Identifying Woody Plants (Month 2)

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The Identifying Woody Plants field class I am taking at Missouri State University has met 5 more times since my last post about the field sessions on the campus.

I am continuing to take pictures of items in the classroom before class:

An opened Maclura pomifera (Osage orange) fruit

Some Quercus macrocarpa (Bur oak) acorns

An herbarium page showing Tilia americana (American Basswood) fruit which we have seen in the field, but my pictures were not very good.

Cuttings from two plants were brought in and we were asked to ID them based on our notes – with the hint that the first one had milky sap (hard to see since it had been cut):

Morus alba (white mulberry) – a non-native that is frequently seen as a ‘weed’ tree and Vitis (grape).

Recently the walk from the parking lot to the classroom building has been full of late blooming pollinator plants and fall foliage.

The one session where we stayed on campus added some new trees to our list:

Quercus bicolor (Swamp white oak)

Sassafras albidum (Sassafras)

Carya ovata (Shagbark hickory)

Quercus lyrata (Overcup oak)

We also saw some review trees and I got better pictures of Celtis occidentalis bark (Rough hackberry)

And some add odd growth of a Liriodendron tulipifera (tulip/yellow poplar). The trunk of the tree was growing at a slant rather than straight upward and it had small branches coming out relatively close the ground.

The hikes on campus and further afield have been more pleasant this past month because the temperatures have been cooler. There have been no rainy days in the field either!

Previous posts about Identifying Woody Plants field class

Missouri Master Naturalist Training – Week 8

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Week 7 of Missouri Master Naturalist consisted of two sessions: a lecture on Fungi that was part of the monthly chapter meeting and two lectures in our regular class: Snakes of Missouri and Endangered Species and Conservation. I took notes during all three! I particularly enjoyed the photographs in the fungi lecture, the snake experiences from a place we had visited for a field trip, and the example used for talking about endangered species (freshwater mussels). I still have a lot of materials from the Missouri Department of Conservation that were on the handout table to browse through from the regular class: salamanders, snakes, mushrooms, lizards, crayfish, toads and frogs, caves and karst, Missouri fishes.

During week 8, I also took action to learn more about Missouri geology on my own since it is not a topic that was covered in the training….starting with two books: Roadside Geology of Missouri by Charles G. Spencer and Geology of Missouri State Parks by Max W. Reams and Carol A. Reams. The second book is the most current – copyrighted in 2022; about 25% of the books is an overview of Missouri geology and then there are sections for state parks by physiographic region. I’ll start with the state parks since it seems safer than stopping at road cuts…although I might keep the Roadside Geology in the car for when my husband is driving, and I can observe as we are on the road.

Next week is graduation week! The time has flown by. I have an evaluation form that I am completing this weekend.

Busiek State Forest and Wildlife Area

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A sunny fall day…the Identifying Woody Plants Class spent a couple of hours at Busiek State Forest and Wildlife Area – adding 9 more woody plants to our list and seeing others that were already on the list and we practised our ID skills for them; there are now 78 woody plants that we should recognize and be able to supply the common name, family, and scientific name!

We encountered an Osage Orange (Maclura pomifera) – a tree we’d seen in previous classes - that had leaves that hadn’t fallen before the first hard frost. All of us began to realize how changed identification was going to be without leaves on the trees!

The first new one was Box Elder (Acer negundo) – the only maple with compound leaves. ID is helped by its green branches.

The second new tree was Spicebush (Lindera benzoin) – still with leaves and one I had seen recently in a Missouri Master Naturalist field trip. The picture I took was of a male but there were female trees with red fruit that we saw at Busiek.

 American Sycamores (Platanus occidentalis) were growing along the dry creek bed…another tree that we reviewed. The very large leaves were still mostly on the tree.

The third new tree was the Carolina willow (Salix caroliniana)…also growing close the dry creek bed. Its leaves are a little bigger that the Black Willow’s…and the stipules tend to stay on rather than falling off. It still had leaves…everyone realized it was a willow of some kind.

I couldn’t resist taking some pictures from the dried creek bed. The fall color is a bit muted this year because it has been so dry here. I noticed some wasp apartments on one of the bridge support columns.

Another review tree – the honey locust (Gleditsia triacanthus) – and I finally got some pictures of thorns. I also picked up a seed pod to put in the tree educational trunk I am creating for Missouri Master Naturalist.

The fourth new tree was the Chinkapin oak (Quercus meuhlenbergii). I didn’t get any good pictures of it!

The same was true of the fifth new plant – a vine: Greenbrier (Smilax). Supposedly it might be something that will be easier to see and ID in the winter because the stems stay green….and the thorns would be on the vine too – to mistaking it for a grape (Vitis).

Smooth sumac (Rhus glabra) was the sixth addition for the day. The plants did not have the distinctive seed heads because they tend to get cut down frequently so that they don’t take over the area where they are growing.

Persimmon (Diospyros virginiana) was our seventh new plant. The fruits looked beautiful, but no one was willing to try them quite yet. I am glad I have planted some in my yard and hope to enjoy them at perfect ripeness in the future.

The eighth new plant was a native woody grass/bamboo: giant cane (Arundinaria gigantea).

The ninth (and last) new plant for the day was an Eastern Cottonwood (Populus deltoides). Most of the leaves were gone…but the one we looked at was a huge tree with deeply grooved bark and buds ready to go for next spring.

It was a good walk and a transition point for the way we will begin to identify trees by characteristics other than their leaves.

Gleanings of the Week Ending October 26, 2024

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The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

A new era of treating neurological diseases at the blood-brain-immune interface – Investigating the connection of neurological diseases and a toxic immune reaction caused by blood that leaks into the brain….in particular, how fibrid (a blood protein) is responsible for setting of this detrimental cascade.

Antifungal resistance is not getting nearly as much attention as antibiotic resistance – yet the risks to global health are just as serious – Just as with antibiotics for farm animals, tons of fungicides are used annually to protect crops, of which some work the same way as antifungals used in humans. And just as bacterial resistance develops…fungi develop resistance too. Combating drug-resistant fungal infections is a complex problem. An important factor is that diagnoses of infections are often delayed – if they are even diagnosed at all. Simple tests for fungal infections are rarely available.

Nikon Small World Contest Celebrates 50 Years of Photographic Excellence Under the Microscope – Great images….the natural world that we can see only with assistance…an art form too.

So Last Season: The Environmental Impact of Fast Fashion and Textile Waste Exports - The last ten years have seen a dramatic increase in the production of single-wear garments—which has contributed to an excess of textile waste and consequent health impacts for the individuals who work in the textile manufacturing industry. Every aspect of the creation of fast fashion garments is unsustainable, from the creation of plastic-derived textiles to the construction of pieces by underpaid and overworked exploited laborers. Up to half of American textile waste is shipped to nations overseas. Adopting more sustainable wardrobe practices not only helps us move away from fast fashion, but also significantly lowers our individual carbon footprints and waste production.

Plastic pollution harms - Nano- and microplastic particles (NMP) are increasingly polluting urban and rural landscapes, where bees and other beneficial insects encounter them… it can damage their organs and cause changes in their behavior, preventing them from properly performing ecosystem services such as pollination and pest control.

British Ecological Society Photo Contest Celebrates the Breadth and Beauty of the World’s Biodiversity – I liked the variety of selections in this photo contest.

Introducing Six Steps to Calm: Our science-backed, stress-busting email course – From BBC…I subscribed…plan to take the course!

Your diet can change your immune system — here’s how - There is still much more work to do to unpick the effects of specific diets on the immune systems of those with different health conditions. However, a growing group of immunologists are optimistic that the mechanistic insights they are uncovering are the first steps towards personalized diets for a range of medical conditions.

US air pollution monitoring network has gaps in coverage - Most of the harmful effects from outdoor air pollution in the U.S. are linked to inhalation of fine particulate matter (PM). These suspended particles, like soot or liquid aerosol droplets, are smaller than 2.5 micrometers in diameter, garnering the designation PM2.5. In February 2024, to better protect Americans from health burdens caused by inhaling particles, the EPA adopted a more stringent standard for PM2.5. The EPA tracks compliance with air pollution standards through a network of about 1,000 costly and highly accurate monitoring stations placed in cities and towns nationwide. People of color and people with low socioeconomic status living in the U.S have fewer monitoring stations than other areas to measure air pollutants, meaning they may not be fully protected by the tighter air pollution standards.

Researchers Parse the Future of Plankton in an Ever-Warmer World - Climate change is hitting our oceans hard, making them warmer and more acidic, while radically altering currents. The outlook for plankton is mixed. As the planet warms, the diversity of the menagerie in many spots is increasing. But certain species are losing out, including big juicy plankton thought to be important for food webs and carbon sequestration. And, in the long term, plankton numbers may plummet as climate change starves them of nutrients. Meanwhile research continues: which plankton species are where but also exactly when, since shifts in bloom timing can also have big knock-on effects for fisheries. And the viruses that attack plankton seem to be on the rise as waters warm — another factor with as-yet unknown consequences.

Life Histories of North American Birds

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The 6 early volumes of Arthur Cleveland Bent’s 23 volume work, Life Histories of North American Birds are available on Internet Archive. The work was published from 1919-1968…the later volumes completed posthumously after his death in 1954. The volumes available are from before 1930.

Bent evidently traveled extensively and interacted with 100s of people to compile the histories…quite an undertaking – more so since it was done before the computers! He started the work when he was 44 years old and spent the 44 remaining years of his life working on it. The work includes numerous photographs; I provide two from each book below but there are many more – well worth browsing these volumes - and the text is interesting as well.

 Life histories of North American diving birds

A more detailed biography of Bent’s life can be found here.

Next Spring Dreaming

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I have been doing some seed planting this fall…dreaming of what will come up next spring. There are some areas that I might have to thin in a few years if too many of the seeds grow!

On the east side of the house where I have a patch of volunteer lambs ear taking over a bare spot in the yard, I planted a persimmon seed. If it grows, it would help stabilize the slope on that side of the house.

In the same area that I planted a spicebush (right side of image), I planted 3 pawpaw seeds…visions of a spicebush and pawpaw garden in that corner of our yard.

A little further down in the violets that have grown into the grass…directly out from my favorite office window, I planted two red buckeye seeds…hopefully I got them far enough apart that they could both thrive (I will feel lucky that even one comes up). I used the iris and peacock stakes to mark where I planted them.  I have visions of blooming buckeyes enjoyed by frequently visiting hummingbirds! The American spikenard is closer to the window and I am hoping to propagate it to other shady parts of the yard as well.

In the mound left when the pine tree fell (stump ground), I have a beautyberry that I planted (to the left in the image) and the goldenrod and volunteer asters are still blooming on the right. I planted 3 pawpaw there…so maybe some trees that will come up next spring.

The area that was a dead patch in the yard has recovered somewhat since I stopped mowing it completely and the mole tunnels crisscrossed it. I planted common milkweed seeds and 2 persimmon seeds there. If the milkweed and persimmons come up the patch will become another garden surrounded by yard…eventually merging with the mound left when the pine tree fell.

I planted 2 other persimmon seeds at the end of the retaining wall in an area that is difficult to mow not that far from where I already have fragrant sumac spilling out of the flower bed.

On the west side of the house, I planted some Hopi Sunflower seeds in an already existing bed. The vegetation there holds the moisture well from the sprinkler system. And maybe that same vegetation will keep the squirrels from finding the seeds!

I also planted Hopi Sunflowers toward the back of my wildflower garden (I am letting the stalks from this summer stand since they might be harboring native bee/wasp larvae). I covered my seed plantings with clippings from the yew…to deter squirrels. This area was very dry so I will put up a sprinkler to water it next spring; evidently our sprinkler system does not reach it.

I have started keeping better records of where and when I am planting in my yard….and dreaming that most of it will come up next spring! It will be a step forward in increasing the number of native plants and reducing the amount of yard I mow.

First Frost and a Comet

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The first frost at our house was on 10/16; the low was 29 degrees, but ice crystals only formed on part of our yard…and I went out shortly after sunrise to capture the event. Some of the crystals seemed to outline the leaves (and their holes) while other leaves seemed to be more thoroughly dusted. There were no crystals on taller plants.

The freezing temperature did not last long enough to wilt vegetation. The violets outside my window are still mostly green…with a few yellow leaves. The maples still have most of their leaves. Our area has not had much rain recently so we are anticipating that the fall color might not be as vibrant as usual.

On another outdoors note…we have been viewing Comet Tsuchinshan-Atlas (A3) from our front sidewalk!

Field Trip to Springfield Wastewater Treatment and Landfill

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The last field trip on the Missouri Master Naturalist (MMN) training schedule was to the Springfield Wastewater Treatment Plant and Landfill.

The wastewater treatment plant that we toured was the smaller of the two that handle Springfield’s sewage. I was surprised that the smell of the place was not as bad as I expected. Maybe it was not as bad because it was a cool morning, but I expect that it primarily was because of the improvements in technology since I last toured a plant over 50 years ago! Now they have a lot more filters and blowers. There are challenges of materials that shouldn’t be in sewage – small items that get flushed (including wipes) that are still solid when then get to the plant and those are taken out early. There are anaerobic and aerobic basins where microbes do the work of cleaning the water. Sometimes there are enough oils that they must be put back through the process. Once the sludge is taken out, the water is clear and the microbes remaining are killed using UV light before the water leaves the plant for the river; the water released from the plant is about the same water quality as the river and there is monitoring to make sure that is true.   

The landfill is uphill from the wastewater plant; the landfill is a high hill so there are great views of the countryside around it.

It was a learning experience…I took notes. The landfill is 1200 acres of land with 213 acres active (i.e. there is plenty of buffer between the landfill and neighboring properties). We learned about the landfill’s construction that protects groundwater; the liner under each cell of the landfill is 5 foot thick: compressed aggregates, felt, plastic, leachate pipe (to drain of liquids) surrounded by river gravel, and finally felt. Each cell of the landfill is 5-10 acres. The leachate pipes are connected to a sewage line that takes the fluid down the hill to the wastewater treatment plant. The temperature in the landfill is 100-120 degrees and that is monitored via wells that are extended as pile gets higher. There are 16 ground water wells near the landfill that are checked every 6 months. They have increased the number of gas wells from 97 to 148; at present the methane is flared because it is not clean enough to put into natural gas pipelines (and it evidently is expensive to get it clean enough). The landfill had been projected to last 100 years when was expanded to 213 active acres but then the pandemic happened, and the projection is now 50 years (we are sending a lot more to the landfill since the pandemic). The city is more actively trying to divert yard waste away from the landfill and promote composting of food scrapes/waste.

The landfill layers quickly become anaerobic because of the heaps of trash piled and compacted. There is a lot of plastic that does no decompose easily even in aerobic conditions and even things that would decompose in aerobic conditions don’t in anerobic. These hills of trash are going to be where they are built for a very long time.

I am thinking about what further changes I will make after this experience. My family tends to have more recycle than trash. The change for me might be that I take more of my recycle to the recycling center rather than doing my curbside bin. Evidently there are lots of things that can happen during mixed stream recycle processing that can result in materials to the landfill.

Missouri Master Naturalist Training – Week 7

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The 7th week of Missouri Master Naturalist (MMN) training included one evening class and my first solo volunteer gig.

The class lectures were on

  • Forest Ecology and Management

  • Pondering the Pond as a Wildlife Habitat

Forest Ecology and Management was done by a Missouri Department of Conservation Educator; I would like to have the charts since he went through them very quickly! The last segment of the lecture was hands-on…passing out small branches from the tree to everyone and then using the dichotomous key in the back of the Fifty Common Trees of Missouri booklet to id it….a red maple. I photographed my branch’s buds, branches and leaf imperfections!

Pondering the Pond as a Wildlife Habitat was done by a person that has been a MMN for over a decade…and done a lot of videography at a pond in a hayfield (i.e. not used by cattle…with adequate vegetation around its edge). Her Youtube Channel – Nature in Motion is something I will be viewing over the next month! She showed over 100 species in 17 minutes of her talk…fast paced…prompted me to think later about the richness in the intersection of science and art.

The volunteer experience was an after-school event at a local school for gifted students…15-20 minutes sessions with two groups of about 12 students each…on two days. My theme was getting outdoors in the fall and looking at some things that could be found.

My table was set up with items to look at: pinecones (3 different kinds), acorns (3 different kinds), Osage orange fruit, black walnuts (in a bag complete with emerging caterpillars), goldenrod (in flower and seeds), magnolia pod, maple branches, and a holly branch.

It also included a hands-on experience with pressed leaves/small branches. Each student made observations about their leaf (color on both sides, holes, insect eggs, shape)…and then compared it to other leaves at their table. The leaves were mostly oak or maple although there were some that were unique (river birch, magnolia, oak leaf hydrangea, boxwood).

The time past very quickly!

Book sorting for Friends of the Library

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There were not a lot of books on the table to sort when I volunteered this week…and there weren’t any 300-piece puzzles on the shelves (I can buy them for $2 each to take to my Dad when there are).

The shelves that we use for sorting were full for hardback fiction, softback fiction, history, and non-fiction. I boxed books and managed to mostly clear the table while I did.

Just as I was beginning to think I would finish early, a librarian brought in a cart of donated books! There was enough hardback fiction to fill a box – no trip to the shelves for them. And the rest I sorted onto shelves. And the big bonus: there was a 300-piece puzzle that will go to Dallas next time I make the trek!

Gleanings of the Week Ending October 19, 2024

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The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

Antarctic 'greening' at dramatic rate - Vegetation cover across the Antarctic Peninsula has increased more than tenfold over the last four decades… fundamental changes to the biology and landscape of this iconic and vulnerable region.

Is cleaning with baking soda better for the environment? – Maybe not…and it might not be very good at some types of cleaning either.

Meet Milagra, a Rare Condor Rescued as an Egg and Newly Released Back into the Wild – A success at Arizona’s Vermilion Cliffs National Monument.

Landslides, Thousands Of Downed Trees, Undercut Roads Along Blue Ridge Parkway – Lots of repairs for the National Park Service after Hurricane Helene. Some damage is severe enough (i.e. more than just clearing mudslides and debris) that it will take time to repair. The fall foliage will come and go.

In Search of Microbes That Weave Colors into Moroccan Carpets - A scientist’s quest for microbes that produce purple pigments led to the vibrant world of natural dyes for women in the Atlas Mountain region of Morocco creating sought after traditional woven carpets…it’s a great intersection of biology and traditional artistry! The findings are compiled into a 48-page open-source guidebook, also translated into English, which described their project, introduced microbial dyeing, and catalogued recipes for plant dyes.

Dementia diagnostic markers change with time of day - Biomarker levels (p-tau217) were at their lowest in the morning when participants woke and highest in the evening.

Great Lakes Water Quality Project Seeks to Restore Coastal Vegetation - Returning certain croplands to perennial vegetation to reduce runoff and limit erosion.

'A warmer, sicker world': Mosquitoes carrying deadly diseases are on an unstoppable march across the US - West Nile virus, Eastern equine encephalitis (EEE), malaria and dengue…The mosquitoes that carry these diseases are thriving in a warming world.

Extinct Volcanoes Could Be Source of Key Metals Needed for Clean Tech - Rare-earths lurking under extinct volcanoes may be easier to extract. The iron-rich magma that formed some extinct volcanoes would be up to 100 times more efficient at concentrating rare-earths than the magma found in active volcanoes today. By one estimate, demand for rare-earths is set to grow fivefold by the end of this decade so finding them closer to home could contribute to more rapid conversion to clean technologies.

See Newly Discovered Nazca Drawings That Depict Llamas, Human Sacrifices and More - With the help of artificial intelligence, researchers have found hundreds of ancient artworks carved into the pebbled ground of Peru’s Nazca Desert in 6 months compared to 430 found between 1927 up to before the use of AI.

Fredrik Robert Martin and Oriental Carpets

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A History of Oriental Carpets was produced by Fredrik Robert Martin based on his collection experiences in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Its three volumes are well-illustrated and easy to browse although I found myself wanting to zoom in on a lot of the images!

 A history of oriental carpets before 1800 pt 1 (1906)

A history of oriental carpets before 1800 pt 2 (1906)

A history of oriental carpets before 1800 pt 3 (1908)

Missouri Master Naturalist Field Trip (2)

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Continuing the blog about the Missouri Master Naturalist (MMN) field trip taken last weekend…

My second rotation was nature journalling. I made a Mindmap on the page of my journal during the intro – and decided to do some leave rubbings first. I had brought a stool for the session (a lesson learned from last time when I stood the whole time…and wore myself out). I quickly discovered that the journal book did not have a hard enough cover to support rubbings. I managed to use my phone to provide a more sold surface for the notebook and did 4 rubbings. I found some leaves with galls and other spots…decided to so some macro photography with my phone. I couldn’t resist documenting what the inside of a spicebush seed looked like.

I walked around taking a few pictures of the surroundings…remembering to look up! All the while I was making notes in the journal about what I was thinking as I took pictures.

Then I noticed a shed with moss and leaves on the top. I took some pictures of it…remembering the concept of intimate landscapes from a book read years ago and decided to so some of that kind of photography.

The black walnuts in various forms of blackness were an obvious subject. I took several different black walnut ‘landscapes.’ The one I liked the most was an empty husk in the moss with a violet and some brown leaves….did a squirrel take the nut? The second favorite was a group of plants that formed an arch…with red fruits. It looked like a good start for a fairy house.

The last rotation was at the stream to look for macro invertebrates. It was my first time in my river boots since we moved to Missouri…they didn’t leak but I need to practice walking in them!

The water was very low and that made it harder to effectively use the seines although we did find a lot of water pennies. The other group found a couple of small hellgrammites…but the big find was right at the end: a dragonfly larva that looked like a leaf! What a great finale for our field trip activities.

Missouri Master Naturalist Field Trip (1)

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Last weekend was probably the best of the Missouri Master Naturalist training field trips. The location was a privately own mixed forest, old fields, a cemetery and a creek: a place with history and almost 30 years of restoration work. It was a scenic drive of about 20 miles from my house…quickly going to 2 lane road…then a road without a center stripe….and then a single lane gravel round with some low vegetation in the center which I heard brushing on the bottom of my car.  

There were three rotations with lunch between the second and third ones. The day started out cool but was close to 80 by the time we ended so I was pleased to do the walking rotation first. It was focused on native trees and plants…and fungi.

There were lots of black walnuts on the ground….and looking up…it was easy to see which tree was producing them since there were still nuts on the trees.

As we walked along the road – there were several fungi to see on rotting logs.

There were familiar leaves and bark….and heart shaped leaves of wild ginger. The leaves on the ground were brown but there was color in the leaves still on the trees.

The millstone from the old mill (broken into two pieces) was near the entrance to the cemetery…brought there when it was found in the creek. Both areas are reminders of the history of the place as much as a place along the creek we were told about over lunch where many arrowheads had been found (a place there they were made over many hundreds of years before Europeans arrived).

Our guide for fungi had brought some other specimens found elsewhere to share with us since the drought had reduced what we would see otherwise on our walk.

The hour past very quickly and we headed back to our next rotation which was journaling…I’ll post about that tomorrow.  

Dallas and Back – October

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I made my monthly trek to Dallas and back late last week. It was a cold morning as I left Missouri…getting away well before 6 and my nav system routing be around a nighttime road closure before I even made it to the highway! It was almost sunrise by the time I made my first rest stop. The color in the sky changed even in the short time I was in the building getting a protein shake for breakfast.

The color was mostly faded when I stopped the second time although it was still within the hour after sunrise.

The drive was uneventful although it seems like there is more active construction on some parts of my route than a month ago. Perhaps they are trying to reach a milestone before winter weather or maybe previous work had been hampered by very high temperatures in southern Oklahoma and Texas.

I visited with my dad and then headed to the hotel to relax…recover from getting up a little earlier than usual and driving for almost 7 hours.

The next morning, I was up and ready for a breakfast at the hotel at 6:30 then arrived to visit my dad shortly after 8 AM. We took a walk around the block. The weather was coolish (he wore a quilted vest over his long-sleeved shirt) and the sun was bright. Some of the houses had fall/Halloween decorations. The bald cypress trees I had noticed last time I walked with him were beginning to lose their needles. They will be ‘bald’ soon!

I was on the road heading home shortly after 10. The drive between the assisted living residence in Dallas and the border between Texas and Oklahoma is the most stressful part of the route – the speed limit is 70 mph for most of the way and people are trying to go that fast and beyond even when the traffic is too heavy to allow that safely.

I got home by about 5:30 and my husband informed me that we might be about to see the aurora after it got dark. We went out about 8…and there it was…faint but definitely some color in the Missouri sky!

Missouri Master Naturalist Training – Week 6

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Week 6 of Missouri Master Naturalist (MMN) training was busy because I also did my first MMN volunteering too! I’m counting that ‘first’ as part of the training. The evening class was focused on:

  • plants and their pollinators. This was a great update --- particularly about native pollinators. I’d learned some things from my etymologist son-in-law (i.e. I had seen the video of buzz pollination and had observed nectar robbing behavior when touring a garden) but it was observational rather than an organized lecture. This lecture filled in the holes of what I had learned previously!

  • the educational trunk contents and the kinds of programs we do with them. There are bins (“trunks”) for bison, pelts, skulls, insects, birds, turtles, amphibians…and they are trying to develop a new one about urban pollinator landscaping. I got more ideas for the tree educational trunk I am creating…understanding more about how it will be used. I am not sure how often I will use some of the trunks, but it is good to know that they exist.

My volunteering at the MMN table at a fair of home schoolers was the highlight of my week. The 4-hour fair was held at a local nature center and organizations had tables of activities for the 300 families that had registered for the event. The MMN table was focused on Monarch Butterflies. We had life cycle puzzles for the students to work, 2 chrysalis in a mesh tent (one healthy, another parasitized), seeds for 3 kinds of milkweed, a coloring page, and a vocabulary word/definition matching page, lots of brochures, and a slideshow (I had put together the slideshow from some recent photographs I’d taken to play on my iPad…the charge lasted for 3.5 hours). By the end we had no seeds left and very few brochures. It was a well-attended event!

Sustaining Eldercare – October 2024

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A big worry in any group living situation with older people – something contagious going around - seemed to be happening in late September. Dad developed upper respiratory congestion and was not feeling well at all; the medication his doctor prescribed made his balance even more precarious but appeared to help him otherwise. No one else in the assisted living residence had it so it might have been a seasonal allergy flare up. He is the only resident that goes outdoors on a regular basis – for his walks around the block and to help water plants around the patio. He is back to normal at this point and the family is very relieved.

We are continuing to enjoy jigsaw puzzles with him. There are some clues that don’t work for him anymore – like tiny writing on a puzzle piece; his eyesight is not good enough to read the words.

One of my sisters took a closer look at his toothbrush and electric shaver recently. The toothbrush needs to be replaced, and the electric shaver looked as if it hadn’t been cleaned for a long time. Since both of those things are items we need to provide for him, we should have been monitoring them more closely. We are good about the things we do for him daily (like putting out clothes for the next day) but probably need a list of things we check periodically (like the toothbrush and electric shaver)! The other toiletries – like toothpaste and lotion and soap – were already on our radar and there are extras of those things already available under the sink of his bathroom.

He has been living in the assisted living residence for 10 months now. My sisters and I are still tweaking how we best support him…some is just to be expected since we want to be responsive as his needs change, but other tweaks are discoveries for us of things we should have been doing proactively all along (like checking the toothbrush and the electric razor).

Gleanings of the Week Ending October 12, 2024

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The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

Who Was Buried in Spain’s Megalithic Necropolis of Panoría? - More women than men were buried in Panoria, where human remains were interred in collective burials between 4,100 and 5,600 years ago.

On Navajo Lands, Ancient Ways Are Restoring the Parched Earth - Traditional rock and stick structures, similar to those used by Native peoples long before Europeans arrived on the continent, are not only delivering water to crops they are also restoring the watershed and those of neighbors, helping to sequester carbon, and reviving this high-desert ecosystem…. an opportunity to begin developing localized food economies.

Megadiverse flowering plant family on isolated islands – A high number of evolutionary events -- occurred in the aster family (daisies, sunflowers, and asters) within relatively short time periods on many islands worldwide.

Why is Mount Everest so big? New research highlights a rogue river – but deeper forces are at work - Everest is around 250m taller than the other great peaks of the Himalayas. It is also growing by about 2mm each year – roughly twice as fast as it has been growing on average over the long term. The Arun river’s course changed around 90,000 years ago, eroding away rock that was weighing Everest down – and the mountain has bounced up in response, by somewhere between 15 and 50m. However, the “fundamental cause” of the peak’s size is the tectonic processes that create mountains.

Researchers Grow an Extinct Plant From a 1,000-Year-Old Seed - Israeli researchers have grown the seed of a previously unknown species of flowering plant into a mature tree. In the late 1980s, archaeologists excavating caves in the northern Judean desert discovered a well-preserved but mysterious seed that had likely been carried there by animals. The seed could be dated to between 993 C.E. and 1202 C.E. and that it was a unique member of the commiphora family, a flowering plant known for its aromatic resins. Chemical analysis of the leaves shows an abundance of medical properties in the leaves, and its lack of fragrance matches descriptions of the tsori in the Bible.

Rare and Elusive Australian Bird, Once Thought Extinct for 100 Years, Discovered by Indigenous Rangers and Scientists – Night parrots are generally difficult to detect—a fact that has been long recorded in Indigenous culture. The elusive species creates tunnels and nests in dense spinifex bushes and emerges at night to forage for seeds.

5 things to know from this week’s big report on cannabis - A new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine finds the disconnect between the states and the federal government is leading to fragmented policies, and risks to the public. 5 takeaways:

  1. People consume cannabis more regularly than alcohol in the U.S.

  2. Weed and vapes can be super potent and that’s not always disclosed

  3. You can get psychoactive hemp products even in states where cannabis is illegal

  4. Research on cannabis is stifled

  5. Cannabis can be dangerous, but people hear more about its benefits than risks

Biodiversity Becoming a Top Priority - A survey of 300 landscape architects, designers, and landscape architecture educators in the U.S. found that 96 percent of landscape architects are familiar with the impacts of the biodiversity crisis. 45 percent have made biodiversity conservation a top priority of their practice and another 41 percent consider biodiversity as part of their organization’s environmental ethos.

Medical imaging breakthrough could transform cancer and arthritis diagnosis - A new hand-held scanner developed by University College London researchers can generate highly detailed 3D photoacoustic images in just seconds, paving the way for their use in a clinical setting for the first time and offering the potential for earlier disease diagnosis (cancer, cardiovascular disease, and arthritis). What a boon if this could become the new standard…avoiding waiting for an imaging appointment, having to sit still for a long time, and higher cost of current technology!

Incredible Winners of the 2024 Natural Landscape Photography Awards – Couldn’t resist this collection of beautiful images to finish off the gleanings for this week.

Robert Ellice Mack’s Children of the late 1800s

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The week’s eBooks are full of illustrations of children – mostly outdoors. They are probably somewhat idealized but are a window into the view people had of what children should be doing in the late 1800s. Certainly children were outdoors more often then than most children are today.

All round the clock

Sweet nature and other poems, with illustrations

Robert Ellice Mack was the editor of the books – selecting poem written by others and illustrations from several artists. There are other books from him that have been digitized; a good list is on University of Pennsylvania’s Online Books Page for him.

Meadow at Lake Springfield Boathouse

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I opted to drive myself the Lake Springfield boathouse last week so I could photograph the meadow/prairie and the other plantings near the boathouse before the rest of the Identifying Woody Plants class arrived. The beautyberry was spectacular! I am so glad I planted some in my yard recently and hope it makes it through the winter to be a great plant next year.

The common milkweed had already been cut down but there were several pods spilling their seeds where the plants once stood.

The asters seemed to be hosting the most insects in the meadow/prairie area. I was thrilled to see Monarch butterflies; they were large ones…the ones that go all the way to Mexico for the winter. The thistles were releasing their seeds and the golden rods were the second most popular nectar plant for insects.

It was a great day to see the meadow in fall glory!