Eric Eggen'sTrek Around the USA: Miscellany

VISIT TO ROYAL BOTANICAL GARDENS, NEAR HAMILTON, ONTARIO

True lilies in bloom.

Asiatic Hybrid Lily
'Black Beauty'

Asiatic Hybrid Lily
'Baywatch'

Asiatic Hybrid Lily
'Forza Red'

Asiatic Hybrid Lily
'Acoustic'

Colorado Spruce, the real blue spruce:

Korean Fir Tree, Abies koreana 'Silberlocke'

An unusual elephant ear, located in the Mediterranean Garden:

Lemon Lime Taro
Xantaosoma mafaffa

PUFFIN BOAT TRIP TO MACHIAS SEAL ISLAND, MAINE (OR NEW BRUNSWICK)

Birders and Tyler aka "Matt"

Harbor at Cutler, Maine

Bald Eagle in Tree on Island
Near Cutler, Maine

Lighthouse on Machias Seal Island

Puffins

Auks - Puffins, Razorbills and Mirs

Auks Swimming and Diving Off Machias Seal Island

The Puffin Boat

SPRUCE TREES AT COASTAL MAINE BOTANICAL GARDEN, BOOTHBAY, MAINE

Weeping Norwegian Spruce
Picca abies 'Pendula'

White Spruce (blue-needled form)
Picca glauea

Red Spruce
Picca rubens

VIEWS OF LONGWOOD GARDENS, KENNITT SQUARE (NEAR PHILADELPHIA), PENNSYLVANIA

Pierre S. DuPont planned and developed his Longwood estate from 1909 to 1954. These are photos from my visit on June 23, 2011:

Italian Water Garden
Designed and Built by Pierre S. DuPont

Waterfall Steps at Italian Water Garden

The living wall is a form of plantscape design that is gaining popularity. This is the first one I have seen in a public garden (public meaning its open to the public). Oddly, its placed in a corridor in a remote area of the Conservatory with the restrooms. The detail is tremendous, but it is not purely a botanical display. It is more a work of plantscape art that is constantly renewed.

Green Wall in Conservatory

Detail of Green Wall

Silver Garden

Weeping Willow in Silver Garden

Cacti in Silver Garden

Some interesting plant specimens:

Cattleya Orchids

Siam Tulip
From Vietnam
Curcuma alismatfolia

Siam Tulip
A Member of the Ginger Family

Longwood Hybrid Canna Lily

Chimes Tower adjacent to
Waterfall and Lake

Man-made Waterfall
In Man-Made Natural Setting

VISIT TO ELIZABETHAN GARDENS, ROANOKE ISLAND, NORTH CAROLINA

The Garden Club of North Carolina began the construction of this English Pleasure Garden in 1953. It is a highly developed combination of structured gardens, meandering walks through wooded areas, fountains and statuary. Landscape design and plant selection are excellent. The website for the gardens is www.elizabethangardens.org. What follows is a photo gallery from my visit.

Formal areas and borders:

Border at Entrance Featuring Begonias

Gateway Formal Garden

Sitting Area Near Queen's Tea Garden

Formal Sunken Garden

The Queen Elizabeth rose, a florabunda, is featured in the Queen's Tea Garden. One of the plants was presented to the gardens by Queen Elizabeth II on the occasion of the celebration of her 50 years of reign.

Queen Elizabeth Rose

There were a substantial number of hydrangeas, all in bloom.

Blue Lace-Cap Hydrangea

Magenta Big Leaf Hydrangea

Deep Blue Big Leaf Hydrangea

Oak Leaf Hydrangea

CRUISE FROM NEW ORLEANS TO THE WESTERN CARIBBEAN

The first interesting thing about a cruise out of New Orleans is its uniqueness as an international port. Open water of the Gulf of Mexico is 150 miles downriver through the Mississippi River delta. So for the first several hours, our ship navigates along the twists and turns of the river, in sight of the support structure of the oil industry along both banks until we reach Venice (the Louisiana one), which has no canals—but is the end of the line for roads and lights. By the time we reach this end of civilization, it is nearly midnight on a moonless night, and the delta marshlands are passed without note. We will miss this area on the way back as well because we will pass well before dawn next Sunday morning.

Also interesting about the river is that it is flooding. At least it has been in Memphis and Vicksburg. If this were 1927, New Orleans would be flooded as well. But the Army Corps of Engineers has added the floodways and the Old River Complex to the levee system that was in place at that time. As a result, the floodways have been opened and the river at New Orleans is about where it usually is--three or four feet below the top of the levee. The remaining concern is whether the Old River Complex, south of Natchez, will withstand the flood-level flow and do its job.

Bon Voyage

Our first stop was at Costa Maya, a new tourist destination on the Yucatan peninsula. It was devastated by Hurricane Dean four years ago, and it is still in the process of rebuilding. It primarily caters to cruise ships, but also has diving tourism on the barrier atolls. The two offerings are mutually exclusive because a cruise ship stop does not allow enough time to go to the coral atoll, dive, and return to port.

I was told by our tour guide, Luis Dodd, that the Yucatan peninsula was a result of the asteroid impact in the Caribbean sixty million years ago that is believed to have destroyed the dinosaurs. The asteroid crater, sixty miles across, is to the east of the peninsula. The result was a shallow sea which over time deposited the limestone that now forms peninsula. That is the geologic character of all we saw—limestone and flat.

Luis Dodd, a local, was our guide at the Mayan ruins at Kohunlich. What appeared to interest him as much as the ruins was the trees. Apparently there are 200 varieties of trees on the Yucatan peninsula. Considering that the peninsula is almost entirely made of limestone, with an very small amount of decomposed limestone that passes as rocky soil, the arboreal diversity is intriguing. Its as if the poor conditions create a multitude of micro-environments that different trees have found ways to exploit. The ruins themselves were covered with trees and underbrush, which were growing out of fissures in the top layer of limestone blocks. The first stage of developing the archeological sites is to remove the trees, their roots and the accompanying soil. In some locations only part of the pyramid has been uncovered. For example, below is a picture of the Jaguar pyramid at Lamania, Belize. The trees in the background are on the unexcavated back and top of the pyramid.

Jaguar Mayan Pyramid in Belize

The best known feature at Kohunlich is the Temple of the Masks, on which several stucco images has been excavated. The temple was built about 500 A.D.

Our next stop was at Roatan, Honduras. We spent the day snorkeling along the coral reef. We went on the same boat with a group of divers, so we spent much of the time in the boat in deeper, rougher water to accommodate them. The coral is the first stage of the limestone that makes up landmass near shore. But Honduras is mountainous, so other geological forces have been at work.

The most striking thing about our next stop at Belize is the obvious British influence. There is an orderliness here that is not evident in Mexico or Honduras.

We visited another set of Mayan ruins by traveling by boat up a river. The site is known as Lamanai. It was occupied by various Mayan groups from the 16th century B.C. to the 17th century A.D. We saw excavated masks at this site as well. Here is Julie making contact with the ancient Mayans:

Mayan Mask at Lamanai, Belize

TUNEUP TRIP TO MISSISSIPPI RIVER FLOOD, May 10 to 12, 2011

Today is May 12th. Two days ago I headed West on Interstate 10 to take a look at the Mississippi River and its floodways. Coming downriver is perhaps the highest and largest bulge of water since the infamous 1927 flood.

A few years ago I followed the river from Venice, Louisiana to Memphis, Tennessee, during a normal season, with the river well within its banks and its levees standing high and dry and distant from the river’s flow. That is not the case now. In Louisiana and Mississippi the river is against the levees and is within a few feet of overtopping them.

To keep the river below the tops of the levees, they are going to have to open floodways. The Army Corps of Engineers has already started opening the “Bonnie Carrie” spillway located about 20 miles north of New Orleans. This is or will be sending about 300,000 cubic feet per second of river water into Lake Ponchartrain. This is about 15 percent of the flow currently in the river at that point. But it is not enough to keep the river from overtopping the levees in New Orleans. To do that the Corps also needs to open the Morganza floodway, which is 30 miles northwest of Baton Rouge. Unlike “Bonnie Carrie” which causes water to flow into publically-owned wilderness on its passage to the lake, the Morganza floodway is privately-owned farmland, over which the Corps has a flood easement. So even though the Corp has the legal right to send part of the river down the floodway, the farmers who own the land will lose at least a crop. And the farmers are upset. Its been about fifty years since the Morganza floodway has been opened.

I traveled through New Orleans and then up across the “Bonnie Carrie” spillway. I saw fast-moving water heading into Lake Ponchartrain. There was a lot of water, but it seemed well controlled.

I wanted to take the car ferry across the river at Reserve, Louisiana, but when I got there the ferry was closed. I crossed the river by bridge a few miles upstream and got to see the state of the river north of New Orleans. It appeared to be about six feet below the top of the levee. There were several ocean-going ships in the river, but none of them appeared to be moving and they all seemed to be at anchor---not loading or unloading. Other than that, businesses along the banks of the river and in adjacent towns seemed to be operating normally.

My next destination was the Morganza floodway. News reports indicated that the decision to open this floodway had not yet been made. However, I watched local New Orleans news on Tuesday night (5/10) and it seemed from their perspective opening the floodway was both necessary (for New Orleans) and just a matter of time.

State Road 1 runs on top of the levee at the Morganza spillway. As you drive North, to the right is a vast lake of flood water as far as you can see, and to the left is dropoff of about 30 feet to dry bottomland, covered with crops and a few structures. I don’t know if any of them are occupied dwellings. There was no livestock in evidence. Present in the area were some National Guard, Louisiana State Patrol, Army Corps of Engineer civilians, and a news van from a New Orleans TV station.

Past the Morganza floodway about 15 miles is the most elaborate Army Corps site on the Mississippi River. This is the Old River Complex. It is designed to keep the Mississippi River from shifting its flow from its present course past Baton Rouge and New Orleans, and into the Atchafalaya River Basin, which leads to the Gulf of Mexico at Morgan City, Louisiana. Because the amount of water passing through the complex can be mechanically adjusted, it also serves as a flood control device. In 1950, thirty percent of the Mississippi’s flow was going into the Atchafalaya River at this point, and the river was within a couple of decades of “capture”. To keep this from occurring, the Corps dammed the existing channel between the two rivers, constructed a navigation lock and a spillway called the Low Sill Structure. These changed were completed by 1963. In 1972, flood waters tested the structure and it nearly failed. The Corps then added three more structures, a hydroelectric dam, an overtop or backup spillway, and an Auxiliary Structure. The most important of these is the Auxiliary Structure, which is designed to do the same thing as the Low Sill Structure, but on a grander scale. While there have been floodwater episodes since the 1983 completion of these additional structures, they have not been tested by floodwaters of the magnitude of the 1972 flood, or anything like they will be tested by the current flood. According to news reports, the Corp is watching the structures very closely.

I stopped to get a good look at both the Auxiliary Structure and the Low Sill Structure. The Auxiliary Structure appeared to be open about halfway. The water was flowing fast and there was some turbulence, but the channel was well within its banks and the structure did not appear to be tested. The Low Sill Structure was possibly open all the way. It is a smaller structure, but still quite massive. The water drop is much greater than at the Auxliary Structure, and it was this water drop that caused much of the problem in 1972. Because of this greater drop, the outflow of the Low Sill Structure was very turbulent. It was actually a 200-foot cataract. Fish were jumping out of the turbulent water, with some even landing on the structure. I was in the company of about 20 spectators who were standing and watching the water display. While there were several Corp personnel in pickup trucks in the area, there was no sense of any heightened activity. The structures were apparently doing what they were supposed to do, and were well within their limits.

The more substantial consequence from the increased flow over the Old River Complex wi11 be felt in the Atchatafalaya River Basin, and particularly down near Morgan City, which is now expecting flooding. But since most of that basin is a huge swamp, it can absorb the Mississippi floodwaters with significantly less impact than if they continued down the Big Muddy.

Today I viewed the Mississippi River from Natchez to Vicksburg. While the river is still within its levees, it is near their tops and in some areas sand bags have been placed on top of the levee. On the Mississippi side, the area is hilly, and the hills rather than levees are the primary barrier. I tried to go to the battlefield park West of Port Gibson, but the river was over the road. I think there is a distinct possibility of the river overtopping the levees at or near Vicksburg, with the Louisiana side probably more at risk.

It was a useful trip. The forces at work in the river are truly monumental.

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Miscellany