Trees

The UNC Charlotte Urban Institute is cosponsoring the fifth annual Urban Forestry Summit by the nonprofit group TreesCharlotte on Sept. 20 at UNC Charlotte Center City. The aim of the event is to share information and discussion about topics relevant to Charlotte’s urban forest. The event is free and open to the public but registration […]

Lurking silently beneath the beauty of Charlotte’s tree canopy is a persistent problem with ailing trees. The issue significantly affects the city’s efforts to preserve and replenish its most treasured amenity. Major challenges include: Tree diseases The stresses of an urban, high-rise environment on uptown street trees The age of the tree canopy, particularly in […]

The trout lilies and trilliums are in full bloom, the turkeys are strutting, the smallmouth are biting, and the butterflies are flitting about in our fields and woodlands. One of the most common butterflies seen in our area is the Eastern tiger swallowtail (Papilio glaucus). Male Eastern tiger swallowtails are yellow with four black tiger […]

[highlightrule]Trees reduce air pollution, improve water quality, save energy costs, reduce storm water runoff and enhance property values. And some would say Charlotte’s tree canopy also shapes the soul of the city.[/highlightrule] In Charlotte, a widespread passion about trees inspires a special sort of community activism, marked by a keen admiration of the beauty of […]

[highlightrule]A little-known registry of Champion Trees includes 15 of Charlotte’s most magnificent trees, bringing more than a title to the Queen City’s crown.[/highlightrule] While civic pride reached heightened levels in Charlotte when the Carolina Panthers made it to Super Bowl 50 as NFC champions, it turns out there is another group of extra large, equally […]

[highlightrule] One map shows that almost every unprotected woodlot in the N.C. Piedmont is at risk of being lost to development.[/highlightrule] There’s a difference between spending time in the woods and understanding the complex dynamics of a forest. For far too many people, even outdoor enthusiasts, nuances such as species diversity and forest succession are […]

During one of my college English classes, the professor told us Southern literature is distinguished by a heightened sense of family, history and place. (In a cheeky paper published years later, another UNC professor offered evidence to suggest the signifier can actually be reduced to a single entity: the presence of a dead mule.) Recently, […]

The following is excerpted, with permission, from Margins of a Greater Wildness: Nature Essays on Stanley Creek and Beyond, a collection of essays by Richard Rankin on local topics from the Stanley Creek community in eastern Gaston County, where the Rankin family has lived for many generations. One person is primarily responsible for the rediscovery […]

Tuesday was an almost perfect spring morning: cool, sun coming up and spring flowers ablaze. As I relished a morning walk about 4 miles south of uptown, I also relished something perhaps more gruesome. I gleefully squished dozens of green cankerworms that had fallen onto the street during Monday’s rain. April in Charlotte is a […]

Growing up, we had a lot of wild foods – things like persimmon pudding and blackberry pie – which I never realized might be considered wild foods. For the past few years I have been an avid hunter of deer, doves, squirrel and turkey, but this year I’ve expanded my interests into hunting rabbit, grouse […]