Tree of the Week

American Plum, Prunus Americana Marsh.

DISTINGUISHING CHARACTERISTICS: Leaves simple, alternate, oval to oblong-oval, 2 to 4 inches long with petioles ½ to ¾ inch long, sharply toothed; petioles with or without glands; veins forming a network near the margins. Winter tqigs slender to moderate, often thorny, gray or red-brown; leaf scars small, half-round, with 3 bundle scars. Buds ovoid, 1/16 to ¼ (usually about 1/8) inch long, the terminal absent, often paired (side by side) above the lead scares; scales about 6, glabrous, red or reddish brown. Flowers perfect, regular, showy, in umbellike cluster of 2 to 5, appearing with or shortly before the leaves in spring; petals 5, white, nearly round. Fruit a drupe about 1 inch in diameter, red or light purple when ripe. Bark brown or dark gray, scaly.

SIMILAR TREES: Cherries have nonthorny twigs, terminal buds, flowers in racemes, and much smaller fruits. In winter, distinguished from other small, thorny trees by its lack of a terminal bud and its frequently paired lateral buds.

IOWA DISTRIBUTION: Native throughout the state.

Forest and Shade Trees of Iowa by Peter J. van der Linden and Donald R. Farrar

Finding Projectile Points

The durability and variety of point forms make them ideal for classification and study. Point forms, however, can vary by quality of material, skill of the maker, breakage and reshaping, and reshaping by use. The single point types illustrated in this guide include a wide range of variability around each modal form depicted. Very similar point forms have been given different names by archaeologists working throughout North America. Despite these factors, the points illustrated represent broad patterns of past shared behavior, craft, and technology in the Upper Midwest and Plains through time. While archaeologists cannot demonstrate that the point types they have defined represent past reality in the minds of their makers, the operating assumption by most archaeologists is that they do.

A Guide to Projectile Points of Iowa, Part 2: Middle Archaic, Late Archaic, Woodland, and Late Prehistoric Points by Joseph Tiffany, photographs by Christian A. Driver

Winter Sport

Years ago, after an extended field trip to the marshes of the Gulf Coast, Paul Errington reflected: “The South was genuine, beautiful, and fascinating, but it was not home to one born and apprenticed in a country molded by ice sheets.”

He spoke for all children of the northern prairies and glacial wetlands—people and wildfowl. Even though the prairie ducks have basked this winter in the Laguna Madre and other sunny resorts, it has been in forced exile. They were banished from their homeland by winter and are chafing to return. The North is where they belong, and for seven months, from ice to ice, they will be back in their prairie waters. The seven months are beginning; the fires of spring are kindled.

North again. Home again.

Out Home by John Madson