August is National Tree Check Month!

Original Post DNR: Check your trees for the Asian longhorned beetle   MICHIGAN, (WNEM) – They haven’t been found here yet, but the Department of Natural Resources is asking you to take a quick look around your trees for the Asian longhorned beetle. August has been declared national Tree Check Month, time to be on More

Earthworms at the Root of Sugar Maple Decline

By Marcia Goodrich  original post: Michigan Tech  A new study suggests that non-native worms are eating up the forest floor, causing sugar maples to die back and perhaps harming other forest dwellers. The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out, and corpses aren’t the only casualties. A Michigan Technological University scientist has fingered non-native earthworms More

Mappy Monday: America’s rural forests are shrinking

By Matt Hickman | February 23, 2017 | Mother Nature Network It’s easy — and completely logical — to assume that the further you move away from cities, the closer you’ll be to trees. And by trees, I don’t mean heavily trafficked public parkland with a few impressive stands here and there but large, remote tracts of forested wilderness. More

Hemlock wooly adelgid making trouble in Michigan

By Beth Hyatt | July 24, 2017 | Total Landscape Care Concerned citizens in Michigan are working to protect approximately 170 million hemlock trees from the hemlock wooly adelgid (HWA), which is a tiny insect that’s one of the most damaging invasive forest pests in eastern North America. Native to Japan and discovered in Virginia in 1951, the HWA More

Mappy Monday: How Urban Trees Can Save Lives

How Urban Trees Can Save Lives We’ve recently been enthralled by ESRI Story maps! They are an engaging and fun way to learn about various map-related subjects. Esri Story Maps let you combine authoritative maps with narrative text, images, and multimedia content, making it easy to harness the power of maps and geography to tell More

Mappy Monday: Tree Plotter

Do you ever wonder where the largest trees are in Grand Rapids? Or where the nearest Catalpa to your home is? How about the trees that are in bloom or the most colorful trees? Now you can know! This week we’re introducing the new and improved Tree Plotter! Friends of Grand Rapids Parks and the More

Mappy Monday!

Introducing the new Friends of Grand Rapids Parks’ Urban Forest Project blog series: In this blog series we will be exploring the wonderful world of trees, data, and maps For our introductory entry we will be highlighting one of our partners: Have you ever been in the middle of nowhere and wondered where you were? More

Mayor’s Tree of the Year 2017!

Our beautiful city is home to thousands of trees, each with their own history. Over the past five years Friends of Grand Rapid’s Parks has partnered with the City of Grand Rapids Mayor’s Office to champion a tree in our community that is special to the citizens of GR. The Mayor’s Tree of Year competition More

Grand Rapids in Bloom: Spring 2017 Tree Planting Season Recap

Another Friends of Grand Rapids Parks planting season is in the books, folks! Neighbors and volunteers came together at 9 separate locations helping to #GreenUpGR and give our neighborhoods a little extra bloom during this season’s major tree planting effort! Our Spring 2017 Planting For Our Future, Arbor Day and community tree planting season came More

Maple Eyespot Gall Midge: Odd and Alien Like Tree Problems. (Part 2)

Thank you Nick Sanchez (District Forester – Kent, Montcalm & Ionia Counties) for your contribution to the “Odd and Alien LIke Tree Problem blog! Maple Eyespot Gall Midge Ever get the feeling you are being watched? Every May, a tiny, mosquito-like fly called an ocellate gall midge, Acericecis ocellaris, emerges from the soil to mate More