Wild bean (Apios americana). Herbaceous, perennial, twining vine in the pea family (Fabaceae) found occasionally in the city (so a NYC rarity). This one was found in a canopy opening in a moist forest. I wonder why this isn’t available horticulturally? Pelham Bay Park, Bronx.
FROM THE DAILY GREEN: Being green can be lonely. As a botanist and urban conservation biologist, I fancy myself a real eco-type: preserving open space and restoring rare plant populations, what could be greener than that? Yet in the environmental community at large, I feel like an outsider.
Apprising people of my line of work, the response is either puzzled looks or inquiries about a certain stubborn mildew on prized garden roses. People no longer know what a botanist does, which is study plants in the wild. The current green conversation gushes over emerging technologies and new design. It is enthralled with the latest eco-iteration (“Is your pen good enough for the planet?”) and focused on calculating carbon footprints. This focus on “modern” and “cutting edge” ignores the history of the movement and leaves me feeling like I exist in backwater, a quaint and irrelevant anachronism. Where, in this discussion, is nature? After all, doesn’t the color green come from good ol’ chlorophyll?