Master Gardeners of Northern Virginia
Over 40 Years of Growing Gardens and Gardeners
Curious how sugars produced during photosynthesis in the leaves or water and minerals absorbed by the roots move through a plant? Do you know how plants without leaves produce sugars or why cacti should be harvested around midday? Learn more with our new Glossary words—VASCULAR BUNDLE and VEIN.
Are you ready for spring? starting to plant your vegetable garden? Did you know that many vegetables you grow are actually fruits (our newest Glossary word)? Learn about the nature of fruits, their development, and the different types we find on our favorite plants and on our plates. Happy Gardening!
Today is Squirrel Appreciation Day. Despite their sometimes-destructive behavior digging up and eating cultivated plants and bulbs, squirrels provide ecological benefits like pest control and seed dispersal. Some of those seeds are contained in nuts, our newest Illustrated Glossary entry. Learn more about nuts, and gray, black and white squirrels!
The most common fruits are capsules, which come in many shapes and sizes and are categorized by how they split open to release their seeds. To learn more, click on our latest and last word for 2023, capsule.
If you are unsure of what constitutes a native, non-native/alien, or invasive species, we offer definitions and explain why what you plant and grow on your property matters. Click on the words to learn more.
This is the time of year when the changing leaves pique our interest. If you pick up a leaf and look at it closely you’ll notice its veins follow a certain pattern. The arrangement of veins on a leaf is called venation, which is a starting point for many plant identification systems. One of the most common forms of venation is pinnate.
Beneficial or pest or both? Larvae, the second life stage of insects like butterflies, moths, beetles, and flies that go through complete metamorphosis, can be herbivores, predators, or scavengers. Can you tell the difference? To learn more, go directly to the Illustrated Glossary page by clicking here.
The word scale may instill some dread in those of us who have overindulged in a meal or two, but to a gardener it may conjure up a sap-sucking insect and honeydew—no, not the melon—which promotes the growth of unsightly sooty mold on plants. To learn more about these terms, go directly to the Illustrated Glossary page by clicking here.
Because good soil is the foundation for healthy plants, before you choose plants for your garden make sure you know the composition of your soil—is it mostly clay, sand, silt, loam?—and whether it requires the addition of humus or mulch. To learn more about these terms, go directly to the Illustrated Glossary page by clicking here.
You can help the native pollinator population by growing native plants in your gardens. However, home improvement stores and many nurseries tend to stock more cultivars, nativars, and hybrids than native species. Click on the link to go directly to the Illustrated Glossary page to learn how cultivars and nativars differ from native plants and the potential ecological impact you should consider before purchasing them.
Green Community Celebration and Home & Garden Tour
Get ideas and inspiration to help build a greener community in Arlington on Sunday, June 4, 1-4pm!
Visit green homes, gardens and community spaces throughout Arlington
Join us for a Green Community Celebration at Shirlington Library Plaza.
The 20th annual Green Home and Garden Tour will showcase green homes, green renovations, and watershed-friendly gardens in Arlington. Sneak a peek at sustainable features, including energy efficient technologies, solar energy, water-saving technologies, rain gardens, native plants, wildlife habitat and more.
The simultaneous Green Community Celebration at Shirlington Library Plaza will feature electric vehicles, exhibits and family-friendly fun!
This event is sponsored by Arlington County’s Office of Sustainability and Environmental Management, EcoAction Arlington, Virginia Cooperative Extension and Arlington Public Libraries.
Earlier this month, Geranium maculatum (wild or spotted geranium) was a featured Tried and True Native Plant Selection. The word protandrous described its flowers. Learn how protandry, and the related words protogyny and dichogamy, are important to cross-pollination by clicking on this link to go directly to the Illustrated Glossary page.
We’ve made bark our featured word for the month and added some other tree-related words (cambium, cuticle, epidermis, parenchyma, periderm, phelloderm, phloem, heartwood, sapwood, xylem) to our MGNV Glossary because April was all about trees. To learn more, click on the links to go directly to the individual Illustrated Glossary pages.
In French, the word légumes refers to vegetables in general while in English legumes is commonly used to denote particular vegetables, namely beans, peas, and the like. However, in botany, legumes are not vegetables at all but the fruit of the Fabaceae. To learn more, click on this link to go directly to the individual Illustrated Glossary page.
What do the three pictures above have in common? They show the axis of a plant—its stem—and the axes of an inflorescence and a compound leaf—their rachises. To learn why February's last words are important terms for gardeners to understand, click on one of the links to go to the individual Illustrated Glossary page.
alate: winged
When you hear the word wings, you probably visualize birds, insects, or planes. Unless you are a botanist or an avid gardener, plants are not images that you first call to mind. However, some plant species have alate or winged parts.
marcescent: remaining attached although withered (leaves, petals, sepals)
Deciduous trees shed their leaves in autumn as they prepare for the severity of winter. Yet, some trees seem to be laggards and hold on to their dead leaves until new growth dislodges them in spring. These marcescent leaves persist because the separation layer fails to form or complete formation.
mast: nuts, seeds, or other fruits of some woody plants, including trees, shrubs, and vines, that serve as food for wildlife, especially when accumulated on the forest floor
The word mast comes from the Old English maest, meaning “fodder,” and is believed to be derived from a prehistoric German word meaning meat. The word was originally applied in agriculture to food provided by nature for domestic animals (particularly hogs but also cattle, sheep, goats, and even chickens) that foraged in the woods near homes and farms...In horticulture today, mast is divided into “hard mast” and “soft mast.”
polygamodioecious: plant species having male and female reproductive organs on different individual plants along with bisexual (perfect) flowers on each plant
In the broadest sense, the majority of plants are monoecious... The remainder mainly fall into two categories, the dioecious and the polygamodioecious (also polygamous).
cypsela: a one-seeded, indehiscent, dry fruit formed from an inferior ovary and with a fused calyx, characteristic of the Asteraceae
Unlike the internationally recognized terms of taxonomy (the orderly classification of plants), no agreed upon standards exist for naming fruits. Almost 100 types of fruit have been described since 1751 when Carl Linnaeus identified eight different fruits in his Philosophia Botanica.
barren: a substantial area of land, usually level, with limited growth of stunted trees and little other vegetation except perennial grasses or lithophytic (growing on rock) forbs.
The geographic areas known as barrens are of different causes and types. Many have in common that they are located in geographic areas sitting on several feet of gravel and coarse sandy soil, usually highly acidic, left behind by retreating glaciers during multiple ice ages.
glochid or glochidium: small barbed hair (modified spine) found only on members (like prickly-pears and chollas) of the cactus subfamily Opuntioideae.
spine: a modified, sharp, pointed leaf
Glochids or glochidia, which grow in tufts, are prominently visible (and felt) by gardeners weeding or otherwise working around prickly-pear cactus.
dehisce: to split or burst open
In botany, the word dehisce is used mainly when discussing plant parts such as anthers, sporangia, and fruit.
perennial: a plant that lives for more than two years or growing seasons
Perennials usually can live from three to hundreds of years, with new growth from a perennating (renewing or persisting) part.
