Flora & Fauna: Delightful Federal Duck Stamps; pumpkin history; bats for bug control; the incredible shooting plant

The simple genius behind duck stamps has supported conservation for over 90 years. (Adobe Stock photo)

Undeniably adorable when waddling on land, elegant and playful while paddling in water and given to showstopping, streamlined moves while flying: Ducks give artists so many reasons to love them. Among those artists, there is a special group -- realist wildlife painters vying to win the Federal Duck Stamp award, which many artists consider a "career pinnacle achievement, comparable to the Oscars or the Grammy’s," writes Kim Kobersmith of The Daily Yonder. The simple genius behind duck stamps has supported conservation for more than 90 years. "Duck hunters over 16 years old are required to purchase the stamp annually. . . . Ninety-eight percent of stamp proceeds go directly to add protected land to the National Wildlife Refuge System. In its 91-year history, the duck stamp has raised $1.2 billion and conserved 6 million acres across the country." The Fish and Wildlife Service website features the nation's Federal Duck Stamp gallery. 

How pumpkins evolved from a humble staple to a "spicy fall obsession" is a tale that began 9,000 years ago in ancient Mexico, writes extension specialist and horticulturist Shelley Mitchell for The Conversation. "I educate the people about the plant’s storied history and its prominence today." Mitchell explains that Native Americans grew pumpkin crops "even before [they grew] corn and beans." Being completely edible, pumpkins are a versatile crop, and early American settlers learned that growing them in North America was easier than in Europe. Read Mitchell's full history about this adaptable member of the squash family here.

A bat researcher measures the ears of a 'chatty' evening bat.
(Photo by Michael Minasi, KUT News)

An orchard filled with stink bugs, mosquitoes and dusty moths is an evening bat's dream dinner. "The tiny brown bats fill the Texas skies each night, and collectively eat tons of insects. They’re essential for farms – including where these researchers are working: Swift River Pecans," reports Michael Marks for Harvest Public Media. "The orchard’s owner, Troy Swift, hosted the researchers so they could collect more information on the species that visit his 266-acre property . . . Swift decided to forego using pesticides on part of his pecan orchard and just let the bat population handle the bugs this year."

An autumn road trip through rural Maine is one way to find the rarest and most coveted apples. "As leaf-peepers flood the state, apple-obsessives also fan out to find oddball specimens that range from rare heirlooms to never-before-tasted seedlings," writes Jen Rose Smith for The Wall Street Journal. "As an amateur fruit fanatic myself, I’ve long wanted to taste my way through Maine’s apple underground. . . along the state’s 3,500-mile coastline." Read Smith's complete apple adventure here.

A great blue heron stands in a restored stream that was once a cranberry bog. 
(Photo by C. Jackson, The Living Observatory via Inside Climate News)

Rising temperatures in Massachusetts have left some cranberry farmers unable to grow the state's signature crop. Instead of continuing to grow cranberries in a climate no longer suited for them, some area farmers are using state assistance to "transform their bogs into wetlands, ensuring the land remains protected," reports Nicole Williams of Inside Climate News. "The shift, called a green exit strategy, has been developed by state agencies and conservationists and driven in part by farmers finding tougher competition from regions with colder climates and younger vines."

American witch hazel plants use internal 'spring' pressure to shoot
their seeds at alarming speeds. (Snapshot via bioGraphic video)

 

As an understory shrub native to the eastern U.S., the American witch hazel (Hamamelis virginiana) plant may sound boring, but it has secret powers. "For centuries, Indigenous peoples in eastern North America have brewed 'magic water' by boiling bark from the twiggy shrub and using it to treat all manner of maladies," writes Katie Garrett for bioGraphic. "Perhaps the plant’s strangest trait is how it spreads its seeds. As winter approaches, they fire their glossy black seeds across the forest floor with audible pops — sometimes launching the start of a new generation as much as 10 meters (33 ft) away from the parent plant."

Wet weather leaves vegetable farmers in a tough spot

The historic flooding and rain in the Midwest has wreaked havoc on crops of all types, but vegetable farmers are in a particularly tough spot. Unlike corn and soybean farmers, vegetable growers don't get a piece of the $16 billion disaster aid package, and they can't get federally subsidized crop insurance.

"Although the lack of federal safety-net programs for farmers who grow everything from arugula to zucchini isn’t new, one of the wettest springs in U.S. history has focused attention on the special status of so-called commodity crops, primarily corn, soybeans, cotton, rice and wheat," Scott McFetridge reports for The Associated Press. "Growers of some of those crops received $11 billion in special aid last year and will get $16 billion more this year to offset losses caused by trade disputes that led to tariffs and resulting drops in demand."

Corn and soy growers are treated differently because their crops are commodities important to the national economy; most of the production is used for animal feed, ethanol and seed for future crops, and only 1 percent is for human consumption. "There isn’t a replacement for such crops, and a shortage would be painful, particularly to the livestock industry," McFetridge reports.

Consumers might rue the shortage of one at-risk crop come Thanksgiving: pumpkins. Farmers are about three weeks behind in planting because of the rain, but are sowing "from dawn to dusk and even during the night to catch up," according to Mohammad Babadoost, a professor at the University of Illinois and Urbana-Champaign. Jim Ackerman, agriculture manager for canned pumpkin giant Libby's, told McFetridge that the pumpkin crop should ripen in time and meet demand if the weather gets warmer and drier this summer.

Calif. drought a nightmare for small agri-tourism businesses that once thrived at Halloween

The California drought is forcing many small agri-tourism businesses to skip Halloween festivities this year that require water, such as pumpkin patches and corn mazes, Geoffrey Mohan reports for the Los Angeles Times. "The travails haunting some of the state's small farms this Halloween come even as large-scale growers of the ornamental gourds in the San Joaquin Valley say they've had a bumper crop that is in high demand because of rain-damaged harvests in the Midwest, Texas and East Coast. The divergent fates illustrate a paradox of California's drought: farmers with recourse to deep wells can reap a tidy profit. Those who don't might not farm again." (Times photo by Kirk McCoy: Bob Lombardi, owner of the shut-down Lombardi Ranch, looks at one of the baby bear pumpkins he was able to grow on only two acres because of the drought)

"Statewide, growers have gambled on crops that give them the best yield per drop, agriculture experts say," Mohan writes. "Despite the drought's estimated $1.5-billion toll on the agriculture economy last year, many of California's vegetable crops, and a few fruits, have had increased yields, according to University of California Davis and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Pumpkin harvests were up 16 percent last year."

"Meanwhile, farms with few choices have withered: the state lost about 1 percent to 2 percent of its dairy industry from 2010 to 2014, according to Lesley Butler, a dairy economist at UC Davis," Mohan writes. "And while farm revenues for vegetable crops in the San Joaquin and Sacramento regions are expected to rise by $4 million to $8 million this year, they probably will plummet by more than $100 million in Tulare County, according to UC Davis' Center for Watershed Sciences." (Read more)

Pumpkin mystery solved: County-level map shows where pumpkins are produced

Fall means pumpkins are beginning to pop up at grocery stores, farmer's markets, pumpkin patches and the front porches of houses. Pumpkins are a fairly common sight in fall, especially when Halloween rolls around. But where do pumpkins come from? They don't come from the South and some portions of the Southwest and Midwest, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture Census, Christopher Ingraham reports for The Washington Post.

"Pumpkins are grown commercially in just about every county in the Northeastern states," Ingraham writes. "There are plenty of pumpkins grown along the west coast and throughout the mountain west as well. But interestingly, there's an arc of relatively pumpkin-free counties running from eastern Montana all the way down through the middle of the country and across to Florida."

Five of the top six pumpkin-producing counties are in Illinois, led by Tazewell County, which has 4,669 acres of pumpkins, Ingraham writes. Next is San Joaquin County, California, 3,441 acres; Mason County, Illinois, 2,627 acres; Wayne County, Illinois, 1,547 acres; Peoria County, Illinois, 1,323 acres; Stark County, Illinois, 1,068 acres; Yoakum County, Texas, 1,014 acres; Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, 1,004 acres; Carroll County, Virginia, 703 acres; and Suffolk County, New York, 641 acres. (Post map)