McKinley Woods FP On Sunday, April 6, I went to McKinley Woods to see how the wildflowers are looking. No prescribed burn this year so the display is less showy and more uneven than usual as many plants are delayed trying to come up through the leaves, while bare ground and south facing areas are…
Read more
By Henry Eilers On August 19 at 9 am we met at Glenn and Nancy Savage’s place on Quail Lane to view their amazing and extensive prairie and wetland restorations. Emilee Hale, Pheasants Forever biologist led a group of participants from PF, local soil and water conservation districts and several federal agencies. Also participating were…
Read more
The ability of seed banks to successfully store seeds of economically important crops for long periods of time has been adopted by plant conservationists as a method for conserving dwindling plant diversity across the globe. The premise of seed banking is that if seeds are dried to 15-24% relative humidity and stored at -20°C, many species can be held in a dormant state for decades to…
Read more
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 could also be said for sedges. They are a group of grass like plants, also referred to as graminoids, about which most of us know…
Read more
From INPS President Janine Catchpole: I want to talk about Patricia K Armstrong. She is a woman with a history we should appreciate, and she has a problem that needs a creative solution. At 90 trips around the sun, she climbed to the Big Prairie at Revis during the Annual Gathering with ease, and down…
Read more
Lakeside daisy’s (Tetraneuris herbacea) rocky road to recovery began in 1988 when it was listed as a federally threatened species. This designation was determined in part by the limited availability of suitable habitat, and the potential loss of that habitat as a result of stone quarrying operations in major parts of its range (namely Ohio).…
Read more
-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. And then there are large trees of course, such as oaks and hickories. We think less often of the understory, unless such iconic species as…
Read more
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 that had survived that devastating 2012 drought. Though mostly small, 3’ or less, they all indicated considerable age by their sizable basal crowns. The largest…
Read more
-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 a week ago that I was privileged to accompany Nathan Aaron, a skilled botanist who is working in the Meramec Hills section of the Missouri…
Read more
Somewhere in a lake near you, in a shallow bay, grows a floating plant with pouchlike sacs on its leaflets. The sacs each have a “spring- loaded” trap door that can open and shut in a fraction of a second. The “triggers” are hairs, known as “trichomes” in plants, around the mouth of the sac.…
Read more
