EDUCATION

Power Plants Exploration Game

Power Plants Garden
June 21 - mid-October; 8:00 am - 5:00 pm daily
Power Plants Garden

Discover our new Power Plants Garden (see article above) and bring your school-aged children to play a game of plant exploration designed for just them. The game will lead them through the exhibit and illustrate the different ways plants play a role in creating new sources of fuel. Pick up the game brochure in the Visitors Center, walk across the street to the garden, and return your game card to the front desk when complete. A small prize will be awarded to those who answer the questions. Children age ten and under might need adult assistance. Free. No registration required.
 

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HORTICULTURE

Emerald Ash Borer Update

As we welcome in the spring season, it is a good time to review the battle to control the emerald ash borer in the United States, which is now in its sixth year. This introduced exotic pest has killed more that twenty five million trees (see image at left of trees in decline), and in spite of tens of millions of dollars spent on control measures, this insect is spreading to an ever widening area. The emerald ash borer will have a major impact in all locales where ash trees are dominate, either as landscape and street tree specimens or in native woodland populations.

This Asian beetle, beautifully iridescent green in color, was discovered in Michigan in 2002. It is believed to have been imported in wooden pallets and may have been undetected for more than ten years. By 2005, the emerald ash borer had spread to Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, with an isolated outbreak in Maryland. This pest continues to extend its range, now established in western Pennsylvania and most recently in Fayette County, West Virginia. While other ash boring insects seem to infect weak or dying trees, the emerald ash borer can infect large healthy trees, killing them within one to three years.    Read Full Story.

RESEARCH

U. S. National Seed Herbarium Moves to the Arboretum

The world’s largest and most diverse systematic collection of seeds of flowering and coniferous plants is now part of the National Arboretum. The seed collection was transferred to the Arboretum's Floral & Nursery Plants Research Unit in late 2007 from the Plant Sciences Institute of the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center in Beltsville, Maryland, where it resided for many years. The collection contains approximately 125,000 dried seed and fruit samples from plants throughout the world. Over 27,000 different species of plants representing 397 families and 13,000 genera of plants are represented in this valuable collection. The samples are stored in either glass vials or plastic bags. The entire collection is kept in a secure, moveable compact storage facility.

The National Seed Herbarium serves several important roles, including helping to document biodiversity and seed types of species, varieties, and cultivars, some of which may be extinct. It is an important tool for identifying unknown seeds, and it supports research programs relating to seeds. The collection also serves as the primary source of information for the most important references for seed identification of noxious weeds, legumes, and families of seed plants published by the USDA. The Seed Herbarium is a companion to and complements the arboretum herbarium, which contains over 600,000 dried specimens of twigs, branches, flowers, and fruits of the world’s flora.    Read Full Story
 
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