Value of the average garden’s yield of fruits and vegetables: $414
1/86Cost of leasing one New York State sugar maple tree for one sap season: $29
5/86Lifespan of a sidewalk tree in New York City (in years): 7
2/87Price of a bouquet of wilted, dead, or beheaded flowers at Drop Dead Flowers in New York City: $37.50
8/87Acres of lawn in the United States: 25,000,000
10/89Estimated number of ash trees used to supply major league baseball teams with Louisville Sluggers this year: 6,600
2/89Percentage increase, since 1978, in the number of private security firms operating in Colombia: 127
4/89Number of office plants a member of Congress is allowed to borrow from the U.S. Botanic Garden: 2
5/89Estimated number of acres of residential lawn in the United States: 20,000,000
1/90Estimated number of plant and animal species that have become extinct since 1980, worldwide: 100,000
10/90Cost of dyeing a dried-out lawn green, from Landscape Services of Santa Barbara, California, per 1,000 square feet: $125
11/90Percentage of hunting injuries in Georgia that are the result of hunters falling out of trees: 36
10/91Cost of a two-square-foot “personal meadow” from Zezé Flowers in Manhattan: $75
8/91Ratio of the average amount of pesticide used on U.S. lawns to the amount used on U.S. cropland, per acre: 5:1
8/91Amount David Eilers, a 15-year-old Atlanta resident, earned last year from his lawn-mowing service: $49,000
8/91Estimated number of blades of grass in one acre of lawn: 564,537,600
11/92Price of one 20-pound crate of kindling from trees “felled by natural causes,” from Eddie Bauer: $59
Number of states in which it has been found: 6
10/93Number of the 60 gardeners employed by the Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas who are responsible for artificial plants: 12
10/93Number of Emergency-room admissions last year for injuries involving houseplants: 2,421
5/93Rank of May among months in which the greatest number of flowers at New York’s Botanical Garden are in full bloom: 1
6/93Ratio of the emissions produced by a car driven 50 miles to those produced by a lawn mower in one hour: 1:1
6/93Number of trees required to absorb the average annual carbon dioxide emissions of an American car: 200
3/94Maximum number of four-legged pets a resident of West University Place, Texas, is allowed to own: 3
7/94Participants in the annual Nude Chili Cookoff held at the Treehouse Fun Ranch in Devore, California, last July: 2,000
9/94Cost of developing and growing the grass playing field used for the World Cup at Michigan’s Silverdome: $2,400,000
2/95Number of marijuana plants for which a grower may be sentenced to death under the crime bill passed last fall: 60,000
6/96Number of contestants in the Championship Race for Riding Lawn Mowers, held in Rockford, Illinois, last June: 50
3/98Percentage change since 1996 in the acres of U.S. cropland planted with genetically engineered crops: +300
6/98Number of artificial reefs planned for construction worldwide to facilitate surfing: 4
7/98Percentage of U.S. plant species cited as “threatened by extinction” by the World Conservation Union last April: 29
Hours after this announcement that Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt declared war on weeds: 5.5
8/99Ratio of eggs rolled on the White House lawn last Easter to bombs dropped on Serbia during its Orthodox holy week: 1:1
8/99Annual cost of containing plants and animals accidentally irradiated at Washington’s Hanford Nuclear Site: $2,000,000
4/00Number of flowers that prison inmates plant each spring at the Illinois State Fairgrounds: 110,000
4/00Ratio of April showers to plants producing May flowers at the Springfield, Illinois, Park District last year: 1:1,571
11/02Years after inventing the Kalashnikov that its namesake said in July that he wished he had made a lawn mower instead: 55
11/03Age in years of a California bristlecone pine that is the oldest tree on earth: 4,733
Age in years of a Nevada bristlecone when the U.S. Forest Service let a graduate student cut it down in 1964: 4,950
6/03Number of sites nationwide where farmers grew “pharmaceutical crops” last year: 34
5/04Number of times that Everglades saw grass switches gender during a week of flowering: 2
3/05Days after Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston separated in January that an Us Weekly executive called the story “our tsunami”: 4
Number of saplings that Pitt paid to have planted in Bhutan last year to counteract his personal CO2 production: 1,700
Estimated number of different official names that have been applied to them: 6,000,000
12/07Number of Christmas trees FedExed last year to U.S. troops: 11,854
8/07Portion of states where the projected climate in 2100 will not be able to sustain their official tree or flower: 3/5
11/08Number of marijuana plants found under cultivation inside Miami’s Mall of the Americas in August: 360