LandsMagazine would like to congratulate SWA Group for receiving the Design Excellence Award in ASLA's 2003 Professional Awards. The design of Westlake Corporate Campus captures the essence of a country ranch—integrating a 650,000-square-foot office building and a parking structure for 2,700 cars with forest, meadow, and ponds. The design emulates the experience of a 'country home,' with buildings, roadways, and garage integrated into the indigenous landscape.

Meadow grasses and indigenous plant material evoke the north Texas grasslands. Exterior public spaces are articulated with flagstone, spring-like water features, and drifts of dry-land plant materials, such as prickly pear cactus and muhly grass. The use of Texas sandstone, steel, and glass on both the building and site work established a palette that harmonizes with the subtle coloration and texture of the site.

To screen the parking garage from the office building, the designers placed them at a distance from each other and provided a covered walkway for shade. The walkway serves as a journey through the landscape's flowering perennials, grasses, and trees. Roadways are narrow and curbless to express the idea of a country road and allow water to return to the landscape. Roadway lighting is placed in trees rather than on poles, and all site hardware is minimized. Every design element helps to preserve as many existing trees, plant communities, and habitat areas as possible, and provides for dam reconstruction, pond reshaping, dredging, and restoration of edge habitat. In addition, approximately 1,000 new trees were established for the next generation of forest.

Design Honor Award Winners:

Landscape Architect: Reed Hilderbrand Associates, Inc. - Design of Hither Lane, E. Hampton, NY

Landscape Architect: Olin Partnership, Ltd. - Design of J. Paul Getty Center, Los Angeles, CA

The genus species name of this unusual and infrequently flowering plant offers a graphic depiction of its smell during its brief bloom cycle. Other descriptions are that of a rotting corpse. The odor, strongest at night, attracts pollinators, which in its native Sumatra, Indonesia rainforest home, are carrion beetles and sweat bees. In Sumatra, it grows naturally in moist, shady forest floor soils.

The Corpse Plant has very large leaves reaching 15-18 feet tall and 15 feet in diameter and an underground tuber that weighs up to 140 pounds when the plant is ready to flower. The developing inflorescence is comprised of a spathe (resembling a bell with a crimson interior) surrounding a spike-like spadix. It is said to be the largest quasi 'flower' in the world with a spadix stretch of 6 to 10 feet and a fully-opened spathe of 3 feet across. (The largest true flower is produced by Rafflesia arnoldii, also native to Sumatra rainforests.)

Seeds of the Corpse Plant were first collected by a European botanist named Odoardo Beccari in 1878 and brought to Italy and finally to the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in England. The first recorded bloom in the U.S. occurred at the New York Botanical Garden in 1937; many people witnessing its spectacular inflorescence described it as one of the most sensational works of nature they had ever seen. It has bloomed only 20 times since its arrival. The exact time of eventual flowering is determined by day and night temperatures as well as plant physiological timetables. The Corpse Flower blooms for only about 2 days once it is starts the process.

Due to its infrequent flowering, short bloom size, and pungency, a blooming Corpse Plant is a very popular attraction at the rare botanic garden and arboretum fortunate enough to have one in its collection. When flowering is imminent, there is great excitement and the event is widely advertised. At the Botanic Garden of the University of Bonn, Germany, the line to see the flowering spectacle when last in bloom extended over two miles long. The picture below depicts the July 24th, 2000 flowering of the Corpse Plant housed in an indoor greenhouse at the United States Botanic Garden in Washington D.C. that I had the pleasure of witnessing. Lines were long and reporters and camera crews representing mainstream and alternative media were flown in from every state and many other nations to document this historic horticultural event. At 5:15 p.m. on Friday, July 25, 2003, Dr. Dan Nicolson of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History, Department of Botany, dissected the inflorescence, which is being preserved in the National Herbarium.

Because male and female flowers mature at different times, there is a need for either a second plant or human assistance since a single plant cannot self-pollinate. John Trager, curator of the collections at the Huntington Botanic Gardens in San Marino, California and a skilled hand-pollinator of succulents, extracted several pollen samples which were used to pollinate the female flowers of their specimen Corpse Flower that bloomed for a short period in August 1999. (The event resulted in 76,000 visitors, a 182 percent increase over 1998.) Interestingly, one of the more unusual pollination accelerating techniques involves taking a advantage of ethylene gas produced by a bag of rotting apples to speed up the pollen-ripening process.

Although the first reports of the introduction of materials into trees date to the 12th Century, it is a technology that is often misunderstood. Materials in liquids can be injected into the woody tissues, known as xylem, of trees because the pressure within the xylem is below that of atmospheric pressure outside the tree. Under this condition of negative pressure, liquids introduced into healthy xylem through a fresh injection wound will be taken into the xylem and distributed within the tree in the sap stream. It has been suggested that because the xylem of the tree accepts the liquids based on its porosity, the term infusion is more appropriate than injection when describing the movement of systemic liquids into trees.

There is no need to use high pressures to attempt to force liquids into a tree. High-pressure injection often damages tree tissues and does not place most of the injected materials into the outer xylem in which most systemic transport occurs. Low pressures sufficient to empty the injection reservoir are most effective for transport and cause the least impact on the tree.

A breakthrough in injection technology occurred in the 1960s when the systemic insecticide Bidrin, in micro-injection capsules, was injected into trees and shown to control a variety of chewing and sucking insect pests. It was then clear that large volumes of materials did not need to be injected into a tree to control a tree health problem. Research on Bidrin demonstrated that a small volume of a concentrated systemic chemical in a micro-injection capsule could provide effective tree health care.

Since that time, the focus of micro-injection research has been on developing systemic formulations of antibiotics, insecticides and fungicides that were effective in low volumes. Considerable research has gone into studies of the most effective injection techniques to maximize uptake and distribution and to minimize any effects of wounding of the tree. Combinations of an insecticide and a fungicide in a single capsule have recently been developed to allow micro-injection treatment of both insect and disease problems with a single injection.

Micro-injection is both an evolving, research-based technology and a clinical tool for the tree health care practitioner. Research on micro-injection is continuing at major research universities and at government research facilities. A key goal for the future of micro-injection is to determine the potential systemic uses for new tree health care chemicals which are being produced and registered each year.

Viable Alternatives

Micro-injection allows the introduction of systemic chemicals such as antibiotics, fungicides, insecticides and mineral nutrients directly into a tree without any contact with the environment. Micro-injection, macro-injection and implants are the most commonly used methods to introduce systemic chemicals directly into the vascular system of trees. Trunk injections and implants have become an increasingly popular clinical alternative to spray applications in the control of urban tree health problems. Trunk injections and implants are efficient delivery systems that can be performed under most weather conditions. Systemic materials placed into the tree are rapidly available within the tree and there is no environmental contact with pesticides.

Soil injection of systemic chemicals may represent another option, but increasing concerns about groundwater contamination have limited the use of soil injections in many areas.

Like any technology, these techniques can only be effective if applied by trained applicators who have correctly diagnosed a tree health problem. Companies that sell injection and implant products usually provide some type of training prior to use of their products. The J. J. Mauget Company, for example, requires a one-day training program before sale of any of its products. In addition, these techniques have to be applied in strict adherence to the guidelines of the manufacturers. An incorrect diagnosis will likely result in the use of an ineffective material. Improper application can be harmful to the tree.

—Dr. Terry A. Tattar is professor, Shade Tree Laboratory, Department of Microbiology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Mass. He has conducted extensive research on vascular transport and vascular diseases of trees and often presents seminars on micro-injection technology.

If the soil report indicates a high amount of sodium you will likely see a recommendation for an application of gypsum (CaSO4). Gypsum, or calcium sulfate, is commonly used as a source of calcium in the reclamation of sodic soils (soils with high sodium). High amounts of absorbed sodium causes a loss of soil aggregates, and in turn a reduction or loss of open pore spaces. Without the pore space between the soil particles, air and water movement through the soil is reduced and plant health and vigor declines. The calcium in gypsum helps to remove the sodium by bumping the sodium molecule off the soil particle, thus allowing the sodium to be leached from the soil root zone. In some high clay landscape soil situations you may not be able to get adequate leaching to allow the sodium to be removed from the root zone. Under this situation you may need to consider adding sub-surface drainage to the area and adding organic amendments to open the soil, allowing water movement and air movement.

High pH on your soil report can be more difficult to correct. Many landscape professionals assume that most or all of our southwestern soils have high pH. While many of the reports I have reviewed have moderate to high pH, over my 22 years in the business several have shown acid conditions. Again, it is important to run a soil and water test before you apply corrective amendments. In the correction of alkaline (high pH) soils you need to look at the application of elemental sulfur or acid inducing fertilizers. For high pH soils your lab recommendation may suggest the application of elemental sulfur. In established landscape this can be difficult to apply without plant damage. Please get advice from your pest control advisor or fertilizer consultant prior to application. You may also find that long term application of acid forming fertilizer products, such as ammonium sulfate based nitrogen products and sulfur coated urea, can help reduce soil pH without some of the plant safety issues associated with application of granular elemental sulfur.

With proper application and utilization of soil amendments, you may be able to improve the long-term health of your landscapes, improve fertilizer performance, and keep the customers happy.

This is SCTC's largest educational event of the year, attracting 800 public and private professional horticulturists annually. This year, before breakout session begin at 9:00am, we are offering a general session starting at 7:15 open to all attendees entitled: California's Emerging Environmental Challenges: A Framework for Tomorrow presented by Dr's. Joan Denton, Art Craigmill and Dave Burger.

During the break-out sessions, over 80 highly qualified and respected experts from across the county will present timely, objective information on cutting edge topics pertinent to the turfgrass and landscape industry. Finish up your CEU's! 6.5 PCA/QAL/QAC (including 2 Laws and Regs in a special afternoon session) have been applied for as well as .6 GCSAA CEUs and 5.0 ISA hours.

You can register online at www.turfcouncil.org

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© 2003 Steven Jay Porus and Unlimited Access Co., All rights Reserved.