It has been said that it is ‘the little things that make the world go round’. The renowned author E. O. Wilson had ants and beetles in mind. But it…
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-Henry “Weeds” Eilers When we think about our woodlands – what comes to mind? Perhaps the earliest wildflowers after a long cold winter or hunting for morels a bit later.…
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Henry “Weeds” Eilers After recent burns and while getting my exercise by cutting down and piling brush at the Shoal Creek Conservation Area, I checked the few plants of Spicebush…
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-Henry “Weeds” Eilers One of our chapter members in October suggested that I do a plant profile column for the INPS newsletter on this native shrub. It had been only…
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Better start out with a definition of ‘weeds’ first. That means something quite different, whether you are an industrial farmer or a lawn obsessed suburbanite. Even polling our readers might…
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After a hiatus of several years I have again be collecting seeds for the Chicago Botanical Gardens SOS Millennium Seed Bank Partnership. They issued a priority list but were looking…
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The Chicago Botanic Garden contacted me again this spring about collecting seed for their SOS [Seeds of Success] seed-banking program. I had done so some 5 years ago. One of…
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The ‘Naturalist at Large’ by the retired biology professor Bernd Heinrich is a feature in the Natural History Magazine; always a favorite of mine. In the last issue of the…
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A nice colony of Pale-spike Lobelia [Lobelia spicata] is in early bloom in my garden as I sit here one of the last days in June. It is a rather dainty…
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Rare plants, unusual plants, that were some alternate headings that came to mind. This exploration is prompted by a long list of plants that I have come across over a…
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