked paradigm shift? As well, is there some way that Torreya Guardians could ensure that these papers would be considered in the next 5-year plan update, due in 2025?
Toward fostering professional and public awareness of technical papers that brought about this paradigm shift, I posted a lengthy new webpage that links and excerpts the main papers. I use a chronological framework that also lists and excerpts previous scholarship (beginning in 1967) exploring possible causes for the demise of Florida torreya within its historical range. I also produced a video introduction to the paradigm shift and the history of scholarship pertaining to Florida torreya:
• Published Documents on Endangerment Causes of Torreya taxifolia in Florida
(Table of contents for this lengthy new webpage is below.)
• VIDEO on the paradigm shift
(Title: "Assisted Migration of Climate-Endangered Plants - Torreya Guardians lead the way")
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• December 2023 / Daein Ballard / NEW HAMPSHIRE discoveries on full-sun torreyas
SUMMARY (by Barlow) of the New Hampshire report: Three of the 6 photos Daein Ballard sent us in December are shown above. Significant findings include (1) At least in full-sun sites, torreyas as far north as southern New Hampsire will have 2 growth spurts annually — just like we have documented in full-sun Tennessee. (2) The full-sun torreya growth form is less yew-like than in shady habitat (see the lower portion of the middle photo above). Daein reports that the full-sun leaf pattern deters deer. This is likely because the deer cannot avoid getting poked by the very sharp needle tips when it tries to bite off the end of a lateral. See how the full-sun growth form is very similar to that already demonstrated by Fred Bess in Ohio. (Go to the Cleveland-Ohio page and scroll down to the October 2018 photos.)
• November 2023/ Connie Barlow/ New VIDEO reviews history of search for Torreya's causes of endangerment — and implications of the new papers on PLANT and SEED MICROBIOMES
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This 70-minute VIDEO begins with a celebration of the 1,000+ seeds our grower in Ohio produced autumn 2023. The rest of the video is a presentation by the group's founder, Connie Barlow, of the long and shifting history of scientific speculation and (sometimes faulty) assumptions about the ultimate cause(s) of this ancient conifer's sudden demise in its tiny historical range in Florida.
A new webpage Connie created, "Published Documents on Endangerment Causes of Torreya taxifolia in Florida", is the basis for this educational video.
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BACKGROUND: Motivated by the July 2023 adoption of a new regulation permitting the agency in charge of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) to expand recovery efforts beyond the "historical range" — especially if climate change had already damaged prospects there — Connie began a scholarly search of new papers that might offer guidance for Florida Torreya. What she found was a "paradigm shift" (beginning around 2016) that offered new and compelling scientific reasons for the ESA implementers to follow the lead of this citizen group in "assisted migration" poleward as a way to help this tree regain its ability to fight native diseases. Central to this new understanding is the discovery that all plant tissues — including seeds — harbor beneficial fungal and bacterial partners: what is now called the PLANT MICROBIOME and the SEED MICROBIOME.
• November 2023/ Connie Barlow/ USDA new map of plant hardiness zones shows regional warming in our northward Torreya plantings
• November 2023/ Connie Barlow/ Seed harvest by Torreya Guardians at two sites in central NC
Visit the Cinton and Mt Olive NC page for 2023 photos during collection, added to the chronological entries that began October 2013.
• November 2023/ Fred Bess/ Parma OHIO, photos of final harvest from 3 female stems
ABOVE: Visit the Parma, OHIO (suburb of Cleveland) torreya page for the full history, from planting to harvesting seeds.
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Fred delivered 1,085 seeds to Connie Barlow in Ypsilanti, Michigan.
LEFT: Connie noticed a clear, thin "cap" on all seeds — and thus an experiment: For winter stratification outdoors, she put 400 seeds with the cap removed into one pit, and 400 with just the flesh removed into another pit.
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HYPOTHESIS: Perhaps when this ancient genus was dispersed by large herbivorous reptiles who swallowed the seeds whole for the food value of just the fleshy aril. Passage through the system may have removed this clear, thin cap that covers just the pointy, germination tip of the seed. Is our own failure to remove this cap the reason why almost no seeds germinate after just one winter? (Most germinate after 2 winter stratifications.) Thus, will the 400 seeds with caps removed show more first-winter germinations than the 400 seeds with intact caps?
• November 2023/ Mike Heim / Torreya planter in Wisconsin obtains LAND CONSERVATION easement
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Mike Heim writes, "Another 58 acres protected forever!"
Access the news article on the
CONSERVATION EASEMENT DESIGNATION.
SIGNIFICANCE: This is the first time that a torreya planter on private land has ensured that protection of their plantings will continue after their own death or sale of the property.
• Visit Mike Heim's TORREYA IN HAYWARD WISCONSIN page.
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• October 2023/ Connie Barlow / Torreya Guardians reported in New York Times and Sierra Magazine as the first assisted migration project — now redwoods have taken the lead
Access links and lengthy excerpts of New York Times and Sierra MagazineSee if this "share" link gets you past the paywall: NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE "Redwoods"
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COAST REDWOOD is the new leader in assisted migration — and thank goodness! Finally, academics and journalists have lost any truthful grounding for nitpicking the efforts of Torreya Guardians, as citizens, working on our own to achieve recovery of the nearly-extinct-in-historic-range FLORIDA TORREYA.
Additional good news is that the massive project moving REDWOOD seeds from California to the Seattle WA area was originated by CITIZENS in 2016, with an NGO formed to lead the expanding project only this year.
Over the past four years, I used my personal experience with redwoods and reading relevant scientific papers to help with their laying out of best practices for propagation and siting where to plant. See here and here.
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TORREYA GUARDIANS also helped with applying our own experience as to whether rooted branchlets can ever be nurtured into tree form. In the case of our slow-growing subcanopy tree, the answer is no. In the case of the evolved canopy capacity and basal resprouting ability of Coast Redwood, the answer is yes. Learn more about the lengthy and photo-rich webpage I constructed: "Growth Capacities of Coast Redwood".
TORREYA GUARDIANS WEST formed in 2022 in order to begin assisted migration of the California species of the genus: Torreya californica. Unburdened by any endangered species listing, and free of academic and institutional attempts to block citizen actions, Torreya seeds from the 2022 harvest in California went to a citizen in Vancouver, British Columbia last year. This year's harvest (already finished) will include seed shipment to a botanical garden also in that part of CANADA. The citizen redwood group in Seattle will also be able to help California torreya find additional homes in the Pacific Northwest in the years ahead.
IMPLICATIONS FOR ESA MANAGEMENT OF FLORIDA TORREYA: From what I can discern, there is only one remaining scientific basis for the two botanical gardens in Georgia to continue their prohibition of assisted migration of Florida torreya. These two institutions are empowered by the Endangered Species Act to exercise total control over the management of the two ex situ plantings of diverse, wild genetics of Florida Torreya in northern-most Georgia. From what we can discern, ever since 2016 tens of thousands of seeds produced in those orchards have not only been uncollected and unutilized but also not even documented as to yearly production.
The "one remaining scientific basis" for the Georgia botanical gardens continuing to block wild-genetic seed distribution poleward has recently been falsified by discovery of, what is now called a PLANT MICROBIOME
, which is pervasive in all the tissues of all plants studied thus far. Even more important is that, when the botanical gardens documented the genetics of a Fusarium fungal species in all torreya seeds sampled, their decision to halt seed distribution northward would turn out to be the polar opposite of what the next paradigm shift would signify, beginning in 2018. That is, papers published in botany and pathology journals confirmed that all plant seeds contain their own SEED MICROBIOME of fungal and bacterial mutualists — crucial for successful germination and root development.
Thus the finding of Fusarium torreyae within torreya seeds should have been a green light for moving ahead with assisted migration, not a full-stop. Because I myself was unaware of the PLANT & SEED MICROBIOME discoveries until this summer, I do not fault overworked botanical staff and academics for being unaware of that too. So the question becomes:
Which scientist or journalist will bring this SEED MICROBIOME PARADIGM SHIFT to light, such that institutional management policies will have to shift in order to still be regarded as scientifically grounded?
• October 2023/ Fred Bess/ Parma, OHIO (a suburb of Cleveland) has another big torreya seed harvest
Fred Bess (Cleveland, OH) does it again! He writes in part,
"I spent the last hour 'donating blood' while picking Torreya arils/seeds. Dang, those needles are sharp! The aril flesh has finally started to split. That is my cue to collect them.
I picked only from the big female tree and only the mid-section. I still must pick the top third and bottom portion. You can see I've gotten quite the crop. A two-and-a-half-gallon bucket full to the top, and I may be able to pick yet another bucket full. I want to heal for a day or two before I pick more. I have yet to pick from the other two females. And, as always, I keep the seeds separated to keep the genetics apart...."
• October 2023 / Clint Bancroft / A torreya grown from seed emerges with a triple stem
CLINT BANCROFT: "Torreya as trinity! Today as I was removing seedlings from their group container to put into individual one-gallon pots, I discovered that one had emerged from a single seed — but had three trunks! Never before has a seed sprouted with more than a single trunk. (The group of seedlings in the container all sprouted from seeds harvested Fall 2021 at Mt. Olive, North Carolina.)"
• September 2023/ Connie Barlow / Wikipedia page on Torreya Guardians has new section on how our group is influencing academic philosophers
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In my retirement, I've had more time to devote to volunteer activities beyond maintaining this webpage for Torreya Guardians. Notably, I have become an experienced wikipedia editor.
My first effort in 2021 was co-creating a new page with a Canadian: "Assisted migration of forests in North America". Next, I massively updated and extended the Torreya taxifolia wikipedia page.
I did not create the original Torreya Guardians wikipedia page. But I was able to make some contributions of basic facts (although not all that I had hoped for!) when it was created.
Now I have learned enough about wikipedia standards — especially for topics that include controversies, which our page certainly does — that I managed to craft a new section that passed the test. I did that by selecting two excerpts: one that favored our work and the other that did not. So there is balance.
The new section is "Reception within the Bioethics profession". As per my custom as a former science writer, I looked for scholarly papers by academic bioethicists that mentioned how our group was leading "assisted migration" in this time of rapid climate change. Check it out!
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• September 2023/ Clint Bancroft/ Basal sprout appears on precious seedling sourced from 2018 seeds donated by Caroline Dormon Nature Preserve in Louisiana
ABOVE LEFT: Clint Bancroft receives several torreya seeds produced by the tallest Florida torreya at the Caroline Dormon Nature Preserve in Louisiana, November 2018. (The tree is immediately behind Clint.)
ABOVE RIGHT: Clint took this photo nearly five years later (September 2023) of the basal sprout emerging from a young torreya growing from one of those seeds. (It takes 2 winter stratifications before torreya seeds will germinate.) Clint Bancroft is a Torreya Guardian who aims to plant the most genetically diverse population of seedlings in a wild forest setting on his property along Greasy Creek, in the Ocoee watershed of southeastern Tennessee. CLINT WROTE:
"I have good news from Greasy Creek. As you know, there was only one seed from the 5 we were gifted from the Dormon torreya collection in Louisiana (November 2018 site visit). I had the good fortune, and awesome responsibility, of being the holder of that single seedling. It is doing well, still in its pot behind an impassable fence wire barrier. This year the tree has put up a basal sprout. I plan to leave it on the parent until next fall and then collect it for rooting. My sense is that it is yet too small for collection this year. This, being the rarest among our collection from various seed sources, will be dealt with very cautiously."
• September 2023/ Connie Barlow / 2020 Report shows cumulative government funds spent on endangered species management of Torreya taxifolia
The 50th anniversary of the Endangered Species Act is December 2023. Because there is a lot of political controversy about possibly amending the act as well as the usual funding debates, I am reading quite a few relevant news reports. One linked to a tabulation of cumulative government spending for each species. The image below is just a piece of Table 2, which entails (in order of expenditures from highest to lowest) the funding rank of 1,599 of the 1,821 domestic species (and subspecies) listed as endangered (E) or threatened (T) as of 2020. Florida torreya was the third highest-funded plant. A saltwater plant and an orchid native to springs in five western states were the only plants (plants entail the majority of listed species) that received more funding, since aggregate accounting began in 1990.
Also relevant to our group is a table from a 2022 paper, "Data sharing for conservation: A standardized checklist of US native tree species and threat assessments to prioritize and coordinate action". Below you will see my adaptation of the table, which singled out something I have never before been able to discern myself from within the vast list of endangered species. This is the subset of TREE species on the endangered species list. Besides our own focal tree, only three others have genus names that are recognizable to me as trees: Asimina (pawpaw), Betula (birch), and Cercocarpus.
• September 2023/ Connie Barlow / Citizen planters helping Australia's Wollemia tree validate our own group's effort helping Florida Torreya
Thanks to Canadian Lucas Machias, I learned of a new research paper (and a news article about it) reporting how citizen science is helping to conserve the "living fossil" Wollemia tree — both within and outside of its tiny relict range (at the bottom of a deep canyon, to keep cool) in eastern Australia.
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Consider first that Wollemia's discovery in 1994 is what knocked Florida torreya off its pedestal as the "most endangered conifer in the world."
Thanks to the unusual decision to have commercial nurseries help in distributing rooted cuttings of Wollemia to home gardeners in some 31 nations around the world, scientists have been able to learn a lot about where and how this precious species can grow — without having to spend their own time (and a lot of funding) to do so in the usual way that "endangered species" are managed.
Indeed, citizens were recruited to care for Wollemia cuttings, and commercial nurseries made distribution part of their normal business. What a contrast to how our own citizen effort has been ignored (and spoken against) by the professionals in charge! |
Torreya planter, Fred Bess, in Cleveland Ohio has participated in the Wollemia home effort (using his greenhouse) and so has our Wisconsin planter, Mike Heim, who keeps his Wollemia potted for moving indoors during the winter. See my excerpting of the 2023 research paper on our Historic Groves page. I also added a new conservation subsection on this topic to the WOLLEMIA WIKIPEDIA page.
• August 2023/ Mike Heim and Connie Barlow / Torreya Guardians contribute to northward American Chestnut documentation
BELOW LEFT is a 2023 photo by Mike Heim of one of his mature 1980 plantings of (pure) American Chestnut on his forested property in northern Wisconsin. He wrote, "Here is a photo of my largest blight-resistent pure American chestnut. I had bought them from a nursery in MI in 1980. It developed blight cankers early on, healed over them, and hasn't had a problem since." Notice, for scale, the man standing at the tree's base.
SIGNIFICANCE: Because Historic Groves documentation by Torreya Guardians far north of the tiny historical range of Torreya taxifolia in n. Florida has been recognized by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as an important contribution of ours, citizens and professionals involved with American Chestnut restoration should also be aware of and document just how far north of "historical range" this cherished native canopy tree can survive (even thrive) today.
• August 2023/ Paul Camire and Connie Barlow / New VIDEO of Torreya thriving in MICHIGAN
PAUL CAMIRE, whose family farm and forest is in the "thumb" of southern Michigan, led CONNIE BARLOW on a tour of his Florida torreya plantings August 13, 2023. Despite setbacks by herbivory, Paul's 45-acre deciduous forest is proving to be good habitat for this endangered and slow-growing subcanopy conifer. Another 30 young ones still in pots outdoors at his home will join the forest plantings in the years to come.
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This 34-minute VIDEO delves into the details of best forest planting practices. Paul's experience will encourage other planters to (a) build strong cages to protect torreya where DEER are over-abundant and (b) don't give up when herbivory happens. Torreya will recover! This ancient species may be slow, but it is almost indestructible once it gets a roothold.
Crucially, too: There is no evidence of winter kill or disease problems. And at timecode 10:52 you will hear Connie's surprise when Paul shows his vibrant Florida yew — another glacial relict left stranded amidst the wild torreya in the panhandle of Florida.
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Watch on youtube: "Michigan welcomes endangered trees from Florida (2023)".
Visit the Capac Michigan torreya webpage.
• August 2023/ Connie Barlow / 48 papers linked and excerpted on the history of research on why Florida torreya is endangered
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Until this month I was unaware that in 2015 agricultural research pathologists initiated a PARADIGM SHIFT in how they regard fungal endophytes (including Fusarium species).
Henceforth, fungal endophytes discovered in plants are first evaluated as potential mutualists with their hosts: "seeds contain mainly plant-beneficial microorganisms" (Abdelfattah et al. 2022)
Learn more in this new list of 48 scientific papers, with excerpts.
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Since 2003, I have been analyzing published papers that offer and/or test hypotheses on WHY FLORIDA TORREYA suddenly succumbed to disease(s) in its tiny native range in the 1950s, and continuing today. "Environmental stress" that provoked disease expression by weakened plants was tested in the 1990s. However, quantitative historical data (especially on temperature changes in the ravine habitat) were not adequate for the scientists to point to a specific environmental shift as the likely ultimate cause of the multiple diseases injuring the species.
In the early 2010s, new morphological standards for parsing the globally ranging FUSARIUM genus of fungi led to University of Florida researchers distinguishing and naming a NEW SPECIES from fungal isolates that previously had been called Fusarium lateritium. The new species was named Fusarium torreyae, and this gave rise to speculations that the disease was exotic and had arrived on this continent in sync with the sudden outburst of stem cankers in Florida torreya. Thenceforth, the risk of a possibly exotic pathogen spreading northward supplied new reasons for botanical garden staff to maintain hostility to "assisted migration" projects, such as those underway by Torreya Guardians.
Within the past half-dozen years, an additional risk factor put a virtual end to harvesting and distribution of tens of thousands of torreya seeds produced annually in the two ex situ orchards in n. Georgia that are "safeguarding" the wild genetics. That new risk factor derives from the finding that Fusarium torreyae was not only in "all tissues" of Florida torreya — but even in its SEEDS. This finding, however, actually offers hope for the fears to subside — but only if the botanical staff and other professionals familiarize themselves with the new (post-2014) scientific papers, such as my own compilation of 48 SCIENTIFIC PAPERS, which includes the most recent papers documenting that FUNGAL ENDOPHYTES CAN BE BENEFICIAL, especially when inside SEEDS .
• July 2023/ Connie Barlow /
