From The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation Whether you wake to find mist hanging in damp hollows, snow draping the last of your tomato vines, or sunshine glinting off a warm sea, there is one thing that unites us all this month: pumpkins. With Halloween quickly followed by Thanksgiving, pumpkins seem to define this season….
Which of the following statements are false? Spiders are insects. “Arachnid” is just a fancy name for spider. You can always tell a spider because it has eight legs. All spiders make webs. The orb web (round or “geometric” web) is a “normal” spider web. A “daddy-longlegs” is a kind…
When deer are very hungry they will eat almost anything, but during the growing season they usually have lots of options. That being the case, they often eat what they like best. Following is a list of trees, shrubs, perennial flowers, and annual flowers used by North Dakota gardeners. They are grouped according to…
by Margy Terpstra In 1996, we were close to becoming empty nesters that had run out of projects, and had that itch to find a home with a bigger lot and more trees. We began searching. As soon as we walked through this house and onto the deck, I turned…
by Cynthia Berger Published in National Wildlife, April/May 2002 When her kids went off to college, Kathy Biggs got rid of her backyard swimming pool. But her Sebastopol, California yard still buzzes with activity on warm summer afternoons, because Kathy replaced the pool with a dragonfly pond. Now, instead of kids…
Condensed from: Science Daily (Aug. 22, 2011) Biologist Alan R. Templeton, Ph.D., fell in love with the eastern collared lizard that lives in the hot, dry Ozark glades when he was 13. By the time he returned from graduate and postgraduate work, 75 percent of the lizard populations had vanished….
by Ed Schmidt The national annual meeting of Wild Ones was held at the national headquarters in Neenah, Wisconsin. The drive up takes about seven hours , so we left St. Louis at 6 a.m., arriving around 3, in time for introductions before the start of the formal annual meeting at…
Percentage of US landmass 2 Rank in number of native species 21 Major natural communities 16 Distinctive natural communities 85 Forest communities 15 Woodland communities 18 Annual value of wood harvesting & processing 3,000,000,000
The peak of fall color in Missouri is usually mid‑October. This is when maples, ashes, oaks and hickories are at the height of their fall display. Normally by late October, the colors have faded and the leaves are beginning to drop from the trees. This progression of color change starts…
I want to share a cautionary tale from my mother, who is a native plant gardener and Wild Ones member in Kentucky. Earlier this week, she cut some tropical milkweed (Asclepias curassavica). Shortly afterwards, her eyes began to burn, and her vision gradually got blurry. By the time she went…
