GreenerPolitics

Tenille Will, an artist that resides in Toronto, or more specifically, 3 doors down from the Green Party of Ontario’s provincial campaign office has undertaken a work entitled, “The Future is Green.”

“We are very honoured to be able to display Tenille’s work in our office,” says Jeff Brownridge, provincial campaign manager, “I am very impressed with her support of our campaign.”

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Will is a prolific artist whose work is well known in the United Kingdom. Her work is in oils and is marked by bold colors and lines. Other examples of her work are on display in the Green Party office located on the corner on the Dundas and Dufferin.

An official unveiling of ‘the Future is Green’ will be announced early next week. If you are interested in attending, please contact 416-977-7476.

You can view other paintings here:

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“As the Tree grows, the river flows
and life continues to thrive….” -Debra J. Stiles

by Arden Bonokovski

So Mark asked me if I knew anything about how the wonderful willow is able to clean up so many of our messes in nature….

Here is what I have found out. Willows are an excellent candidate for this work as they have deeper root systems that the typical grassy plants used in eco-restoration, so they are able to detoxify much deeper soil than the typical species. Willows are able to do so because they are resistant to heavy metals such as cadmium, copper, zinc, nickel, lead and iron. They are also desirable candidates as the vastness of the genus means that different species of willow are native to most continents, making it easy to find a species of willow suitable for any area. So far it is known that willows are able to detoxify environments in four ways: phytoremediation, phytodegradation, phytostabilization, and rhizofiltration.

Phytoremediation is the extraction of heavy metals from soil through the uptake of the toxin by the roots of the willow followed by the translocation of the toxin to the above ground organs of the plant. The high biomass of a willow tree or shrub allows for a large uptake of the heavy metals.

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