The sighting didn’t occur in some flower-filled field but in Queens, perhaps better known for shopping malls than wildlife. When I heard that an employee of New York City’s Department of Environmental Protection had discovered three chrysalises in a planting bed near 97th Street and 63rd Road, I boarded the M train to join the festivities.
“They were munching on Asclepias incarnata,” otherwise known as milkweed, the species’ favorite food, said Maria Corporan, the supervisor gardener who discovered them earlier this month. “I always look at the plants to see if there’s any diseases. I was like, oh my God, I guess we’ve got monarchs here.”
She wasn’t referring to fully formed butterflies but the humble caterpillars that precede them. The caterpillars create chrysalises, or pupas, the cases that protect and envelope them as they transform.
Ms. Corporan showed me a picture on her phone. To my surprise, the caterpillars were rather attention-grabbing on their own—large and with a monarch’s characteristic orange, black and white pattern.
She pointed out two of their chrysalises in the planting bed. I was surprised she found them, even though she saw the caterpillars at work. The chrysalises hung like jade-colored dewdrops, hidden on the underside of a dogwood shrub’s leaves.
Ms. Corporan feared that the third one, hooked onto a sweet pepperbush, was too close to the bed’s guardrail and could get knocked loose by a passerby. She took it back to her office, hoping it would emerge there.
I assumed that the butterflies would require a habitat at least the size of a vest-pocket park, but the planting bed appeared to be no more than 20 feet long and less than 10 feet wide. And butterfly habitat wasn’t even its primary purpose.
It was a bioswale, a piece of land designed to filter silt and pollution from surface water that might otherwise overwhelm water-treatment plants during heavy storms. “We’ve built over 2,500 around the city,” with thousands more planned, said Vincent Sapienza, the Department of Environmental Protection’s acting commissioner.
15 comments:
Something good for a change. No?
Just wait until the entire bioswale is filled with garbage...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiYtdnsdt1o
Well this is a nice thing. A Queens Anomaly.
I am waiting for the one in my neighborhood. Think it is a great idea. People should be educated more on the positive side of this.
It helps the environment and looks nice.
Queens used to be full of bioswales, they were called front and back yards. They were made of dirt and vegetation, no government programs needed.
Is this uncommon? I see Monarchs fluttering around my neighborhood, and milkweed growning in many untended lots.
Bios-whales?
"Thar she blows"!
Somebody is making money off of these.
Maybe if the barbarian homeowners did not pave their front yards for extra parking spaces and cut down their trees, we would not be needing these rescue attempts.
The city spends money putting these in.
Now...WHI WILL BE TAKING CARE OF THESE?
The homeowners? I doubt it.
On 164St. Flushing, over 18 curb trees were just planted.
Most are dying because the homeowners are too fucking lazy to water them.
Great places for your dog to piss on.
Where are the bioswale police?
Bike lanes and bioswales.
Face it, we do not have a civilized population in NYC anymore who respect these amenities.
Queens used to be full of bioswales, they were called front and back yards. They were made of dirt and vegetation, no government programs needed.
in a nutshell, say no more.
in memoriam to the simple things in life.
Bioswales are going to be a big boondoggle They cost $25,000 each to install,also they are dangerous when getting in and out of a car,there will be lawsuits and just like the tree pits they will become o trash pit.Might be smarter to give tax breaks to landlords who have a certain amount of greenspace to encourage it.
>Most are dying because the homeowners are too fucking lazy to water them.
The city usually gets more than enough rain for the trees, but this spring and early summer were unusually dry.
Last year I saw a lot of trees dead regardless of the rainfall.
I even saw one homeowner pouring remaining car cleaning fluid into one of those tree pits.
Lazy homeowners do not give a shit, except when they let their dogs shit in tree pits.
Yikes!
$25,000 per bioswale?
Put it towards real,quality education,
and enforce the city law that does not permit homeowners paving front yards for parking.
These are not needed.
And....a little history lesson....if past borough president Connely did not pocket a lot of cash...we would have had a complete two pipe sewer system to,adequately carry off water. Instead of one pipe for pee and poop and another for rainwater we have a combined one pipe flow.
I think this happened in the 1930s.
Queens's government, full of crooks back then and now.
Park your car in front one of tyese and the minute you open your curb door, you've mowed down some plantings.
Of course, you could all step out into the street side and be hit by an oncoming vehicle instead.
What idiot dreamed up this quick bandaid fix for a mortal wound?
The real problem lies in the rampant overdevelopment that is occurring.
Replace a one home with four and you've got about 16 asses on toilet seats pouring more shit into our antiquated sewer system.
When the rainwater miixes with this, you've got poop soup backing up into basements and overflowing into our streets.
164th Street, between Crocheron and 33rd , was a prime example years ago.
Dry wells were finally installed but these bioswales are still being maked off in abundance for this stretch of the nabe.
Curb overdevelopment! Problem solved. Ah, but then there would be no contractor-developer kickbacks to pond scum like Vallone.
We have checked the facts. He is a developers' lobbyist! Vote for his opponent!
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