Tag: Pollinators

Art Exhibit Celebrates Pollinators And Appalachian Writer Talks Book ‘No Son Of Mine,’ This West Virginia Morning

On this West Virginia Morning, writer Jonathan Corcoran grew up in Elkins. While in college, his mother discovered he was gay. She disowned him and told him to never come back to West Virginia. She died in 2020. They never reconciled. Corcoran, a writing professor at New York University, has written a book, No Son of Mine, which explores grief and his relationship with his mother.

On this West Virginia Morning, writer Jonathan Corcoran grew up in Elkins. While in college, his mother discovered he was gay. She disowned him and told him to never come back to West Virginia. She died in 2020. They never reconciled.

Corcoran, a writing professor at New York University, has written a book, No Son of Mine, which explores grief and his relationship with his mother. Inside Appalachia Producer Bill Lynch spoke with the author, who began with a reading.

Also, in this show, we have the latest story from The Allegheny Front, a public radio program based in Pittsburgh that reports on environmental issues in the region. Their latest story takes us to an art exhibit highlighting our local pollinators.

West Virginia Morning is a production of West Virginia Public Broadcasting which is solely responsible for its content.

Support for our news bureaus comes from Shepherd University.

Emily Rice produced this episode.

Listen to West Virginia Morning weekdays at 7:43 a.m. on WVPB Radio or subscribe to the podcast and never miss an episode. #WVMorning

Drastic Temperature Swings May Affect Fruit Tree Yields

The rule of thumb for putting out your outdoor plants is right around May 15, close to Mother’s Day.

Over the past month we’ve seen days in the 70s and nights below freezing. 

Zack Fowler is a West Virginia University biology professor and the director at WVU’s Core Arboretum. He said the wild temperature swings relate to phenology, the timing of annual events and an organism’s life cycle.

“Phenology is, especially around here, emerging from dormancy in the spring, making flowers, making fruits, losing leaves, going back into dormancy, those sorts of things,” Fowler said. “The scientists that study this have found big changes in plant phenology due to warmer weather earlier in the spring.”

Fowler said early blossoms on apple and paw paw trees, for example, followed by freezing temperatures, won’t necessarily kill the tree, but can affect the fruit yield.  

“If a frost comes while the flowers are blossoming, the blossoms would die before they’ll produce fruit, and if it comes when there’s already some small tender fruit, the fruit will just kind of wither and fall,” he said.

Fowler said when blossoms come early, sometimes pollinators like bees come out of hibernation as well, giving fruit growth a natural boost. 

“Trees and plants depend on the emergence of pollinators and other organisms to complete their life cycle,” Fowler said. “You end up in this complex system where if everything moves together as things warm up, it might not be weird to have spring earlier, but it might not have drastic system wide effects. If everything doesn’t move in sync, if one thing moves faster than another thing, or if the insects respond differently than the plants, or if the trees respond differently than the small plants that need to grow under the trees, then things could really be impacted by that.” 

He said the rule of thumb for putting out your outdoor plants is right around May 15, close to Mother’s Day.

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