Ask A Biologist Podcast
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Ask A Biologist Podcast
Bringing Biodiversity to the City
Can a transformed 4-acre former citrus orchard become a vibrant urban wildlife sanctuary? Dr. Biology is out of the studio to explore Julie Stromberg's remarkable riparian garden. Julie, a plant ecologist and emeritus professor at Arizona State University, shares her motivations and the vital ecological benefits of creating such green spaces in urban areas. Hear the story behind her efforts in sustainable agriculture that are preserving biodiversity right in the heart of the city.
Read more: Bringing Home the Wild: A Riparian Garden in a Southwest City
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Dr. Biology: 0:02
This is Ask a Biologist a program about the living world, and I'm Dr Biology. Okay, so from the sounds in the background, you probably already know we're not in the studio and you might think we're out in the field, but that's not the case. We're actually in a backyard, but not just any backyard. This is the home of our guest, Julie Stromberg, and it's pretty much a wildlife sanctuary inside the city. It's also the motivation behind her new book called Bringing Home the Wild, a riparian garden in the southwest city. Now, Julie is a professor emeritus at Arizona State University and a longtime plant ecologist who specializes in wetland and riparian ecosystems of the American Southwest. For this podcast, we plan to take a tour of this wild backyard to learn more about why and how the space was created.
Dr. Biology: 1:07
Hey there, Julie,
Julie: 1:07
Hi Chuck (a.k.a. Dr. Biology).
Dr. Biology: 1:08
Thank you so much for letting me visit your wild backyard.
Julie: 1:10
Such a pleasure to have you over to welcome you through the portal into our little paradise and oasis in the city.
Dr. Biology: 1:17
You know that's interesting because when I was reading, one of your friends said something that it's like walking through a portal when you come in here. And I can get just an idea, because you know I'm just starting here and actually before we head out, can you tell me how big is your quote unquote backyard?
Julie: 1:35
We have a backyard and a front yard and side yard! Originally it was 13 acres of dying citrus, but we sold nine and we're starting from scratch and we now we have four. We have neighbors behind us who have an organic orchard on several acres, but our parcel is four. I envision it as sort of a series of rooms and trails which makes it feel bigger than it is. People get lost back there.
Dr. Biology: 2:02
I can imagine. I'm just looking out right now and I don't even know where we'd start, but talking about being in the city but having the wild here. There's a road out here, there's developments right next door. Yes, it's pretty amazing to me, because that portal really is a portal.
Julie: 2:21
It really is, and there are a lot of neighbors around us that are of a similar mindset to us, including appreciating the fact that the soils here are amazing. They're loam soils, they're fertile. This was a historic agricultural area and there's a tidal wave of dense houses that are encroaching. There's such potential here to have sustainable agriculture, to have ecotherapy, and to have a carbon-capturing oasis in the city. I'm so glad that 25 years ago we did buy up acreage and prevented it from becoming densely packed with houses. Now we have trees and shrubs and birds instead.
Dr. Biology: 2:58
It's interesting because we don't always think about these pockets and how important they could be.
Julie: 3:05
Yes.
Dr. Biology: 3:06
We live in an area where we have county islands and those are interesting because they have not really been incorporated by the cities yet and they have livestock. They have chickens, goats, you name it, it's there, big parcels. Goats, you name it, it's there, big parcels.
Julie: 3:36
And they're interesting because they do help to maintain populations that can’t otherwise easily disperse to new areas because the houses in the city are so dense. We've had so many insects and birds and plants arrive on our property that we didn't plant, and part of that is because when we moved in 25 years ago there was more agriculture in the area, the road was roughly paved, there was irrigation and there were many wild plants that one can also find growing along desert streams. Pollinators and other insects reproduce on our property and then can fly away and can populate others. We need to have these stepping stones of areas where non-human creatures can thrive, disperse and expand, right?
Dr. Biology: 4:08
There's almost, like you've heard, terms of wildlife corridors, and so these are not necessarily a corridor, but they are wildlife pockets.
Julie: 4:16
Yeah, wildlife pockets.
Dr. Biology: 4:17
And I think that's a great thing. Before we actually go for our walk, I do want to get a little bit of a vision for everybody. We know it's four acres now, but what prompted you to do this?
Julie: 4:33
Yes, multiple motivations. During my life at Arizona State University, I was a riparian researcher and I spent a lot of time traveling to rivers around the Southwest. They are beautiful and gorgeous and fascinating. I fell in love with mesquite bosques, which are a type of woodland that borders the Salt River as well as other rivers in the state, and I thought, wow, if I'm going to live in the city, I want to live in a mesquite bosque. So there was that motivation. And I taught restoration ecology and I thought, well, here's a chance to put principles into practice.
Julie: 5:11
Some people say ecological restoration is glorified gardening and in a sense it is. It's not quite that, but I do come from a long line of gardeners. My mother was a gardener and she taught me to love and appreciate plants, and so my gardening fingers just needed a place to be active. Also, when I was doing my research, I went to a workshop about mesquite as a food source for the Indigenous people of the Southwest and for other inhabitants. I've been fascinated with sustainable agriculture for a long time, because industrial agriculture is so damaging and people need an alternative. So I thought, wow, we can have birds in the city. We can have a food forest in the city. We can have a quiet space in the city. The noise of the city is- I just can't hack it. I've got to wake up to birdsong or I'm going to be a grumpy ecologist.
Dr. Biology: 5:58
Okay, no one wants anybody to be grumpy. That's true, I don't want anybody to be grumpy. So, because we're in this wonderful location and it's early in the morning. If anybody wonders, it's like 7 in the morning here and that means it's a little bit cooler, although not necessarily cool and interestingly enough, I saw what looked like some storm clouds. So who knows, we might even get a bit of a desert shower this morning.
Julie: 6:32
That would be lovely, right? Oh, the smells after the rains are incredible.
Dr. Biology: 6:37
I bet, speaking of this, let's go, okay, where do you want to go first?
Julie: 6:39
Oh gosh. Well, right here at the gate, we have to stop by the bursara, the elephant tree. These grow wild on South Mountain Park, which you can see just across the road there, and they are an amazing plant with respect to their smells. Here, take a berry and just crunch it between your fingers and take a whiff. Crunch between your fingers and take a whiff. Presumably you're going to relax.
Julie: 7:06
Yeah, and the compounds in this plant, which is in the family that frankincense and myrrh are in, have been proven to reduce your anxiety. It's called an anxiolytic. What a great way to get ready for work as you go out the door. What a great way to start the day.
Dr. Biology: 7:25
And it's a great way to bring your guests in. Exactly. Calm them down right away. Yeah, by the way, when you're listening to this, if you don't know what this plant looks like, we will be putting images in the podcast. We do that sort of thing. If you have an app that supports that, you can see it, or you can go to our website and you'll be able to see them as well. So just keep that in mind. All right, what's next?
Julie: 7:54
Well, let's head out down this path. Right now. One of the lovely plants that's in bloom is the desert willow. That was a short walk.
Dr. Biology: 8:04
It was a short walk, yeah, so I guess four acres you do get to pack a lot in.
Julie: 8:08
We pack a lot in, yeah. So, here's the desert willow- these are trees that are widely planted in the city as a landscape plant. Boy. After the rain the smell is kind of pungent, and just after the rain it's lovely and delicious. The desert willow is one we planted- so we have a mix of plants that we planted and then the wildlings that came in. We weren't the only ones doing the planting- the birds, the wind, the water brought plants in, and this one that came in, right here, this wildling is called sacred datura. The rabbits have been nibbling the leaves on this plant, and this plant is psychotropic!
Julie: 8:46
Oh, really, yes, and it's been used historically by shamans. Crazy rabbits, crazy rabbits, so they're having one heck of a party right now! Sacred datura has big, broad leaves. She's a herbaceous perennial, and in the morning and at night she has beautiful big, white tubular flowers that just fill the atmosphere with a wonderful odor and they attract bees and pollinators and they come in and they have a party and sometimes they will get sort of drugged and sometimes I help the bees out of the flower. They’ve had just a little too much and they can't find the door.
Dr. Biology: 9:19
All right. Well, we're going to move on a little bit before I join the rabbits, or the bees here. Right, let me see here what's next, because I mean it is incredibly green it's incredibly lush.
I could think of myself basically out in the desert in kind of those transition zones.
Julie: 9:33
Right, right. Some of our area is irrigated and some is not, so we have moisture gradients, which is part of what contributes to the diversity. So, we'll stay in the irrigated area for a while, and if we just walk a few more steps this way, there's a tree that I call the dancing tree.
Julie: 9:59
I call her the dancing tree but not because the tree is dancing. Although trees do move, they move very slowly, much more slowly than we do. They will close their leaves up at night. They will respond to touch. They're sentient creatures. This is a Mexican palo verde. She's one of the oldest trees on the property, just huge, and I've pruned some of her lower limbs so that we can go up and climb the tree and just sit in the tree and relax.
Dr. Biology: 10:26
And sit in the tree.
Julie: 10:27
But beneath her there's sort of an open area. One time I had some friends over and they just spontaneously broke out and danced.
Dr. Biology: 10:34
So, you were dancing under the tree, so she's become known as the dancing tree, got it.
Julie: 10:39
This is one that some people call ratama, another name for Mexican palo verde. In some areas, some restoration sites one along the Salt River, she's not welcomed. She's been poisoned and killed and removed because she's not considered to be part of the historical flora of the area.
Dr. Biology: 10:58
Now you're bringing up an important point because there's, for those that don't know, there's native and non-native is the common terms that might come up, and there's a bit of a discussion going on to the fact that what is native and what is non-native, and who belongs and shouldn't be there.
Julie: 11:19
Yes, there is, and it's been going on for a while, and it can get fairly emotional because you know, when you're dealing with issues of belonging and attachment, the objective science doesn't necessarily have the last word. The terms native and non-native are not binary. Like many things, you know, it's not black and white, there are shades of gray- there are different lengths of time different plants have been here, different distances they've come. Plus, we're in a changing climate- changing CO2. Much in the world is changing. So what belonged here 100 years ago is not what belongs here now.
Dr. Biology: 11:49
Right, and that's really common with birds. For example, In the Phoenix area we have these rosy-faced lovebirds.
Julie: 11:57
Oh yes, we've had them periodically.
Dr. Biology: 11:58
Yes, yeah, yeah, and they're not native, but they're certainly taken up home in the Phoenix area and there are a lot of birds like that and, in some cases, those birds that were not native. It's important because it turns out in their “native” right now they're having a great big decline in populations of parrots, for example. Many species of parrots are dropping in numbers in their “native” habitats, but they're out in the strangest places, inner cities and all Without that we would have a problem, right.
Julie: 12:35
Migration and adaptation are ongoing and trying to stop it just creates more harm than benefit. People still actually are being taught that sort of very simplistically idea that “native is good, non-native is bad,” and once you learn that it kind of embeds. But it's not true. A newly arrived creature can have an effect that's neutral, positive, negative, and it depends on who is being affected. It's very complicated and we've reduced it to the simplistic idea. You can become sort of extreme. I mean I love native species; I plant them in my yard, but I'm not an extremist. It doesn't mean I'm going to hate the others. Everyone's welcome in our yard except the really, really pointy prickly ones that I could step on.
Julie: 13:12
And also, I guess my driving concern right now is the rapidly changing climate. My motivating factor, if you had to limit it to one, is that I want plants out there who are capturing the carbon, sequestering the carbon, taking that CO2 out of the atmosphere that we're releasing into it when we burn fossil fuels. So if a plant is thriving and doing well and capturing carbon, I'm like, go team. Go, “team carbon capture”.
Dr. Biology: 13:40
All right. So green is good, all right. So, while we're talking about plants, you have another term, when I was reading the book, that I hadn't really come across before, and it's plant blindness. Can we talk a little bit about plant blindness?
Julie: 13:57
Yes, plant blindness. It was a term that was coined by some botanists who were concerned about the fact that to most people, plants are just sort of background material. They don't really notice them. If you showed them a picture of a beautiful forest and it had a little bird in it, they would say, oh, what a lovely bird. And they would say nothing about the plants. When we even talk about nature, mostly we're talking about plants, you know. Plants are the workhorses in an ecosystem and plants are so critical to our survival. I mean they give us the oxygen we breathe, the food we eat, the medicines, our housing, they function to help regulate the climate and they're so critical to our well-being. But courses in botany are declining in universities and grade schools. If I say the word wildlife to you, like what comes to your mind?
Dr. Biology: 14:47
Oh, you know pointed ears and whiskers and things like that even though wildlife includes plants and animals and fungi.
Julie: 14:55
Anything living that's not something that humans have planted or tended is wildlife, so that's sort of emblematic of plant blindness.
Dr. Biology: 15:02
I mean, we're animals.
Julie: 15:03
You know I love dogs. I'm a mammal. I love other mammals. It's rare to find biologists that really like to focus on the plants, so there's a group of people that are trying to counteract plant blindness and just bring plants to the attention of more people.
Dr. Biology: 15:17
I absolutely love this space with the dancing tree, but I did promise that we were going to do some more walking around here at four acres, yes, so what's the next stop?
Julie: 15:27
We have to visit the mesquite trees.
Dr. Biology: 15:30
Oh, the mesquite tree yes, all right.
Julie: 15:42
These are a species of mesquite called velvet mesquite. There are a lot of mesquites that are planted in the valley that came from South America, but these were the ones that you would have found along the Salt River hundreds of years ago. And actually when we moved in, most of the trees had died because the irrigation had been shut off on most of the citrus trees, but there were a few velvet mesquite who had survived. And so we have a mix of the original velvet mesquite and then ones that we brought in and now they're reproducing on their own. Right, mesquite trees have really deep roots.
Dr. Biology: 16:14
Yes, right those tap roots that go way, way down so that doesn't surprise me that they were the ones that were surviving and the fruit trees just weren't making it.
Julie: 16:23
Right, and mesquite are an amazingly flexible and adaptable tree with respect to their water. They do have very deep roots, but they also, if the water is primarily on the surface, they will grow roots just below the surface. These plants are making decisions about where to grow roots and they can hear the water. They actually have a two-step process by which they can detect water and hone in on it, and so they're proliferating around our irrigation water, growing very quickly. Mesquites have low branches- they are not tall like a big redwood tree or something. Their branches fall and sprawl across the ground, so they're as wide as they are tall, which makes it very easy to collect the pods.
Dr. Biology: 17:07
Right right.
Julie: 17:08
So, this tree right here, I call her Kui.
Dr. Biology: 17:09
Kui
Julie: 17:10
Yes, which I believe is an Indigenous name for mesquite. Here, have a seat. You can see I've cleared out a little area where we can sit under her canopy and have a conversation and climb into her if you want. If Dr Biology wants to go up the tree, he can.
Dr. Biology: 17:29
Yeah, okay, well, maybe later after the podcast.
Julie: 17:35
Notice all the pods on the ground. They're kind of beige, five or six inches long, and over the past few years I've been harvesting the pods, learning how to collect them and clean them and mill them and cook with the flour..
Dr. Biology: 17:52
Oh right, mesquite, flour. Yes, the Native Americans, it was really popular with them.
Julie: 17:57
You can buy a bag online for like $15 to $20 but I'm not in this to make money. I'm driven by the idea of sustainable agriculture. Because mesquites, their roots, partner with bacteria that fix nitrogen, so they're self-fertilizing. You don't have to buy bags of fertilizer and they live for hundreds of years and every year they produce this amazing crop of food, which has protein and complex sugars. It helps regulate diabetes and if you're gluten-free, like I am, it's an alternative to wheat flour, so I eat lots of pods.
Dr. Biology: 18:29
So how much flour have you gotten this year?
Julie: 18:30
So far we've milled 30 pounds, 30 pounds of flour, and it's delicious, and we could have gotten so much more. Each year we learn a little bit better how to harvest. When I was at Arizona State University, I taught ecology. I consider myself an ecologist, but here in our four acres, I am part of the ecosystem. I am eating the food, I am breathing the oxygen that the trees are producing, I am tending them. I'm in a mutualistic partnership with these creatures. I'm not just reading about something or writing about something. I am part of the ecosystem, right, and I can't tell you how lovely that feels, and I want others to experience that ‘wow’.
Dr. Biology: 19:12
So, the other thing I noticed is a lot of birds. I mean, we've been walking through here and there have been at least two or three species that I've picked up there. It's amazing what's going on.
Julie: 19:25
Yes, and Matt, my husband, is the birder of the two of us. He's amazing. We've been keeping a record of all the plants and birds and creatures we've seen on our property. I'm a list keeper. We're up to 159 species of birds that we've seen or heard on our property. Of course, most of those are not residents. Some are migratory, Some we ask, “What are you doing here?”
Yeah, what's the most unusual? Oh, well, gosh. One of them, they're both rare species. One's an endangered species. One is the yellow-billed cuckoo and during the summer monsoon this is the time you will see them. They have an amazing call, kind of like a drumming sound, and they've become very rare. Another one is the southwestern willow flycatcher.
Dr. Biology: 20:15
A little bird.
Julie: 20:16
Little tiny bird, I mean, just gray, you know it's like if you didn't really know what you were looking for, you wouldn't notice it. A lot of the birds I do not notice. Matt points them out to me, thankfully. But this little bird, as the name implies, catches, flies. They feed on insects, and this bird has lost its habitat because riparian forests and woodlands have been converted to agriculture or cities. The water's been diverted. It’s a migratory bird. It flies from Central America to North America and back, and during migration season I'm pretty sure that one stopped at our water drip.
Julie: 20:55
Matt was like, “Julie, you've got to come out on the porch.” This little bird was just darting from the mesquite trees catching insects and he says, “yeah, that's a southwestern willow flycatcher.” We were talking earlier about wildlife corridors and migration corridors, and so our property is functioning as a stepping stone for these avian migrants that need some place to stop and refuel and rest up before they move on to their breeding territory.
Dr. Biology: 21:19
Right, it's a long trip. It is a very long trip, right? Okay, so I hear a little bit of rumbling in the background, so I think maybe we should walk on just a bit more. So, what's the next stop?
Julie: 21:31
Oh, yes, it's a little bit of a walk to get there. We're reaching the western edge of the property where it's getting a little bit drier, but look up.
Dr. Biology: 21:43
And what do you see?
Julie: 21:45
Well, that's, it's a dead eucalyptus tree.
Dr. Biology: 21:49
Okay, very, very tall.
Julie: 21:51
We did not plant it. It was barely alive when we moved in, and it did die from lack of water. But in its death, this eucalypt tree is providing so much life for so many birds. I mean, there are cavity nesting birds that are in there. Hawks like Harris hawk and red-tailed hawks use it as a perching site to visualize their next meal. And it's one that we had a little bit of a conflict with the city over. I mean, having dead trees in your property is not something that they want.
Julie: 22:22
We had to have a bit of a conversation about why that tree should remain standing. This tree is a community landmark. Community is important- knowing your neighbors and having some sense of place and space. Neighbors would walk by and they would tell us stories about oh, that's the tree where the hawks have their nest. It was sort of an anchor for the neighborhood and I think that made a difference.
Dr. Biology: 22:48
Made a difference. Okay, you know you talk about different kinds of birds. I have to say that I have seen some photos from Matt of some owls. Oh, the owls and the baby owls, yes, yes, owlets, is that right?
Julie: 23:06
Owlets, yes, yes, there were four owlets this year. Yeah, let's go into the broadleaf forest, duck your head there- some of the mesquite branches are kind of low. So a little background. These are three Fremont cottonwood trees that actually came from an experiment that one of my graduate students was working on, and at the end of the experiment it's like well, what do we do with the survivors? We're not going to throw them in the trash. So, they came to live at our house and now they're huge trees. Fremont cottonwood are trees that historically grew along the Salt River, they are an iconic riparian tree, and now they are home to these family of owls and many other birds as well, and this is one of the coolest parts of the yard.
Dr. Biology: 23:56
Cool as in temperature?
Julie: 23:59
Cool as in wow, this is great. No, cool as in temperature. It's hard to ignore the heat, it's just a pressing concern and I've come out here with students with my infrared temperature sensor and it will be 20 to 25 degrees cooler under this broadly forest canopy than out in the open, and that's significant when it's, you know, 110 or something outside, or 120.
Julie: 24:24
It gets us into this energy use versus water use tradeoff. Some people have said to me Julie, when you were at ASU you lectured about water and water conservation and now aren't you just wasting water? Well, it might look that way, but we're not wasting water. Yes, it's water that was diverted from the Salt River, but it's going to very good use. I mean not just the bird habitat and the food, but the evapotranspirational cooling and the trees are capturing carbon. There is a tremendous amount of ecosystem services that these forests are providing.
Julie: 25:00
One of the reasons I wrote the book is to talk about these multifunctional spaces. In the city we're so, as a society, compartmentalized, like what we do and also the way we use land. Oh, this land will be used to grow corn, this land will be used to golf, yeah, golf, and then we'll have our little tiny strip of riparian habitat along the River. I like this idea of multifunctional spaces where in one space you can have agriculture, recreation, ecotherapy, climate capture, all in one space, and if many people are tending it and taking care of it, you feel a part of everything. You're not so compartmentalized and separate.
Julie: 25:40
Getting back to this idea of feeling like you're part of an ecosystem and understanding that we need to take better care of our ecosystems.
Dr. Biology: 25:47
Right, that’s actually one of the things we've talked about on shows before. Do community gardens do that as well?
Julie: 25:55
Yes, and with, you know, 8 billion of us humans on the planet we co-opt so many of the planetary resources. Over half of the water in the streams is used for human use. There's just not much left over in terms of water or space for wild creatures, so there's a big role to play for urban gardeners, urban ecologists, urban dwellers, to share some of these resources with our non-human neighbors and coexist. Urban dwellers need to share some of these resources with our non-human neighbors and coexist.
Dr. Biology: 26:26
So, the storm actually is coming this way, for us. We love rain. Those people out there that don't like rain, you know you can come to Arizona because you won't get a lot of it, but soon you will become a rain lover, because it's something that we don't get a lot of and we love these summer storms.
Julie: 26:45
Oh yeah, summer storms, this is lovely. Yeah, let's walk over here to the chinaberry tree, which is right by the corrugated roof on what we call the pavilion. It's the storage area next to the chinaberry tree.
Dr. Biology: 27:05
Well, it's a good thing we got over here, because there is some rain here, so let's talk about this. You said chinaberry tree.
Julie: 27:13
Chinaberry tree. Yeah, this was one of the few trees that had survived when we moved in and, as you can see here, this is a big irrigation structure and it's an old system. It's leaky, so even if we weren't irrigating at that time the neighbors were, so there was a little bit of water that leaked and kept this chinaberry tree growing. It was one of those trees that was planted decades ago. It's in the mahogany family. It has incredibly hard wood, beautiful wood, fairly drought tolerant, but also has these big, broad leaves, so it's a very good urban tree to provide shade and cooling but also withstand periodic droughts. It's one of those trees that are clonal, meaning she sends off new shoots. Trees have modular growth, so she sends off those shoots of herself.
Dr. Biology: 27:59
So, she pops up 20 or 30 feet away.
Julie: 28:01
Yeah, yeah. So that's not a seedling, that's just another piece of herself that she produced. This tree is fascinating… we heard the cardinal and we do have this nesting pair of cardinals, which are just lovely. But in the chinaberry actually, what we see every year are robins, American robins.
Dr. Biology: 28:17
I've never seen a robin here.
Julie: 28:18
I know, and I came from Wisconsin and you sort of take robins for granted, so it was just so exciting. And they were feeding on the chinaberries. There are some berries that humans can't necessarily eat but birds can, and this is one of them. We did have one experience when one of our dogs decided to munch on the chinaberries and got a little bit drunk. We took him to the vet and he said, yeah, just let him sleep it off and he'll be fine. And he was.
Dr. Biology:
Did he learn?
Julie:
He did learn.
Dr. Biology: 28:46
Yeah, okay, all right. Well, that's good. Yeah, one thing about these storms is they're fun to have, but they don't last all that long sometimes. This one seems to be waning. You said that this was an orchard before.
Julie: 29:01
Yes, this was a citrus orchard, and we do have our own little traditional fruit orchard.
Dr. Biology: 29:09
Right, and so I was hoping we'd go.
Julie: 29:10
Yeah, definitely have to go over there. That's a bit of a walk.
Dr. Biology: 29:12
Okay, all right, so we'll start out. You guys get to teleport, we'll do the walking.
Julie: 29:19
Okay, so here's the orchard.
Dr. Biology: It doesn't look like an orchard to me, to be fair. It looks more like a meadow.
Julie: 29:27
Well, when we first moved in I was still using the lawnmower, but then over the years I just stopped mowing less and less. And I remember one time I was out mowing a strip in the orchard so the water could flow better, and I saw this butterfly. And it turned out to be a buckeye butterfly. Just gorgeous. And I thought. what am I doing? Why am I using this machine to just create havoc? So now the orchard has morphed into a meadow. We have some fruit trees- there's a few citrus trees, and then pomegranates, which are just delicious, and then the peach trees which are one of my favorites.
I should try a peach you should definitely try a peach. I hope you're not wearing a shirt you care a lot about, because it's going to drip some juice on you.
Dr. Biology: 30:13
Okay, well, I'll try one. [slurping sound] Very sweet.
Julie: 30:24
And then take a look just to the left of the peach tree. We had an almond tree here. We were trying to grow almonds and the tree just did not fare well, so we left the dead tree there and vines scrambled up and over it and now we have passion vines, clematis vine, we have snail vine that we actually eat the flowers of, and it's just a great substrate for plants, for butterflies and also food for us.
Dr. Biology: 30:52
Right, those passion vines have those beautiful flowers.
Julie: 30:56
Oh, they're amazing.
Dr. Biology: 30:57
And what is it? The fritillary butterfly.
Dr. Biology: 31:01
Yes, the fritillary, absolutely love those, and we have one in our backyard, oh nice. So, Julie, before I forget because I know we could spend all morning, if not longer, on this I always ask three questions of my scientists. Okay, so while we're in the orchard, while it's a little bit calm, let's go ahead and start with the questions. Okay, you ready, all right. So, the first question is when did you first know you wanted to be a scientist? Was there ever an aha moment, or did it just sneak up on you?
Julie: 31:38
Oh, I knew pretty early on when I was a little girl. I would collect data on anything, ridiculous things. Like if I was eating a bag of M&Ms I'd keep track of how many red M&Ms and how many other different colored M&Ms there were. There weren't any questions behind it, but I was collecting data. My father was a history professor at the university and my mother loved plants and I had this sort of data-driven, analytical, questioning mind and so I kind of fused my parents- my father had his intellectual academic path and my mother was a gardener who loved plants and all things wild- and I sort of fused that into becoming an academic plant ecologist.
Dr. Biology: 32:24
Well, the next thing I'm going to do is I'm going to be a little bit mean, okay, and this is just a thought question. I’m going to take it all away- you can't be a scientist. Ooh, in this case if you weren't a scientist, I know you'd be easily shifting to gardening and farming, so I'm going to take that.
Julie: 32:45
Okay, you take that way too. That was my next…
Dr. Biology: 32:46
And you've written a book, so I'm going to take some of the writing and I know you love teaching, because most of us that do that teaching and what I'm trying to do is what if I took a lot of these things away, if basically your career, your life, if you had gone another direction? What would you be? What would you do?
Julie: 33:02
I would be a, not a trainer of dogs, a trainer of people that have dogs.
Dr. Biology: 32:03
Really.
Julie: 33:05
Yes, because I remember this big decision back in undergraduate like oh, should I be, a veterinarian, or should I be a botanist?
Julie: 33:25
I like to say that the plants ultimately pulled harder than the dogs. I do spend a lot of time volunteering with dogs at the animal shelter and it's just that the human-dog bond needs attention. People need to be trained and they need to learn dog language and body language and how to communicate. So that's a passion of mine too.
Dr. Biology: 33:44
Oh, I like that. You know, we always talk about training the dog, but we don't really talk about training the dog owner. Yes, oh yeah.
Julie: 33:52
The dog usually wants to please, but you have to be able to listen and understand what they're about.
Dr. Biology: 33:58
Yeah, I like it. I like it. All right. And the last question with your years of experience, you probably have answered this before. What advice would you have for a young scientist, or perhaps someone who is doing something else? They're in a different career. Maybe they were the dog trainer that decides they want to become the scientist. What advice would you have for them?
Julie: 34:28
I would say get outdoors, get off your computer screen, get out of your book, meet people, practice, try things. Internships, volunteer experiences. When I was young, I volunteered at a Schlitz Audubon Center in Wisconsin and it's a supplement to what you learn in lectures and books. So yeah, just get out there and try new things in the real world.
Dr. Biology: 34:59
You know the other thing, Julie. Before I go I usually say my guests go, but in this case I'm going to have to leave this wonderful wild backyard. Would you do me a favor? Could you read a little piece from your book? We've been carrying it around here. It's not a huge book, so if anybody wants to tackle it. It's not going to take them along, it's got pictures too.
Julie: 35:22
Yes, pictures, Photographs. It's not going to take them along. Yes, pictures and photographs.
Dr. Biology: 35:24
It's definitely worth checking out. So, the rain has stopped enough so that I think you can do it without getting wet, and I'll let you take it from here.
Julie: 35:34
Okay, this is the start of chapter five, which I call The Consumers, and it's Eating Local: Snatching the Bagel. Score! I snatched a whole bagel from the trash can. I can't stand it when people waste food. I hope no one was watching. I was attending an event at an animal shelter near our house while also looking out for my own pack. We have only four dogs, but that is many mouths to feed, explaining why I get excited when I find free food. As I was driving home from the bagel snatching event, I saw a skinny Rottweiler at an overturned garbage can. She was scarfing down scraps. As I got out of the car to help to help rescue, not to help scarf. I'm not that feral.
Julie: 36:14
Yet I pondered the bond between our two species. Food was at the root of our relationship with dogs and remains so today. Wolves hunted with our ancestors, warned them of danger and scavenged in their waste piles. Our ancestors, in turn played with their puppies and ate them during times of scarcity. Ew! One does what one needs to survive, I suppose A strong and enduring partnership ensued.
Waste makes me fret, as does thinking about the systemic changes our society needs to make soon if we are to feed the eight billion of us and our companion animals without irreparably damaging our soil and our above-ground ecosystems too. Not wasting food is one place to start. Going. Very local is good too. We in our own four-acre patch of green increasingly nibble off the land, feasting from the productivity of our deep, rich, alluvial loam prime farmland soil. I don't know if you've tried to feed yourself from your own garden. If you have, you know how much effort goes into producing even a single grain of an edible grass. If you were an urban farmer, I'm guessing it wasn't you who tossed the bagel.
Dr. Biology: 37:14
Right? Wow, I agree.
As much as I would love to stay around, I am going to have to head on home, and it is getting a little bit warmer here. So, Julie, thank you so much for letting me come out and experience this portal into another world.
Julie: 37:32
Oh, you're very welcome. It's so wonderful to have people come over and to be able to share our space and our vision with them.
Dr. Biology: 37:40
You have been listening to Ask A Biologist, and my guest has been Julie Stromberg, a professor emeritus at Arizona State University. She's a plant ecologist who specializes in wetland and riparian ecosystems. She's also the author of the book called Bringing Home the Wild- a Riparian Garden in a Southwest City. We'll be sure to put the link in the show notes so you can find it if you are interested. I think it's a fun read and a quick read, so it's definitely worth picking up.
Dr. Biology: 38:18
The Ask A Biologist podcast is usually produced on the campus of Arizona State University and recorded in the Grassroots Studio housed in the School of Life Sciences, which is an academic unit of The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. But today, well, you can tell we've been out in the wild, but we didn't have to go very far. Maybe we'll get more of these spaces. Think about making your own. It doesn't have to be four acres; it can be small.
Also, a quick reminder if you haven't subscribed to this podcast, please take a moment to do so. So, you don't miss out on any future episodes. And remember, even though our program is not broadcast live. You can still send us your questions about biology using our companion website. The address is askbiologist.asu.edu or you can just use your favorite search tool and enter the words ask a biologist. As always, I'm Dr Biology and I hope you're staying safe and healthy.
