Text Box: TOWN COUNCIL NOTES April 10 Mayor Beers reported that the fiscal year starts July 1. She is working on the budget and plans to submit it on May 15. Tuesday, May 30 was approved as the date for the public budget meeting. Councilwoman Nancy Long reported that a fiddler wanted to use the town hall on an ongoing basis for an improvisational group. She said that she told him the town was trying not to take any additional continuous uses and he seemed to understand. . Clerk/treasurer Cathie Polak suggested hiring off-duty Montgomery County police to monitor speeders on Oxford Rd. The council agreed to come up with a schedule and hire the police for targeted times to stop speeders. Councilmembers noted that a number of trucks have been entering town illegally, including a large truck that entered on Princeton to go to the house Bell Builders is working on. Mayor Beers suggested (i) talking to Bell; (ii) calling the U.S. Army Corp. of Engineers to ask them to put pressure on the county to enforce the traffic laws; and (iii) for residents to call the police if they see a truck violating the restriction. Text Box: FORMER RESIDENT STUDYING RARE PLANT NEAR GLEN ECHO By Carlotta Anderson Edd Barrows, a professor of biology at Georgetown University and former resident of 21 Wellesley Circle, visited Glen Echo recently as part of his study of a globally rare plant that has been found only locally and in tiny isolated areas of Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Ohio, North Carolina, and West Virginia. Some patches of Coville’s Phacelia (Phacelia covillei) in the Washington, D.C., area are found near Glen Echo in two national parks: the C&O Canal National Historical Park and the George Washington Memorial Parkway. Low growing and with small light violet blossoms, the spring-flowering plant is endangered by habitat destruction and aggressive alien plants such as English Ivy , Honeysuckles, Garlic Mustard, and others. Working with a grant from the National Park Service with the aim of maintaining lands in their natural state, Edd and others will be observing the plants both visually and with cameras to learn about their insect pollinators so that they can be encouraged. Ecologists fear that without such assistance, such plants may become even rarer and eventually go extinct. Anyone who finds the Phacelia should walk around it. Others seeking to eliminate invasive plants locally are volunteers known as Weed Warriors (http://www.mc-mncppc.org/Environment/weed_warriors/intro.shtm) who, under county supervision, remove non-native plants included in the “Dirty Forty,” such as Porcelainberry, Asiatic Bittersweet, and Chinese and Japanese Wisteria. Weeds Gone Wild is an excellent Website that can help you identify and control local nuisance plants: http://www.nps.gov/plants/alien/ . Text Box: Coville’s Phacelia is a rare plant found only locally and in tiny isolated areas of several other states. It has light violet blossoms in spring.