Amanda Mcnulty

Cedar apple rust is a fungus, but its brown cases become jelly-like blobs with protrusions that look like something from outer space.

Amanda McNulty explains the origin of her passion for colorful Christmas tree lights

Amanda McNulty reflects on the romance and beauty of Christmas trees once lit by candles.

Hello, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. Cornell University thinks pretty highly of black locust, native to the Appalachian Mountains, but now spread all over the country – it was one of the first trees colonists sent back to Europe for its rot-resistant wood and prolific offering of flowers loved by honey bees. For mountains topped by mining or wastelands subject to erosion, it can stabilize the soil quickly as it fixes nitrogen and has an extensive root system that absorbs other nutrients and water. If you want wood furniture for your patio, locust can’t be beat. For commercial lumber production, be it fencing or siding, it’s quality and fast growth rate are without equal. In Hungary, twenty percent of timber land is planted in locust for fuel and lumber, their geneticists have done the finest breeding work for straight trunks.

Hello, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. We still have herds of buffalo in protected areas but many of the other megafauna that once roamed North America with them have disappeared. Early human inhabitants of our continent did interact with mammoths, mastodons, saber tooth tigers, and even horses that are no longer here. The theories include overkill by the humans that arrived in North America during these extinctions and changes in climate from dry and cold to warm and humid. There are occasional bone remnants of some now extinct animals at what are called "kill sites," so humans did hunt and eat them to some extent. But those same sites have many more bones from still living animals like buffalo. Clovis points, sharpened and fluted rocks attached to wooden shafts or poles, did make ancient humans effective hunters.

Hello, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. Honey locust is a fascinating tree that has what are described as "wicked thorns," up to four inches long and occurring in groups of three on trunks and branches. There’re several ideas about why it has thorns. One theory is that mastodons, that had large grinding teeth and ate bark and limbs, browsed on this bark and the tree adapted by growing thorns. Seems a little far fetched but some scientists hold this theory, and mastodons were in North America for almost four million years. The thorns usually don’t occur higher on the tree than where a mastodon could reach leading to another theory -- the thorns were to keep them from eating the seed pods before they were ripe and fell to the ground. Researchers have found these seeds in mastodon dung.

Hello, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. Southern magnolia, Magnolia grandiflora, is a plant that offers something all year long. If you like to have greenery in the house, you can always cut some branches and they’ll stay fresh (if you change the water) for a month of so. For wreaths at Christmas they last on a front door that gets sun, unlike those that seem more seasonable since they’re made of Christmas tree cuttings. Even after they lose their green color, the dried yellow leaves are still attractive and can be used on a garden shed door. For weddings, I’ve made hundreds of feet of garland to use in tents, on the porches of houses, and inside churches. And, as the scientific name suggests, the flowers are indeed grand, fragrant, and as big as your spread fingers and fragrant to boot.

Hello, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. If you walk around Swan Lake Iris Gardens in Sumter, you’ll see why you should carefully select an evergreen magnolia, Magnolia grandiflora, to plant in your yard. A massive grouping welcomes you as you enter the gardens, plants fifty feet tall with full limbs and brown backs to the glossy leaves. As you walk around, however, you come to a grove of seedlings which are somewhat rangy, not so full of leaves and without that beautiful brown underside. As new yards are getting smaller, there might not be room for an eighty-foot tall tree with a spread of thirty to forty feet. Don’t despair plant breeders have come up with selections that are much smaller, from thirty feet to some topping out at fifteen feet and narrow enough for a border.

Hello, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. We are fortunate to have a house full of Oriental rugs that one person or another has given us – if you don’t have central heat in your house a wool rug on the floor helps keep your feet somewhat warm. The Chinese rug in the living room was under a sofa with a slipcover that came to the floor before we got it and the moths ate holes in that part that was in the dark.They are sneaky little fellows, and I try to not have any furniture over a rug that would give them that dark space. When I was young, people had companies come take up all their wool rugs when summer came, clean them and store them until moth season was over, putting down prickly sisal rugs in their place.

Hello, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. Doug Tallamy has taught us how important planting larval food sources is for moths and butterflies, which are the primary food most adult birds feed their babies, and the power of the mighty oak that serves that purpose for about a thousand different larvae. Well, for clothes moths, their larval food sources are wool, fur, silk, and feathers, all natural products that contain keratin. How weird is that! We are so focused on leaves. Silkworms are pretty focused on leaves, too, they are picky and want white mulberry leaves. Some people tried to start a silk worm industry here and planted white mulberries—they’ve spread all over, those Asian caterpillars weren’t interested in our native red mulberry – whose berries birds relish, and if you taste some, you’ll enjoy them too.