Arboretum Newsletter - Volume II, Issue 3, Summer 2003

Arboretum Hosts Area Elementary Students

The School Days Tours brought nine classes of third, fourth and fifth grade students to the ETSU Arboretum on March 13, 2003. The young visitors learned ways to measure the height and diameter of large trees from Arboretum outreach coordinator Susan Antkiewicz and volunteer Charlie Mattioli. Campus Horticulturalist Kathleen Moore demonstrated proper tree planting techniques in the beds of the new Veterans Memorial Dwarf Conifer Garden. Arboretum director Foster Levy introduced some of the giant trees on campus, and co-director Tim McDowell presented basic tree morphology to the many elementary school students. Each of the classes was given trees to plant on their school grounds, and each of the students received arboretum maps and walking tour brochures. We thank the Forestry Division of the Tennessee Department of Agriculture and the United States Department of Agriculture for their support of the School Days Tours through a grant to the ETSU Arboretum.Thanks also to the participating teachers at Fairmont Elementary School, Lakeridge Elementary, and the Ashley Academy.

Two-Day Teacher Workshop a Big Success

A workshop introducing school teachers to advanced topics in plant biology through explorations of the tree collections of the ETSU Arboretum was conducted on July 18th and 19th. Fourteen teachers attended the workshop, which ran all day Friday and Saturday. The workshop focused on the close evolutionary relationships between tree species of the southeastern United States and their counterpart species in eastern China, Japan and Korea. The Arboretum now features several pairs of closely related American and Asian species, such as the Tulip Poplar and its Chinese sister species (Liriodenron tulipifera and L. chinense), the Ironwood and its Japanese cousin (Carpinus caroliniana and C. japonica), and closely related pairs from the dogwoods (Cornus), magnolias (Magnolia), sycamores (Platanus) and maples (Acer).