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Jane Hartline, owner of Sauvie Island Natives, is a dedicated and generous supporter of native plants for landscaping and propagation within the Portland metro area. She is an advocate for use of native plants as a wonderful gardening option.  In the past, she has often donated to the habitat restoration mission of FOBW. So it was welcome news when she again informed us that 25% of all sales on Saturday September 16, 2023 would be donated to the Friends of Baltimore Woods. Jane rounded that total up to $300! A win-win for your garden, native plants provide habitat for native pollinating insects such as bees and butterflies who have co-evolved with native plants over millennia. Over 90% of these insects are specialized to feed and lay eggs on a limited number of native plants, and in turn birds, amphibians, fish and mammals rely on these plants, and the insects which depend on them, to survive. Natives are also naturally adapted to the climate variations of local ecosystems, and can withstand the developing drought conditions better than non-natives. Since 2020, Jane’s native plant nursery on Sauvie Island has been supplying local gardeners with a wide selection of local native plants, while providing knowledgeable advice for growing them. If you need recommendations on how to grow native plants in your garden, Jane and her crew will help you. Any native plant you plant in your North Portland backyard to qualify for the Portland Audubon Backyard Habitat Program, provides complimentary benefits to all native creatures of neighborhood natural areas, including the oak woodland ecosystem of Baltimore Woods. We are so grateful for our many community partners, including Jane Hartline! Thank you Jane and Sauvie Island Natives for your continued bountiful support!

Friends of Baltimore Woods will again be partnering with Sparrowhawk Native Plants for our annual native plant sale in St. Johns on April 26 and 27 this spring.  The sale takes place this year in the St. Johns Church parking lot located at 8044 North Richmond Avenue, a block east of last year’s sale location. Pre-ordering online begins Sunday February 25th and lasts until March 24 or until plant supplies last, additionally you are now able to window-shop the 100 native species for sale on the Sparrowhawk website. Every Spring and Fall, Sparrowhawk Native Plants partners with community organizations around the Metro region, providing eco-minded gardeners the opportunity to order habitat-friendly and climate-resilient plants online and pick them up on scheduled weekends in close proximity to their neighborhoods. FOBW volunteers help plan and publicize this annual sale. Timelines and tasks go on our calendar as the organizers meet to plan the event.  Soon posters will be designed, printed and put up around the North Peninsula business district. The day before the plant pick-up weekend is busy with sale preparations.  On Thursday April 25, many volunteers will be needed to help set up canopies, tables, wheelbarrows, and label and set out hundreds of pre-ordered plants that are grouped to match how they’re coded on customer order sheets to make them easy to find. Look for information on volunteer sign up to be posted on the FOBW Upcoming Events link starting February 25. The April 25 “set up” volunteers will be able to pick up their pre-ordered plants on that day. So whether you are transitioning a lawn to a natural habitat; attracting bees, butterflies and hummingbirds; or filling a shady corner in the backyard, browse through the Sparrowhawk Natives online plant photos. The site has descriptions of all their plants. It includes much valuable information for successfully growing these natives and designing native garden landscapes.

This fall the Friends of Baltimore Woods were indeed fortunate when Garrett Kaiser of Scout Troop 71, focused his beam of Eagle Scout volunteer light on the slippery dirt trail along the undeveloped portion of North Alta Avenue, which is a trail that walkers can use to access the postage stamp sized parcel of Baltimore Woods known as the Old Oak Lot. To earn Eagle Scout status, one needs to plan, organize and provide leadership on a beneficial community service project.  To increase the safety for walkers, Garrett chose to mobilize his troop members to build a set of stairs and a hand rail along the steep dirt path. In verifiable leadership fashion, he contacted FOBW to explain his plan, assessed the physical conditions of the site, identified the materials needed, and how to acquire them along with designing the stairs and railing for the project. On Saturday November 18, more than 30 volunteers from St Johns Scouts Post 58, Portland State University and Friends of the Baltimore Woods joined the stair building work party. Thanks to a donation of logs by Lars Limburg of Arbor Pacific Tree Works and his back hoe, logs were placed and bark chips distributed along the path to Cathedral Park. Native plants were also planted at the adjacent Old Oak property. So many accomplishments were achieved that day due to the enthusiastic hands of numerous generous volunteers. Thank you to Jim Barnas for bringing the donuts, all the wonderful participants, and especially to Garrett Kaiser for helping to lead such a successful trail upgrade for the Old Oak Lot of Baltimore Woods. The new stairs and railing are a sturdy and beautiful addition to the trail.

What would happen if the Friends of Baltimore Woods (FOBW) had access to rare and unusual native plants, beyond the familiar favorites Portland Parks can provide? How would we plant them in the Baltimore Woods Lower Meadow, which was once covered in asphalt, and has hot, dry clay soil in summer? And what would be the best way to plant them, so that they aren’t in soil either too rich or too hard-packed for them to succeed? These are questions we hope to answer, thanks to a $3,000 grant from (Gardening in America) Garden Club of America.  When the Garden Club of Portland (PGC) approached Friends of Baltimore Woods with the idea of partnering on a project with the grant, Portland Parks Ecologist Laura Guderyahn had the idea to purchase uncommon native plant starts and seeds that are hard to find and might thrive in hot, sunny conditions. Some would be sowed immediately, and some would be propagated for a year until sturdier for later planting. Laura ran her idea by FOBW, and we jumped on board. Laura then wrote the grant proposal to Portland Garden Club (PGC). That group, in turn, submitted the grant request on FOBW’s behalf to Garden Club of America. On July 1, 2023 FOBW won the grant of $3000 to purchase plant species indigenous to our meadow site. We had one year to spend the money on this ambitious project, it was time to get busy! While the news was exciting, uplifting and overall wonderful, it left a few questions unanswered, namely who would do what to realize the project. After some reflection and discussion, a plan emerged. Leah Passell and I took on the fun but challenging project of deciding on a list of plants that could be suitable for the specific harsh growing conditions at the site. We created a list of 28 possible species, heavily based on Portland Plant List. The final list included native lilies like Cat’s Ear Calochortus, Fool’s Onion, Taper Tip Onion, Harvest Brodiaea, Ookow, Yampah (an important first food), two types of milkweed and several native grasses. Next we reached out to more than 15 native plant nurseries to check on availability. We sought plants at wholesale prices. In the end, we narrowed our list down to 15 types of native plants that we were able to locate at four local nurseries. Leah wrote up and submitted orders and picked up all the plant materials.  Suddenly, we had an abundance of plant materials and a rapidly closing window of time for ideal fall-season planting. Our complex project got a great boost when Liz Dally, a retired business person and active member of the Native Plant Society of Oregon, stepped up to help lead the project. Our PGC lead, the appropriately named Cynthia Grant, suggested we improve soil conditions in the lower meadow for planting. Laura secured the use of the city’s Dingo the Digger, a sturdy digging machine, to loosen soil in about a dozen areas along the main trail to be used as planting beds. The digger loosened and dug out rocks, then compost was mixed in to prepare the planting beds that run along the main trail. What had seemed like a daunting task started to seem like an achievable one. On November 11, about 20 members of PGC helped FOBW members get 200 plants, about 1180 bulbs and nearly 3 pounds of grass seed into the ground. We worked together like a well-oiled machine, which couldn’t have happened without an organized plant placement layout that was flagged the day before thanks to Liz Dally’s leadership and organizing skills. We are grateful to Cynthia Grant for her guidance in spurring us to identify how we would achieve our ambitious goal, to Laura Guderyahn for her help securing Dingo the Digger to prepare planting beds in our lower meadow and especially Liz who stepped in to coordinate the project. Now it’s winter and new seeds and bulbs are quietly sleeping beneath the soil. We hope to see new life at the Baltimore Woods Lower Meadow in spring. Thanks to the many people from PGC and FOBW who helped actualize a habitat restoration dream!

Seeds are like a promise, yet to be kept. They encompass hope, toughness, fragility, survival, and new beginnings. They are like a gift, wrapped in the most homely of gift-wraps, but with the best possible payoff when opened – a continuation of new life in our ecosystem. The Friends of Baltimore Woods (FOBW) group is in the midst of a new restoration project, which includes the growing of native wildflower and grass species from seed to increase botanical diversity in our meadow. We hope our project results in a natural area which more closely resembles the incredible biodiversity of Willamette Valley oak meadowscapes, now largely lost to human development. When we were researching plant materials to add to our meadows, we found that most native plant growers did not have many of the less common plant species which we sought for our hot and dry site, or had them in only very limited, or very expensive quantities. However, our project, funded by a grant administered by the Portland Garden Club, had propagation as one of its goals, with the hopes of fostering not only more species of plants, but an opportunity for our group to learn more about propagating native plants from seed. This has benefit of being less expensive than purchasing nursery-grown plants, and offers a wider variety of species, greater botanical diversity, and a greater overall number of plants. Our aim is to transform the hottest, driest parts of our meadow, by adding plants most acclimated to those conditions. In our research, we found many amazing native plant nurseries which promote ecological restoration as a core part of their mission. We chose to purchase plant materials from four local nurseries; Echo Valley Natives, Scholls Valley Native Nursery, Xera Plants, and Heritage Seedlings. However, we found a bonanza of native seed varieties at Heritage Seedlings, which has a native plant propagation program overseen by botanist Lynda Boyer, a noted Willamette Valley restoration ecologist. The seeds are locally sourced and verified Willamette Valley natives, many of which are becoming rare in our area due to the constantly shrinking meadow landscapes which were once a dominant ecosystem here. Now FOBW members are learning about the practice of sowing native seeds, and are trying a variety of growing approaches to see what works best. We are learning about terms such as seed-dormancy, stratification, scarification, and imbibing. Our methods include sowing seeds in propagation flats in an unheated greenhouse, in outdoor home garden plots, and sowing some of each seed variety directly into our meadow. The cool, damp winter weather of the Pacific Northwest provides ideal conditions for seeds to break dormancy come springtime. But whether these tiny seeds will find the soil conditions they need, and survive the roaming & hungry populations of native birds & rodents, remains to be seen. It is all fodder for the great experiment of increasing our plant species diversity, and we will aim to track and note where our successes and failures lie in the months, and even years, of plant propagation that lie ahead. But hope is still there, still thriving, at the back of our minds, as we sow these tiny packages of ecological miracles into the augmented soil plots of the Baltimore Woods Lower Meadow.

  The Friends of Baltimore Woods are thrilled to co-sponsor the showing of the “Once a Braided River” documentary at St Johns Cinema this month. It will play one night only on Tuesday September 12, at 7pm. A panel discussion follows the 53 minute film. For thousands of years the North reach of the Willamette River was a braided waterway of shallow channels and islands, rich in biodiversity and a home to many indigenous communities. Today, after years of human engineering of this natural riparian habitat, the area is designated an Industrial Sanctuary, and a Superfund Site. Along a six mile stretch of Portland Harbor, hundreds of aging tanks store over 300 million gallons of volatile fossil fuels, which is 90% of the state’s liquid fossil fuel inventory, on top of major earthquake fault zones. “Once a Braided River,” a new documentary by Barbara Bernstein, focuses on the part of Portland that most Portlanders don’t know about or ignore. It braids together the strands of many issues that face us – climate chaos, rivers contaminated with toxic pollutants, fish and wildlife brought to the brink of extinction by these perilous practices, and the dire hazards of storing immense amounts of explosive fossil fuels upon liquefaction zones underlain by major fault lines along the shorelines of our Willamette River. The film begins with the story of the river before it was transformed into a Superfund Site and features community groups and activists working to replace the current Industrial Sanctuary with a green working waterfront defined by good jobs, clean energy, and healthy ecosystems. The documentary explores a vision to reclaim this stretch of river as a place where people and wildlife who depend upon the river for their homes, jobs and migration routes can thrive. Barbara Bernstein, the producer of the film, is a local, award-winning independent audio engineer, musician, and composer with 27 years experience in creating radio documentaries, audio art, theater, dance scores and sound design. She specializes in reporting on environmental, social justice and human rights issues. This film is critical for beginning the conversation about long term solutions for the Willamette River. At the Cinema 21 showing of this film last May, panel discussion member Bob Sallinger reminded the audience that people can bring positive changes successfully if we gather and work together. Tickets are available for purchase on this link. The screening will be followed by a panel discussion with Bob Sallinger, Sarah Taylor, John Wasiutynski and Jay Wilson, who are featured in the film, and moderated by Barbara Bernstein. This event is co-sponsored by the Braided River Campaign, Friends of Baltimore Woods, Columbia Riverkeeper, Willamette Riverkeeper, KBOO Community Radio, 350PDX and Oregon PSR. Artwork: Kandace Manning. Article written by Barbara Bernstein and Lisa Manning. “Once a Braided River” at the St Johns Cinema.  [ Tuesday, September 12th at 7PM ] Purchase Tickets [ Watch the trailer | View our upcoming Events Calendar  ]

Has the record breaking summer heat made you concerned about climate change? Do you wish you could do something? For one day only, on Saturday September 16, if you mention the Friends of Baltimore Woods at check-out, the folks at Sauvie Island Natives Nursery will generously donate 25% of your plant purchase to our native habitat preservation mission. Native plants are naturally drought tolerant and provide habitat and food sources to insects, bugs and bees, which in turn feed native birds and other wildlife. Your investment will have a double benefit. You’ll add plants to your garden that are adapted to thrive in this climate and you’ll support the continuing stewardship of the local native oak woodlands and meadows of Baltimore Woods. Sauvie Island Natives Nursery, located at 14745 NW Gillihan Road on Sauvie Island, is conveniently open four days a week, on Sundays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays. You can click on this link to their website for directions and to schedule a visit: https://sauvienatives.com/ If you take a walk in the lovely peaceful landscape around the nursery, you’ll pass a pond and feel like you’re in a wildlife sanctuary, plus owner Jane Hartline is an excellent resource for information and advice on gardening with native plants.

Once again, the Sparrowhawk & Friends of Baltimore Woods Native Plant Sale helped to distribute thousands of new plants into Portland gardens this April.  Thank you to all the volunteers, the FOBW board and owners of Sparrowhawk Native Plants who helped to make this spring plant sale another glowing, or should we say, growing success! This year 8,550 native plants were purchased to be planted in Portland landscapes, including the St Johns neighborhood.  Approximately, 534 people placed plant orders and FOBW earned $4,000 from this event. This is our only annual fundraiser, and helps with our mission of preserving a North Portland nature corridor scheduled to be aligned with the future NP Willamette Greenway from the downtown Esplanade to Kelly Point Park. The funds fill our coffers for year round habitat restoration work in Baltimore Woods. Native plants are a win-win option for your garden providing habitat for native insects, bees and butterflies, which in turn pollinate vegetable flowers, fruit trees and shrubs and also provide essential nourishment to wildlife including birds, those beautiful springtime serenaders. Natives are also naturally adapted to the climate variations of local ecosystems, and can withstand drought conditions better than non-natives. In recent years, Nikkie West and Tracy Cozine, the owners of Sparrowhawk Native Plants, have partnered with FOBW for our annual plant sale and their superior organization skills and hiring of additional temporary staff, makes this big job more manageable. Thankfully the beautiful St Johns Church parking lot space on North Charleston Street, the sale location in St Johns, has a wall of tall native cedar trees that naturally cooled and shaded the potted plants during the unusually warm spring days of the sale. The white Sparrowhawk canopies provided shade but not the cooling effect of the trees! A reminder that one of the best options for cooling our planet is planting more native plants and trees! 

Did you know you could adopt a local bioswale and take care of it as a steward? Bioswales are areas along city streets and sidewalks containing rain gardens intended to collect stormwater. They use soil and plants to capture and filter rainwater to reduce the load on the city’s stormwater system. They also help prevent pollution from washing into our rivers. The streets that have bioswales on them are called “Green Streets.” The City of Portland Environmental Services builds and maintains Green Streets all around Portland. Many of the bioswales are available for adoption! The primary stewardship tasks involve trash collection, weeding and clearing of debris from water inlets. Watering can also be part of the job in summer. It’s fun and easy. Many bioswales include hardy native plants like sedges, rushes, Spirea and great Camas. According to Portland BES Green Street program, you can help support Portland’s Green Streets in two ways. The first is to be a good Green Street neighbor. This means: Keep people, pets, and trash out of the planters. Keep inlets open. Don’t prune or cut the plants. If needed, you can water the plants during a dry spell. Report Green Street maintenance issues. The second way is to volunteer as a Green Street Steward and adopt a Green Street. Stewards perform regular maintenance on their adopted Green Streets and enjoy the benefits of making a difference. If you would like to tend a little garden near your home or apartment, you can go to the Portland Green Street Program to search for bioswales near you and sign up.

After an unusually cold and wet May, the Portland area experienced a sudden and rather drastic change to hot and dry conditions. While the sudden heat gave us humans “weather whiplash”, wildflowers in the meadow proceeded to burst into bloom. Friends of Baltimore Woods has been gratified that so many of the native plants, which were planted several seasons ago, are beginning to spread and propagate themselves, with the result that some areas of the meadow were putting on quite a floral display this May! Care has been taken to cultivate many varieties of flowering native plants which bloom throughout the entire growing season, providing a steady supply of food for pollinators, plus shelter, food and habitat for a multitude of bugs, birds and mammals. We’ve added some new varieties of plants this spring, and have plans for more planting projects in the fall. *A special note for people visiting Baltimore Woods with their loving canine friends:  Although Portland Parks has posted the Baltimore Woods and Meadows as a “No Dogs” Nature Park, people and their dogs are frequently seen visiting this natural area. While we know that people love their dogs and need natural spaces to walk them, the local wildlife can be compromised by encounters with your pet.  Free-running dogs can scare ground nesting birds, chase local wildlife, trample plants, and generally disrupt the feeding and rearing of young during this busy season. Therefore, we respectfully ask you to keep your dog on a leash at all times when visiting the Baltimore Woods natural area. Even if other people do not abide by this rule, your leashed pet will provide a good example. With your help one less dog will be interrupting daily survival routines of our local wildlife, and we can continue to enjoy wild creature sightings on the landscape.

Who can say what Betsy Valle was thinking that day when walking her little four-legged pal, Coco, along a section of grim alley recently inhabited by mangled vehicles and abandoned dreams that the intersection of N. Decatur alley at N. St. Louis had become? Nonethless, it’s not a rare sight to see pedestrians and bicyclists passing by on this segment of the future North Portland Greenway Trail. To see beyond the nexus of desperation and litter that have dominated the site a person needs rose tinted glasses. Or, maybe, simply the naturally sunny nature and can-do spirit that is Betsy’s. Walking north on Decatur adjacent to Baltimore Woods corridor, there’s a particular place where Decatur rises gently to meet the gravelled N. St. Louis Avenue right of way, an unimproved road on the downside that on the hillside disappears into a small cluster of established Big Leaf Maple trees and shrubs shading the ground underneath. It needs to be said that spot, since the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, had been effectively taken over by a succession of illegal RV and trailer campers. Portland Park Rangers and PBOT did what they could to address locals’ concerns about the impact to the immediate natural area; and vehicles would then be moved out, only for others to show up to take advantage of the site next to the dirt roadway that by now had been made level and easy to pull into. And on this particular day, not long after the most recent eviction, most people would be expecting the next caravan to soon arrive. Betsy, though, looked around and recognized the site for what it was: a leafy bower that naturally attracted people to rest under its filtered light and to gaze out at the panorama it offered of the St. Johns Bridge, the Willamette River and Forest Park blanketing the hills beyond the opposite shore. Betsy thought to herself, what if it could be a rest area for people walking and biking? Within a day or two, other Friends of Baltimore Woods, Leah Passell and Barbara Quinn, had joined in on the idea and planning was underway. Portland Parks and BES, the Friends partners, were notified of the proposal to make a trailside rest stop. FoBW purchased a nice heavy wood picnic table advertised by a St. Johns neighbor on craigslist. Tim Wessels from Green Anchors and Lars Limburg of Arbor Pacific Tree Work, LLC delivered a huge heap of wood chips and Lars placed a couple dozen giant tree rounds and limbs strategically around the soon-to-be rest stop. Lars can be reached at arborpacifictreework@gmail.com. With the logs placed around the perimeter in time for November’s SOLVE volunteer work party at the site, twenty local Scouts, some parents, troop leaders and other volunteers joined FoBW to spread the wood chips, and dig weeds such as blackberries, clematis vines, ivy, and holly. Volunteer Liz Dally donated several trays of native plants that she’d propagated and the Scouts and volunteers then helped plant them. The picnic table was set and anchored to the ground and a welcoming sign designed by Barbara was mounted on a post. At the end of the work party, after group photos, and collecting tools and supplies, there was a moment to reflect, savor the accomplishment and smile at the amazing transformation.

The dormant winter months are a great time to take an inventory of your garden plants and plan for the upcoming growing season. Every spring, Friends of Baltimore Woods holds a native plant sale in partnership with Sparrowhawk Native Plants. This year our FoBW/Sparrowhawk Native Plant Sale is the weekend of April 28 and 29. It is the only fundraiser for our non-profit and the revenue goes to sponsoring our free public winter talks; donations to our community partners; and buying tools, seeds, native plants and supplies for our native habitat restoration work in north Portland’s 30 acres of Baltimore Woods. The pandemic has left some perks in its wake, one of them being the highly organized system that the owners of Sparrowhawk Native Plants, Nikkie West and Tracy Cozine have devised for plant pick-up at the pop-up sales. When you come with your order form in April, volunteers will direct you to the labeled and numbered location of your plants in the large lot. There will be a Flash Sale with bargain prices during the last hour on Saturday if you would like take a chance finding plants that could work in your garden and save some cash. This year our collaborative sale begins with a one month window of on-line ordering starting Sunday February 26, and ending on Sunday March 26. As in previous years, it’s best to shop early to get the plants you want by browsing the Sparrowhawk Native Plant selections online, and paying for them in advance. You will then be able to pick up your purchases on Friday April 28 and Saturday April 29, at the St Johns Farmers Market site, on the corner lot of North Charleston Avenue and North Central Street, near the St Johns Library. As staff members of the Portland Audubon Backyard Bird Habitat Program, Nikkie and Tracy noted the huge desire of homeowners to redesign their gardens to attract wildlife. They created Sparrowhawk Native Plants in 2019, to fulfill this region’s desperately needed access to native plants for gardeners enthusiastic about creating natural wildlife habitats in their backyards. Adding native plants to your garden is a win-win for you and the planet. Over millennia native plants have evolved to thrive in their local environments, along with local insects, birds and mammals. Many of these plants are naturally drought resistant and support a variety of local bees, butterflies and insects that are an important food source for baby birds, amphibians, fish and many mammals. 90% of insects are specialists, and only feed and lay eggs on a limited number of local natives. Because they are especially adapted to thrive in our Northwest ecosystems, natives are our best defense against climate change. Friends of Baltimore Woods highly appreciates your support, interest in our mission of supporting native ecosystems, and willingness to make your backyard garden habitat and wildlife friendly. Please visit the Sparrowhawk Native Plant website if you want to learn more about the our FoBW Spring Native Plant Sale, growing native plants, the Sparrowhawk Community Partnership Program, and gardening for a better planet!

Winter Talk: How to Choose the Best Plants for Pollinators The Friends of Baltimore Woods will host our annual Winter Talk on Saturday, February 11th, from 1pm – 2pm at the St Johns Community Center at 8427 N. Central St. An additional 30 min Q&A period will follow the talk. Look for our event signs on the day of the talk! Our guest speaker is Matthew Shepherd of the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Protection. Mr. Shepherd is the Director of Outreach & Education for Xerces, and a passionate advocate for educating the public about invertebrates (animals without internal skeletons, such as insects) as well as restoring & enhancing the natural areas on which they depend. The talk will focus on gardening with native plants for the benefit of pollinators, focusing not only on flowering plants for nectar, but also host plants for larvae, and other ways we can maintain, or not maintain our yards, in order to foster habitat for beneficial bugs and a healthier ecosystem. The talk is open to the public, and while there is no admission charge, we encourage donations, which will help to support the mission of the Friends of Baltimore Woods to restore a nature corridor in north Portland. A $5 donation will entitle you to a raffle ticket to win a Tee-shirt!

Oregon Butterfly Is Endangered Species Act Success : The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced today that the Fender’s blue butterfly will be downlisted from endangered to threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act. This action is based on the recovery of butterfly populations in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. “The Endangered Species Act has ensured the full recovery of more than 50 species, and the Fender’s blue is now well on its way,” said Quinn Read, Oregon policy director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “This little butterfly was nearly lost to Oregon, but now we can celebrate its recovery along with the 50th anniversary of the landmark law that saved this species.” The Fender’s blue is a tiny butterfly with a 1-inch wingspan. It’s found only in the prairie and oak savannah of the Willamette Valley. The species is so rare that it was presumed extinct until small populations were rediscovered in 1989. When the Service listed the Fender’s blue as endangered in 2000, fewer than 4,000 of the butterflies were known to live in the wild. Although Fender’s blue numbers have fluctuated over the years, a 2016 survey found populations had grown to 29,000 total individuals. Fender’s blue butterflies are completely dependent upon threatened Kincaid’s lupine, a flowering plant that is the butterflies’ primary host. The butterfly remains highly vulnerable to climate change, as rising temperatures harm the lupine and other plants it needs to survive. The Service cited management efforts to restore and maintain prairie habitat in the Willamette Valley as benefiting the species. The Fender’s blue will continue to be protected as a threatened species, and the Service has developed a rule to ensure its continued recovery in the years to come. “This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Endangered Species Act, and the hopeful story of the Fender’s blue butterfly demonstrates once again that this is the most effective tool we have to stop extinction,” Read said.

The non-native plant Italian arum (Arum italicum), is kind of like an unwelcome night-owl roommate who raids the fridge while everyone sleeps and co-opts shared spaces with their stuff. Literal turf wars can erupt! The pernicious invader has taken root in several locations within the Baltimore Woods corridor while the Friends and partners seek ways to remove it. The plant’s tendency to produce numerous tiny tubers makes that a challenge. Italian arum is a nonnative perennial that was originally introduced as an ornamental plant. It has now naturalized in the Portland area. Due to it establishing in riparian areas and other habitats, its toxicity, and being very difficult to control once established, it is considered an invasive species in Portland. Animals and birds that eat the berries are probably the chief method of dispersal from the home landscape to natural areas. it may also be spread by improper disposal of the corms (tuber-like underground stems) from which it grows. Since it may not be responsive to mechanical or chemical removal or even to burning, it is absolutely critical that we stop planting it. Once established though, the best method of removal is by digging. It is necessary to dig up the entire plant (including the bulbs and all the tubers) and bag and dispose of it as landfilled waste—not compost! It may take several years of repeated mechanical removal to eradicate arum from an area but the Friends are out to win this turf war!

A Poem by Sebastian Valle Mellman I soar up into the sky. I look down without a sound And I see the world below me. And down far below me is a lake And in that lake I see a bird A bird of prey. I let out the cry of a hawk. As I approach I see a bird That has gone astray from The flock, I extend my talons And get the bird by surprise I swiftly fly back up and secure My grip on the bird I go back to my nest and As I get there I hear the shrill Cries of my babies. Tomorrow I will do it all again. Because today and tomorrow, And forever on, I am the Hawk

Among the most consistently seen wildlife in Baltimore Woods are birds of prey. The Sharp Shinned hawk is one species you might not be as familiar with. It is a small hawk that prefers woodlands, thickets and edge habitats although it has adapted to urban areas where prey is plentiful. This quintessential woodland predator is a “perch and scan” hunter according to wildlife biologists. They sit quietly on a tree branch and swoop in when a meal comes within striking distance. Its prey are mostly birds of about sparrow size up to robin size, sometimes up to the size of quail. It also eats small numbers of rodents, bats, squirrels, lizards, frogs, snakes, and large insects. Adults have solid gray upper parts and barred, reddish-brown underparts. Their long, square tails have gray and black bars with very narrow, white tips. Their eyes are red. Immature birds are brown above with diffuse brown streaking below; they have yellow eyes. Sharp-shinned Hawks have short, rounded wings that are set slightly more forward on their bodies than those of the larger, but similar-looking, Cooper’s Hawk. In size, the Sharp Shinned is slightly smaller than the Cooper’s and slightly larger than the American Kestrel. One of its distinguishing features is quicker, snappier wingbeats. It also prefers to breed secretively in extensive forests. Sharp Shinned hawks sometimes stalk urban bird feeders in search of prey, so if you see one too often near your feeder, it’s best to take the feeders inside for a few days until it moves on. The sight of this bird and other birds of prey in Baltimore Woods are a reminder that natural areas (and bird feeders!) in an urban area can provide rich habitat and prey that are essential for their survival.

Incredibly, spring is here, so its a great time to activate your gardening dreams. Fortunately, Friends of Baltimore Woods has a “Brigadoon-like” annual native plant sale in St. Johns in partnership with the pop-up, Sparrowhawk Native Plant Nursery. Online pre-ordering has ended, but If you missed the deadline, or if you simply want more plants, the flash sale is a fun way to score some lovely odds and ends for your habitat garden. Sparrowhawk sells off a small amount of overstock at liquidated prices at the end of the pop up sale. The flash sale will start at 3:30pm on Saturday, April 2 at the pick up site, the corner lot at N. Charleston and Central. Native plants are a win-win for your garden. Speaking from experience, they attract valuable pollinating insects and wildlife. They are also acclimatized to our area, and many are drought tolerant. Natives can add natural grace and beauty to any garden. Every time I add natives I’m amazed at their natural attractiveness and hardiness. Sparrowhawk Native Plant Nursery is a non-brick and mortar business, owned and operated by two amazing women, Nikkie West and Tracy Cozine. Their mission is to sell premium high quality native plants in partnership with different community non-profits, who in turn get a percentage of the proceeds. In 2022, they expect to give back $35,000 to their community partners. The percent of sales that are shared with FOBW, will go directly to operating costs. The Friends appreciate the volunteers and customers who make the annual plant sale fun and successful AND you can have naturally hardy and beautiful natives for your garden besides!

The Baltimore Woods has a new local ally tucked into Green Anchors, the eco-industrial park just north of Cathedral Park. What appears from the street to be a tumble of tiny houses, cranes, steel containers and quonsets, holds a hidden gem of riverfront gardens, buzzing beehives and a small nursery run by local nonprofit, Rewild Portland. Rewild Portland headquartered at Green Anchors in fall 2020, buying a 30 x 95 ft high tunnel greenhouse built on site in 2018 by landscape designer and artist Scott Sutton to grow plants for restoration of the former brownfield site on which Green Anchors sits. Rewild Portland’s mission is to build community resilience through teaching place-based ancestral arts and skills. Partnering with Green Anchors, the organization can now further this mission by growing craft and medicine plants specific to the skills and classes they teach, as well as native plants for community partners like Friends of Baltimore Woods, and other restoration projects. In collaboration, Friends of Baltimore Woods has donated seed, native plant starts, nursery tools and equipment remaining from their earlier plant sale days. The Friends also donated $500 to to jumpstart the first round of wildflower plantings destined for spring planting in the oak savannah. These include Douglas Aster, fireweed, gumweed, blanketflower, prunella and goldenrod. Much of the seed is collected from the neighborhood by FOBW hands and locally adapted to our microclimate. The ReWild nursery is currently rebuilding their large high tunnel greenhouse that collapsed in an ice storm in February 2021. It has been operating since then with smaller hoophouses, but will soon have a much increased capacity to continue rolling seasonal plantings for Baltimore Woods. Rewild Portland Nursery Director, Ivy Stovall, is a founding member of FOBW and a 20-year resident of St. Johns. As a long-time Baltimore Woods advocate and community organizer, Ivy is thrilled to be able to contribute to the restoration project by growing plants in close proximity to their destination and in close cooperation with the board and volunteers as they develop planting plans. Community education and skillsharing is central to the nursery mission, which runs on volunteer power. All are welcome to come learn and share knowledge about plant propagation and gardening at weekly volunteer sessions led by Ivy at Green Anchors. Volunteer dates and sign ups can be found here. Stay tuned for announcements about special volunteer sessions devoted to Baltimore Woods and come be a part of this full-circle, local restoration effort—from seeding, to planting, to tending the neighborhood wilds. You can check out Rewild Portland’s Community Nursery at their second annual Earth Day Weekend plant sale April 23rd and 24th, at Green Anchors, 8940 N. Bradford St. You can check out the project and take home native plants as well as plants for medicine, craft, dye, and eating.

On Thursday, Dec. 9, SOLVE and FoBW partnered to host a private team-building work party in the meadow for employees of New Relic, a Portland-based software company. In spite of cold, damp weather, the mostly home-based employees applied themselves enthusiastically to one or more of several different activities and had fun working in community. In fact, recently hired employees had their first opportunity to meet their coworkers due to the current requirement to work from home. The volunteers removed all the remaining prickly lettuce in the upper meadow in record time, while another group cut blackberry vines off native shrubs in the upper woodland. A third group planted 35 meadow checkerbloom that were generously donated by FoBW volunteer, Liz Daly. The New Relic group also mulched the new plantings with wood chips and finished by helping dig and remove invasive thistle. Whew! So much done in so little time. Thanks New Relic volunteers!