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June 22, 2025

Talbot Spy

Nonpartisan Education-based News for Talbot County Community

Food and Garden

Adkins Arboretum’s Mystery Monday: Guess the Photo!

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Happy Mystery Monday!  Can you guess what is pictured in photo below:
The answer to last week’s mystery is arrowwood viburnum, Viburnum dentatum, pictured in the photo below:
Arrowwood viburnum is a native deciduous shrub that can be found from Maine to Florida, and westward toward Iowa and east Texas. It thrives in open woods and streambanks and most commonly occurs in partial shade but can tolerate full sun.
Arrowwood flowers from May–June and fruits from August–November. The shrub’s non-fragrant white flowers form flat-topped corymbs. The showy flower clusters give way to blue-black, berry-like drupes which are attractive to birds and other wildlife.
Thanks to vigorous and sturdy growth, arrowwood can be used as a hedge, screen, specimen, or in mass plantings. While the shrub’s growth habit is an upright oval, the older branches arch with age. Suckers also develop with age and are easy to transplant. Next season’s blossoms appear on old growth
Native Americans reportedly used the straight stems of this species for arrow shafts, hence the common name.
Arrowwood viburnum is the host plant for various species of moths and butterflies, including two specialist moth species: the brown scoopwing moth and the marveled wave moth. It’s also a host plant for Spring azure butterflies. Arrowwood provides nectar for pollinators, including native bees, and food and shelter for birds. Arrowwood is deer resistant.
Mystery Monday is sponsored by the Spy Newspapers and Adkins Arboretum.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Adkins Arboretum Mystery Tuesday: Guess the Photo!

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Happy Mystery Monday!  Can you guess what is pictured in the photo below?
The answer to last week’s mystery is deerberry, Vaccinium stamineum, pictured in the photo below:
Deerberry is a very common, native deciduous shrub that grows in sandy, well-drained soil and xeric communities such as dry oak woods, pine barrens, savannas, dry pine ridges, sparsely wooded bluffs, sand hills, thickets, and clearings. It often grows in conjunction with rhododendrons and azaleas, which share similar acidic soil requirements.
Deerberry’s nodding, bell-shaped flowers produce from April–June. They’re greenish-white and pink tinged. The stamens are prominent, as indicated by the Latin name stamineum. The fruit of deerberry dangles in loose clusters. The berries are sour and largely inedible for humans, unless they’re sweetened. The berries ripen from late–Summer to early–Fall and are enjoyed by birds and mammals.
Deerberry and blueberry are both members of the same plant family, ericaceae, and share similar characteristics, but also have key differences. For instance, deerberry fruit is typically larger and has a more tart flavor than blueberries.
Deerberry’s foliage turns a variety of colors through the seasons.
Mystery Monday is sponsored by the Spy Newspapers and Adkins Arboretum.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Adkins Arboretum’s Mystery Monday: Guess the Photo!

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Happy Mystery Monday!  Can you guess what is pictured in photo below?
The answer to last week’s mystery is Copes gray treefrog, Hyla chrysoscelis, pictured below.
Cope’s gray tree frogs are native to North America, and are especially abundant in the southeast. They are adapted to woodland habitats but will sometimes travel into more open areas to reach a breeding pond. These frogs inhabit all elevations of wooded areas near temporary and permanent waters, such as swamps, ponds, lakes, old fields, thickly wooded suburban neighborhoods, farm woodlots, and mixed or deciduous forests.
Variable in color from mottled gray to gray green, the skin of Cope’s gray tree frogs resembles bark. They typically measure 3.2–5.1 cm long. As a member of the genus Hyla, they possess advanced toe pads, allowing them to adhere more strongly to vertical surfaces, like glass, metal, and primarily tree bark.
Cope’s grays rest in damp, rotten logs, or hollow trees, emerging to feed. Tree frogs tend to be “sit-and-wait” predators, consuming caterpillars, beetles, flies that wander by. Tree frogs produce mucus secretions that are foul tasting and cause burning sensation and inflammation. While these secretions are thought to be anti-predator functions, it is possible that they also function as antimicrobial agents.
In Winter, Cope’s gray tree frogs hibernate on land, and may be found under woody debris logs, roots and leaf litter. When gray tree frogs hibernate, they appear rigid. They have a high freezing tolerance due to glycerol in the blood. During hibernation, 80% of the body freezes and the eye becomes opaque as breathing and heartbeat are temporarily suspended. Their high tolerance for freezing temperatures has enabled gray tree frogs to expand their territory northward towards higher elevations. Cope’s gray tree frog can survive temperatures as low as 18°F.
Mystery Monday is sponsored by the Spy Newspapers and Adkins Arboretum.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

What’s Native? The Battle over Been Here/Come Here By Nancy Taylor Robson

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Leslie Cario, Adkins Arboretum

What’s really indigenous to a place? We’re talking native plants here. (And ultimately: does native really matter?). OK, first, what’s native?

“If it’s from Asia or South America, it’s not native,” says entomologist Dr. Doug Tallamy, author of Bringing Nature Home. Lonicera japonica or Miscanthus sinensis tell you by their names that they are not from the Delmarva Peninsula. (It won’t necessarily tell you whether it’s invasive, but that’s a different question).

Human beings have always been about “Oooo! New and shiny!” Our peripatetic species has been hauling botanical specimens home for millenniums to add to our gardens, pharmacies, and tables. Thirty-five hundred years ago, Queen Hatshepsut of Egypt dispatched plant hunters to search for a little something new for the royal gardens. Her plant squad dug, balled, and lugged home 32 incense trees. Tulips from Turkey, potatoes from Peru. We’ve had several thousand years of globalization, so what constitutes ‘been here’ versus ‘come here’ is not always a simple question to answer.

The USDA defines native plants as those that “are the indigenous terrestrial and aquatic species that have evolved and occur naturally in a particular region, ecosystem, and habitat. Species native to North America are generally recognized as those occurring on the continent prior to European settlement. They represent a number of different life forms, including conifer trees, hardwood trees and shrubs, grasses, forbs, and others.”

To determine indigenous North American species, many in the US look to the plant catalogues compiled by 18th century Philadelphia botanists John Bartram and his son, William. Lewis and Clarke added to those lists during their years-long exploration of the continent following the Louisiana Purchase in 1803.

It’s a big country, and there are lots of species native to big chunks of it. For example, the white oak (Quercus alba), Maryland’s state tree, is native from Minnesota and Maine to Texas and northern Florida. But will a white oak seedling whose ancestry is in Sheboygan thrive in St Michaels?

“It’s not just: is the plant native to North America?” says Lois deVries, founder of The Sustainable Gardening Institute and The Sustainable Gardening Library, “but: is it suitable for your ecoregion?”

“What’s most important is matching the ecotype provenance,” agrees Tallamy. “It’s native to your region because it’s adapted to your region.”

Sara Tangren at Chesapeake Nurseries

Years ago, during a drought, Dr Sara Tangren, founder of Chesapeake Natives Nursery (now Coordinator for National Capital Partnership for Regional Invasive Species Management), noticed the striking difference in ecotypes of the same North American Aster species in her nursery.

“The ones from New England struggled but the ecotypes from here in Maryland were thriving on only the morning dew,” she noted. “That’s ecoregion adaption at work.”

Maryland is blessed with a variety of ecoregions that include several different soil types, which also (obviously) affect the plant colonies that have developed. De Vries, who lives in New Jersey, sees this distinction daily.

“The Great Limestone Valley is right across the street from me,” she says. “That’s a very limey gravely area, and very different plants thrive in that. I’m on Martinsburg shale here, which is very different acid soil with completely different plants.”

But if we’re only looking at plants and soil, we miss the additional connection of animals who are dependent on specific native plants, (we’re talking food web), which is a big reason why native plants as the foundation of the food web matter a lot.

“Some of it is based on the lens we are looking through,” says Leslie Cario, Director of Horticulture and Natural Lands at Adkins Arboretum. Adkins has long been focused on native plants, yet it’s always been in conjunction with the whole ecology of the area. “The people from The Biodiversity Project came out to catalogue what’s here, so it wasn’t just plants; it was insects, and different types of animals. So, it also depends if you’re focusing on conservation or restoration or gardening.”

Deborah Barber. cellophane bee specialist on native Coral Bells (Heuchera)

For Tallamy, who has long promoted the increased use of native plants as a means of restoring shattered biodiversity, it’s ultimately about a plant’s function in a whole community. White oak, for example, supports about 400 different animal species, a huge return on investment (to say nothing of how beautiful they are). So, ‘native’ has to do with a kind of ongoing reciprocity.

“A plant is native when it shares an ecological history with the plants and animals around it,” Tallamy says. “Native plants function better with the things they co-evolved with. It’s how it functions in the environment.”

But it doesn’t mean that all come-here’s are anathema. Come-here’s, when they contribute to the whole, (rather than take over as invasives) are welcome.

“Some people are really strict [about only natives],” notes Tallamy, who is more interested in collective citizenship than in purity.  “I have wood poppies in our yard. They are not strictly native to southeast Pennsylvania, but they function as a native. The deer love them.”

So, it’s complicated. And yes, ultimately, native plants matter enormously. They are vital components of a resilient, healthy (and beautiful) food web, landscape, home, and garden. Some may feel as though native plants restrict their garden choices, but Cario suggests that different individual aesthetic visions can easily dovetail with increasing native plant communities since it also enlarges the total gardening experience.

“Consider your gardening an act of altruism,” she says. “So, we’re not just doing it for ourselves, but to support wildlife around us. Even starting small will make some difference, so people should just try something and replace over time as they find out what works for them and what they enjoy. And I think people, who are looking, will enjoy as much the things coming to visit their garden as they are enjoying their garden.”

 

Resources:

Sustainable Gardening Institute

https://www.sustainablegardeninginstitute.org

Adkins Arboretum

https://www.adkinsarboretum.org

Chesapeake Natives

https://www.chesapeakenatives.org

Homegrown National Park

https://homegrownnationalpark.org

Maryland Native Plant Society

https://www.mdflora.org/plant-id

https://www.mdflora.org/chapters

 

National wildlife website

https://www.nwf.org

 

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Adkins Arboretum Mystery Monday: Guess the photo!

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Happy Mystery Monday!  Can you guess what is pictured in the photo below?
The answer to last week’s mystery is pinxter flower azalea, Rhododendron periclymenoides, pictured below:
Pinxter flower azalea is native to the Eastern United States, from Massachusetts to Alabama. It is one of several azaleas native to Maryland. An understory shrub, pinxter azalea is dense and bushy, typically growing 2–6′ tall. Pinxter azalea grows naturally in mixed deciduous forests, along streams, swamp edges and ravines, where they can form dense thickets.
Pinxter flowers open in mid to late Spring, and are often mistaken for honeysuckle blooms. The flower colors vary among species populations from white to dark pink. The open petals curve back to show off the long extended stamens and styles. Pinxter flowers begin to open before leaf expansion, drawing many pollinators, including hummingbirds, bees, and butterflies. The flowers are fragrant, and have a light spicy scent.
Maryland’s native azaleas host at least 50 species of native caterpillars, including hairstreaks and brown elfins.
The common name “pinxter” means Pentecost (the seventh Sunday after Easter) in Dutch, in reference to the bloom time for this shrub.
Warning: Rhododendrons contain poisonous substances and should not be ingested by humans or animals. All parts of the plant are highly toxic, even honey made from the flowers may be dangerous.
Mystery Monday is sponsored by the Spy Newspapers and Adkins Arboretum.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Adkins Arboretum Mystery Monday: Guess the picture!

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Happy Mystery Monday!  Can you guess what is pictured below?
The answer to last week’s mystery is bluets, Houstonia caerulea, pictured below.
Bluets are native to eastern North America. They are a small, delicate, perennial plant that grows in tufts with tiny, pale blue flowers with yellow centers. Some bluet flowers are almost white, while others are a rich, dark blue.
Bluets mature in mid-Spring and continue into mid-Summer. At just 6″ tall, common bluets are very light and airy. They are found in moist, partially shaded areas like deciduous woods, meadows, and clearings. The vegetation consists of a basal roseate that stays on the ground, and a few small leaves along the thin, green stems that emerge from the basal roseate.
The flowers are very small and appear to almost float above the ground because their stems are so thin. Bluets produce both nectar and pollen. Their short flower tubes make their nectar accessible to short-tongued native bees. Several smaller species of early butterflies visit common bluets, and bluets serve as a host plant for the larvae of the spotted thyris moth, Thyris maculata.
An alternate name for bluets is Quaker ladies, because their shape is similar to the hats and dresses once worn by women of the Quaker faith.
Mystery Monday is sponsored by the Spy Newspapers and Adkins Arboretum.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Adkins Arboretum Mystery Monday: Guess the photo!

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Happy Mystery Monday!  Can you guess what is pictured in the photo below?
The answer to last week’s mystery is white oak, Quercus alba, pictured in the photo below.
White oak is a very commonly found throughout Maryland. In fact, in 1941, white oak was designated the Maryland State Tree.
The white oak is found in a variety of different habitats, although it is localized to the eastern regions of the United States. It’s a wonderful shade tree, reaching 80-100′ tall and 60′ wide. The tree leafs out in April, offering cool comfort in the Summer.
Sometime around its 50th year, a white oak will begin to produce acorns, up to 10,000 annually. The acorns are quick to sprout soon after they fall to the ground. White oak acorns are sweet, and are important to the diet of over 80 species of birds and mammals. University of Delaware Professor and author Doug Tallamy states that the white oak tree is the most powerful plant as it supports 534 different species of butterfly and moth caterpillars.
Male and female flowers grow on the same white oak tree. The male flowers are yellow-green drooping clusters, while the female flowers are small, red, and without petals. Male flowers become elongated catkins containing pollen grains that are released into the wind. After the pollen is released, the whole catkin is promptly shed. Oak trees are wind pollinated, but birds and animals can also help the pollen disperse by moving the reproductive products around.
Mystery Monday is sponsored by the Spy Newspapers and Adkins Arboretum.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Wine of the Week: Campo Di Marte Pecorino Offrida DOCG

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Ciao Tutti!

This weekend we will taste the Campo Di Marte Pecorino Offrida DOCG  ($13.50, 13.5 ABV) from the Tenuta De Angelis winery in Castel Di Lama in Le Marche. It has been very popular with our customers but it is long overdue for its debut at our weekly tasting. In Italian, “pecora” means sheep. The sheep favored eating the sweeter Pecorino grapes during their seasonal migration and the shepherds may have offered their Pecorino cheese to the vineyard owners as compensation for the grapes consumed by their flocks of sheep. The woodpecker on the label symbolizes the bird’s importance to the god Mars, who guided the Picenes, an ancient Italic people, to the province of Ascoli Piceno in Le Marche. The vineyard is the Field of Mars (Campo Di Marte)

In the 1950’s, the De Angelis family constructed their first winery to vinify both their own grapes and those from other producers. Soon new vineyards were planted in Castel di Lama and Offrida and all wines are fermented with native yeasts and are certified organic. The winery is now managed by winemaker Quinto Fausti and his son Alighiero.

Le Marche is home to many ancient castles, such as the one that overlooks the Offrida vineyard.

The Campo di Marte Pecorino is 100% Pecorino indigenous grape and offers floral aromas, ripe pear flavor, bright acidity with an edge of minerality and a dry, crisp, finish reminiscent of bitter almonds. Pair with spring salads, soups, light pasta dishes, fish or other seafood.

If you have not yet tasted this customer favorite, come join me Friday from noon to 5:45 or Saturday from noon to 4:45 and taste how good it is!

Cin Cin,

Jenn

Piazza Italian Market is located in the Talbot Town Shopping Center, 218 N. Washington St., in Easton, MD

Contributor Jennifer Martella has pursued dual careers in architecture and real estate since she moved to the Eastern Shore in 2004. She has reestablished her architectural practice for residential and commercial projects and is a real estate agent for Meredith Fine Properties. She especially enjoys using her architectural expertise to help buyers envision how they could modify a potential property. Her Italian heritage led her to Piazza Italian Market, where she hosts wine tastings every Friday and Saturday afternoons.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.