Volume 3, Number 1 - Penn State Erie

The Arboretum at Penn State Behrend
Penn State Erie, The Behrend College
4215 Station Road
Erie, PA 16563-0107
Printed on recycled paper
Ethel Kochel Garden Dedicated
Ethel Kochel was the guest of honor at the surprise
October 5, 2007 dedication of the Ethel Kochel Garden,
the newest addition to the Arboretum at Penn State Behrend.
Jeffrey Kochel ’71 AGR and his wife Pamela Olson
Kochel ‘73 LIB, commissioned the garden as a tribute
to his mother. At the suggestion of Mary Beth McCarthy,
Penn State Master Gardener and director of the College’s
Center for Career Development, the Kochels chose to
renovate the patio area located on the west side of the
building that is dedicated to his father, Irvin Kochel.
As designed and planted by Dahlkemper Landscape
Architects and Contractors, it features a Skyline
(Sunburst) honey locust tree and ornamental grasses
including ‘Karl Foerster’ feather reed grass. An acidstained
pattern enhances the existing paving. Two new
metal picnic tables allow students, faculty, and staff the
opportunity to study, relax, or dine al-fresco.
The highlight of the garden, however, is a collection
of dwarf conifers, a favorite of Mary Behrend. The
fifteen species of conifers include: Pinus strobus ‘Nana’,
Pinus strobus ‘Contorta Nana’, Pinus strobus ‘Hershey’,
Pinus strobus ‘Horsford’, Pinus strobus ‘Pendula’, Pinus
strobus ‘Torulosa’, Pinus mugo mugo, Pinus mugho
purmillo, Microbiota decussate, Picea abies pumilla,
Chamaecyparis p. filfera ‘Sungold’, Picea mariana
‘Ericoides’, Dwarf globe blue spruce, Chamaecyparis
obtusa gracilis, and Picea abies nidiformis.
Mrs. Kochel is the widow of the late Irvin Kochel who
served as the director of Penn State Behrend from 1954
until 1980. When the family first arrived on campus they
lived on campus, in an old farmhouse, and Mrs. Kochel
became fond of Behrend property. According to Jeff
Kochel, “my mother has always been interested in the
campus grounds and was concerned about retaining the
‘country feel’ of Behrend as it expanded under my father’s
leadership. She supported my father in many ways during
Behrend’s development. It just seemed to fit to bring
all this together in a garden that represents Pam and my
appreciation for the Behrend grounds and highlights
a section of the building named after my father with a
garden honoring my mother. This recognizes her support
‘behind the scenes’ for my father, and her love of nature.”
Jeffrey Kochel is employed at Forest Investment Associates
in Smethport, providing timberland investment
and management services to individual and institutional
investors, and corporations. As a student he worked
summers on the Behrend grounds crew. Says Mr. Kochel:
“Since my wife and I both enjoy the beauty of the
campus and think this is an important asset for Behrend,
we were interested in doing something to help with the
development of the new arboretum.”
Back row: Irvin Kochel III
(’75 SCI), Pamela Olson
Kochel (‘73 LIB), Jeffrey
Kochel (’71 AGR), Terry
Young
Front Row: Carla Kochel
(’75 HHD), Ethel Kochel,
Patty Kochel Young
Quirky Quercus
VolUmE 3 NUmbEr 1 | SprINg 2008 | www.greencampus.psu.edu
Oaks are flowering plants belonging to the genus
Quercus, the Latin name derived from two
Celtic words: quer, meaning fine and cuez,
meaning tree. In the same family are beeches (genus
Fagus) and chestnuts (genus Castanea); only the oaks
produce acorns. The only other genus producing acorns
is Litliocarpus, the tanbark oak.
These trees are set apart by four characteristics: a
fruit known as the acorn; a distinctive, wind-pollinated
flower; a strong, complex wood; and an ability to live for
many decades, if not centuries. The acorn, producing
female flowers, are scattered singly or in small groups
among the youngest twigs The pollen-producing male
flowers are clustered on pendulous threads known as
catkins. A male flower has five to 12 stamens that make
the pollen and between 25-100 male flowers form a
catkin and each tree bears thousands of catkins in a
single year.
Typically the genus Quercus is divided into two major
groups: red and white. Both have lobed leaves with the
red oak lobes bristle-tipped while the white oaks have
rounded lobes. Other obvious differences are in the
acorns. Red oak acorns require two years to mature while
white oaks mature in one season (annuals). Red oak acorn
cups have velvety hairs on the inner surface. Another
feature that the wine industry has taken advantage of is
that the heartwood of white oaks have clogged vessels
(part of the anatomy of wood) that makes them impervious
to liquids. White oak barrels make up the cooperage
industry. Because red oaks have open vessels and easily
absorb wood preservatives, they are used in oak flooring.
White oak evolutionary lineage has rounded lobes,
not pointed. Tips of the lobes and the rest of the leaf
margin (edge) may have teeth or spines, not bristles.
Teeth are green leaf tissue drawn to a point along the
margin. If the point is hard and very sharp it is called a
spine. Bristles are dry, colorless extensions of a leaf vein
that go beyond the margin. Acorns of white oaks ripen
in one year and the scales of the acorn are knobby.
Red oak evolution, sometimes called black, has
deeply lobed leaves or unlobed, oval leaves. Lobes or
margins of the leaves are tipped with tawny bristles that
extend beyond the green of the blade. Acorns typically
take 2 years to ripen, with the exception of the coast
live oak of California. Its acorn scales are thin and flat,
covering the acorn like shingles.
But what seems not to fit into the oak leaf formula
are those oak leaves without any lobing or which have
serrated margins instead. The following “red oaks” have
elliptical leaves with smooth (entire) margins: Quercus
imbricata (Shingle Oak) and Quercus phellos (Willow
Oak). At least six more southern oaks also could be
included here. An odd form of lobing occurs in another
“red oak” the Quercus marilandica (Blackjack Oak).
The “white oaks” that are not lobed appear to have
serrated margins in the following species: Quercus
michauxii (Swamp Chestnut Oak) which sports a wavy
margin in 9-14 rounded teeth and Quercus muehlenbergii
(Chinkapin Oak). Other” white oaks” have very
shallow lobes or an entire margin such as: Quercus bicolor
(Swamp White Oak) and Quercus prinodes (Dwarf
Chinkapin Oak). Many of these listed above can be found
in the Arboretum at Penn State Behrend.
Ed Masteller, Ph.D., professor emeritus of biology,
may be contacted at e11@psu.edu.
Quercus alba. White oaks
have leaves with rounded
lobes. Their acorns, producing
female flowers,
are scattered in small
groups among the youngest
twigs.
IN THIS ISSUE
Remembering Aldo
Leopold 2
The Revival of the
Ameican Chestnut 3
? 4
This publication is available
in alternative media upon
request.
Penn State is committed to
affirmative action, equal opportunity,
and the diversity of
its workforce.
U.Ed. EBO 08-xx
For information about the
arboretum call 814-898-6160

Sand County
Almanac is the
2008 choice
for One Book,
One Erie
Remembering Aldo Leopold
We approach the sixtieth anniversary of the
death of Aldo Leopold (1887-1948). His
legacy lies in our attitudes towards nature.
We expect our visit to an arboretum to be an experience
of learning and spiritual enrichment. Earlier generations
may have seen timber, pulp, or employment in trees.
They still may, but for many the uses of trees are inseparable
from our conviction that we need a sense of beauty,
an ethic of conservation, and knowledge of the world we
did not create. What we may forget is that our sense of
wonder grows from the achievements of persons whose
name and works are less well known. Typically they
include such names as Sweden’s Carl Linnaeus (1707-
1778), an inventor of modern scientific nomenclature
and Rachel Carson (1907-1964), a marine biologist
whose book, Silent Spring, helped
make us sensitive to the fragility of
nature. Like Carson, Leopold became
best known for a single work, Sand
County Almanac, one that has never
gone out of print and remains a pioneering
work of nature writing.
Leopold’s biography understates
the impact of his ideas. He developed
a sense of nature as an interdependent
community, a “land ethic,” in which human
intervention demands a knowledge
and responsibility beyond any economic
purpose. Of course, the objective of a
sustainable relation among humans,
plants, and animals is the only one that has economic
justification, yet Leopold’s vision is one which recognizes
the integrity of living things. He especially mourned the
disappearance of wolves and grizzly bears and the need to
set aside areas of roadless wilderness in the West. In his
words, “relegating grizzlies to Alaska is about like relegating
happiness to heaven; one may never get there.” One
suspects Leopold’s conviction was a result of his gift of
powerful observation. He was born near Burlington, Iowa
near the Mississippi at a time when some of the original
prairie survived, and because of his parents emphasis
on education, he enjoyed a privileged secondary education
that brought him to graduate from Yale School of
Forestry.
Employed by the US Forestry Service, Leopold spent
his first assignment in the US territory that would become
the state of Arizona. He would also work in New Mexico’s
Gila National Forest, part of which was set aside for the
Aldo Leopold Wilderness. In 1924, Leopold became
Director of the Forest Products Laboratory in Madison,
Wisconsin. Less than a decade later, at a time of dust
bowl drought, he lent his expertise to a project of the
Department of Agriculture’s newly formed Soil Erosion
Service. The 1933 watershed demonstration project for
soil erosion at the town of Coon Valley in southwestern
Wisconsin proved the value of more deliberate farming
practice. The project also laid a basis for the work of the
Civilian Conservation Corps. In 1935, after joining the
faculty at the University of Wisconsin, Leopold purchased
a run down farm that became a model of natural
restoration and conservation available to his students and
a source of inspiration for Sand County Almanac.
It is hardly surprising that Leopold’s writing about
trees emphasized their role as sentinels of other natural
events. One of his essays “Good Oak” mourns a great oak
of 30” in diameter with some eighty rings. The tree was
struck down by lightning at Leopold’s beloved farm. His
use of its fire wood made him reflect as he cut through the
rings. Leopold notes that about the time of the tree’s germination
in 1865 there was evidently a scarcity of rabbits,
since the seedling survived. He starts at the “dust bowl
droughts” of the 1930s on the “Babbittian” decade of the
1920s when everything grew bigger and better in heedless
arrogance and the decade after 1910 “when steam
shovels sucked dry the marshes of central Wisconsin to
make farms, and made ash heaps instead.” The years of
fierce fire and drought alternate with some of the greater
sadness of extermination. When on September 10,
1877, “two brothers shooting at Muskego Lake, bagged
210 Blue-winged Teal in one day, and in 1876 four
hunters killed 153 Prairie Chickens, and one Chicago
firm received and marketed 25,000...”. “In 1871, within
a 50-mile triangle spreading northwestward from my oak,
136 million Passenger Pigeons nested...” in their largest
concentration before confronting extinction .
In the essay “December,” Leopold takes special joy
in the “candle” of new growth in the pines. “In fact every
Pine carries an open bankbook in which his cash balance
is recorded by June 30 of every year. If, on that date, his
completed candle has developed a terminal cluster of ten
or twelve buds, it means that he has salted away enough
rain and sun for a two-foot or even three-foot skyward
next Spring.” There is abundant evidence of the genius
that prompted Leopold’s observation and his testimony.
Perhaps the best way to bring it honor is to recall his belief
that “we can be ethical only in relation to something we
can see, feel, understand, love, or otherwise have faith
in.” Surely the great natural beauty that is Pennsylvania’s
heritage makes imperative such a relation.
Zachary T. Irwin, Ph.D., associate professor of political
science, may be contacted at zti1@psu.edu.
The Revival of the American Chestnut
At the beginning of the 20th century the American
chestnut (Castanea dentata) trees at the
New York Zoological Garden began to die because
of a fungal infection that would girdle the trunks
and choke off the vascular system. By mid-century the
fungus, now described as the chestnut blight (Cryphonectria
parasitica), spread throughout the range of
the American chestnut, and the result was an ecological
disaster. Millions of acres of forest in the eastern United
States were decimated and the American chestnut, once
a dominant tree in large portions of the Appalachian
Highlands, was reduced to a minor species in the ecosystem.
The fate of the American chestnut tree became
an example of the environmental havoc and ruin that can
result from the introduction of a non-native species.
The American chestnut tree was of great economic
and ecological value. It was fast growing and the wood
was highly valued for construction because of its
resistance to rot. The nuts, or mast, were a major food
source for many forest species and they were highly
prized for human consumption. Roasted chestnuts,
chestnut stuffing, cakes, and breads were typical fare in
American cuisine. All of that changed with the introduction
of the chestnut blight. Huge swaths of Appalachian
forest were transformed as chestnut trees died and were
replaced with other species such as oak and maple.
From Ontario to Alabama, and from Maine to Illinois,
the American chestnut was reduced to an insignificant
plant that survived by sprouting from stumps or in a few
isolated stands that escaped disease. Even today the
American chestnut survives in the forest by sprouting
from the old stumps left after the initial dieback.
The sprouts rarely reach tree size because the fungus
re-infects, but an occasional tree reaches maturity and
sets seed. However, the American chestnut is no longer
a significant species in the North American forest, it
is no longer a commodity for the timber industry, and
the edible chestnuts sold in stores are not from the
American chestnut but are usually imported and from
the European chestnut (Castanea sativa).
Despite the devastation wrought by the blight, tree
breeders, foresters, and biologists have not surrendered
the field and given up on the American chestnut as a
valuable species and an integral part of the American
landscape and heritage. A search of the natural stands
of American chestnut has not revealed a high degree
of genetic resistance to the blight but changes in the
virulence of the fungus that causes the blight have been
discovered in some locations. This hypovirulence might
have some success in controlling the blight in contained
stands. More promising is a long-term breeding pro-
gram that involves crossing the American chestnut with
the blight resistant Chinese chestnut (Castenea mollissima)
and then backcrossing to the American trees in
order to develop a hybrid that is disease resistant but has
the wood, nut, and form of the American chestnut tree.
The American Chestnut Foundation (www.acf.org)
is leading the charge in this approach with the goal of
establishing breeding stocks of resistant plants and then
releasing, by the end of this decade, disease resistant
American chestnut trees to the public. The last century
was a disaster for the American chestnut but through
the dedication of scientists, foresters, and geneticists,
perhaps the 21st century will witness the reintroduction
of this important species in the North American forests.
The Arboretum at Penn State Behrend has recently
planted American chestnut trees, Chinese chestnut
trees, and progeny generated from a cross between
these two species. The trees are still small, but a walk
through the Arboretum will give you a chance to see a
tree that was once a leader in the forest landscape and
the American way of life.
Michael A. Campbell, Ph.D., associate professor of
biology, may be contacted at mac17@psu.edu.
The Arboretum at Penn
State Behrend has recently
planted American
chestnut trees, Chinese
chestnut trees, and
progeny generated from a
cross between these two
species.