Ant Diversity And Abundance Increase With Increasing Plant Complexity And Amount Of Garbage Bins In New York City Street Medians

No, seriously.

Is That Me . . . Or Just That Foul-Smelling Ginkgo?

A civic-minded group starts the heavy lifting of eradicating vomitous female ginkgos from the city:

Ten per cent of all trees in Manhattan are ginkgos, making it the borough’s third-most-common species. There is also the matter of its odor. Each fall, the mature female — as dioecious gymnosperms, ginkgos come in genders — produces ovules that, once fertilized, develop into bunches of seeds, each consisting of an inner kernel encased in a soft, fuzzy skin. The seeds look like green cherries and contain butyric acid, the smell of which has been variously described as “rancid butter,” “sour milk,” “sh*tberries,” and “dog crap.” The Anti-Ginkgo Tolerance Group put it this way, in a recent proposal:

We are here to solve the problem of the Ginkgo tree commonly known as vomit trees. . . . The Ginkgo tree is widely known by most people but not by name. Walking down the street on a beautiful October evening your moment of tranquility is rudely demolished by the smell of old cheese and vomit.

The members of the A.G.T.G. are few but spirited. The committee was formed in January, under the aegis of Teens Take the City, a Y.M.C.A. program designed to teach young people about local government, and one recent afternoon at the Grosvenor Neighborhood House, on the Upper West Side, its ranks numbered three: Tevin Perez, seventeen; Jackson Sansoucie, seventeen; and Daniel Maldonado, eighteen. The plan was to pass out pamphlets urging citizens to call 311 if they encountered the smelly seeds.

Perez, wearing a rumpled white button-down, khakis, and a puka-shell necklace, was the first to arrive. Seated at a table in a basement room with pocked blue walls, he and the group’s adviser, Stephen Lehtonen, said that, walking to a pizzeria one afternoon, the group had been inspired by a forty-foot ginkgo, on the front lawn of the nearby Frederick Douglass Houses, that particularly stunk. Perez likened its scent to “rotten eggs in a rare form.”

The Second-Coolest Thing Tony Avella Will Get In The Paper For This Week . . .

. . . after the resolution supporting a ban on the foie gras industry in New York state is being the keynote speaker at National Pigeon Day:

A group of pigeon-loving bird watchers wants New Yorkers to thank their feathered friends today for all the “charm” they drop on Gotham.

“National Pigeon Day” is set to be celebrated in Central Park this afternoon, with songs, prayers and speeches to honor this proud bird — not the “rats with wings” once decried by Woody Allen.

Organizers with the New York Bird Club insist that our feathered neighbors are completely misunderstood.

The pigeon proceedings get under wing 4 p.m. at Pilgrim Hill, near the park entrance at Fifth Avenue and East 72nd Street.

City Councilman Tony Avella (D-Queens) is set to be the event’s headline speaker, in a bid to strengthen his hold on the pigeon-loving electorate.

. . .

“The fact there is a National Pigeon Day shows pigeons have been of service to this country,” said Avella, and cited the pigeon’s roles in World Wars I and II as messengers.

“People have to remember that they are decent animals . . . and that they are part of the environment.”

. . .

“Pigeons give a city a wonderful flavor. They are part of the charm and they belong there,” organizers said.

“They are often a city child’s first contact with nature and an elderly person’s only friends.”

Annotation: Contrarianism is the defining feature of this decade, a scourge not easily abated, bring on the electrified subway trusses.

I Guess The Whole West Nile Problem Is Gone?

Because I assumed there was a small problem with the whole standing water thing:

The city is thinking outside the box — or, rather, inside the barrel — over water demand this summer.

A pilot program by the Department of Environmental Protection will hand out 250 rain barrels this month to Queens residents to collect storm water from rooftops for lawn-watering use.

The DEP estimates that up to 40 percent of some households’ summer water consumption goes to irrigation.

The barrels will be handed out in the lawn-heavy neighborhoods of Rosedale, St. Albans, New Hyde Park and Floral Park.

As If You Need Something Else To Keep You Up At Night . . .

. . . but look on the bright side — maybe the noise will drown out that 3 a.m. car stereo, your upstairs neighbors’ reggaeton mixes or all those drunk bar patrons. And maybe a cottage industry of cicada white noise sleep aids will crop up, and we’ll never not have to hear their 100-decibel hum:

Cicadas are succumbing to the 17-year itch.

The last time the giant, but harmless, insects visited New York, David Dinkins was mayor and the subway fare was $1.15.

But after living six inches underground since 1991, millions are about to come to the surface across the Northeast: The males will sing their distinctive song, the females will swoon, and then they will mate and die.

Unlike some species of cicadas, which show up year after year, the periodic variety arrives in intervals of 13 or 17 years, numbers that have mystified entomologists for generations.

“When the Pilgrims came to the New World, they thought cicadas were a plague from God and mislabeled them locusts, even though they are only a distant relation,” said John Cooley, an entomologist at the University of Connecticut.

. . .

This particular brood stretches from Georgia to Massachusetts. Locally, they are concentrated on Long Island, although some might remain in Brooklyn and Queens. “Cicadas have survived millions of years, even through ice ages, so if they are moving toward extinction, that is a concern,” he said.

As temperatures reach the mid-60s, the cicadas prepare to rise to the surface and complete their development, growing to as long as two inches.

Known as the loudest insects in the world, the male’s song can exceed 100 decibels, louder than a subway train.
. . .

When the cicadas are silenced in a few weeks, this particular brood will not return until 2025, but cicada fans can take heart, another 17-year brood is due in 2010.