Path: csiph.com!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!individual.net!not-for-mail From: rbowman Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc Subject: Re: OT - TV Date: 3 Oct 2026 02:41:49 GMT Lines: 96 Message-ID: References: <118cshs$2v7m0$1@dont-email.me> <118s7it$bikd$1@dont-email.me> <118t6mg$k4sv$1@dont-email.me> <118t8fd$kiul$1@dont-email.me> <1198ebu$fpmu$1@dont-email.me> <119c0l5.p88.1@ID-201911.user.individual.net> <119dul2$2e6v5$1@dont-email.me> <0j5somxj0v.ln2@Telcontar.valinor> <119funo$34fsg$1@dont-email.me> <119j0j8$81k4$1@dont-email.me> <119ku19$tkmi$1@dont-email.me> <119o767$21k2o$16@dont-email.me> <119p1vc$2crcd$12@dont-email.me> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: individual.net uMhtEICFKhdHwFSlcIbDhgoq2RusO2aOQVKirrE1hkN03NP9TG Cancel-Lock: sha1:WruFnqAPkX2sS4LHR9jjLaOR/m4= sha256:7qUKkss/3DqxR6a8doTGBIsVAeTPAEDmDSe9UFl9yIU= User-Agent: Pan/0.165 (Kostiantynivka) Xref: csiph.com comp.os.linux.misc:92700 On Fri, 2 Oct 2026 20:51:08 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote: > On 02/10/2026 20:06, rbowman wrote: >> On Fri, 2 Oct 2026 13:13:59 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote: >> >> >>>> That may have to do with the food supply. Other than back yard >>>> gardens the only crop in this area is hay and there are no native nut >>>> trees. Non- native hardwood species have been planted in the city but >>>> for some reason they are mostly maples with a few chestnuts. >>>> >>> Maples non native? >> >> Not that you would recognize. The Rocky Mountain Maple is in the family >> but it's a shrub. Box elder technically is a maple but it has compound >> leaves. >> > But Canada is full of maples. Didn't they migrate south to Montana, or > did ICE get them? Like the US, Canada is a big place. https://localgardener.net/10-native-maples-of-canada/ Alberta is the province directly north of here with Saskatchewan north of the eastern part of the state. Indigenous hardwoods peter out in Manitoba, well to the east. Unless they've been planted the maple species in Alberta are shrubs more than what you would think of as a maple tree. >> There are very few native hardwoods. Cottonwood (poplar), aspen, a few >> paper birch in the northwest. Alders and peachleaf willows tend to be >> more shrubby than trees. > > No oak, ash, rowan, or any of the more usual? One fall I went looking for some acorns to experiment with. White oak acorns are somewhat edible if you soak them to reduce the tannic acid. Red oaks have even more and aren't edible at all unless you're a squirrel. Anyway I walked the city areas where non-native trees were planted and didn't find an oak of any sort. It's mostly maples and horse chestnuts. There are some green ashes in the eastern part of the state along the Missouri but ashes across the country have been hit by the emerald ash borer, an Asian import. Strangely Asian ash trees have more tannin and aren't palatable. Like the chestnut and elm, foresters search for survivors that may have some natural resistance to chestnut blight, Dutch elm disease, and the ash borer. The elm borer is the vector for the fungus but doesn't kill the trees outright. In North America the mountain ash is the closest thing to the European rowan, but that's another eastern species. Botany in this area is much easier than back east. Where I grew up we had several flavors of oaks, maples, birches, beeches, aspen, ashes, hickory, poplar and cherry. The chestnuts and elms are very slowly recovering. Even the conifers had several variants of each. You had to have your shit together on field trips. For people familiar with photos of New York City it may come as a shock to find 45% of the state is forested. I exaggerate but here if you discount introduced species if it has leaves that fall off it's a cottonwood. If it has needles that fall off it's a western large. If it has long needles that don't fall off seasonally, it's a ponderosa pine. If it has short needles that don't fall off it's a douglas fir (it really isn't a fir). They are relatively rare but if it has berries that taste like gin, it's a juniper. There are a few other pine species as you get out of this area and at higher elevations you get Englemann spuce and subalpine fir replacing the p. pines and doug firs. > Those (ones you cited) are all marsh trees. Absolutely. Statewide the average yearly precipitation is 15". It's the 45th wettest sate in the US, or I guess the fifth driest. Almost everything east of the Divide is short grass prairie. Even here up to 5 or 6000' is short grass. Higher elevations get snow and conifers can survive. At lower elevations natural softwoods are found along the rivers and lakes, although there aren't that many lakes. > Plenty of hardwoods are native to the USA. It's strange that they don't > grow in your area. > I would have expected oak, ash, maple, walnut. Maybe beech and related > species. Hardwoods are chiefly found in the east and taper off around the Mississippi. When the early midwest settlers built sod houses it wasn't because they liked living with the insects. Any trees were used for firewood. https://www.wildercompanion.com/2020/05/sod-houses-on-prairie.html At least when you get to the Rockies there are trees on the mountains but they are conifers that can survive the conditions.