Friday, February 25, 2011

Plant of the Week

Wild petunia
Ruellia humilis Nutt.
other common names: hairy ruellia
Ruellia: in honor of an early French herbalist, Jean de la Ruelle (1474–1537)
Humilis: from Latin, meaning “low,” in reference to the low-growing habit of the species in many habitats. (Due to variance in the genus, some authorities combine this species with another species, R. carolinensis.)
Acanthus family: Acanthaceae

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

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

An Interview with Mark Müller: Part 2

How do you merge your illustration work, your writing, your DVD work, etc., with your hands-on reconstruction work?

The reconstruction work that we do merges seamlessly with all my other projects including the educational/awareness aspect. We delight in having people come out for advice on their own plantings, help with a burn, or just enjoy the raucous color display when everything is in full bloom. Of course the hands-on work often inspires the artwork and keeps things real. It’s also great when you have to draw or film something and don’t have to leave the farm!

What has changed in the outdoor world since your first days of trying to learn about it and protect it? What's better, what’s worse?
So many things in the outdoor world have changed in my lifetime for better and for worse that whole books are written to address this question. But in general I’d say that things were pretty nasty in the 1960s as far as air and water quality and habitat destruction were concerned, and at the pace of environmental atrocities at that time we would be a lot worse off now if it were not for some pretty bold legislation and the blooming of environmental groups and an explosion of awareness—thank you, Rachel Carson and Aldo Leopold et al. If you would have told me 20 years ago that you would see dozens of bald eagles munching on bullheads along the Iowa River behind McDonald’s in Iowa City or that we would have a trapping season for bobcat and river otters or that turkeys would become a nuisance here, I would not have believed it. So there have been some miracle reversals, but we may have outdone ourselves with our contribution to global climate change, which will make DDT nearly wiping out raptors, oil spills, excessive logging, near total destruction of the tallgrass prairie, wetland draining, ivory-billed woodpeckers, etc., seem like trivial events in comparison to what we may be facing. It could be more than easy to go completely negative here, so I concentrate on keeping our consumption footprint small, continue to work on protecting and creating high-quality habitat and holding my breath that people will have the courage to get up and do what needs to be done before it’s too late.

Mark Müller, coauthor, An Illustrated Guide to Iowa Prairie Plants, and author, Prairie in Your Pocket, Woodland in Your Pocket, and Wetlands in Your Pocket

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Plant of the Week


Canada wild rye
Elymus canadensis L.
other common names: nodding wild rye, rye grass, Canada lyme grass, Great Plains wild rye
Elymus: derived from the Greek elymos, the name for a kind of grain that has the lemma and palea tightly rolled about the seed
Canadensis: meaning “of Canada” 
Grass family: Poaceae (Gramineae)


Monday, February 21, 2011

This Week in Iowa Nature

Skunk cabbage blooms, which generate their own heat, often appear before the snow melts at Hanging Bog State Preserve in Linn County.

Jean C. Prior and James Sandrock, The Iowa Nature Calendar