Find Sweet Gum Field Sits on Top of a Waste Treatment Facility

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Vol 1, Spring 2018 treesoftomorrow.life Hidden Politics of OrnamentalStreet Trees Trees of Tomorrow Station StopsandResourceFlows: Found in Flushing,Queens 5/6/18 1:30 PM Will London Plane Supply Demand for Ecosystem Services? Haunting Takes Work Plantanus x acerifola The London Plane, a hybrid between the Plantanus occidenta- lis and the Plantanus orientalis, springs up in Spain or England through controlled collisions in the 17th-century. Its mottled lower bark peels like a snake’s and the upper branches look like bone. Snakes might evoke transition, mythical transportation between worlds, or translation. Bone might be a kind of deep immune system; it might be a kind of haunting, thus a kind of re-membering/ reassembly of limbs.

If the high branches look like bone, it haunts of the Elms throughout the US that died by the millions from Dutch Elm disease in the 1970s to the 1990s; London Plane was often planted to replace them. It haunts of Robert Moses, the too-powerful city planner who thwarted public transportation in favor of cars and highways, whose favorite tree was the Sycamore because of the way it arches over car-riddled streets.

London Plane also reminds us of being worked-to-the-bone; they are familiar workers, a part of the every-day street, idling with finches and lazily exceeding the spatial allocation of the sidewalk.

According to NYC Parks website, an average London Plane re- moves 843 gallons of stormwater a year, which they equate with a savings of $8.34. This tree conserves 714 kWh at a ToT: Is there anything you can say about the ways ecosys- value established by NYC Parks as $90.18; this Sycamore re- tem services rely on the idea of nature in balance? moves 1 lb of air pollutants per year saving $5.57, and reduces 225 lbs of CO2 each year, valuing at $.75 per year; Annual Ben- efits total at $105.59 per tree. Trees of Tomorrow managed to LP: conduct an interview with one of Flushing’s London Planes. We asked about its ecosystem services.

ToT: Hello London Plane, thank you so much for this interview. ToT: Do you imagine yourself as revolutionary ghost? We’re curious if you are aware of how your existence is quan- tified according to exchange value? LP: LP:

ToT: What would a revolutionary ecology of work look like for Find London Plane you? Everywhere in Flushing, basically. Outside of the urban environment, it especially loves river banks and wetlands LP: Nettles.

ToT: Nettles is a strong companion species for you? How Can a Tree Get Paid Fairly? This means conceiving of an alternate form of value. See Jason W. Moore, “Chapter Two: Value in the Web of Life” in Capialism LP: in the Web of Life (London: Verso Books, 2015) 51-74. and Mor- gan .M. Robertson. “”The nature that capital can see: science, state, and market in the commodification of ecosystem services.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, volume 24 (2006): 367 - 387. 1

ToT_TabloidResized.indd 2 5/6/18 1:30 PM Does Cherry Deliver Fruitless Truths? Fruitful Lies? Prunus serrulata, yeodensis, serotina, nudiflora, spp.

Wild Cherries The cherry with roots in North America prior to colonization has fruit that is bitter and acrid. Bitter flavor, in small amounts signal the transportation of compounds favorable to human digestion, generating fluids from the tongue all the way to the small intestine, activating digestive juices that enable embod- ied discernment. In large amounts, bitter is usually poison. Ac- rid flavors tell us that the heat of inflammation will be calmed; acrid indicates constituents that can talk down reactvity and de-escalate issues that come along with foreign invasion. .

Landscape as Product Many cherry species are rooted in soils of colonization, diplomacy, and domination, delivering sweetnees, sourness, ornamentality, deceit, overtures of peace. Peace that comes from falling pink blossoms, from liminoid festival, peace that comes from power.

In Early Modernity, sweet and sour cherries travel from West Asia to Europe, arriving in Flanders then England. From 1735 to 1869, the Prince Nurseries in Flushing sell sweet and sour cherries. From 1839 to 1906, Parsons Nursery specialize in trees and shrubs from Eastern Asia. Parsons Nursery imports Find Cherry ornamental cherry varietals from Japan; we might conjecture It usually has horizontal striations and shiny bark about connections between how ornamentality and exoticism function in colonial cultivations. Graft Fruit Branches In Flushing-Corona Park, a ring of cherries swirl around a stat- ue of George Washington, reminding us he did tell a lie; he cut Consider grafting fruiting branches onto ornamental ones. down the cherry tree. He also was a plantation owner and Graft in early spring. Using a wedge, whip, or whip and tongue visited nurseries in Flushing, perhaps buying cherries and par- graft. Line up the vascular cambium, or inner bark, with the ticipating in the cultivation of his plantation - a more-than-hu- graft and host tree (water and sugar travel through this thin man landscape built from supremacist power structures and layer of green, so it is important they match up). Cherries can violence. host other Prunus species or be grafted onto them.

Diplomacy and Domination Visit: http://guerrillagrafters.org Cherry blossoms are arteries of peace and diplomacy at the turn of the 20th-century; First Lady Taft grafts ornamentation onto new throroughfares in the US capitol -- from elaborate diplomatic channels between Japan and the US. But the first 1. 2. 3. 4. 2000 ornamental cherry trees to arrive in the US from Japan route infections and parasites, so they are all burned. Thou- sands more cherry blossom trees arrive.

Winding cherry roots connect to Korea and the Japanese oc- cupation from 1910 to 1945. Cultivars of Prunus Yedoensis be- set the streets and the countryside of Korea. Cherry Blossom festivals are stationed. Many Koreans claim the cherry trees that appear in droves originate from Korea at an earlier period. Genetic tests are conducted. Botanists debate. Korean ‘King’ cherry is discovered as endangered in the mountains. 2

ToT_TabloidResized.indd 3 5/6/18 1:30 PM Trees of Tomorrow

Flushing Creek

Garden Center Tidal Gate Bridge Home Depot

Lumber Yard

Queens Botanical Garden

Pool of Industry Transportation Routes Trees of Tomorrow tour route marked by branches:

London Maple Mulberry Plane Honey N Cherry Locust Oak

Pear Ginkgo Pine W E Sweet Japanese Hawthorne Flushing Meadows Gum Zelkova Corona Park S Mets - Willets Point Subway & LIRR Station .05mi .10mi .15mi 1939 World’s Fair Horticultural Scale Exhibition Gardens on Parade

ToT_TabloidResized.indd 4 5/6/18 1:30 PM Trees of Tomorrow

Flushing Creek

Garden Center Tidal Gate Bridge Home Depot

Lumber Yard

Queens Botanical Garden

Pool of Industry Transportation Routes Trees of Tomorrow tour route marked by branches:

London Maple Mulberry Plane Honey N Cherry Locust Oak

ToT_TabloidResized.indd 5 5/6/18 1:30 PM Can Sweet Gum Respond to

No They Didn’t Try Everything in the Forest Post-Antibiotic Future? Liquidambar styraciflua At the turn of the 15th-century Paracelsus writes of a common mnemonic device and way of knowing among herbalists, known as the Doctrine of Signatures. This doctrine, likely developed from folk medicine, states that something about a plant -- it’s habit, appearance, or constituent parts -- will indicate how it can be used medicinally. Yellow Dock’s yellow root indicates an affinity with the liver; the porous looking nature of yarrow flowers and the fact it grows on borders indicates affinity with the skin. From this way of knowing, our heightened senses tell us what we need to know about a plant. This can be extended to taste, for example sweet-ish flavors tell us tissue will be re- paired, sour flavors act on the gall bladder, bitter is poison but helpful to the digestion in small amounts.

Spikes and Gum Popular among urban planners for its fast growth and reddish color in the fall, Sweet Gum trees produce round fruits that have many curling spikes, and many porous openings. The fruit is hard, and unlike Sycamore pods, will endure on the ground and underfoot. The fruit of these trees contain shikimic acid, an antiviral metabolite, and traditionally used for a range of viral infections. Sweet Gum’s common name comes from the resinous smelling, oozing sap which can be chewed and used as a gum, also used traditionally for tooth problems. The sap Moving Past Ornamentality and Into a Culture of Use. and leaves of this tree have been traditionally employed as Soils are history, material, living networks, and metaphor. What infusion, compress, or tincture for their anti-microbial action, happens when the ground under our feet isn’t reckoned with? and studies show that Sweet Gum has an effect on antibiotic Sweet Gum grow throughout the Flushing-Corona Park, an area resistant staph infections. that was once a wetlands, then a landfill, now a park. Layers beneath our feet tell of salt marshes that contributed significantly to ecologies ex- tending to Meadow Lake, and larger city maritime ecologies, of ash and coal dumps, dras- tic pesticide use -- to lay the groundwork for the park and in attempt to control new, ag- gressive grasses -- that lead

to fish die-off in the waterways. Adjacent to the park, a soccer Find Sweet Gum field sits on top of a waste treatment facility. ToT imagines By looking for fallen fruits. Then look up. Find Sweet Gum in entanglements between urban planning, wetlands ecosystems, Flushing-Corona Park amongst the Sycamores by the golf dumps, and tourist attractions -- entanglements through which course. species less friendly to humans emerge. Many superbugs now have antibiotic resistance, a direct result of the overuse of pesticides, hospital run-off, prolific antibiotic use in agriculture. Senses Engaged Can Sweet Gum help us respond to a post-antibiotic future? Crush a leaf and smell it. Non judgementally jot down everything ToT suggests to make like the chipmunks and the cardinals; it makes you think of. Do the same with the fruit; try cracking make Liquidambar styriciflua your ally. open the pods. With a cleared mind, write notes about what you see and sense, Observe the whole tree, it’s shape and hab- its. Draw what you see. Then draw what is not there. 5

ToT_TabloidResized.indd 6 5/6/18 1:30 PM Hawthorne’s Duplicitous Transport of Human Labor Crataegus spp.

Is Hawthorne Enemy or Ally? A multispecies companion, valued for medicine, survival food, hardwood, and magick, Hawthorne was a powerful ally in pre-capitalist Europe. As enclosures gained ground and drove commoning practices underground, Hawthorne transformed into hedgerows, making usufruct territories private. No longer able to access an anarchist exchange of food and resource, Hawthorne’s thorns drove folks to new, industrializing cities for work and sustenance, turning commoners into cheap labor (albeit feeding them on the way, earning its name as the ‘bread and cheese’ tree).

Hawthorne, a commoning co-conspirator, pushed people to factories. But does Hawthorne have another chapter? Can Hawthorne be a player in making urban commons-- staunching the unsustainable flow of cheap food, cheap labor, cheap re- sources from rural countryside to city?

Borders and Thorns Hawthorne often have many gnarled trunks coming up out of the ground, and lots of unruly branches. It is often host to To Make a Tincture of Hawthorne: many lichens. Many birds and other creatures eat the berries. The big long thorns are irregular. Pick flowers in late spring. Do not pick all of them. Pick some leaves. Chop the flowers Hawthorne have white or pink flowers. Flowers are five-pet- aled, sweet but mild smelling, produced in 2- to 3-inch inflores- and the leaves, and put in an appropriately cences. The fruit is not very sweet. sized jar; cover with brandy. Close jar and shake everyday. In the fall, return to the tree. Hawthorne Makes Sense of Tangles Collect the red berries and then place them A strong tonic, the Hawthorn is associated with the heart. It is used for treating all kinds of disorders of the human heart in a larger jar adding the leaves, flowers and and circulatory system. It increases the blood flow to the heart brandy mixture from the spring. Let sit for muscles and restores the heart beat. Bioflavonoids in the fruit are thought to be largely responsible for its medicinal actions, 6 weeks, shaking every day and thinking although herbalists claim the flowers and leaves are also very about good things. Strain and press out with beneficial. Consider it for tumours when there are complicated cheese cloth. Store in amber bottle. veinous supply lines.

Hawthorne is long associated with mending a broken heart perhaps because it helps a person to integrate experience and reinvent from a tangle of connections. Find Hawthorne Find Hawthorne amidst experimental bioswales on the south side of Sanford Street at College Point Boulevard. Stop the Cheap Flows Toss companion seeds to protect the base of a Hawthorne, and to offer biomass: chives, marigold, borage, comfrey, lemon balm, plantain, mustard, nasturium, calendula, tansy, yarrow. 6

ToT_TabloidResized.indd 7 5/6/18 1:30 PM Trees of Tomorrow is conceptualized, organized, and executed by Margaretha Haughwout (Guerrilla Grafters), Cody Ann Herrmann, and Julian Louis Phillips, in alliance with Social Practice Queens and the John Bowne High School Agricultural Program; it was initiated along with Greg Sholette and Randall Szott.

Many thanks to Steve Perry and Patryja Jamilowska of John Bowne High School; Chuck Wade; Jack Eichenbaum, Queens Borough Historian; John Choe and the Greater Flushing Chamber of Commerce; Deborah Silverfine and the Voelker-Orth Museum, Bird Sanctuary and Victorian Gardens; Anne Pal and the Bowne House; and the Quaker Meeting House.

The Trunkless Tree artwork in this publication is the work of the amazing John Bowne Agricultural Program students: Cherry: Larissa Li; Willow: Angelica ‘Noguera, Katsura: Diana Vazguez, Gingko: Gabriella Heyward; Sweet Gum: Antonio Crespo; Sycamore: Destiny Irazarry.

Design by Benji Geisler and Margaretha Haughwout, Texts by Margaretha Haughwout

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