The blooming flowers in Ohio's state gardens and arboretums are wonderful to look at and teach us about horticulture. They may also help scientists and land managers use less insecticide and do a better job of controlling pests at the same time. WOSU's Jonathan Hickman reports.
Ohio State entomologist Daniel Herms has found a valuable ally in his fight against insect pests in the natural clock of common garden plants.
"We found that we can use the flowering sequence of plants as a biological calendar to predict insect activity." Says Herms.
The timing of biological events such as a flower blooming or a bird migration is called phenology. Herms and others wanted to use phenological data to develop a pest management program that would allow land managers to target just those times when the insects would be active, for example, he's found that certain insect pests seem to emerge just as the lilacs are blooming. If managers know when insects are active, they can limit the amount of insecticide they need to spray. But lilacs can bloom at very different times in one part of Ohio than they do in another.
"In spring sometimes you might be 3 to 4 weeks ahead in southern Ohio than in northern Ohio, so this creates complications for making extension recommendations for when pests are active." Says Herms.
To help with the scheduling, Herms turned to the Ohio State Extension Service and a network of Master Gardeners-citizens who learn extensively about horticulture at gardens and extension offices around the state, and volunteer their time at those gardens in return. They thought, why not monitor flowers at gardens all around the state to develop a detailed map of where and when different plants bloom. Then that information can be matched with weather data to create a reference for pest management across Ohio. Denise Ellsworth is with Ohio State Extension.
"At this point what we have are, we have 36 gardens across the state, and if you go online you can see the distribution, they're really north to south distribution, and east to west across the state." Says Ellsworth.
Chris Tilton volunteers as a master gardener and makes the rounds at the Ohio State's Chadwick Arboretum in Columbus.
"That's the flower. And eventually they'll get to be all like this, sort of that dark rose color, sort of an old rose color." Says Tilton.
When the opportunity to work on the phenology project came up, Tilton found it immediately appealing.
"What fun it is to be in a beautiful flower garden like this. And the whole point of it is to watch when the flowers bloom. So why wouldn't you want to be outside in May and June when the weather is best waiting for different flowers to bloom?" Asks Tilton.
Master gardeners are not the only volunteers-all kinds of interested people have been helping out at the gardens.
"We could certainly have more volunteers observing. It's not a difficult thing. A flower's in bloom when you can see the pistels and stamens. And that's a full bloom." Says Tilton.
OSU Extension's Denise Ellsworth notes that volunteers can also send information on certain plants-like the lilac-to a national phenology database.
"This national phenology network is looking at plants across the country, and they have decades really of citizen science data, from research stations, and now people can get one of these lilacs, put it in their back yard, and submit their information online." Ellsworth says.
Researchers use information from the national database to map how the timing of flower blooms, leaf growth, and other biological events are changing, possibly in response to climate change. Though the Ohio Phenology Network was originally planned as a 5-year project, Ellsworth hopes it will extend long beyond that.
"So you know looking down the road maybe 20 or 30 years from now somebody can pull that data and really get the big picture of climate change and seasons, how long has our season become, how early are springs coming, because we have this data that has been systematically collected all these years." Says Ellsworth
The network, which is run by the OSU extension office and Agricultural Research and Development Center, will continue at least through next year.
Jonathan Hickman, WOSU News