Plant of the Week

Ten-petaled mentzelia
Mentzelia decapetala (Pursh ex Sims)
Urban & Gilg. ex Gilg. (shown)
other common names: ten-petaled blazing star, prairie lily, sand lily

Stickleaf mentzelia
Mentzelia oligosperma Nutt.
other common names: few-seeded mentzelia, five-petaled mentzelia, Argus blazing star
Mentzelia: named in honor of Christian Mentzel, a German botanist of the late 17th century
Decapetala: from Latin, meaning “ten petals”
Oligosperma: from Latin, meaning “few-seeded,” for this characteristic of the species
Loasa family: Loasaceae

Photograph by Thomas Rosburg, Wildflowers of the Tallgrass Prairie: The Upper Midwest, Second Edition

Plant of the Week

Ground cherry
Physalis virginiana Mill.
other common names: Virginia ground cherry, old squaw berry, tomatos del campo, husk tomatoes, eastern ground cherry
Physalis: from Greek, meaning “bladder,” referring to the bladderlike husk of the fruit
Virginiana: meaning “of Virginia”
Nightshade family: Solanaceae

Photograph by Thomas Rosburg, Wildflowers of the Tallgrass Prairie: The Upper Midwest, Second Edition

Don't miss this seminar...

Anatomy of the Flood –Preparing for the Future – Seminar

The Iowa Floods of 2008 are receding into history, but information gleaned from the disaster can help mitigate against future floods.

A two-hour session on “Anatomy of Iowa Floods:  Preparing for the Future” will be held on Tuesday, Sept. 7, in Elkader, Iowa at the FreedomBank Community Room, 4:00 - 6:00 PM. Topics will include climate change trends in Iowa precipitation and run-off; floodplain management strategies; rural-urban watershed coalition building; water quality; the work of the Iowa Flood Center; and a review of public policy issues. 

This seminar is hosted by the University of Iowa’s Center for Global & Regional Environmental Research, Rebuild Iowa Office, University of Northern Iowa Center for Energy and Environmental Education, Iowa Department of Natural Resources, Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship, Iowa State University Extension, Iowa League of Cities and the Iowa State Association of Counties.

If you can't make this seminar, please keep an eye on the blog for posts of future events, and please check out A Watershed Year: Anatomy of the Iowa Floods of 2008 edited by Cornelia F. Mutel.

Midwest Nature Quote of the Week

Any one who has looked across a ghostly valley at midnight, when moonlight makes a formless silver unity out of the drifting fog, knows how impossible it often is in nature to distinguish mass from hallucination. Any one who has stood upon a lofty summit and gazed over an inchoate tangle of deep canyons and cragged mountains, of sunlit lakelets and black expanses of forest, has become aware of a certain giddy sensation that there are no distances, no measures, simply unrelated matter rising and falling without any analogy to the banal geometry of breadth, thickness, and height.

Robert Marshall, The People’s Forests