Registration is now open for the St. Louis Native Plant Garden Tour on Saturday, June 20 from 9 AM to 3 PM. Take a self-guided tour of 10 residential native plant gardens in central St. Louis County. Various locations in Brentwood, Clayton, Glendale, Kirkwood, Webster Groves and more. Sun, shade, butterflies,…
Entomologist and wildlife ecologist Doug Tallamy is at his best in a recent OpEd piece in the New York Times entitled, The Chickadee’s Guide to Gardening: In Your Garden, Choose Plants That Help the Environment. OXFORD, Pa. — I GREW up thinking little of plants. I was interested in snakes…
Late last year St. Louis Wild Ones agreed to be listed as a partner on St. Louis Audubon’s application for a Missouri Department of Conservation Community Conservation Grant for a project in Creve Coeur Park. In November, Audubon received word that the project had been selected for funding to the sum…
By Betty Struckhoff Watching kids find little critters in pond water, some of them using a microscope, all under the helpful eyes of a docent made me think I could have been at Shaw Nature Reserve. But I was in the middle of London, one of the biggest, most densely…
By Mitch Leachman The St. Louis Audubon Society’s Bring Conservation Home program was created in 2012. It gives individual landowners in the St. Louis region specific advice on how to create bird- and pollinator-friendly habitat in their own yards. A number of the program’s volunteer Habitat Advisors are Wild Ones members,…
By Nellie Brown It’s not because the tree is in the holiday spirit. The “ornaments” are actually bagworms. The caterpillars eat an extremely wide range of plants (128 species), from arborvitae to maples. They can be devastating on many woody ornamentals, including many plants in your yard. The eggs hatch…
By Marsha Gebhardt I highly recommend attending one or more of the Friday Greener Gardens series at Shaw Nature Reserve. This is a new series for SNR; they call it an “experiment.” I attended the first one on a beautiful April evening. After sharing food and drink and a bit…
By Scott Barnes At the June yard tour, Dave Tylka talked about a caterpillar that ate all the leaves on his Indigo plant last year. I had the same problem, and was surprised to learn I wasn’t alone. The caterpillar belongs to the Broom Moth. I looked them up and learned…
By Kathryn Jepsen A free, informative field day for land managers, land owners and other resource professionals interested in woodland restoration. See first-hand what Missouri Master Naturalists, St. Charles County Parks and Recreation, and their partners are doing to restore the county’s woodland and prairie communities. Learn about the resources…
By Nellie Brown At this time of year, as the trees are leafing out, insects that feed on them are showing up as well. One of these is the eastern tent caterpillar (Malacosoma americanum). The adult moth is rarely seen, but the larval caterpillars create webs in the limb crotches of…
