There is a nice mixture of lily pad-like leaves floating off the end of my dock – huge round serving platter-sized lotus leaves, the smaller dinner plate-sized split leaves of water lilies and the split ovals of spatterdock. One I hope never to see in the mix was discovered for the first time in [Continue]
In late summer there are many different yellow sunflower-ish flowers blooming in sunny spots in roadside ditches, along trails and field-side. One of these tall yellow bloomers is Jerusalem artichoke and there is a delicious edible vegetable growing underground beneath it. These 6’-9’ tall plants are in the sunflower family and produce yellow 4” [Continue]
Wild grapes are the most plentiful free fruit in North America. Their vines grow prolifically in most of the United States except for the southwest and extreme southeast. The strange thing is that they are mostly unnoticed until they become a problem – for example when they are about to strangle and pull down [Continue]
This space is often used to educate readers about invasive plant species, but this time we’re going in the polar opposite direction with species so rare that they are endangered or threatened. An endangered species is one that is on the brink of extinction. Threatened species are those likely to be at the brink [Continue]
My husband and I lost most of our chicken flock to an unknown predator in one night of terror last summer. After a little research, we decided to replace them with Easter Egger chickens. Easter Eggers’ eggs range in color from blue to green to pink, coming right out of the chicken looking like [Continue]
“In the place where the tree falleth, there it shall be.” Ecclesiastes 11:3 A dead tree is never entirely dead even though it may seem that way at first glance. Observe a dead tree for a while and you’ll see that it is teeming with life. The healthiest, most biologically diverse forests have a [Continue]
For many Septembers, my husband and I have traveled to Canada for duck and grouse hunting. The drive is twelve hours long and when it’s not my turn to drive, I usually have my eyes turned to the roadside ditches to see what’s growing there. (There really isn’t much else to look at in [Continue]
I would bet that 95% of property owners reading this have one or more plant species on their property that violates NR40, the Wisconsin DNR’s invasive species rule. Some of you know that you do. Perhaps you’ve got a woodland where invasive buckthorn or garlic mustard is past any chance of control. Or [Continue]
Once upon a time, long ago in a land far away, a beautiful purple-flowered plant bloomed every summer. It attracted bees and other pollinators and was used for medicine and to make gardens pretty. It was well-behaved in its native land, never overstepping its bounds, because a tiny beetle that wouldn’t eat anything but [Continue]
Along with maple, the tree that most Wisconsinites can identify is the mighty oak. My entirely unscientific research turned up hundreds of poems written about oak trees, almost as many as are written about love and love lost. Often people will leave an oak standing in an inconvenient location rather than fell it. In 2004 [Continue]