A brief history of where Joey is in this video. Floyd Bennett Field was originally an island called Barren island and was mostly used to process the horses and other waste from New York City. They filled it in to connect to the mainland and built an airport in 1932. That airport didn’t pan out and the US Naval Air Service used it until the 50s and then it was dormant and became part of Gateway National Recreation Area managed by the National Park Service in 1971. Gateway NRA includes some Rockaway beaches, the entire Jamaica Bay, parts of Stinkin Island NY and Sandy Hook NJ.
I couldn't help myself, when I gave an adult education class recently, I imformed the gardening folks that Hosta was related to Plantain but less beneficial to wildlife. The mid-life & older gardeners are who I'm trying to reach. The hard core lawn lovers committing ecological genocide & they've never even thought about why they're so attached to them. The programming has been so intense, they act like you're trying to take their first born if I suggest lawns aren't a good thing. Defining yourself by the condition of a monoculture, sad. Keep spreading seeds & information!!! informed* obviously 😉
Farming used to be mixed rows or alternating rows. I got a book from my dad like 20 years ago that I believe was from the 70's or earlier " Carrots Love Tomatoes" something like that. It was a book on what to grow together and what to separate. A native yard is easier to maintain and better for the environment. No need to keep up with the Jones. People care too much about what other people think. Here in NY some people have started going natural but have had to put up signs to prevent people who want to "help" by cutting their yard for them. I'm sure they mean well but just don't understand. Keep fighting the good fight.
Good for you! I'm in constant disagreement with neighbors. I've had one (relatively NICE) old neighbor tell me 1) I'm being unfair to everyone else, because they have to LOOK AT my lawn (my BACK LAWN even) and 2) I don't belong in that neighborhood. City's are EXACTLY where we need some new thoughts! So very frustrating. Thank you again
Hosta is genetically related to daylilues and is a monocot. Plantago is is a dicot related to foxglove (and much more distantly, to Catalpa or mint). What do you mean by "related?", and are the old folks really so illiterate that they wouldn't just assume you are an idiot not worth listening to? I too am against monoculture lawns (weedy meadows have a place), but fighting idiot fashion with falsehood doesn't seem like a solution. How about, "Do y'all like butterflies? Then let plantains (Plantago, not the starch banana) proliferate in your lawns. Buckeye larvae eat them (so do most woolly bears, which are good food for songbirds, even if you dislike butterflies)." Got the ecological point accross without either lying or creating the false expectation that plantains will have pretty flowers like Hosta (milkweeds and Symphyotrichum asters, a few of which tolerate light shade, may be better alternatives on that front).
Thorstein Veblen did a classic take-down of lawns in Theory of the Leisure Class. His take was that they were about rich people proving they had land to waste. Lawns look like a close-cropped cow pasture, but they're just different enough to remind the observer that the owner is so rich that they don't have to do something so vulgar as make money with their land by raising cows.
@KOKO-uu7yd Since you, too, are conditioned by capitalism to understand what exactly she was saying: you are not in her class. Therefore, peasant, you must go. That missed you by a mile, huh
The casual and yet geeked out info-packed way you share the details of this field trip made me care more about botany than I was prepared for. Someone with this much love for their native environment while still appreciating the power of those invasives should absolutely get a paycheck for the education they share. Thanks, man.
Your videos bring me immense joy and have become a favourite part of my day. It’s easy to be cynical due to the state of our planet. You have a refreshing mix of optimism and what I can only describe as “realistic cynicism.” You find the beauty when it’s there, but aren’t afraid to point bullshit out where you see it.
This process of asphalt reclamation is almost complete in the former Army compound at Sampson State Park on the shores of Seneca Lake New York. many of the old avenues that crisscrossed the base are now homes to trees, bushes and wildflowers. The remnants of the base's home gardens such as lilacs are interspersed with natives and invasive.. Many of the former roads are now just big enough to walk through after closure in 1956.
Reminds me of the old Bethlehem Steel slag dump sites in Hellertown pa. Lots of heaped slag, basically a small arid landscape, small pines and stuff. Really cool. Called the Thomas Iron site.
I'll tell you a Louie story. When Joey was at Cornell Sept. 18 to give a lecture, at the end we were told a class needed the hall so we were filing out. It became a log jam and I was right behind Joey and Louie was in front of me. We stopped and Louie turned and gave me the side eye stopping me DEAD IN MY TRACKS. Best bodyguard a man could ever have. I now know how all those sheep feel when being herded, yikes. If you're EVER lucky enough to have the chance to see Joey in person, do NOT pass it up. Absolutely gorgeous human irl.
He does have an undeniably hot working class Ital face. Minus all the excess ink I would def hit it hard. 👌🏻 And what is he like 5 foot 4 or some shit? Yeah that shit would hot as hell.
My daughter petted the pup when he visited the herbarium at U Texas Austin. By the way, they have a Darwin-collected specimen and they are housed in the Texas Tower
It's nice to see urban areas getting some nature love, especially the planting native seeds part. May it be inspirational to city dwellers out there. Instead of doom scrolling - plant some seeds in cement cracks and dirt patches! 💯🌱
Have you ever looked at the native Opuntias near Sequim Washington, Whidbey Island, and at least one of the San Juan Islands? Sequim gets like 14 inches of rain annually, and 30 miles west gets about 200 inches! Some intersting stuff for a guy like yourself!
Damn, I knew cacti were native to the US, but I didn't know any were native to NY. I looked some stuff up after this video and sure enough, prickly pears are native all up the coast. Very cool!
It's surpising how cold hardy and moisture tolerant some cacti are... the Des Moines botanic garden has an unprotected outdoor collection of opuntia humifusa, o. polyacantha, o. basiliaris, and echinocereus reichenbachii... all of which deal with our zone 5 temperatures and snowy winters... all planted in 2015... they even planted some hesperaloe parviflora this past spring to test out
Hello Grant. I don't know. I saw it growing in a garden some time ago. The guy did have some good advice - he said if the plant's survival was doubtful, he put it on the sheltered north side of his garden; according to him, it's not the absolute temperature that kills plants, it's freeze-thaw cycles. @@grantpeters7958
I've grown these opuntia from seed from my neighbor's yard here in east Tennessee. The seeds sprout periodically over several years. Also I've observed eastern box turtle eating the fruit.
I feed those opunta pads to my Leopard and Marginated tortoises, they love it! I’ve also seen Eastern box turtles eating them out on Long Island years ago, especially the “cactus pears.”
I can't say I've got a lot of love for the prickly pear, growing up before they got the cactoblastis here in Australia- they were absolute terrors. Walking through the bush or riding your motobike and getting a shin-full of aurantiaca was extremely painful and traumatic! Really sharp, barbed thorns that would go in deep and so hard to pull out you basically needed a pair of pliers. In my area back then there was also the stricta which was slightly less brutal but they had small, fuzzy spines which could be extremely irritating, too small to pull out with tweezers so you had to get some packing or gaff tape over the skin to rip them out like 'waxing' hairs. (Which would probably work too) Apart from being a wild, invasive pain in the arse, the stricta was pretty tasty fruit if you got them at the right time of the year to make a jam out of or eat off the plant. Same with the pads which are somewhere between cucumber and a choko, so not great, not terrible but pretty good if you're camping and needed some kind of fibre and water. Just burn the spines off in the fire was the easiest way of getting rid of them. Haven't seen either in years so the moths did their job
Great episode! I'm going to link to it in my permaculture course. I used to make signs that said "This is Nature"and put them in weedy naturalizing areas in Brooklyn when I lived there. Mugwort is used as moxa in acupuncture and Korean's use it in their baths so prob not gonna give you a headache. It was one of the first herbs used to bitter beer until those absinthy effects made the church tell brewers that they could only use hops. Love your show. Go to the Greenbelt Native Plant Center and come up to the Hudson Valley to the Shawangunk Mountains - Sam's Point.
despite how much I like beautiful landscapes and healthy ecosystems your videos on the ecology of abandoned urban areas are by far my favorite! super interesting stuff
You're in NYC!! Fantastic!! Yeah, Floyd Bennet Field is interesting. You wandering around any community gardens, too? (Cause then I might get to run into you and tell ya how much I love these videos)
Ugh, I kind of love the invasive sedum. But the native sedum of the NE is so gorgeous too! As much as mugwort upsets me, it's kind of a cool plant... Cool & scary
If you continue on the bus you’ll pass Floyd Bennett, go over a bridge and be at the extremely glamorous “Riis (pronounced “Reese”) Park. The beach there is known as the “Brooklyn Riviera.”
Well done! Thank you! What an exciting documentary of plants observed seizing what humans have conspicuously abandoned so new plants can take over! New mats of green stock growing to make new homes to bring in even newer troops to take back their land and break down the human laid asphalt to hold the plants and capture the soil. And the excitement of this visitor is enjoyable to share because he knows what he is talking about and enjoys what he is doing as he names the inhabitants that have flown in or been carried in, to take back this land that is the source of all life. With the excitement of the host, comes the flowering of so many names mixed together beyond my ability to pluck out the profanity from the latin or the genius of the host as he smashes it all together to fill the disintegrating asphalt. These lanscaped "weeds", no one could have planted better if they tried, and the host tries to mix it up with just a bit of philosophy, teaching better to come here than to stare at some phone, than go f#$$ you##$$$, and better yet, to learn the proper names of these living and beautiful, growing plants where they should not be, but certainly are stocking up here, with such as lichens and bacteria and fu's planted by man or nature, but with abandon. My, let's do that again! 😅
Turned your nose up at the purslane saying you wouldn't eat anything growing there, but you still ate the cactus fruit huh? 🤣 Thanks for making this video. I grew up on Long Island and this is a prime example of this classic LI parking lot ecosystem. Honestly one of my favorite ecosystems there is, severely underrated. Everyone loves the rare coastal plains and such out there and for good reason, but not as many people notice that a lot of the same plants that grow near the beaches are growing in the parking lots too 😂
Well, the cactus fruit was enclosed so somewhat protected from air pollution ( but not soil pollution), while the Purslane gets a double whammy of possible/probable pollution…Joey’s probably built up immunity to all kinds of 🤬over his years in the field trying botanical stuff all over the world , plus working on those immaculately clean freight trains… 🌱 🤣
He didn't eat it, he tasted it. The main contaminant risk in a location like this is going to be PCBs in the concrete joint sealants. It was a small amount and as long as he didn't swallow it's fine.
@@placidpond it really is fun walking around out of the way places to see what’s growing, I also have an irresistible urge to pick up interesting rocks since I was a kid. Botany and geology, great together, why I love when Joey includes the geology of a site, I’ve become so interested in convergent evolution since watching his videos, I never really thought about it. I chuckled when he mentioned the airfield pavement will eventually crumble and turn to just rocks ( with the help of plants and eventually trees if it is not developed) 🌿🗿
Thank you 🙏 so much for all the videos you make. I really love 💕 them and I learn so much watching them. It’s also really enjoyable seeing the habitats you visit. I wish you a wonderful day and look 👀 forward to your next adventure 🌴🌵🌲🍁
I live around this area and bike there all the time! Biking along that part of Brooklyn I’ve taken note of other non-native plants that are established in the area, such as Melilotus albus, Cirsium vulgare, and Lythrum salicaria, as well as the ones mentioned in the video such as the Elaeagnus umbellata which all seem to be dominating the nearby surrounding marsh areas along the bay. I’ve also noticed millions of Lanternfly nymphs emerging from those marshy areas along the water in the late summer months, but not as much last summer as the previous ones (which when they start to fly and swarm they take over the area). This is such an awesome video and thank you for taking the time to explain this area! Super informative and helpful in learning about the stuff that grows near me. Thank you for the knowledge!
I fuckin love your video! Thanks for keeping it real! 💯 Here in California, nobody talks like that, to hear someone speak with zero fucks makes me happy😁
I don't encourage spreading autumn olive (eleagnus umbellata, but they are a superfood, nitrogen fixer. It's established in my area, so I harvest the berries, and chip it up for mulch.
In Ottawa Canada I've seen a garden of opuntias. Never very tall, but they still bloom and appear to winter as they're in the same spot every year. Shocked me to no end.
Dude, I am in freakin love with you. This was the best most real video in my opinion to date. Your tone and direct calling it what it is is so freakin appreciated. I hope there are some remaining eco systems around in 100 years too. Dude, you done did it with the word " glocket" what the heck is a glocket. I love you please come t o Atlanta.
Glochids are what he's talking about. They're the little hairs that get under your skin and irritate. If you're in Atlanta you should go out to Arabia Mountain in south Dekslb County. There's a couple of species of Opuntia that grow out there on the granite exposures. A bunch of other cool and unusual plants too. Right now the "Stone Mountain Daisies"(actually a sunflower) are going off like mad. 👍
Hey, thanks I really appreciate your very detailed explanation. Glochids, I now know what they are and how to spell. As for ANY type of rock exposures and vegetation--I am about. Will check out the Arabia. Let us not forget they literally BLEW UP AND TOOK DOWN the Georgia Guidestones and covered it all up. Take care!@@lairdhaynes1986
I love seeing plants colonizing disturbed/human made environments, and thinking about why invasive have such an advantage over everything else in doing it.
my friends and i run illegal bike races in the woods near floyd bennett field, and camp there in the summer. i will definitely go by soon and try to propagate some cactus, any tips or guides for helping them root and grow successfully ?
I remember when I was a sprog, one of my cousins telling me how tasty prickly pear was. And I spent probably half an hour, gingerly picking one, and crying because it hurt. Then my Grandpa came up, and he just grabbed that thing and rubbed it between his hands until all the prickles were gone. I ate it, even though it didn't taste very nice. I'll never forget that. 😅
Love to see you reporting live on the scene from the 5 boroughs, amazing to see how the plant kingdom is gradually reclaiming the places we abandon it bodes well for the future when a lot of this city is underwater and the survivors have to restore whats left of the land here
I have some boerhavia erecta (caryophylalles) in my backyard. When I first moved in everything was in drought condition, the leaves were purple which I know assume to be betalain pigments protecting from the dry, sunny heat. It’s now fully green Botany so cool
Thanks, Joey! I like these videos of urban ecology. I like exploring such places myself too and frequenting them over the years and seeing what type of succession is taking place and what is happening. They are also great places to relax as most people tend to stay away from them.
I live in Oregon (the Willamette Valley). There's a neighbor in my town that has a prickly pear growing in their front yard, and we have a wildlife safari park a bit south of the valley that has one as well. I've recently been wondering how these plants survive in this cold (for cacti) and wet climate. NY is way colder and only slightly less wet. Perfect timing lol.
You were so close to the Asclepius tuberosa! It probably wasn’t much to see at this time and I’m pretty sure it escaped from some garden in those community gardens at Floyd Bennett Field.
Fun to see you out in my neck of the woods. You haven't really lived until you've accidentally crawled into a patch of those cactus in winter when they're laying flat on the ground. Sandy Hook right across the bay is covered with them.
I'm so happy you are in my neck of the woods. Hopefully you head east on Long Island where I live, or northeast of L.I. where I grew up. Im afraid it's too boring, ie, pine barrens.
Pine Barrens are fantastic places to explore, check out the Pine Barrens in southern NJ….Some plants grow there that are not found anywhere else in the world 🌱
Don't be down on the LI pine barrens, it's actually a super rare and fascinating ecosystem. The red pines are a beautiful plant, as are the little scrub oaks and the grasses and everything else. A lot of plants that grow there are super rare too. And you get those clear fresh ponds you with water so clean you can drink it, surrounded by cranberries and wintergreen 😊. Acidic sandy soils are the best. What a great ecosystem.
@@latifoljic I remember there was a huge fire there in the early 90s. Within a couple years all the scrub pine and shrub oak were almost fully grown back. Certain pine cones require fire to open so they can spread their seeds. The Pine Barrens in Jersey are tremendous, almost 1/3 of the state. Beautiful place but eerie how they’re always so silent.
Purslane is actually not only edible but tasty, surprisingly nutritous, cultivated and partially domesticated in many areas, and is a prime candidate for being more widely used to combat undernutrition in key areas where it is invasive and not understood as a possible resource by people who need nutritional supplementation of existing hogh calorie foodstuffs in order to improve long term health. Basically it's not good for the environment that it's there but with a little education it could be incorporated into local cuisines and possibly save lives by increasing overall vitality and therefore raising survival rates of diseases. Also autumn olive fruits are edible and sometimes sweet depending on the individual plant, but admittedly they're small and mildly astringent and Elaeagnus has a worse impact than purslane.
My dude, your videos are the greatest! But you're putting them out so fast, I'm having trouble keeping up! A release schedule would make both the algorithm and your adoring fans tumesce. I get that a backlog can lead to ecchymosis in a sensitive area, but consider the option!
If you ever have cause to be down here, id love to see a video on the ecology along the less preened parts of the schuylkill river trail area or fairmont park in philly
Was already surprised they grow in Crooklyn but all the way in the UK 🇬🇧 wouldn't have guessed finding prickly-pear type there across the pond for some reason.
@@xXScissorHandsXx yeah they're by no means commonplace (people here still love their traditional English garden) but there's a small and growing band of people pushing our climate to grow desert plants. I grow a variety of opuntia, yucca, agave etc. outdoors. Here's a video of mine creating the bed: th-cam.com/video/Mb8dmYjK808/w-d-xo.htmlsi=2r9nJK3qGPBILzEg
@@quercus_opuntia Maihuenia as well, actually better suited to cold + wet as supposedly O. humifusa can actually have issues with rot with too much wet in the winters.
It's not just you... Id like to go out more, but the presence of actual human feces at all my favorite hikes /camping/fishing spots really gets me down. Toilet paper across the forest floor like a ticker tape parade went by.
Geez it grows in a side road garden near my cousins house in eastern Woodbridge Township, NJ. Nothing fazes it and the yellow flowers are very beautiful🌵 I personally will not have any Opuntia inside or outside, their 🤬 glochids are something else…👺
Hey Tony. There is a desert in Norther Maine. Never been there. It might be a fun ride. I noticed that you are wearing reflective clothing. That tells me you are riding a two-wheeler. or avoiding two wheelers. either way stay sharp on the road brother. Also, coneflowers, and milkweed. nuff, said.
A brief history of where Joey is in this video. Floyd Bennett Field was originally an island called Barren island and was mostly used to process the horses and other waste from New York City. They filled it in to connect to the mainland and built an airport in 1932. That airport didn’t pan out and the US Naval Air Service used it until the 50s and then it was dormant and became part of Gateway National Recreation Area managed by the National Park Service in 1971. Gateway NRA includes some Rockaway beaches, the entire Jamaica Bay, parts of Stinkin Island NY and Sandy Hook NJ.
Thanks for that. I couldn't find stinkin island ny
Is anyone allowed to go there or it's restricted? Can you get arrested?
@@coreturkoane5570
www.nps.gov/gate/index.htm
No no, the entire island is Stinkin'
Thank you!
I hope you gave that Spotted Lantern Fly a tiny silent apology and a quick stomp to 'da head
I couldn't help myself, when I gave an adult education class recently, I imformed the gardening folks that Hosta was related to Plantain but less beneficial to wildlife. The mid-life & older gardeners are who I'm trying to reach. The hard core lawn lovers committing ecological genocide & they've never even thought about why they're so attached to them. The programming has been so intense, they act like you're trying to take their first born if I suggest lawns aren't a good thing. Defining yourself by the condition of a monoculture, sad.
Keep spreading seeds & information!!!
informed* obviously 😉
Farming used to be mixed rows or alternating rows. I got a book from my dad like 20 years ago that I believe was from the 70's or earlier " Carrots Love Tomatoes" something like that. It was a book on what to grow together and what to separate. A native yard is easier to maintain and better for the environment. No need to keep up with the Jones. People care too much about what other people think. Here in NY some people have started going natural but have had to put up signs to prevent people who want to "help" by cutting their yard for them. I'm sure they mean well but just don't understand. Keep fighting the good fight.
Good for you!
I'm in constant disagreement with neighbors. I've had one (relatively NICE) old neighbor tell me 1) I'm being unfair to everyone else, because they have to LOOK AT my lawn (my BACK LAWN even) and 2) I don't belong in that neighborhood.
City's are EXACTLY where we need some new thoughts!
So very frustrating.
Thank you again
Hosta is genetically related to daylilues and is a monocot. Plantago is is a dicot related to foxglove (and much more distantly, to Catalpa or mint). What do you mean by "related?", and are the old folks really so illiterate that they wouldn't just assume you are an idiot not worth listening to? I too am against monoculture lawns (weedy meadows have a place), but fighting idiot fashion with falsehood doesn't seem like a solution. How about, "Do y'all like butterflies? Then let plantains (Plantago, not the starch banana) proliferate in your lawns. Buckeye larvae eat them (so do most woolly bears, which are good food for songbirds, even if you dislike butterflies)." Got the ecological point accross without either lying or creating the false expectation that plantains will have pretty flowers like Hosta (milkweeds and Symphyotrichum asters, a few of which tolerate light shade, may be better alternatives on that front).
Thorstein Veblen did a classic take-down of lawns in Theory of the Leisure Class. His take was that they were about rich people proving they had land to waste. Lawns look like a close-cropped cow pasture, but they're just different enough to remind the observer that the owner is so rich that they don't have to do something so vulgar as make money with their land by raising cows.
@KOKO-uu7yd Since you, too, are conditioned by capitalism to understand what exactly she was saying: you are not in her class. Therefore, peasant, you must go. That missed you by a mile, huh
The casual and yet geeked out info-packed way you share the details of this field trip made me care more about botany than I was prepared for. Someone with this much love for their native environment while still appreciating the power of those invasives should absolutely get a paycheck for the education they share. Thanks, man.
I never fail to laugh. I mean the botany is great but the little interludes make this the most interesting and amusing botany lesson ever.
“Late-stage capitalist hell-scape” is quite an astute observation, as is “gfy.” 😂
Our mother doesn’t like to be naked. She will cover all of these dead areas with wonderful plants. Love your shows Sir, absolutely wonderful!
19:10 it's fascinating that he's STILL got a couple prickly pear seeds stuck to his fingers after the cut!!
Your videos bring me immense joy and have become a favourite part of my day. It’s easy to be cynical due to the state of our planet. You have a refreshing mix of optimism and what I can only describe as “realistic cynicism.” You find the beauty when it’s there, but aren’t afraid to point bullshit out where you see it.
This process of asphalt reclamation is almost complete in the former Army compound at Sampson State Park on the shores of Seneca Lake New York. many of the old avenues that crisscrossed the base are now homes to trees, bushes and wildflowers. The remnants of the base's home gardens such as lilacs are interspersed with natives and invasive.. Many of the former roads are now just big enough to walk through after closure in 1956.
Reminds me of the old Bethlehem Steel slag dump sites in Hellertown pa. Lots of heaped slag, basically a small arid landscape, small pines and stuff. Really cool. Called the Thomas Iron site.
The invasive spotted lantern fly making a cameo at 21:23 is a little too on the nose. Thanks for another east coast video.
I'll tell you a Louie story. When Joey was at Cornell Sept. 18 to give a lecture, at the end we were told a class needed the hall so we were filing out. It became a log jam and I was right behind Joey and Louie was in front of me. We stopped and Louie turned and gave me the side eye stopping me DEAD IN MY TRACKS. Best bodyguard a man could ever have. I now know how all those sheep feel when being herded, yikes. If you're EVER lucky enough to have the chance to see Joey in person, do NOT pass it up. Absolutely gorgeous human irl.
He does have an undeniably hot working class Ital face. Minus all the excess ink I would def hit it hard. 👌🏻 And what is he like 5 foot 4 or some shit? Yeah that shit would hot as hell.
My daughter petted the pup when he visited the herbarium at U Texas Austin. By the way, they have a Darwin-collected specimen and they are housed in the Texas Tower
Well shoot, I was gonna watch fail videos, but you got me learning about succession and plant adaptations AGAIN.
It's nice to see urban areas getting some nature love, especially the planting native seeds part. May it be inspirational to city dwellers out there. Instead of doom scrolling - plant some seeds in cement cracks and dirt patches! 💯🌱
Have you ever looked at the native Opuntias near Sequim Washington, Whidbey Island, and at least one of the San Juan Islands? Sequim gets like 14 inches of rain annually, and 30 miles west gets about 200 inches! Some intersting stuff for a guy like yourself!
Damn, I knew cacti were native to the US, but I didn't know any were native to NY. I looked some stuff up after this video and sure enough, prickly pears are native all up the coast. Very cool!
Ikr, whodathunkit? Amazeballs!
Some hippie girls I used to live with would collect mugwort and put it under their pillows bc it was a “dream potentiator”
Excellent video showing how nature reclaims itself in abandoned area's.
not just new york! we have pricklies north of the border too, my neighbor has a beautiful specimen that tanks -30 winters (zone 5) like a champ!
It's surpising how cold hardy and moisture tolerant some cacti are... the Des Moines botanic garden has an unprotected outdoor collection of opuntia humifusa, o. polyacantha, o. basiliaris, and echinocereus reichenbachii... all of which deal with our zone 5 temperatures and snowy winters... all planted in 2015... they even planted some hesperaloe parviflora this past spring to test out
The plants are working to clean the place and reclaim it. Amazing to see.
Opuntia can actually survive in Sudbury, Ontario, where it hits a low of -40 most winters.
Great Plains of northern Montana, and southern Alberta, Saskatchewan & Manitoba as well.
USDA plant growth zone 3.
Isn't Sudbury where that big meteor hit?
Yes, it is, and it brought nickel. Mining here in the 20th century caused a nearly total destruction of natural habitat over a vast area. @@AlAllerton
Which opuntia can survive that? I live in a similar climate to Sudbury and take my massive Texas opuntia I propagated indoors every winter
Hello Grant. I don't know. I saw it growing in a garden some time ago. The guy did have some good advice - he said if the plant's survival was doubtful, he put it on the sheltered north side of his garden; according to him, it's not the absolute temperature that kills plants, it's freeze-thaw cycles. @@grantpeters7958
I've grown these opuntia from seed from my neighbor's yard here in east Tennessee. The seeds sprout periodically over several years.
Also I've observed eastern box turtle eating the fruit.
I feed those opunta pads to my Leopard and Marginated tortoises, they love it! I’ve also seen Eastern box turtles eating them out on Long Island years ago, especially the “cactus pears.”
I can't say I've got a lot of love for the prickly pear, growing up before they got the cactoblastis here in Australia- they were absolute terrors. Walking through the bush or riding your motobike and getting a shin-full of aurantiaca was extremely painful and traumatic! Really sharp, barbed thorns that would go in deep and so hard to pull out you basically needed a pair of pliers. In my area back then there was also the stricta which was slightly less brutal but they had small, fuzzy spines which could be extremely irritating, too small to pull out with tweezers so you had to get some packing or gaff tape over the skin to rip them out like 'waxing' hairs. (Which would probably work too)
Apart from being a wild, invasive pain in the arse, the stricta was pretty tasty fruit if you got them at the right time of the year to make a jam out of or eat off the plant. Same with the pads which are somewhere between cucumber and a choko, so not great, not terrible but pretty good if you're camping and needed some kind of fibre and water. Just burn the spines off in the fire was the easiest way of getting rid of them.
Haven't seen either in years so the moths did their job
Great episode! I'm going to link to it in my permaculture course. I used to make signs that said "This is Nature"and put them in weedy naturalizing areas in Brooklyn when I lived there. Mugwort is used as moxa in acupuncture and Korean's use it in their baths so prob not gonna give you a headache. It was one of the first herbs used to bitter beer until those absinthy effects made the church tell brewers that they could only use hops. Love your show. Go to the Greenbelt Native Plant Center and come up to the Hudson Valley to the Shawangunk Mountains - Sam's Point.
despite how much I like beautiful landscapes and healthy ecosystems your videos on the ecology of abandoned urban areas are by far my favorite! super interesting stuff
You're in NYC!! Fantastic!! Yeah, Floyd Bennet Field is interesting.
You wandering around any community gardens, too? (Cause then I might get to run into you and tell ya how much I love these videos)
Joey, you bring the beauty where no one looks. ❤
Ugh, I kind of love the invasive sedum. But the native sedum of the NE is so gorgeous too!
As much as mugwort upsets me, it's kind of a cool plant... Cool & scary
Sup Joey! I'm in Brooklyn, now I gotta go check this place out. Thanks for another good one.
If you continue on the bus you’ll pass Floyd Bennett, go over a bridge and be at the extremely glamorous “Riis (pronounced “Reese”) Park. The beach there is known as the “Brooklyn Riviera.”
so cool. I lived in NYC for about a yr and a half but I never found stuff like this. awesome. saludos desde Costa Rica :)
I like these types of videos. You can find lots of cool plants growing nearby in the most unlikely areas. So go outside and start looking around.
Well done! Thank you!
What an exciting documentary of plants observed seizing what humans have conspicuously abandoned so new plants can take over! New mats of green stock growing to make new homes to bring in even newer troops to take back their land and break down the human laid asphalt to hold the plants and capture the soil. And the excitement of this visitor is enjoyable to share because he knows what he is talking about and enjoys what he is doing as he names the inhabitants that have flown in or been carried in, to take back this land that is the source of all life. With the excitement of the host, comes the flowering of so many names mixed together beyond my ability to pluck out the profanity from the latin or the genius of the host as he smashes it all together to fill the disintegrating asphalt. These lanscaped "weeds", no one could have planted better if they tried, and the host tries to mix it up with just a bit of philosophy, teaching better to come here than to stare at some phone, than go f#$$ you##$$$, and better yet, to learn the proper names of these living and beautiful, growing plants where they should not be, but certainly are stocking up here, with such as lichens and bacteria and fu's planted by man or nature, but with abandon. My, let's do that again! 😅
Turned your nose up at the purslane saying you wouldn't eat anything growing there, but you still ate the cactus fruit huh? 🤣
Thanks for making this video. I grew up on Long Island and this is a prime example of this classic LI parking lot ecosystem. Honestly one of my favorite ecosystems there is, severely underrated. Everyone loves the rare coastal plains and such out there and for good reason, but not as many people notice that a lot of the same plants that grow near the beaches are growing in the parking lots too 😂
Well, the cactus fruit was enclosed so somewhat protected from air pollution ( but not soil pollution), while the Purslane gets a double whammy of possible/probable pollution…Joey’s probably built up immunity to all kinds of 🤬over his years in the field trying botanical stuff all over the world , plus working on those immaculately clean freight trains… 🌱 🤣
He didn't eat it, he tasted it. The main contaminant risk in a location like this is going to be PCBs in the concrete joint sealants. It was a small amount and as long as he didn't swallow it's fine.
I do the geology of parking lots and have collected great specimens from railroad ballast and riprap
@@placidpond it really is fun walking around out of the way places to see what’s growing, I also have an irresistible urge to pick up interesting rocks since I was a kid. Botany and geology, great together, why I love when Joey includes the geology of a site, I’ve become so interested in convergent evolution since watching his videos, I never really thought about it. I chuckled when he mentioned the airfield pavement will eventually crumble and turn to just rocks ( with the help of plants and eventually trees if it is not developed) 🌿🗿
Fig-o-deenas taste better
Thank you 🙏 so much for all the videos you make. I really love 💕 them and I learn so much watching them. It’s also really enjoyable seeing the habitats you visit. I wish you a wonderful day and look 👀 forward to your next adventure 🌴🌵🌲🍁
Rockaway Beach had wild arugula growing in the cracks of the sidewalks this summer. Do.not eat lol
I seeded a few thousand blue bonnets in the Argahndab valley Afghanistan 2009-10 while on deployment.
I love seeing the ecology of abandonned areas. Pioneer species are uniquely cool to me.
Fascinating tour of nature having its way with our creations. Given enough time, they will take it all back.😄
Just another wonderful addition to the "Put it in a Bahg" series, with a brought in a bag banger feature 😜
Nothing negative about being a realist brother. love your work, gfy.
Your urban botany videos like this are some of my favorites
I didn’t know there was such a large abandoned space in the middle of Brooklyn. A lot of good information and made me laugh too.
It's not really in the middle of Brooklyn. It's on a peninsula into Jamaica Bay, SW of JFK Airport. At the margins.
@@LaSargenta
Exactly, it’s waaaaaayyy tf out there!
The "Go fuck yourself, bye" endings crack me up every fucking time :)
Very fascinating video on pioneer species that can thrive under harsh conditions and also have the ability to create soil.
I live around this area and bike there all the time! Biking along that part of Brooklyn I’ve taken note of other non-native plants that are established in the area, such as Melilotus albus, Cirsium vulgare, and Lythrum salicaria, as well as the ones mentioned in the video such as the Elaeagnus umbellata which all seem to be dominating the nearby surrounding marsh areas along the bay. I’ve also noticed millions of Lanternfly nymphs emerging from those marshy areas along the water in the late summer months, but not as much last summer as the previous ones (which when they start to fly and swarm they take over the area).
This is such an awesome video and thank you for taking the time to explain this area! Super informative and helpful in learning about the stuff that grows near me. Thank you for the knowledge!
I fuckin love your video! Thanks for keeping it real! 💯 Here in California, nobody talks like that, to hear someone speak with zero fucks makes me happy😁
I don't encourage spreading autumn olive (eleagnus umbellata, but they are a superfood, nitrogen fixer. It's established in my area, so I harvest the berries, and chip it up for mulch.
My son just picked a Starbucks cupfull in the Pine Barrens. The pucker is still present in my throat. I think they killed my dental plaque
@@placidpond you have to get them when they're fully ripe, otherwise the fruit is very astringent, as you discovered. I spit the seeds out.
Tim will probably make jam with them, like Bonnie the botanist once did
I followed you years ago looking forward to the day you came to south Brooklyn (especially the Marine Park Salt Marsh!)...and you delivered 😁
I’m obsessed with the urban jungle videos, fascinating to see how life can grow in the cracks of human society
In Ottawa Canada I've seen a garden of opuntias. Never very tall, but they still bloom and appear to winter as they're in the same spot every year. Shocked me to no end.
Dude, I am in freakin love with you. This was the best most real video in my opinion to date. Your tone and direct calling it what it is is so freakin appreciated. I hope there are some remaining eco systems around in 100 years too. Dude, you done did it with the word " glocket" what the heck is a glocket. I love you please come t o Atlanta.
Glochids are what he's talking about. They're the little hairs that get under your skin and irritate.
If you're in Atlanta you should go out to Arabia Mountain in south Dekslb County. There's a couple of species of Opuntia that grow out there on the granite exposures. A bunch of other cool and unusual plants too. Right now the "Stone Mountain Daisies"(actually a sunflower) are going off like mad. 👍
Hey, thanks I really appreciate your very detailed explanation. Glochids, I now know what they are and how to spell. As for ANY type of rock exposures and vegetation--I am about. Will check out the Arabia. Let us not forget they literally BLEW UP AND TOOK DOWN the Georgia Guidestones and covered it all up. Take care!@@lairdhaynes1986
Thanks Joey and crew or the great video.
It was a US Coast Guard air station for helicopter ops. Now the nearest air station is at Atlantic City, NJ
I thought there was one on sandy hook
I see the invasive concrete has attracted the invasive sedum.
You really are amazing, man. So intelligent and thorogh.
I love seeing plants colonizing disturbed/human made environments, and thinking about why invasive have such an advantage over everything else in doing it.
Love the discussion and examples of succession
Are you coming to queens. Alley pond, idlewild maybe?
how could you not be into foraging with such a huge knowledge about plants?????
I love your enthusiasm, I'm from Brooklyn and have been to floyd bennett field a lot growing up. You sound a little like George Costanza 🤣
*psst… “Kings Plaza.”* 😂
I like the empathy for the lantern fly.
“It’s not your fault” 😂
“I wouldn’t eat anything that grows here”. (eats something that grows there)😂
my friends and i run illegal bike races in the woods near floyd bennett field, and camp there in the summer. i will definitely go by soon and try to propagate some cactus, any tips or guides for helping them root and grow successfully ?
You need very fertile asphalt. 😏
I remember when I was a sprog, one of my cousins telling me how tasty prickly pear was. And I spent probably half an hour, gingerly picking one, and crying because it hurt. Then my Grandpa came up, and he just grabbed that thing and rubbed it between his hands until all the prickles were gone. I ate it, even though it didn't taste very nice. I'll never forget that. 😅
Love to see you reporting live on the scene from the 5 boroughs, amazing to see how the plant kingdom is gradually reclaiming the places we abandon it bodes well for the future when a lot of this city is underwater and the survivors have to restore whats left of the land here
This was a really good one. Keep up the good work.
I have some boerhavia erecta (caryophylalles) in my backyard.
When I first moved in everything was in drought condition, the leaves were purple which I know assume to be betalain pigments protecting from the dry, sunny heat.
It’s now fully green
Botany so cool
Thanks, Joey! I like these videos of urban ecology. I like exploring such places myself too and frequenting them over the years and seeing what type of succession is taking place and what is happening. They are also great places to relax as most people tend to stay away from them.
Thanks!
Thanks for sharing your philosophy at the end. Your knowledge gives you credibility in life.
Prickly pear grows in Nj on railroad tracks mostly.Prickly pear juice is awesome
Big colony on Newmarket Road, Piscataway/Dunellen border as someone’s front lawn planting
@@placidpond I lived in Dunellen it’s all scattered on the sides of the tracks till you get to Plainfield.For some reason it likes the Raritan line
I’ve taken a paddle from there… it didn’t replant in my garden well… too much shade. I’m going back to try again! Please come back to NY!!!!❤❤
Dude how much coffee did you have? I wish i could rattle and roll like you do!
6:48 Spotted Lantern Fly
I live in Oregon (the Willamette Valley). There's a neighbor in my town that has a prickly pear growing in their front yard, and we have a wildlife safari park a bit south of the valley that has one as well. I've recently been wondering how these plants survive in this cold (for cacti) and wet climate. NY is way colder and only slightly less wet. Perfect timing lol.
gotta appreciate the sheer resilience of Opuntia’s. Damn things are pretty much everywhere
Cacti grows natively in the north. Holyshit.
Going for a walk with you would be super cool
Great show.
You were so close to the Asclepius tuberosa! It probably wasn’t much to see at this time and I’m pretty sure it escaped from some garden in those community gardens at Floyd Bennett Field.
Fun to see you out in my neck of the woods. You haven't really lived until you've accidentally crawled into a patch of those cactus in winter when they're laying flat on the ground. Sandy Hook right across the bay is covered with them.
Another fantastic video, GFY❤
Have you ever read the book ‘A tree Grows in Brooklyn’? Your title recalled that great story.
Nasty invasive weed, Alianthus. Grows everywhere in Chicagoland too. Stinketh.
@@Erewhon2024 I feel ya, but what a good title lol as well as book. And this guy… lol love me some fellow plant nerds
@@ARavenSpeaks plant nerds are so few and far between….🌱
I'm so happy you are in my neck of the woods. Hopefully you head east on Long Island where I live, or northeast of L.I. where I grew up. Im afraid it's too boring, ie, pine barrens.
Pine Barrens are fantastic places to explore, check out the Pine Barrens in southern NJ….Some plants grow there that are not found anywhere else in the world 🌱
Don't be down on the LI pine barrens, it's actually a super rare and fascinating ecosystem. The red pines are a beautiful plant, as are the little scrub oaks and the grasses and everything else. A lot of plants that grow there are super rare too. And you get those clear fresh ponds you with water so clean you can drink it, surrounded by cranberries and wintergreen 😊. Acidic sandy soils are the best. What a great ecosystem.
@@latifoljic
I remember there was a huge fire there in the early 90s. Within a couple years all the scrub pine and shrub oak were almost fully grown back. Certain pine cones require fire to open so they can spread their seeds. The Pine Barrens in Jersey are tremendous, almost 1/3 of the state. Beautiful place but eerie how they’re always so silent.
can you do a video on japanese knot weed and how invasive it is. It's taking over a lot of river banks near me on the east coast usa
@21:23 "Look at these fkng guys they walk around like they own the place. It's not your fault, buddy, IT'S OURS."
*”Sympathy for The Devil”* 😮😂
Purslane is actually not only edible but tasty, surprisingly nutritous, cultivated and partially domesticated in many areas, and is a prime candidate for being more widely used to combat undernutrition in key areas where it is invasive and not understood as a possible resource by people who need nutritional supplementation of existing hogh calorie foodstuffs in order to improve long term health.
Basically it's not good for the environment that it's there but with a little education it could be incorporated into local cuisines and possibly save lives by increasing overall vitality and therefore raising survival rates of diseases.
Also autumn olive fruits are edible and sometimes sweet depending on the individual plant, but admittedly they're small and mildly astringent and Elaeagnus has a worse impact than purslane.
anyone got any suggestions for native plants that regrow quickly and are adaptable to frequent cuttings? i wanna piss some ppl off
Any kind of opuntia that is native to your area.
I Went there and picked myself up some cactus. It's everywhere
My dude, your videos are the greatest! But you're putting them out so fast, I'm having trouble keeping up! A release schedule would make both the algorithm and your adoring fans tumesce. I get that a backlog can lead to ecchymosis in a sensitive area, but consider the option!
Excellent opuntia analysis Joey thank you
We have those lantern fly in PA this year bad. Never seen so many before in this area.
If you ever have cause to be down here, id love to see a video on the ecology along the less preened parts of the schuylkill river trail area or fairmont park in philly
Those opuntia are bullet proof. I grow o. humifusa in pure gravel here in the Uk and our winters are no problem for them.
Was already surprised they grow in Crooklyn but all the way in the UK 🇬🇧 wouldn't have guessed finding prickly-pear type there across the pond for some reason.
@@xXScissorHandsXx yeah they're by no means commonplace (people here still love their traditional English garden) but there's a small and growing band of people pushing our climate to grow desert plants. I grow a variety of opuntia, yucca, agave etc. outdoors. Here's a video of mine creating the bed: th-cam.com/video/Mb8dmYjK808/w-d-xo.htmlsi=2r9nJK3qGPBILzEg
@@greatnorthernexoticpretty much the only cactus species that can thrive in cold and wet conditions
@@quercus_opuntia Maihuenia as well, actually better suited to cold + wet as supposedly O. humifusa can actually have issues with rot with too much wet in the winters.
It's not just you... Id like to go out more, but the presence of actual human feces at all my favorite hikes /camping/fishing spots really gets me down. Toilet paper across the forest floor like a ticker tape parade went by.
That ticker tape description is how Bill Bryson described the whole of Britain in Notes from a Small Island.
Damn, which woods do they go to…?
I've seen Opuntia naturalized in sandy, protected (bay side) sites on the Jersey shore barrier islands.
Geez it grows in a side road garden near my cousins house in eastern Woodbridge Township, NJ. Nothing fazes it and the yellow flowers are very beautiful🌵 I personally will not have any Opuntia inside or outside, their 🤬 glochids are something else…👺
Yes
Not naturalised native. Naturalised means introduced plant that has integrated into the ecosystem and can reproduce with no help.
Hey Tony. There is a desert in Norther Maine. Never been there. It might be a fun ride. I noticed that you are wearing reflective clothing. That tells me you are riding a two-wheeler. or avoiding two wheelers. either way stay sharp on the road brother. Also, coneflowers, and milkweed. nuff, said.
Love your videos. I did notice a misspelling...desiccation...1 "s" 2 c's"
Meh. Noted. Lol
I've confirmed the species ID's for many of your Opuntia observations from Illinois and New York on INat, Joey.