Bur Oak Blog

Interview with Terry VanDeWalle

2012-01-27T12:49:00.000-08:00

You’ve had pet snakes for many years. Have you also had pet frogs or toads and turtles?

I have not had any frogs or toads as pets, but we have had a few turtles in the house at times. My daughter is really interested in turtles, and I have picked up several hatchling turtles that we have headstarted, including painted turtles, snapping turtles, and a Blanding’s turtle, a threatened species in Iowa. Headstarting is raising hatchlings in captivity for a while, letting them grow, and then releasing them back where they came from. Headstarting can really increase the survival of young turtles, which are highly prone to predation by raccoons, opossums, skunks, and other predators. Keep in mind that a permit may be required to keep wild turtles in captivity, particularly certain species.

What’s your best turtle story?

I have a lot of turtle stories, but one I like is about a snapping turtle. I was trapping turtles in Lee County, Iowa, as part of a survey of a County Conservation Board property, and I caught a 10-12-pound snapper. I wanted to photograph the turtle, so I left it in the trap and carried the trap and turtle up to my truck in the parking area. It was mid-morning, and I wanted to spend some time looking for lizards while the temperature was right, so I took the turtle out of the trap and placed it in a bucket while I searched for lizards. I left the trap set up so that it would dry in the sun. After about half an hour, I came back and was going to photograph the snapper and then let it go. I went to the bucket and the turtle was gone. I looked around a bit but did not see it, so I figured it had gotten out of the bucket and headed back to the water. I turned around to get the trap so that I could reset it and, you guessed it, the snapper was in the trap. Apparently, it had gotten out of the bucket, walked 10 feet, and crawled right back into the trap. If I had known it was going to be that easy, I would not have carried all those traps down to the water.

Your graduate research was on turtles; what particular species did you study? My research looked at the effect of river modification (channelization, dams, bank stabilization, etc.) on the diversity of aquatic turtles. We evaluated the effects on all of Iowa’s aquatic turtles. As expected, we found that the more highly modified the river, the lower the number of species of turtles in the river.

What are your current research interests?

For the past 11 years, I have been doing a long-term mark/recapture and radio-telemetry study with massasauga rattlesnakes in Iowa.

What other plants and animals are you especially interested in?

Although reptiles and amphibians are my favorite, I really consider myself a naturalist and have an interest in many types of plants and animals; I really enjoying walking or driving through areas identifying species as I go. Over the past few years I have been working quite a bit with bats as part of my job as an environmental consultant.

Malformed frogs have been much in the news in recent years. Are turtles similarly threatened?

The current thinking is that many of the deformities that we saw in frogs were caused by parasites. Turtles, as far as we know, do not experience the same thing. The primary threat to turtles is loss of habitat, predation of nests and hatchlings, and roads.

Tell us about your next laminated guide. What other publications are you working on?

The next laminated guide will be Salamanders in Your Pocket. It will cover the same 12 states as the other guides. Although we only have 5 species of salamanders and newts in Iowa, there are many more species as you go south and east.

I am also currently working with Jim Christiansen, Neil Bernstein, and Jeff Parmelee on a book covering the natural history of Iowa’s reptiles.

What are the best places in the Midwest to see reptiles and amphibians?

This will likely seem like the obvious answer, but the best places to look for reptiles and amphibians are where there is suitable habitat, such as wetlands, streams, lakes, ponds, grassland, woodland, etc. Unfortunately, throughout the Midwest, much of our natural habitat has been lost, and the places it remains are often public areas, like county or state parks or wildlife refuges. So these areas probably provide the best opportunities to observe reptiles and amphibians along with many other species of wildlife as well. Many states have watchable wildlife guides that describe the best areas. The places that are good for reptiles and amphibians are also good for a whole host of other species, so remember to look up and around once in a while to see the birds flying over or the muskrat swimming by.

Terry VanDeWalle, Frogs and Toads in Your Pocket and Turtles in Your Pocket, with photographs by Suzanne L. Collins

Comfort Food From Iowa

2012-01-25T12:40:00.000-08:00

Apple Goodie

3 cups sliced or diced apples
3/4 cup white sugar
1/4 teaspoon soda
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/3 cup melted butter
1 rounded tablespoon flour (2 level tablespoons)
Salt and cinnamon to taste
3/4 cup oatmeal
3/4 cup flour
3/4 cup brown sugar, firmly packed

Combine apples and white sugar and put in buttered 8x8 Pyrex pan. Mix soda, baking powder, melted butter, flour, and salt and cinnamon to taste. Spread over top of apples. Combine remaining ingredients and crumble over the top. Bake 30 to 40 minutes at 350 degrees. Cut in squares and serve with hard sauce or whipped cream. I don't use either one; good without.

Neighboring on the Air: Cooking with the KMA Radio Homemakers, by Evelyn Birkby

Winter Bird

2012-01-23T12:17:00.000-08:00

Pine Grosbeak
Pinicola enucleator

During the winter of 1989-90 snow cover was sparse, so it was easy to walk our woodland trails. On January 2, I heard whistling calls and, in a grove of red cedar trees, spotted a flock of plump, cardinal-size birds with short dark bills. A few were pinkish red with black wings and white wingbars. Most had gray plumage with yellowish green heads and napes. I soon identified the birds as male and female pine grosbeaks. I knew this sighting was unusual, since pine grosbeaks come this far south only sporadically, so I notified Anne Marie Plunkett, who arrived the next day with Ray Glassel and Bob Janssen, both of whom, at three hundred ninety-seven species each, still tie the second-place record for the most species seen in Minnesota. The three friends found the grosbeaks in the same cedar trees where I had seen them.

North American Fringillidae, also known as winter finches, include purple finches, goldfinches, redpolls, pine grosbeaks, red crossbills, white-winged crossbills, and evening grosbeaks, among others. They are small to medium-size arboreal, seed-eating songbirds that fly fast, undulate in flight, have high-pitched calls, and gather in flocks when not nesting. As with the northern owls, patterns of movement and numbers vary greatly from year to year in response to fluctuations in food supplies, especially in winter. The birds I saw had moved south because of a poor crop of mountain ash berries, conifer seeds, and seeds of other trees across much of Canada.

Breeding locations also depend on food supplies and vary from year to year, but nesting primarily occurs in the open spruce and fir forests of Canada. The male grosbeak sings soft, whistled notes to defend his territory and in courtship feeds his mate. He remains nearby while she gathers moss, twigs, grass, lichen, and rootlets to build a bulky nest fifteen to twenty feet high on a horizontal branch or in a fork of a conifer. She sits on her two to five eggs for about two weeks. Her mate feeds her on the nest. Both parents develop throat pouches in which they carry seeds, buds, berries, and some insects to their nestlings. Young birds fledge two to three weeks after hatching.

Because of their flocking nature, these birds may be vulnerable to the spread of disease. Habitat destruction from logging operations is another concern, as are poor food crops and competition with other species.

I will always connect the 1990 occurrence of pine grosbeaks in my woods to the three expert birders who came to see them, especially Ray Glassel, a beloved Minnesota birder who has since passed away. The birds remained among the cedar trees for six weeks, which was fortunate because they have not appeared in my woods again.

Nancy Overcott, illustrated by Dana Gardner, Fifty Uncommon Birds of the Upper Midwest

Winter Story

2012-01-20T12:00:00.000-08:00

The garden began to come up in April and as we had perfectly lovely weather things started to grow very fast and every morning I ran literally ran I was so eager to see how much things had grown over night and then nearly the first of May the hoppers hatched. Yes hatched i[n] millions and billions. One of the neighbors who had out a little small grain came one day and said, "Well nothing can live over two days. The hoppers will have every green thing eaten."

And then that night came a blizzard from the north and first came sleet or rain that froze ice over everything it touched and later turned to snow with [the] hard north wind. We had very little fuel and that little was wet. We managed a little breakfast some way but I was so chilled and everything so wet the roof leaking so badly J.T. insisted on my putting on his overcoat while he put one on his brother Donald had left us which was large and he could put Willie inside and going to neighbor Ellis[es] till the storm let up. They had a dugout and shingled roof so we knew they would be comfortable especially as he had a team of mules so had been able to haul wood. It was 3/4 of a mile west and I did not believe I could make it and would rather go to bed but there was no dry place for the bed and J.T. rolled the bedding up as small as he could to keep it dry. You see before this we had taken the straw roof off and put on a sod roof but the rafters were so light we could not put much dirt on so it leaked and leaked, muddy water at that. Well J.T. got me on the south side of him and Willie in his coat but some way I could hardly walk and he had to help me along with his arm around me and then just as we got to the door and the warm air struck me I fainted and nearly fell.

When I recovered I found myself in bed with warm irons to my feet but I did not feel very well all day so do not think I got up. Nor did I seem to want to eat or drink, just to lie still in a kind of stupor. J.T. went back home to see to the stock and about getting some kind of fuel raked up [and] probably went over to the garden for small pieces of old corn stalks and put [them] in the house.

A Prairie Populist: The Memoirs of Luna Kellie, edited by Jane Taylor Nelsen

Winter Gardening

2012-01-18T11:46:00.000-08:00

Saturday, January 21

One month beyond the winter solstice, and we're deep into the kind of weather that sends farmers, retirees, and other "snowbirds" south to places like the Texas and Florida gulf coasts. The kind of weather that gives a special punch to TV ads touting cold remedies, snow tires, ski lessons, rock salt, and Caribbean love boats. The kind of weather that tells me to pull on my heavy wool socks, long johns, t-shirt, flannel shirt, and sweatshirt, and enjoy the simple pleasure of keeping warm on a bitterly cold day. The temperature this morning just ten above and the north wind gusting up to thirty-five miles an hour for a windchill factor of twenty below. Not exactly the sort of weather to tempt even the cross-country skiers outside.

But shortly before noon this morning, when I was up in the attic scanning the landscape, touching up some of my previous reports, and thinking about the one for today, I noticed Kate lugging our large splitoak harvesting basket back and forth between the house and the gazebo. She'd mentioned something the other day about having to defrost the basement freezer, but not wanting to do so until the weather turned cold enough outside so she could temporarily store the frozen produce outside. But I'd forgotten the plan, so when I ran downstairs to ask her what she was doing, her answer momentarily brought me up short.

"I'm just making something out of winter."

And so she was. At the north end of the gazebo, she'd carefully piled up all the frozen cartons, containing all the beef broth and duck broth she'd made during the fall, the fresh gulf shrimp we'd bought this summer and fall, and all the tomato puree and spaghetti sauce we'd made from the bumper harvest of tomatoes this summer. At the south end of the gazebo, she'd set up a large cardboard carton filled with ducks from a local farmer's wife, chicken pot pies she'd made a few weeks ago, and ice cube trays of frozen pesto that I'd made from the bumper crop of basil this summer and fall. The box was closed, the top weighed down with a heavy stone garden turtle to protect the stuff inside from the neighbor's untethered dog.

But the mere sight of it all having come back outside to the gazebo at the edge of the garden on one of the coldest days of the winter gave me a sudden feeling of intense warmth, a renewed sense of the deep interconnectedness of things in the world, of the seasons and a new understanding of Shelley's timely question: "If winter comes can spring be far behind?"

"You bet," said Kate, the point of which I could feel acutely in every one of my chilled fingertips after carrying all the frozen boxes back in again.

From Carl Klaus's Weathering Winter: A Gardener's Daybook

Looking for a good art exhibit to visit?

2012-01-13T13:02:00.000-08:00

Come see Bill Witt's photography from Enchanted by Prairie at the Waldemar A. Schmidt Art Gallery located on the ground floor of the Fine Arts Center at Wartburg College in Waverly, Iowa.

Hours: 9 a.m. - 7 p.m. daily

Comfort Foods of Iowa

2012-01-13T11:32:00.000-08:00

A Recipe for a Day
"Take a little dash of water, cold,
And a little leaven of prayer,
And a little bit of sunshine gold,
Dissolved in the morning air.

Add to your meal some merriment
And a thought of Kith and kin,
And then as your prime ingredient,
A plenty of work thrown in.

But spice it all with the essence of love
And a little whiff of play,
Let a wise old Book and a glance above
Complete the well-made day."

Baked Ham
Mrs. Erma Geist, Joliet, III

Select a thick ham weighing fourteen pounds, scrape trim, cover with fresh, cold water, let soak over night. In the morning, drain and dry; prepare a thick dough by mixing flour and water together, roll out to one-half inch thickness and enclose ham in it, wet the edges and press them firmly together; place ham in a large dripping pan and bake slowly in a moderate oven from four to five hours, remove from oven, break off shell and skin, trim off any ragged portions, stick fat side with whole cloves in diagonal rows an inch apart, grate the crumbs of white bread thickly over this surface and return ham to oven until a golden brown. Ham cooked in this way is cooked in its own juices and is very delicious and no waste.

David Schoonover, editor, P.E.O Cook Book

Winter Bird

2012-01-11T11:04:00.000-08:00

Townsend's Solitaire
Myadestes townsendi

On January 18, 2004, John Hockema found a Townsend's solitaire in a red cedar, a common species of juniper, about ten miles from my home. Although I had looked for solitaires before, I had never found one. I hoped my luck was about to change, but my search that day was unsuccessful. The next day Craig Mandel led a field trip to Fillmore County for his Twin Cities-area Audubon Club. I met them at the solitaire place, but in spite of looking carefully and playing a recording of the bird's clear, single-note call, we were unable to find this thrush from the western states and western Canada that sometimes winters as far east as the Upper Midwest, where it maintains a solitary territory in the middle of a supply of cedar berries. Some compensation for our lack of success came with the sightings of a southern shrike and overwintering flickers and robins on the way to my woods, where the group leader found further compensation in watching a tufted titmouse at our feeders, a species that is uncommon elsewhere in Minnesota.

During breeding season, the solitaire's diet expands to include worms, spiders, and insects that it finds in coniferous mountain forests. It hunts by hovering to pick insects and berries from foliage, pouncing on prey that it finds on the ground, and flying out from a perch to catch prey in the air. Although the bird is similar to flycatchers in its slender shape, long tail, and method of catching insects, the complex, warbling songs that the male sings to defend his territory prove his membership in the thrush family.

Solitaires use pine needles, bark strips, twigs, and grass to construct a shallow cup nest in a dirt bank, in the crevice of a cliff, under tree roots, or under another overhanging shelter. Ornithologists know that the clutch size is usually three to five, that the incubation period is about eleven days, and that both parents feed their babies, which have spotted breasts like the other young thrushes, but they know little else of this bird's breeding biology. In his 1926 book Birds of Western Canada, P. A. Taverner wrote, "A bird typical of the high mountain solitudes, well named Solitaire. Its unobtrusive dull grey golor, glorious song, and the romantic habitat and names surround it with an air of mystery that piques the imagination."

I suspect that solitaires have occasionally wintered among our cedar trees in years when they have wandered east due to poor supplies of berries in their usual winter range. My inability to find one may be due to lack of luck or diligence, so I will continue to look for this bird, which my friends say is not so difficult to find, especially since the species is doing well and faces few significant threats.

Nancy Overcott, illustrations by Dana Gardner, Fifty Uncommon Birds of the Upper Midwest

Bachelor Bess Winter Story

2012-01-09T10:55:00.000-08:00

January 6, 1913 / Fort Pierre, South Dakota
To Mrs. M. M. Corey

Had a nice ride out Sunday evening—plenty of [buffalo] robes and a dandy team. though of course it was cold. It was 18 below Sunday morning and it will beat that a long way tomorrow morning. I am at the school house—have a big fire and have moved my desk down by it. It is not only cold but there is an ugly southeast wind that seems to cut clear through. The weather has been clear ever since I got here except Friday which was blustery. And this is the first windy day. I'm not going home till dark—I might as well save that much coal.

Must close—Lovingly yours
Bachelor Bess

Bachelor Bess: The Homesteading Letters of Elizabeth Corey, 1909-1919 edited by Philip L. Gerber

Winter Gardening

2012-01-06T10:29:00.000-08:00

Thursday, January 5

In every gardener, there's also a dream lurking somewhere on the premises, especially during the bitterly cold days of winter deep freeze. The dream of an early spring day that's sunny enough and warm enough to be outside in the garden. Or a dream of the first summer harvest. Or the first ripe tomato. Or the first fresh tomato sauce, redolent with the aroma of fresh cropped basil and minced garlic. And there's nothing like the arrival of the spring gardening catalogues to help the dream along, glowing with the emblems of summer. A ripe tomato (or two or three) prominently in the foreground of almost every cover, like the watercolor still-life of vegetables on the Shepard's Seed catalogue that turned up in the mailbox this afternoon. And not only some glowing red tomatoes, but also a glossy purple eggplant, a cranberry-colored head of radicchio, a bright yellow pepper sitting next to a green pepper turning red at the tops of its shoulder, a couple heads of pale white garlic, a few sprigs of basil, and a big crinkly green leaf of kale, all appetizingly arrayed upon a bright blue-and-yellow-striped tablecloth. As sunny as summer itself.

As sunny as winter, too, at least at the moment. No matter how bad the temperature or the windchill gets in January, the sun seems to shine more brightly now than at any other time of the year. An illusion aided, no doubt, by its low angle in the sky and its reflection on the snow. It shines more regularly too. Five days in a row so far. The color of its reflected light and the texture of the shadows it casts on the snow can change continuously, as I can see from my third-floor perspective. Early this morning at sunrise, it cast a long shadowless orange aura over the backyard. A few hours later, the yard seemed bathed in a piercingly white light, broken only by the sharply defined and very dark shadows of the trees. A few hours later, the shadows began to soften and the light turned faintly yellow. And now, late in the afternoon, the shadows have completely disappeared, the snow is grayish, and soon it will change color again at the fabled blue hour.

No wonder the Scandinavians cherish the sun so much they've developed a special light bulb to compensate for the long periods when they're deprived of sunlight. I first heard about such light bulbs when I was reading the newspaper this morning, and one of them exploded in the table lamp just a few feet from my head, scattering its pale purple shards on the carpet around my feet. A few minutes later, Kate hustled downstairs to see what had happened, and it was then that she explained to me how these light bulbs are meant to "cut down on depression and lift your spirits," because, as one of the ads for them reports, "their bright, glare-free light is the closest thing to natural daylight." Natural daylight, thank God, doesn't explode just a few feet from my head, but it does lift my spirits. Even now, when its glow is barely perceptible in the snow that is so blue, so blue as to be inseparable from the sky.

From Carl Klaus's Weathering Winter: A Gardener's Daybook

Winter Sport

2012-01-04T13:29:00.000-08:00

By the time the River's narrows are gorged with grinding, piling ice, it is usually late December or well into January. For weeks the rough, opaque ice has blocked out such sunlight as there is. Submerged aquatic plants in the backwaters are unable to respire and produce oxygen, ice cover has prevented wind from aerating the water, and yet a certain biological demand is being made of the River. Even though all metabolisms have slowed, oxygen is still being used faster than it can be replenished in many areas. The winter fish-kill begins. Gizzard shad are among the first to die; they perish in vast numbers under the ice and are carried downstream through the channel dams and into the open River just beyond. Here, awaiting the dead fish, are bald eagles.

It is no wonder that some people here at the lower end of the Upper Mississippi wonder about the general concern for the eagles. On January 2, 1984, I counted fifty-one eagles perched in the trees below Lock and Dam 26; there were nine in one big cottonwood. Now and then one of the great birds would launch itself out over the open water, seeming to know exactly where to go, snatching a dead fish from the surface and easily competing with those other masters of dead-fish-snatching, the scavenger gulls. The harder the winter and the heavier the River ice, the greater the concentrations of our bald eagles. There are periods when up to two hundred eagles can be seen on the Mississippi and lower Illinois within forty miles of where I'm writing this.

They no longer nest here at Pool 26, and our Eagle's Nest Island is only a place name. But in winter they may be so common that they hardly cause comment. I walked from my house down through Hop Hollow to the River one day, tracking a wayward retriever puppy in several inches of new powder snow. It was fine weather, cold and quiet and perfectly clear, a day of alabaster and long blue tree shadows. There was suddenly another shadow, a moving one, crossing my trail. Then another, and another. I looked up to see eight bald eagles through the treetops just above me. Five were adults marked with white heads and tails and dark bodies; the others were brown-and-white juveniles. They milled silently above the trees from which I had started them, little more than fifty yards away but moving off. It isn't everyday that you'll flush a covey of bald eagles, and I watched slack-jawed while they vanished beyond the blufftop. Then came the chill of realizing that somewhere nearby, maybe even under the roost itself, there was a plump, ingenuous black Lab puppy that a bald eagle could see in that white snow with its head tucked under its wing. The pup's registered name, however, was Milo Lucky Streak—and he soon appeared, safe but lonely, gallumphing toward me with happy welcoming noises.

From John Madson's Up on the River: People and Wildlife of the Upper Mississippi

Winter Story

2012-01-03T10:33:00.000-08:00

December 31, 1909 Friday—New Year's Eve—Am at Speers again—stove smoked me out.

Got up yesterday morning pulled on my stockings and shoes and ran out and started my fire—it began to smoke—I worked with it as quickly as possible but was soon almost over come with smoke—just grabbed my big coat and rushed out doors—thanked my lucky stars I had no near neighbors as I perched there on a snow drift coughing and choking and trying to lace my shoes—was also thankful it was some what warmer—when the smoke thinned I went in and dressed then tried it again with no better result so packed my suit case straightened up a bit and started for Speers. Was kind of chilly around the edges when I started but soon warmed up to it as a great deal of new snow had fallen and had drifted the track full. Before I was half way here I was ready to drop the suit case and myself in the snow and shuffle off this mortal coil—it surely was fierce. Howard had started for a jag of hay and saw me comming and came after me—took me around by the hay stack—made me tramp hay. Was about all in when I got here.

Bachelor Bess: The Homesteading Letters of Elizabeth Corey, 1909-1919, edited by Paul Gerber

Prairie Cooks: Holiday Post

2011-12-23T11:26:00.000-08:00

At four o'clock Ingeborg calls up the stairway, "Myrrrrtle?" which is the signal for Myrtle to go down and set her Christmas cookies out for Kaffe Tid. We all troop down to the kitchen. Myrtle is a fantastic cookie maker. Her sandbakkels are incredible—each one a perfect fluted cup of flaky pastry. We can't make sandbakkels at our house because we don't have baking tins. Myrtle passes her cookies around to the grown-ups who are having their coffee around the kitchen table. We take our own cookies back upstairs, because we have got to get back to that Uncle Wiggily game. We are rabid for Uncle Wiggily, and none of us has won yet.

Myrtle's Sandbakkels (Butter Tarts)

Fluted tins (3 inches in diameter at the top and 1 inch high) are necessary to make these beautiful, cup-shaped Christmas cookies, which can be served alone, inverted on a plate, or filled with ice cream, whipped cream, lemon filling, or lingonberry preserves. Do not save this recipe for a rainy day: dry weather makes the dough much easier to work with.

1 cup butter

1 cup margarine (or lard or shortening)

2 cups sugar

1 teaspoon almond extract

1 large beaten egg

4 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

In a large bowl cream the butter, margarine, and sugar well with the almond extract, add the egg and the flour which has been sifted with the salt, until the flour is just absorbed. The dough will be soft. Flour the hands, divide the dough in half, and form two rolls about 9 x 2 1/2 inches. Wrap well in lightly floured waxed paper and chill at least several hours or overnight.

When dough is firm, slice the rolls in circles to 1/8 inch thick and press into the sandbakkel tins to form shells about 1/16 inch thick, making the bottoms slightly thinner than the sides (the dough will settle in baking). To facilitate forming the shells, if desired, press the dough with another sandbakkel tin the same size which has been dipped in flour.

Arrange the tarts on a baking sheet about 1 inch apart and chill again until firm (15 to 30 minutes) before baking in a 350 degree oven for 10 to 12 minutes or until golden and slightly brown around the edges. Remove the tins, inverted, to a cooling rack. Cool until tins can be handled, then twirl in the hands and press in gently with the fingertips until tarts loosen, then invert carefully on the rack. Let the tarts cool completely before storing in airtight tins. Makes about 40 3-inch sandbakkels.

Carrie Young and Felicia Young, Prairie Cooks

Tree of the Week

2011-12-22T09:42:00.000-08:00

White Spruce, Picea glauca (Moench) Voss.

DISTINGUISHING CHARACTERISTICS: Leaves linear, four-sided, evergreen, 1/3 to 3/4 inch long, green or light blue-green, with woody, peglike bases that remain on the twig when the green portions fall, spirally arranged and extending from the twig in several directions. Twigs gray on new growth. Buds with recurved scales. Cones pendant, 1 to 2 1/2 inches long, their scales dull light brown, rigid, with entire, rounded margins. Bark thin, dark, scaly.

SIMILAR TREES: Norway and blue spruces have larger cones and orangeish twigs. See also firs and Douglas=fir in the discussion of Norway spruce.

IOWA DISTRIBUTION: Planted throughout the state.

Forest and Shade Trees of Iowa (Third Edition), by Peter J. van der Linden and Donald R. Farrar

Winter Story

2011-12-21T13:04:00.000-08:00

We had such a nice open winter until after we brought the cattle home. We thought spring was near at hand. They had only a straw stack for food and shelter where they were and we planned on their eating the buffalo grass which was all round our place where it had grown fast after the grasshoppers left. And [there was] a small corn stalk field near to help out. But one night we heard the wind begin to howl in a cold piercing note and J.T. got up to see what was going on. He reported a regular blizzard was starting and we must try to get the cattle in the house or they would drift away and perhaps freeze to death. I hurried to dress and he made me put on his overcoat as he said the wind would blow right through me and I went out into the storm to help him. We opened the south door and drove them to the south side of the house and by considerable running and shouting urging them into the house, all but one stubborn steer. We had him to the door time and again but he always bolted by so as the storm was increasing and we were nearly frozen ourselves we left him go and went back to bed to get warm. I was afraid our carpet partition would not keep them out of our end of the house but J.T. laid on that side of the bed and then they crowded up into the other end of the room and let us go to sleep.

The next day the blizzard was still on and as fuel so scarce J.T. said Willie and I must stay in bed while he rustled a fire and something to eat. So he got a good fire and hot water and coffee. I am quite sure we still had some oatmeal though no milk. Anyway he put a coat around me and I sat up in bed and as the stove was right beside I could reach over and see to things and we had quite a lot of fun out of it. J.T. would dance around to keep warm and sing funny songs and as of course Willie wanted to get up he would take him back to bed. He went out to try to get the wild steer in but it only made him run further from the shelter of the house so he gave it up. There was nothing we could do for the cattle in the house so J.T. soon came back to bed as we could not burn up all the fuel trying to warm the house and we put in the day telling stories and singing songs until it was time for the other meal ("only 2 meals when the man cooks") which was about the same as breakfast and then to bed again and listen to the blizzard.

The next morning it was still cold but the sun shone bright so we turned the cattle [out] as the wind had died out and the snow which had seemed to come for a night and a day so fast and furious had nearly all, as J.T. said, blown into gopher holes or down into Kansas, so the cattle could get their feed all right and even the steer who stayed outdoors, as he had sheltered himself in the lee of the doorway, seemed not the worse for the storm.

A Prairie Populist: The Memoirs of Luna Kellie, edited by Jane Taylor Nelsen

Prairie Cooks: Holiday Post

2011-12-21T11:17:00.000-08:00

By the time we arrive for Christmas dinner, the table is set for twelve people; it is loaded, and it is beautiful. Ingeborg has lovely Scandinavian china and antique water glasses of red and gold. In addition to lutefisk, lefse, and mashed potatoes, she serves roast pork and rich brown gravy. Lining the table are watermelon pickles, raisin breads, preserves, and jellies. For dessert there is pumpkin pie with whipped cream.

Pioneer Pumpkin Pie

My mother and Ingeborg often made pumpkin pie for the winter holidays. This recipe has a mild yet rich taste.

For the 9-inch unbaked pie shell: use recipe for Carrine's Flaky Pie Crust (see page 23)

For the filling:

1 cup canned or fresh pumpkin

2/3 cup light brown sugar

1 teaspoon dark molasses

2 large eggs

1 tablespoon melted butter or margarine

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon ginger

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 1/4 cups light cream

whipping cream (for topping)

After making pie shell, refrigerate for 30 minutes. Place pumpkin, brown sugar, and molasses in a large mixing bowl and combine well. (If using fresh pumpkin, boil well until tender, drain and mash very well—if pumpkin still looks rough, put it in the blender a minute.) In a small bowl combine eggs, melted butter, spices, and salt and beat well with an eggbeater. Pour over pumpkin mixture and add cream and stir until smooth. Pour into refrigerated shell.

Pumpkin pie is best if baked at a long slow heat—pumpkin filling that has been allowed to boil in the oven is not palatable. Start out at 400 degrees for 10 to 12 minutes and then lower heat to 300 degrees and bake for up to another hour or until a knife inserted in the filling comes out clean. Cool pie on rack until warm and serve with a liberal topping of freshly whipped cream sweetened with a little sugar and vanilla. Serves 8.

Carrie Young and Felicia Young, Prairie Cooks

Tree of the Week

2011-12-19T10:37:00.000-08:00

Norway Spruce, Picea abies (L.) Karst.

DISTINGUISHING CHARACTERISTICS: Leaves linear, four-sided, evergreen, 3/8 to 1 inch long, dark green, with woody, peg-like bases tat remain on the twig when the green portions fall, spirally arranged and extending from the twig in several directions. Twigs drooping, orange on new growth. Buds with recurved scales. Cones pendant, 4 to 6 inches long, their scales dull brown, rigid, with finely toothed margins. Bark thin, dark, scaly.

SIMILAR TREES: White and blue spruces have smaller cones, and the twigs are stiffly held, not drooping. Blue spruce has longer, more sharply pointed leaves that are usually (in cultivated trees) noticeably blue-green in color. White spruce has grayish twigs. Firs and Douglas-fir resemble spruces and are often confused with them but differ in having flattened leaves that lack woody, peg-like bases. Fir cones are held upright on the branches and disintegrate at maturity; cones of Douglas-fir have protruding bracts.

IOWA DISTRIBUTION: Planted throughout the state; occasionally naturalized on cool, moist slopes in northeastern Iowa.

Forest and Shade Trees of Iowa (Third Edition), by Peter J. van der Linden and Donald R. Farrar

Winter Story

2011-12-16T09:53:00.000-08:00

December 8, 1909 / Fort Pierre, South Dakota
To Mrs. M. M. Corey

Dear Ma,

You folks think you know something about cold weather but you don't. I had got used to having my hair, eyebrows and eyewinkers covered with frost and ice till I looked like Santa Clause when I got to school but Sun. night beat that all hollow. I went to bed with the covers over my head and just a little air hole over my right eye and when I woke up in the night I found when I put up my hand to turn down the covers that my hair and the blanket were covered with hoar frost.

Monday morning it was blazing cold—I put that heavy gray wool skirt on for an under neath skirt—and wrapped as warm as I could. I got to school at five minutes till eight but the stove is in such a bad condition it took me fifteen minutes to clean out the ashes and start the fire. About that time my feet began to feel queer and by the time I was through sweeping I was ready to dance the "Highland Fling." I saw Mr. Stone coming with Myrtle and when he got there I had a note written to Mrs. Stone asking if she had anything in the house of which I could make bloomers as I got so cold about the branches and if she would send to town for some woolen stockings for me first time she got a chance. Plague take Mr. Stone he read the note and it tickled him so he had to tell Speers about it. Mrs. Speer said the wording of the note most killed him off. Mrs. Stone sent me a pair of woolen stockings and Miss Hunts' bloomers that night when Mr. Stone came after Myrtle.

Bachelor Bess: The Homesteading Letters of Elizabeth Corey, 1909-1919, edited by Paul Gerber

Prairie Cooks: Holiday Post

2011-12-15T08:49:00.000-08:00

Now we are gathered around the table, ten strong, the snow still falling behind the windows. My mother and father, Ole and Anna, my brother, my four sisters, and me. The piano bench has been brought in for two of us smaller girls to sit on, because there are not ten chairs in the house. My mother brings the lutefisk glistening with butter on a platter, my older sisters serve the meatballs in gravy, the mashed potatoes, and a casserole of macaroni and tomatoes. The lefse is already on the table, buttered and rolled up in serving portions on a huge platter.

By the time we are ready for dessert, the windows are so dark we can no longer see the falling snow, and the gas lamp above us seems to burn brighter. When my older sisters start to clear the table, my father says, "I suppose you kids did'nt leave any room for ice cream. I guess Ole and I are going to have to eat it all." Ole thinks this is hilarious and starts one of his giddy laughs he can't stop. Anna purses her lips and looks sideways at him. He straightens up.

Norman leaves the table, goes out to the porch, and brings in the ice cream freezer and sets it beside my mother's place. He has scraped the ice off the top and taken the cover off. My sisters bring the saucers, and my mother dishes up the ice cream with a long-handled spoon. It is too delicious for words. We eat silently. The sauces are passed back for seconds. My brother has thirds. After all, he says, he did all the work.

Hand-Cranked Ice Cream

6 large eggs
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 quart milk
1 quart whipping cream
2 teaspoons vanilla

Place lightly beaten eggs, sugar, and milk in a kettle and let simmer over low heat, stirring constantly with a wooden spatula to keep it just below the boiling point. When it has congealed to the consistency of thin custard, remove the mixture from heat and let cool. Add the whipping cream and vanilla and stir well.

Pour into steel can of 4-quart freezer. Surround with mixture of ice and rock salt. Turn crank slowly until it will no longer turn. Remove ice from top of steel can. Life off cover and carefully take out dasher, cleaning it off with a spoon as you lift. Replace cover and plug hole in top with small cloth. Repack ice around can until ready to serve. Set freezer in shallow pan and let water drain. Makes 4 quarts.

Norwegian Meatballs

No Norwegian Christmas Eve dinner would be complete without meatballs served with mashed potatoes and lefse as accompaniments.

1/2 pound lean ground beef
1/2 pound lean ground pork
1 egg, beaten lightly
1 tablespoon light cream or half-and-half
1 1/2 teaspoons sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

For the gravy:
3 tablespoons drippings and/or butter
1/4 cup flour
2 cups water
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
pepper to taste
1 teaspoon sugar

In a mixing bowl place all the ingredients for meatballs and mix thoroughly together. Flour the hands to keep them from sticking and form tablespoons of the mixture into balls (large walnut sized). Let balls dry on cutting board until all have been made.

Put 1 tablespoon of butter in heavy frying pan, melt to sizzling, and put in meatballs. Cook slowly over moderately low heat, shaking the pan to brown evenly on all sides, until meatballs are cooked through on the inside (20 to 30 minutes). They should be very brown and crusty. Remove meatballs to a warm dish with a slotted spoon.

Pour off drippings from pan, leaving the brown crusty particles. Measure 3 tablespoons drippings, or add enough butter to measure a total of 3 tablespoons of fat, and return to pan. Add the 1/4 cup flour and with a fork brown it in drippings over medium heat, scraping up the brown bits clinging to the sides and bottom of the pan, for 2 minutes. Add 2 cups of water in a stream and, stirring constantly, bring the sauce to a boil, then simmer for 3 minutes until gravy is very smooth. Stir in 1 1/2 teaspoons salt, pepper to taste, and 1 teaspoon sugar. Add the meatballs and simmer for several minutes, stirring occasionally, until the meatballs are heated through. Transfer meatballs and gravy to a heated tureen and serve, along with a bowl of mashed potatoes topped with melted butter and paprika. Serves 4.

Carrie Young and Felicia Young, Prairie Cooks

Tree of the Week

2011-12-12T08:26:00.000-08:00

Mugo Pine, Pinus mugo Turra.

DISTINGUISHING CHARACTERISTICS: Leaves in fascicles of 2, moderately stout, 1 1/2 to 3 inches long. Cones 3/4 to 1 1/2 inches long, without prickles.

SIMILAR TREES: This shrubby pine is easily distinguished from other species by its small size, multi stemmed habit, and small, roundish cones.

IOWA DISTRIBUTION: Planted throughout the state.

Forest and Shade Trees of Iowa (Third Edition), by Peter J. van der Linden and Donald R. Farrar

Winter Story

2011-12-09T10:48:00.000-08:00

November 21st

I haven't had to carry water—just melt snow you know—have had my tub full of snow water by the stove all the time and more than once I've gone to bed at nine thirty with a good fire and when I got up at five thirty have had to strike quite hard with my fist to break the ice on the tub while smaller things freeze up solid. My house is one of the warmest and best built houses in the country so you see we are having a spell of weather. I don't mind it like some folks do and every one is good to me—I have lots of invitations to stay over night or over Saturday & Sunday.

I started bread Friday evening. I suppose you wonder how I kept my yeast from freezing. I did like every one else out here—put it in a tight can, wrapped it up good and took it to bed with me and if holding that darned thing all night isn't enough to give any old maid bad dreams I don't know—I don't think I ever had better luck with bread though.

Bachelor Bess: The Homesteading Letters of Elizabeth Corey, 1909-1919, edited by Paul Gerber

Prairie Cooks: Holiday Post

2011-12-07T10:17:00.000-08:00

Lefse

2 1/2 pounds (6 to 8) boiling potatoes
1/4 cup butter
2 tablespoons light cream
2 tablespoons milk
2 teaspoons salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1 cup flour

Peel and boil 6 to 8 potatoes until very tender; drain, mash, and measure 4 cups. (Reserve the water for making potato bread, if desired.) Add butter, cream, milk, salt, and pepper, and mash again until very creamy. Chill lightly covered with waxed paper or cloth 2 to 4 hours or until well chilled. Add the cup of flour to the dough and work in well with hands. (Do not add flour before you refrigerate. Lefse must be made immediately after flour is added.)

It will be much easier to roll lefse if you use a pastry cloth and a stocking on your rolling pin which have been well seasoned with flour from previous use. Measure 1/4 cup of dough, form it in a ball, and put it on the pastry cloth on which is 1 tablespoon of flour from previous use. Measure 1/4 cup of dough, form it in a ball, and put it on the pastry cloth, and try again.

Have a well-seasoned cast-iron griddle. Do not grease. If you have an electric burner with eight settings, a No. 3 is just right for lefse—but better to have the heat too low than too high. Using a wide metal spatula or lefse stick, if you have one, lift the circle of lefse up from the pastry cloth on one side, using your other hand to help lift it on the other side, and carry it to the griddle. Prick the dough in four or five places with the corner of the spatula. let it bake for about a minute or until it bubbles in the middle, turn it carefully, and cook it for 45 seconds on the other side. If the heat is correct, it should still be very pale, with just a few flecks of brown. Turn again, then keep decreasing the turning time until you are turning about every 5 seconds, for a total of about 3 minutes. When done it should be dry on both sides but still tender and pliable; it should be pale brown flecked. Remove lefse to a dry dish towel and let cool. Wipe griddle with dry cloth between each lefse.

When cool, the circles can be piled up on each other. Store in a covered tin, overnight if desired, until ready to serve. To serve, halve them, spread with soft butter, and roll into coned-shaped rolls. Arrange the lefse on a decorative platter and serve as bread. Lefse freezes beautifully. It can be made several weeks ahead for special occasions. Just place in plastic bags and freeze. Then thaw several hours before serving at room temperature. Serves 6 to 8.

The Nine Days of Christmas

When today's children think of Christmas, they think of gifts. When I was a child I thought of food and celebrations. Gifts were the least part of my childhood Christmases. But the celebrations! That was a different matter.

The active festivities get into full swing in the midafternoon of Christmas Eve when my father brings in the tree and sets it up in the front room. Norwegian tradition holds that the tree must not be decorated until Christmas Eve. My mother is still in the kitchen baking the last piece of Christmas lefse on the top of her cast-iron cookstove—a task she has been at since morning. In a few minutes the pungent scent of damp pine mingles with the aroma of fresh lefse, and we know that Christmas week has started in earnest.

Carrie Young and Felicia Young, Prairie Cooks

Tree of the Week

2011-12-05T10:39:00.000-08:00

Scots Pine, Pinus sylvestris L.

DISTINGUISHING CHARACTERISTICS: Leaves in bundles of 2, slender, 1 to 4 inches long, usually twisted and often marked with fine white lines (seen with magnifying glass). Cones 1 to 2 inches long, falling intact (i.e., basal scales not missing); end of scales raised and pyramidal (less commonly flattened), with or without tiny prickles. Bark scaly and light orange on larger branches and upper trunk, divided into large gray plates covered with orange scales on lower trunk.

SIMILAR TREES: Mugo pine is shrubby; other common two-needle pines have longer leaves. Mature Scots pines can be easily distinguished from other species y the orange bark of their upper trunk and limbs.

IOWA DISTRIBUTION: Planted throughout the state.

Forest and Shade Trees of Iowa (Third Edition), by Peter J. van der Linden and Donald R. Farrar

Tree of the Week

2011-12-02T10:34:00.000-08:00

Ponderosa Pine, Pinus ponderosa Laws

DISTINGUISHING CHARACTERISTICS: Leaves in bundles of both 2 and 3, stout, 4 to 11 inches long, flexible. Cones 2 1/2 to 4 (or more) inches long; basal scales remaining on the twig when the cones fall, leaving a depression in the base of each cone; scales armed with sharp prickles near the end. Bark divided into large, flat plates, yellowish brown to reddish in color.

SIMILAR TREES: Red and Austrian pines have smaller cones and all leaves in bundles of 2.

IOWA DISTRIBUTION: Occasionally planted throughout the state.

Forest and Shade Trees of Iowa (Third Edition), by Peter J. van der Linden and Donald R. Farrar

Winter Story

2011-12-02T09:44:00.000-08:00

November 16, 1909 / Fort Pierre, South Dakota
To Mrs. Margaret Corey
7:30 P.M. and snow two feet deep

Before bed time Friday night it was snowing and kept at it almost all the time till last night or this morning rather. Three days of it and there is more snow on the ground now than there has been on at one time for two or three years they say. I moved into my new house Saturday in spite of the weather.

Good night—more later—Bess

Bachelor Bess: The Homesteading Letters of Elizabeth Corey, 1909-1919, edited by Paul Gerber

Rain Garden Update

2011-11-30T07:39:00.001-08:00

On October 19, staff from UI Facilities Management delivered a mountain of compost to the Kuhl House. The next day, our lawn was part of a Rainscaping Iowa training program sponsored by Iowa State University Extension. A spreader was used to distribute compost over the lawn, then a deep tyne aerator circled back and forth across the lawn to penetrate the ground. This will both enrich and aerate the soil and help prevent rapid runoff from rainfall, extending the benefits we are already enjoying from our rain garden.

Blooms in the rain garden and the prairie garden are almost over for the season; only a few hardy brown-eyed Susan blossoms remain. We like to think that underground, the plants’ long roots will continue to absorb snowmelt until spring comes again.

Interview with Jon Farrar

2011-11-30T07:39:00.000-08:00

What were the challenges of creating the first edition of your Field Guide to Wildflowers of Nebraska and the Great Plains? The second edition?

Time. The field photography really should have been a 10-year project. And there were other complications. The first edition was published in 1990, and most of the field work, the photography, was done in the three years prior to that, a period of drought on the central Great Plains. One of the challenges was finding fresh flowers to photograph. Delicate flowers that opened in morning were ragged and torn by the end of the day. And there were probably some plants that did not bloom at all those years, just hunkered down and waited for years with more moisture. The other challenge was being everywhere at the same time. Nebraska is a big state with diverse plant communities, from the deciduous forest along the Missouri River to the Rocky Mountain type ponderosa forests in the northwest. And between those two forest types are several major grassland types, each with unique plant communities.

Another challenge of producing the field guide was the words. I am not a college-certified botanist, although early in my career I worked with a German horticulturist and one of our primary missions was selecting, propagating, and planting wildflowers on state parks and wildlife management areas. In one regard, not being a training botanist was probably a blessing. I approached the text as would a layperson using it. Technical terminology was avoided as much as possible, and the species accounts were presented in a formula format so that not only was the same type of information presented for each species, it was presented in the same format. For sources I used every reference available, combined with information from the best botanists in the state and my own observations and field notes. In almost every case when a plant was photographed, I also pressed a specimen.

The principal challenge of the second edition was updating the nomenclature—the changes in scientific names and even the moving of species from one genus or family to another. And the text was updated, clarifying or adding information to the first edition text. Most of the other improvements made between the first edition and second edition were the work of the University of Iowa Press—skilled editing, improved maps and graphics, and a more eye-pleasing design. Frankly, the first edition was done by people accustomed to producing a monthly magazine. The second edition was done by people who produce books. The difference is evident, often in seemingly small, but important, details such as selection of the typeface.

How long have you been photographing plants? What are the particular challenges of being a botanical photographer?

I started photographing wildflowers in the late 1960s while still in college. I had a friend in the Navy, and he could buy Pentax cameras and lenses cheaply at the PX in Japan. When I started working for NEBRASKAland magazine in 1970, I purchased my first macro-lens, and wildflowers became a frequent subject for my photographs. Only when shooting photographs for the first edition of the field guide did wildflower photography dominate what I did in the field.

The wildflower photography I did for the field guide was different from what I would have done if my principal objective was producing a beautiful photograph. I did not do the super-tight, often shallow depth of field photographs that can produce spectacular images of little use for identifying plants in the field. Nor did I do the type of photographs of wildflowers often seen in earlier field guides, particularly those done by someone who was more a botanist than a photographer and made photographs more for documentation than visual pleasure. The photographs for the field guide were somewhere in between—close enough to feature a flower’s beauty, but at the same time showing identifying structures and when possible parts of the plant other than just the flower, particularly the foliage, useful in identifying a plant. Still, a pleasing composition in complementary light was always an objective.

The challenges of wildflower photography are not as great as photographing wildlife. After all, a plant cannot jump up and run away. The most attractive photographs of plants are made in the soft light of early morning and late day. Some wildflowers, though, only open in midday. For those a photographer hopes for bright-overcast light that is soft and muted. The same light is best for white flowers. All of these elements of producing a good wildflower photograph can be, mostly, controlled by the photographer by being in the right place at the right time. Even in the right place at the wrong time, the used of fill flash, a reflector, or a diffuser screen can sometimes make the difference between a good photograph and a poor one.

Wind seems to be ever-present on the Great Plains and is probably the wildflower photographer’s worst enemy. Some days the wind is light for the first hour or so in the morning, the perfect situation. Plants being jostled by the wind force a photographer to do one of two things: increase the ISO, which also increases the graininess of the photograph, or increase the shutter speed to stop the plant movement, resulting in more shallow depth of field. In some cases I put up a wind barrier of three-feet-high burlap attached to steel rods that were pushed into the ground.

Why have plants kept your photographic attention for so long? What other subjects do you focus on?

I’m sure my mother would appreciate me saying my interest in plants came from having a house full of flowers, including African violets under grow-lights in the living room and flowers in the yard, and I suppose that did contribute. As a boy I had my own “plant garden,” a card table covered with “my plants.” Only cacti and succulents were allowed. But what has probably sustained my interest in plants is that they are so photogenic and I make my living being a photographer. How could I not photograph them? When I am shooting a photo essay on a particular wildlife area or region, wildflowers are regular fodder for the spread. My principal photographic interest, though, has always been birds, water birds in particular, especially shorebirds.

What advice would you give to beginning nature photographers?

There used to be a saying among professional photographers that “film is cheap,” meaning it was false economy to lose an opportunity for a good photograph because you were too chintzy to spend some film bracketing for exposure and experimenting with different angles, distances, and lenses. Today, in the digital age, photographers are saying “pixels are free.” Buy enough memory cards so you have the luxury of burning exposures. If you throw away 80 percent of what you shoot, you are probably above average at culling. A second piece of advice is know where and when to go. Keep notes. If you are a week early or late for a particular wildflower, write it down and odds are better you will get your photograph the next year. Go often. Be in the field as much as you can. Drag yourself out of bed at 4:30 a.m. in the summer so you are perched near a wildflower when the light is best, and if you are lucky there is no wind, and if even luckier a heavy dew. And one final thing, photographs of snakes, lizards, insects and other small creatures are most authentic and personal when photographed at eye level. The same applies to wildflowers. Don’t stand over them and shoot, get down among them, and if that requires being on your belly for a low-growing flower, do it. Lightweight, waterproof pants are a joy.

Nebraska is a crossroads where eleven major floral associations—from the shortgrass prairie and sandhills prairie in the western half to the mixed-grass and tallgrass prairies in the east—meet and merge. What’s your favorite habitat?

No need to pause and think on this one—Nebraska’s Sandhills region in the central and north-central part of the state. Most of the natural landscapes and plant communities in Nebraska and the Great Plains have been destroyed since settlement. The Sandhills, encompassing about 19,000 square miles, is the largest tract of native grassland in the country because it is used principally for ranching. Properly done, grazing cattle simulates the action of native grazers such as bison and has allowed most of the native species to endure. There are numerous expansive public areas where wildflowers are abundant. If a person savors solitude and is not intimidated by endless horizons and the absence of convenience stores, it is a magical place. Be prepared to battle the wind, though. There is an old saying on the Great Plains, that the wind blows every day and the only thing to slow it down is a barbed wire fence in North Dakota that is down most of the time.

What are your favorite natural areas in Nebraska and the Midwest? What areas do you return to constantly, and what’s your favorite newly visited area?

In Nebraska, the Valentine and Crescent Lake national wildlife refuges are top choices for native grasslands filled with wildflowers and wildlife. Outside of the Sandhills, my next choice for a grassland worth visiting would be the Oglala National Grasslands in the northwest corner of Nebraska. Good examples of mixed-grass and shortgrass prairie can be found only as remnants. Some of the best places to look are on state wildlife management areas. Although Nebraska is not traditionally thought of as a woodland state, Indian Cave State Park in the extreme southeastern corner of the state is a wonderful parcel of eastern deciduous forest. In the far northwest, public land with Rocky Mountain type ponderosa forests is abundant on state and U.S. Forest Service land. In Nebraska’s Panhandle, Agate Fossil Beds National Monument and Scotts Bluff National Monument are good locations for wildflowers.

Each state in the Great Plains has a handful of “best places” to find a good sampling of native flora. Being a native Nebraskan, I confess to living a rock-deprived life, and so when outside of Nebraska I am often drawn to rocky places. They do not have to be spectacular rocky places; in fact, I tend to avoid anything spectacular, where you can accidently hit your shutter button while falling down and make a good photo. A lichen-covered glacial boulder here and there in a grassland will do or soft rock in barren country most people quickly drive through to get from here to there. And I prefer places where I can turn 360 degrees and not see a single thing done by man. I prefer grasslands over woodlands.

A few places I really like are the Lostwood National Wildlife Refuge in the prairie-pothole country of northwestern North Dakota; the Theodore Roosevelt National Park in western North Dakota, particularly the North Unit; Buffalo Gap National Grasslands and Badlands National Park in southwestern South Dakota; Konza Prairie and the Tall Grass National Preserve in northeastern Kansas; the Cimarron National Grasslands in southwestern Kansas and nearby Comanche National Grasslands in southeastern Colorado; the Black Kettle National Grassland in western Oklahoma; and the Wichita Mountains National Wildlife Refuge in south-central Oklahoma.

You’ve been a writer, editor, and photographer for NEBRASKAland magazine and the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission for more than forty years. What changes have you seen in the ways that Nebraskans view the natural world around them? What’s better, what’s worse when it comes to conservation in Nebraska?

Kids are spending less time outdoors, and when they are outdoors it is usually at a managed and manicured area such as a state park, and activities are usually organized by adults. Nature is packaged. That is too bad because kids should be left to their own devices now and then, make their own fun, discover new things in their own way, get dirty and accustomed to things like ticks on your pant legs or nettle itches on your elbows. That trend bodes ill for the future, as we are raising generations of adults with no real experience with nature. Those adults will vote and govern and decide the future of wildlife, native flora, and natural communities.

The bright side of what has happened over the last 40 years is that more people are aware of what we have lost and more interested in preserving what little remains of once vast ecosystems like the tallgrass prairie. More so than in the past, that concern has translated into legal protection for natural areas and support of organizations like The Nature Conservancy. The short-term view is seldom wise, more apt to be expedient or profitable. Protecting what is left of what once was so abundant for future generations is priceless.

Jon Farrar, Field Guide to Wildflowers of Nebraska and the Great Plains: Second Edition

This week in Iowa Nature: Nov 23

2011-11-30T07:38:00.000-08:00

After the frosty days of fall, note the warm reddish hues in stands of big and little bluestem on Iowa's prairie remnants.

The Iowa Nature Calendar

The Wild Turkey

2011-11-23T09:13:00.000-08:00

Wild Turkey

Meleagris gallopavo

In winter, I have seen up to sixty birds foraging together on the edge of the woods. When snow is on the ground, I like to climb in the nearby limestone bluffs and find a sheltered place to sit and wait for something to come my way. It may be a curious chickadee or a parade of deer walking below me. Piles of scat indicate the presence of coyotes. One day, a sound of barking broke the silence. I looked for dogs and hoped to see coyotes. Soon a flock of turkeys meandered into sight. This was the first I knew of the barking sounds that turkeys make.

50 Common Bird of the Upper Midwest, text by Nancy Overcott, art by Dana Gardner

Butterfly of the Week

2011-11-21T11:14:00.000-08:00

Hoary Edge

Achalarus lyciades (Geyer 1832)

Status: Very rare breeding resident.

Flight: Single brooded in Iowa, with records ranging from middle May to early June. It has been reported to fly until August in other states along the northern margin of its range.

Distinguishing features: The upper wing surface of the Hoary Edge is very reminiscent of the wing of the Silver-spotted Skipper, being brown with a gold band along the upper fore wing. The lower hind wing of the Hoary Edge lacks the central silver patch, however, instead having a hoary white-suffusion along the outer wing margin. Wing-span: 3.8-4.5 cm.

Distribution and habitat: Map 41. The Hoary Edge has only been collected for times in Iowa during the past forty years: three times from Waubonsie State Park in extreme southwestern Iowa and once from Des Moines in Polk County. The most recent reported collection date is 1969. No habitat information is available from these collections. Based on its behavior in nearby states, however, it was probably found in open woods and woodland edges. Judging by its distribution in surrounding states, it may eventually be found to occur rarely across the southern tier of Iowa counties.

Natural history: No information is available on the activities of this species in Iowa. Based on reports from nearby states, it is likely that its larvae eat various tick-trefoils.

Questions: What are the Hoary Edge's favored habitats and host plants? Is it able to survive the coldest Iowa winters, or does it have to recolonize from the south following such years? If global warming occurs, will this species become more common across southern Iowa?

The Butterflies of Iowa, by Dennis W. Schlicht, John C. Downey, and Jeffrey C. Nekola

Sandy Dyas at the Englert

2011-11-18T11:25:00.000-08:00

You are cordially invited to the Englert Theatre Gallery Reception tonight from 6-7 pm, in the theater's 2nd floor Douglas and Linda Paul Gallery prior to Greg Brown's performance, honoring local photographer Sandra Dyas. The gallery show will feature some rarely seen pieces from the project that lead to her beloved collection of photos featured in the University of Iowa Press publication Down to the River. Ms. Dyas will be at the reception and the music of those featured in the book will be playing. Hors d'oeuvres will be served, with a cash bar. Free and open to the public.

If you're interested in seeing more of Sandy's work, check out Down to the River. It documents the area’s vibrant live music scene, with its distinctive combination of folk, blues, roots/Americana, and rock sounds. The sixty photos in Down to the River capture her twenty years of photographing live music venues and shooting portraits of musicians in and around the city, resulting in a collection of images as compassionate and honest as the music itself.

Tree of the Week

2011-11-18T09:21:00.000-08:00

Austrian Pine, Pinus nigra Arnold

DISTINGUISHING CHARACTERISTICS: Leaves in bundles of 2, stout, 4 to 6 inches long, rather stiff but resisting breakage when bent in two. Buds coated with a white waxy substance. Cones 2 to 3 inches long, falling intact (i.e., basal scales not missing); scales with tiny deciduous prickles. Bark divided into large, dark gray plates, more or less covered with lighter-colored scales.

SIMILAR TREES: Red pine and ponderosa pine are the only other pines planted in Iowa that regularly have leaves more than 4 inches long. Red pine has brown buds and, when mature, reddish bark. Ponderosa pine has at least some bundles with 3 needles. Fallen cones of both species have missing basal scales. (Small Austrian pines sometimes have needles that are shorter than 4 inches. These trees might be mistaken for Scots pine, but Austrian pine has fat whitened buds and Scots pine has slim red-brown buds.)

IOWA DISTRIBUTION: Planted throughout the state.

Forest and Shade Trees of Iowa (Third Edition), by Peter J. van der Linden and Donald R. Farrar

Gardening in November

2011-11-16T10:33:00.000-08:00

Monday, November 13

I've been sorting through my two plastic cartons of CURRENT VEGETABLE SEEDS -- A - O and P - Z. From Arugula to Zucchini, looking first for the sure keepers, the ones that did so well this year and before (if I've grown them before) that I plan to grow them again. Like standard arugula. Greencrop, Jade, and Rocdor beans. Green Comet broccoli. Cashmere cauliflower. Cross Country picklers. Ichiban eggplants. Tres Fin endive. Buttercrunch, Simpson Elite, and purple oak leaf lettuce. Ace and Biscayne peppers. German Giant radishes. Sunburst pattypen. Space flat-leaf spinach. Ruby Swiss chard. Big Beef, Brandywine, and Enchantment tomatoes. Tokyo turnips. Burpee zucchini. Also though I didn't grow it this year, Ambrosia cantaloupe. For taste, abundance, hardiness, and beauty, those are the best I've seen. As for the rest, the sure losers and the possible keeps, it's time to consult the Vegetable Review Committee. For in just a few months, the time will come to be ordering and starting seeds for the spring garden.

Carl H. Klaus, My Vegetable Love: A Journal of a Growing Season

This Week in Iowa Nature

2011-11-14T10:51:00.000-08:00

November 16—19: Away from city lights, scan the eastern horizon for the annual Leonid meteor shower, bits of cosmic debris streaking through the night sky.

The Iowa Nature Calendar, by Jean Prior and James Sandrock

Tree of the Week

2011-11-11T10:22:00.000-08:00

For the months of November and December, we'll be showcasing pine trees in hopes that you'll see one you might want to help you celebrate the holiday season. Enjoy!

Red Pine, Pinus resinosa Ait.

DISTINGUISHING CHARACTERISTICS: Leaves in bundles of 2, slender, 4 to 6 inches long, fairly flexible but breaking readily when bent in two. Cones 1 1/2 to 2 1/4 inches long; basal scales remaining on the twig when the cone falls, leaving a small depression in the base of the cone; scales without prickles. Bark divided into flat plates separated by shallow furrows and covered with red-orange scales.

SIMILAR TREES: Austrian pine has strongly whitened buds and larger cones that retain their basal scales when falling from the twigs. Ponderosa pine has some bundles with 3 needles and much larger cones with sharp prickles.

IOWA DISTRIBUTION: Planted throughout the state but not commonly so in the west.

Forest and Shade Trees of Iowa (Third Edition), by Peter J. van der Linden and Donald R. Farrar

Gardening in November

2011-11-09T10:29:00.000-08:00

Wednesday, November 8

"In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure-dome decree: where Alph, the sacred river, ran through caverns measureless to man, down to a sunless sea." No wonder we got up early this morning and drove two hours west through rolling fields of pale dried corn and lush green winter wheat, the Black Angus feeding on hillsides in the middle distance, the steely farm ponds nestled in below, the flocks of crows circling overhead in the bright blue sky, scattered with mauve and white clouds. The clouds and the crows and the ponds and the cattle and the corn were still there on the way home, and so were the hillsides of evergreens and the browning oaks and the red-berried hawthorns -- but looking it seemed just then, like fields of chrysanthemums. Maybe it was that we were heading east and the sun was at our back. Or that we were tired and the light was playing tricks with our eyes. But somehow I don't think so.

Carl H. Klaus, My Vegetable Love: A Journal of a Growing Season

On the Fly: An Interview with Connie Mutel

2011-11-08T10:00:00.000-08:00

Check out this link to the UNESCO City of Literature featuring Connie Mutel, author of The Emerald Horizon: The History of Nature in Iowa and A Watershed Year: Anatomy of the Iowa Floods of 2008.

http://www.youtube.com/cityofliteratureusa

Habitat of the Month

2011-11-07T10:55:00.000-08:00

Pacific Coastline

Black Oystercatcher

Where land and sea meet, expect to find interesting habitats. Cliffs carved by the force of waves beating against rocks make perfect homes for birds that eat fish and shellfish.

Black oystercatchers are large shorebirds that live along rocky coastlines. They have all-black bodies, yellow eyes, light pink legs, and long orange bills. When you walk on a beach, you can hear them noisily peeping as they look for food along the water's edge. Sometimes their call sounds like a whistle.

Oystercatchers make nests called scrapes in shallow dents along the rocky beach. The parent birds line the nest with small shells and pebbles. When the eggs hatch, both parents care for the chicks until they can fly. Most black oystercatchers live all year round where they nest.

When oil from big ships and garbage spills into the ocean, the black oystercatcher's home is in danger. Keeping the ocean and beach clean is most important to the birds that live along the coast.

Where Do Birds Live? by Claudia McGehee

This Week in Iowa Nature

2011-11-04T10:46:00.000-07:00

Migrating painted lady butterflies swarm across fields and roads; they can overwinter in sunny, warm places.

The Iowa Nature Calendar, by Jean Prior and James Sandrock

Gardening in November

2011-11-02T10:26:00.000-07:00

Wednesday, November 1

Now for the first times in five months, the poles are down and the fruit is completely harvested -- twelve dozen Enchantments and four dozen Big Beef slicers sitting on the back porch, to be ripened on shelves in the basement. And now as I look out my window in the late afternoon, all I can see in that once abundant spot is the pile of dead pepper plants and tomato plants waiting to be bagged up for the refuse, and a ghostly white row cover along the front of the bed, protecting the radishes and green onions. But I can still remember how it looked in high summer -- tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants pendant on all the vines and bushes.

Carl H. Klaus, My Vegetable Love: A Journal of a Growing Season

Tree of the Week

2011-10-31T10:32:00.000-07:00

Ohio Buckeye, Aesculus glabra Willd

DISTINGUISHING CHARACTERISTICS: Leaves once-pinnately compound, opposite; leaflets 5 to 7 in number (usually 5), 3 to 6 inches long, elliptic to slightly oblong, gradually tapered to both the apex and the base; margins finely toothed. WInter twigs stout, red-brown to gray, glabrous; leaf scars rather large, half-rounded to shield-shaped, bundle scars 3 or in 3 groups. Buds ovoid, light brown, with 5 or 6 pairs of dry brown scales, the terminal 1/2 to 2/3 inch long. Flowers yellow-green, perfect or imperfect, irregular, in panicles, appearing after the leaves in spring. Fruit a nutlike capsule 1 to 2 inches in diameter with 1 or 2 seeds; capsule wall thick and leathery with deciduous prickles; seeds large, dark shiny brown, with a single large, pale spot (hilum). Bark ashy gray, separating into scaly plates divided by shallow furrows.

SIMILAR TREES: Common horsechestnut, our only other tree with palmately compound leaves, has white flowers and obovate, coarsely toothed leaflets abruptly tapered to the apex. Several shrubby species of Aesculus are planted. In winter, horsechestnut has dark, sticky buds.

IOWA DISTRIBUTION: Native south of a line extending from Mills County northeast to Boone County east to Clinton County. Planted throughout the state and sometimes escaping.

Forest and Shade Trees of Iowa (Third Edition), by Peter J. van der Linden and Donald R. Farrar

Scarth Exhibit

2011-10-28T10:35:00.000-07:00

If you’re in the Baraboo area tomorrow, come check out Linda & Robert Scarth’s DEEP NATURE: PHOTOGRAPHS FROM IOWA (as well as some of their other work), which will be on display at the Aldo Leopold Foundation’s Art Discovery Day. Hope to see you there!

October Gardening Tip

2011-10-28T09:16:00.000-07:00

As the frost kills plants, remove them. Annuals should be dug up or pulled out by their roots. Perennials, except for roses, should be cut off an inch or two above the groud. Put undiseased plant material in a compost pile, chopping up large pieces. If plant material is diseased, put it on a special, seperate pile to prevent disease from spreading.

-- Veronica Lorson Fowler, Gardening in Iowa and Surrounding Areas

Gardening in October

2011-10-26T10:10:00.000-07:00

Wednesday, October 25

To wrap or not to wrap. That is the question I was suddenly pondering in the clear, crisp air of the setting sun, the needles of the bald cypress glowing gold just a few feet away. Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous weather, or to take cloth against a sea of troubles and by opposing block them, at least for another week or so. Balmy weather back in the forecast after tonight's cold snap. Not much time to ponder, so I went with my deepest instincts. Wrap for the night is coming wherein you cannot wrap. Then I hustled around, harvesting the last of the pepper crop and a few zucchini still blossoming and fruiting under four layers of cloth. On the way in, I picked out three bright red Enchantments from the table of green and pink tomatoes ripening on the back porch, covered the rest with some old bed sheets, and then set out to make something of all my summer vegetables.

Carl H. Klaus, My Vegetable Love: A Journal of a Growing Season

Tree of the Week

2011-10-24T10:23:00.000-07:00

Black Ash, Fraxinus nigra Marsh

DISTINGUISHING CHARACTERISTICS: Leaves once-pinnately compound, opposite, 12 to 16 inches long; leaflets 7 to 13 in number (usually 9 to 11), oblong lanceolate, 3 to 6 inches long, not stalked, conspicuously toothed, glabrous except for tufts of orange-brown hairs where they join at the leaf stem. Winter twigs moderate to stout, gray, glabrous; leaf scars half-round to nearly-round; bundle scars numerous and close together, forming a fine curved line. Buds similar to green ash but usually black. Flowers very small, polygamous or dioecious, apetalous, appearing with or before the leaves in spring; staminate in short, compact panicles, pistillate in open panicles. Fruit a paddle-shaped samara 1 to 1 1/2 inches long, often persisting in winter; wing notched at apex, surrounding the flat, indistinct seed cavity. Bark gray, scaly, becoming shallowly and rather indistinctly furrowed on large trees.

SIMILAR TREES: Green and white ash have stalked leaflets, brown buds, and samaras with distinct seed cavities that are rounded in cross section.

IOWA DISTRIBUTION: Native as far west as the Des Moines River Valley. Not commonly planted.

Forest and Shade Trees of Iowa (Third Edition), by Peter J. van der Linden and Donald R. Farrar

Interview with Patricia Folley

2011-10-21T10:00:00.000-07:00

You’ve been studying wildflowers for more than thirty years. What was the catalyst—the magic moment—that brought you to appreciate them in the first place?

I can remember that moment very well. I was ten years old, and my family had moved into an old house on the very edge of Oklahoma City. Always curious and never afraid, I started exploring the new neighborhood. Across the street was a flower I’d never seen before and had no name for. I asked everyone in the neighborhood for a name, and none of them knew, and no one was interested in finding out. There was simply no way known to that working-class community to get such information.

So, I went to the Carnegie Library, about a mile away, and asked the librarian. Sad to say, she told me to ”go back to the children’s section and quit bothering me.” Baffled, I decided to make my own list and give them names.

I tried drawing pictures of the flowers and putting my made-up names on them, but it wasn’t like having the flowers. I melted paraffin on the kitchen stove and dipped them in it. What a mess! I got gooey spinach. But I never thought of drying and pressing them—how I wish I had!

Three years later, in junior high school, I found a science teacher who encouraged my interest in wild things, but she was not trained in botany and could not help with many of the names. That interest lay latent until Dr. Doyle McCoy published the first edition of his Roadside Flowers of Oklahoma while I was in high school. Soon I could find the “real” names of those local plants I’d given such fanciful names to.

But nobody I ever met in Oklahoma City really cared about wildflowers, and it remained a private matter while I started college and then went to work at Tinker Air Force Base, married, and had children.

What other plants and animals are you especially interested in?

I’ve been a member of the Audubon Society since I moved to Norman in 1975. They were obsessed with birds, but tolerant of my interest in the plants, and they had field trips! Someone, at last, who would be companions on explorations into wild places. Always, I took the McCoy books with me on those trips. Now, I am more interested in insects, and that is becoming more possible since there are, at last, a few good picture guides for them. Insects and flowers, of course, go together.

You not only wrote the text for this guide to Oklahoma’s wildflowers, but you took the photographs. How did you come to write your guide? What’s the main thing that you hope to accomplish with its publication?

I took the pictures because they were the best way I knew to preserve the appearance of the flowers. Getting a good macro camera in 1975 made the production of color slides fun and easy. And my new husband loved to go camping in Colorado during the hottest two weeks every year in Oklahoma. A whole new range of plants to explore! I have pictures of almost every wildflower that grows above 8,000 feet in Conejos County, Colorado.

I started giving slide programs to the Audubon society and local schools. After the Oklahoma Native Plant Society was organized, I became a fixture at their gatherings, and soon I was giving programs at least weekly. I was always concerned with the accuracy of identification, and when an evening class in plant identification was offered at the University of Oklahoma one year, I was finally able to make my own identifications. That class was taught by Dr James Estes, who became my mentor and has stuck by me all the years since.

I did not intend to write a book, but after my 75^th birthday, the strain of all that travelling to do slide shows was beginning to tell on me. Then I met a young man who had beautiful slides but needed help with their names. All he wanted was the names, and he published online. I offered to write the text for him if he’d allow me to use his pictures. Those were digital pictures. We went to the OU Press, the only one I knew about, and were encouraged to go ahead.

Then my photographer friend backed out, absolutely refused to go on with the project, and recalled all his pictures. By that time, I had text for 400 plants already written. The OU Press wanted slides, anyway, and I pulled the best ones I had and sent them in. Nothing ever came of it, and years later, I went over there and took my material home. Put it under the guest bed and tried to forget about it.

I wanted to get a book out for two reasons: Dr. McCoy had died, and his books were out of print and badly out of date. Taxonomy has come a long way since the 1950s, and so has photography. New members of the native plant society had nothing to get started with. My co-workers on the Flora of Oklahoma project are all botany professors. They have their hands full teaching their students how to determine their own names. That’s a process that I enjoy, but it is time-consuming and also requires a research library and a good microscope. Someone needed to get busy and write a new one guide.

How long have you been photographing plants? What are the particular challenges of being a botanical photographer?

I got a 35mm camera with a 1:1 macro lens in 1975 and immediately started photographing every flower I could find. My children were all grown then, and it made a good hobby. I just wanted the pictures and had no plan for using them.

To get usable pictures of flowers, you have to get down to their level. Many of my friends in the Native Plant Society have their own pictures of me, groveling in the gravel while making a close-up of a tiny wildflower. I have waded in swamps, using chest waders, crawled through underbrush, defied traffic while photographing along the highways, and met not a few curious wild and domestic animals. I’m not afraid of snakes, and I have accumulated quite a few tick and chigger bites but no snakebites. Maybe not being afraid of them helps.

When I first started, most rural landowners were not hostile. That has changed in recent years as trust between people has deteriorated. I do try to get permission to enter private land. But the best resource for me was the Nature Conservancy. I became involved with them when the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve was being negotiated, and I have had help from TNC workers in gaining access to those precious places.

Tell us about your work with the Flora of Oklahoma project and the Bebb Herbarium.

That came out of the four short courses I took at OU while still working full-time. Dr. Estes was very encouraging about my plant obsession and asked me to come in and work with him when I could do day-time work. So, the week after my retirement in January 1988, there I was.

Dr. Estes gave me a cabinet and a microscope to use while I was in the herbarium and assigned a graduate student to teach me what I needed to know. The student, Staria Vanderpool, was just wonderful: patient and kind and very knowledgeable. I worked only one day a week, so was possibly not too much of a drain on her patience. She stuck by me until she got her Ph.D., then went on to teach botany at the University of Arkansas. By that time, I was fairly capable of doing the work.

I take plant specimens that have been pressed, dried, and donated to the herbarium by people doing field work all over the state. Then I use the standard methods of determining the names to assure that they are properly labeled and placed in the collections. It is a never-ending job, and it never gets old. I’m as enthralled by this work as I was on the first day.

After the Flora of Oklahoma project was established by Dr. Estes and Dr. Tyrl, they recruited a few others to help. It is an enormous task and has been occupying a good bit of my life since I was granted entry to it during its third year. When it came time for me to contribute a family description, nobody who was technically qualified was available to do the Cyperaceae (sedges). When I was asked to do the research and become able to do them, I jumped at the chance. I spent the next four years doing field work on sedges, collecting them all over the state, making the specimens, photographing the plants, and determining the names. During this time, the preliminary work was being done for the Flora of North America, and I corresponded with the sedge authors for that work, too.

Never have I been refused by a “real” botanist when I asked for help. They are the most helpful, forgiving, and kind people I’ve ever known. I still do my one-day-a week “job” (I’ve never been paid or wanted to be) and am now fully integrated into the business of authoring the Flora of Oklahoma.

Tell us about the Oklahoma Native Plant Society.

The ONPS was organized in 1988, but I was about 8 months too late to become a charter member. I attended the first annual meeting in 1989, at a state park, and have been involved with it ever since. What the ONPS offers its members is a quarterly newsletter, three or more state-wide meetings every year, and three local chapters with their own, mostly monthly meetings and lots of field trips.

Some of the original members were also botany professors, and the organization was shaped by Paul Buck of Tulsa University, several Tulsa garden club members, and Jim Norman, an amateur botanist and ardent birder from Muskogee. They led awesome field trips.

Soon we had a local chapter which met in the Myriad Gardens arboretum in Oklahoma City. After a while, I was leading my own field trips to the places I’d found while photographing the flowers.

I was president of the state organization from 2000 to 2002, after writing and distributing the newsletter, called “The Gaillardia,” for several years. Now, I’m just enjoying my retirement from official duties, but I try to attend all the meetings.

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?

“What’s better” is the Internet, which makes information that is both more accessible and less reliable easier to get. Also, digital photography, that makes taking good pictures easier and more affordable. I don’t even want to think about what those boxes of slides cost me to create!

“What’s worse” is access to wild places. Vigorous efforts on the part of a few officials and the Native Plant Society to reduce the obsessive overmowing of highway margins have totally failed. It seems that political patronage of those jobs precludes eliminating any of them. Also, private property is much less accessible than it was 30 years ago. Rural property owners are wary of strangers wandering through their land and with some justification. (I’m a rural property owner, too). If it were not for the Nature Conservancy, there would be little access to the places that are still “natural.” State arks are so overused that they are about as full of wildlife as a school playground.

What advice would you give to beginning naturalists?

Get involved in the Audubon Society, the Native Plant Society, and your nearest university. All of them will use willing amateur help after they learn that they can trust you to take the work seriously. Don’t be afraid of getting your shoes muddy: the best places are often the wettest ones.

What are your favorite natural areas in Oklahoma and surrounding states? What areas do you return to constantly, and what’s your favorite newly visited area?

Well, the Nature Conservancy let me, with a friend who was a Ph.D. botanist, make the official inventory of the Pontotoc Ridge Preserve in south-central Oklahoma, and having worked it almost weekly during two growing seasons, it’s become one of my favorite places in the world.

Nearby, the Oklahoma Wildlife Department maintains a “preserve” that is actually a public hunting area. The Lexington Wildlife Area has become like a second home for me, as it is only about 5 miles away, and they let me in except during deer-hunting season, when it’s too dangerous. That is in the winter, so I get the whole growing season to myself.

Now that I’m a bit challenged in the mobility department, I’m not going out to explore new places much. My favorite place to visit since finishing the work at Pontotoc Ridge has been Black Mesa State Park in the far end of the Oklahoma Panhandle.

Patricia Folley, The Guide to Oklahoma Wildflowers

Rainscaping Iowa Training

2011-10-20T10:15:00.000-07:00

The University of Iowa Press lawn will be featured this afternoon in the Rainscape training program—a certification program for landscapers who want to protect Iowa's soil. In addition to its rain garden, the University of Iowa Press will be participating through a demonstration of the deep tyne aeration process. A deep tyne aerator will be used to make holes in the lawn, which will then be filled with compost—perfect for the Press's flourishing lawn!

photo courtesy of Rogersoh at Wikimedia Commons

Did you know that a rain garden should be about 10% of the total area you want to enrich? Find out more at the Rainscaping Iowa website.

Tree of the Week

2011-10-19T10:15:00.000-07:00

White Ash, Fraxinus americana L.

DISTINGUISHING CHARACTERISTICS: Leaves once-pinnately compound, opposite, 8 to 12 inches long; leaflets 5 to 9 in number (usually 7), ovate lanceolate to oval, 2 to 6 inches long with stalks 3/16 to 1/2 inch long; margins entire or obscurely toothed (rarely with conspicuous teeth); upper surface dark green and sometimes glossy, lower surface light green or very pale, glabrous. Winter twigs moderate in diameter, gray or brown, glabrous; leaf scars small, half-round to nearly round, with conspicuous V-shaped notch in the top, bundle scars numerous and very close together, forming a fine curved line. Buds and flowers similar to green ash. Fruit a paddle-shaped samara 1 to 2 inches long, often persisting into winter; wing not extending along seed cavity. Bark similar to green ash.

SIMILAR TREES: Green and black ash have shorter-stalked or unstalked leaflets with finely toothed margins.

IOWA DISTRIBUTION: Native as far west as the Cedar River in northern Iowa, the Des Moines River and its principal tributaries in the central part of the state, and the Missouri River in southern Iowa. Planted throughout the state.

Forest and Shade Trees of Iowa (Third Edition), by Peter J. van der Linden and Donald R. Farrar

Last Time to Catch the Scarth Exhibit

2011-10-17T10:38:00.000-07:00

If you're in the Iowa City area, come over to the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics to see art by Robert and Linda Scarth, photographers of Deep Nature: Photographs from Iowa! Their photos are in the PVAC Gallery 1 wall on the 8th floor of the Colloton Pavillion in the University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics until October 24th.

Gardening in October

2011-10-17T10:04:00.000-07:00

Wednesday, October 18

Whatever was driving me just then, it was a pleasure from start to finish. Just to work the pointed hoe back and forth through the soil one last time, then to lie down on the grass with the sun on my back (no kneeling right now) and crumble the earth in my hand, and level it out, and draw my finger through it to make a light depression, and drop the pinkish seeds in one by one, spaced out enough so I won't have to thin them, and cover them with compost, packing it down with the palm of my right hand.

Carl H. Klaus, My Vegetable Love: A Journal of a Growing Season

Tree of the Week

2011-10-14T10:01:00.000-07:00

Green Ash, Frazinus pennsylvancia Marsh.

DISTINGUISHING CHARACTERISTICS: Leaves once-pinnately compound, opposite, 10 to 12 inches long; leaflets 5 to 9 in number (usually 7), oblong-lanceolate or less commonly elliptic, 2 to 6 inches long, tapering at the base and extending along the upper side of their 1/16- to 3/16-inch-long stalks; margins conspicuously toothed; upper surface dark green and often glossy; lower surface light green, glabrous or nearly so (hairy in the form called red ash). Winter twigs moderate in diameter, gray, glabrous (finely hairy in the form called red ash); leaf scars small, half-round to nearly round, bundle scars numerous and very close together, forming a fine curved line. Buds globose to subglobose, brown, with 1 or 2 pairs of visible scales, the terminal 1/8 to 1/4 inch long. Flowers very small, dioecious, apetalous, appearing with or before leaves; staminate in short, compact panicles, pistillate in open panicles. Fruit a narrow, paddle-shaped samara 1 to 2 inches long that often persists in winter; wing extending along upper half of seed cavity. Bark ashy gray or gray-brown, furrowed, with narrow, interconnecting ridges enclosing diamond-shaped spaces.

SIMILAR TREES: White ash has relatively broad leaflets with entire or obscurely tooth margins and stalks about 1/4 inch long; the wing of its samara does not extend along the sides of the seed cavity. Black ash has 9 to 11 unstalked leaflets and its fruits have indistinct, flattened seed cavities.

IOWA DISTRIBUTION: Native and planted throughout the state.

Forest and Shade Trees of Iowa (Third Edition), by Peter J. van der Linden and Donald R. Farrar

Gardening in October

2011-10-12T09:59:00.000-07:00

Wednesday, October 11

Today the weather's so warm I shed my sweatshirt by noon and put on a short-sleeved shirt. Crisp nights, warm days, sunny skies, gentle breezes, turning leaves. The golden time, and the harvest continues as if it were high summer rather than midfall. Monday, more yellow pattypans. Enough on hand for Kate to stuff a couple that night with couscous, corn, onions, and peppers, and freeze a few for the winter. Also more Big Beef slicers, enough for me to make a tomato sauce for the pattypans to bake in, with basil, parsley, garlic, and chili powder. A Mexican sort of concoction that Kate invented during a family reunion back in August -- so rich and tasty now with the whole wheat couscous, we both agreed it's ready for a recipe contest. More slicers on the back porch, and more turning ripe on the vines. And more zucchini to go with the batch already in the crisper, enough for two or three dinners.

Carl H. Klaus, My Vegetable Love: A Journal of a Growing Season

Habitat of the Month

2011-10-10T10:30:00.000-07:00

Pacific Rainforest
Common Raven

The Pacific rainforest is properly named—it is one of the rainiest places in the United States. Majestic fir, cedar, hemlock, and spruce trees grow in the rainforest. These evergreen trees keep their green needles all year long and make cones for seeds. Not much sunshine gets through the thick forest top, but thousands of plants and animals that like moist shade and mild weather flourish here.

Within the sound of ocean waves, the common raven lives in the lush green rainforest. You can easily observe these large birds with their strong powerful legs and wedge-shaped tails. Both male and female ravens have glossy black bodies and shaggy throat feathers. They are omnivorous, which means they eat both plants and animals.

Ravens are social birds that use many different calls to communicate with each other.

They build deep, bowl-shaped nests high in the tall evergreens. The nests are lined with animal fur to keep their eggs and chicks warm.

Once, rainforests covered wide areas of the Pacific Northwest, but much of the original rainforest has been cut down and logged. Little is left outside protected parks. You can explore the habitat that havens call home all year round when you visit these rainforest parks.

Where Do Birds Live? by Claudia McGehee

Tree of the Week

2011-10-07T09:49:00.000-07:00

Boxelder, Acer negundo L.

DISTINGUISHING CHARACTERISTICS: Leaves once-pinnately compound, opposite; leaflets 3 to 9 in number (usually 3 or 5), ovate, sometimes shallowly lobed, 2 to 4 inches long, the margins entire or coarsely and shallowly toothed. Winter twigs moderate in diameter, green or purple, usually coated with a white waxy substance; leaf scars V-shaped with 3 bundle scars, opposing leaf scars joined at their ends and thus encircling the twigs, the junction prolonged upward into a short point on each side of the twig. Buds ovoid, densely white-hairy, 1/8 to 1/4 inch long with 2 or 4 visible scales. Flowers very small, greenish, dioecious, apetalous, appearing just before the leaves in spring; staminate long-stalked in umbellike clusters; pistillate in racemes. Fruit a pair of samaras joined at the base; wings 1 to 2 inches long, drooping; samaras ripening in autumn, often remaining on the tree through winter. Bark gray or brown, furrowed with scaly ridges.

SIMILAR TREES: Ashes, the only other common trees with opposite, pinnately compound leaves, have 7 to 11 leaflets and single, paddle-shaped samaras. Easily distinguished from other maples and ashes in winter by its greenish or purple twigs, white-hairy buds, and upward-poiting leaf scar junctions.

IOWA DISTRIBUTION: Native throughout the state, occasionally cultivated.

Forest and Shade Trees of Iowa (Third Edition), by Peter J. van der Linden and Donald R. Farrar

Gardening in October

2011-10-05T09:54:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, October 3

On a crisp, clear morning like this, I sometimes wish I could stay home forever. Just sitting on the back steps, taking it all in. The grass spangled with yellow walnut leaves. The yard framed with golden walnut trees .A shaft of sunlight angling through the open branches, suffusing the air and a piece of the big vegetable bed with its luminous beam. Yellow and green, yellow and green. With a few spots of pale brown among the pin oak leaves, and several specks of purple and pink among the pear leaves, and a few hints of orange amid the maple. So striking a leafscape, a landscape, I was momentarily transfixed by it.

Carl H. Klaus, My Vegetable Love: A Journal of a Growing Season

Butterfly of the Week

2011-10-03T10:06:00.000-07:00

Silver-spotted Skipper

Epargyreus clarus (Cramer [1775])
Status: Common breeding resident
Flight: Multiple brooded, flying throughout the growing season. It is most often encountered from late May to mid July.
Distinguishing features: The Silver-spotted Skipper's large size, dark brown color, medial gold band on the upper and lower fore wing, and large silver band on the lower hind wing make it easy to identify. Wingspan: 4.5-5.5 cm.
Distribution and habitat: Map 5. Found throughout the state in a wide variety of wooded habitats. It was first reported in Iowa from Denison in Crawford County in 1869.
Natural history: The Silver-spotted Skipper is an extremely strong flyer. It is very pugnacious and will even dart at small birds. While Paul Opler and George Krizek (1984) report that its larvae consume a large variety of common woodland legumes, no favored host plants have been recorded in Iowa. It is likely that it eats a large variety of common woodland legumes, such as black locust, honey locust, hog peanut, and tick-trefoil.
Questions: Is the pugnacious behavior of perching adults toward flying intruders part of the courtship pattern pr a form of territoriality? What is the selective advantage of the large silvery-white spot on the vertical hind wing?

The Butterflies of Iowa, by Dennis W. Schlicht, John C. Downey, and Jeffrey C. Nekola

September Gardening Tip

2011-09-30T09:49:00.000-07:00

Saturday, September 23

I could tell the freeze was coming for sure, when Pip and I were out walking at midnight, the sky clear, the stars bright, my breath condensing in front of me as he pulled his way around the block, energized by the cold and his purblind will.

Come morning, I jumped out of bed, expecting to find the lawn completely rimed with frost, a thick white coating on it, but instead found just a trace on scattered portions of the back yard. And a close-up check of the unprotected plants revealed they hadn't been nipped by it, not even the okra, native of Africa.

Carl H. Klaus, My Vegetable Love: A Journal of a Growing Season

This Week in Iowa Nature

2011-09-28T11:51:00.000-07:00

The Harvest Moon, familiar in song and story, is the full moon closest to the autumnal equinox.

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

Habitat of the Month

2011-09-26T06:48:00.000-07:00

Western Mountain Meadow
Mountain Bluebird

In ancient times, powerful natural pressures underneath the earth's surface pushed and folded the land above. Over hundreds of years, glaciers—huge, grinding plates of ice—and rivers carved out canyons and gorges and the rugged mountain ranges we see today. Many habitats are found here, from treeless mountaintops to the thick forests and open meadows below.

The mountain bluebird, a fast-flying little songbird, lives near mountain meadows. If a flash of bright sky-blue streaks by, you've probably seen an adult male bluebird.

In the meadows, bluebirds find insects to eat. When it is time to nest, they fly to the forest edge to look for trees with holes in their trunks.

Bluebirds migrate south to warmer places for the winter at the same time that the leaves on the aspen trees turn golden.

As more people cut down trees and build houses near mountains, bluebirds find it harder to locate places to nest. If you live close to a mountain meadow, you can help by building boxes for bluebirds.

Where Do Birds Live? by Claudia McGehee

September Gardening Tip

2011-09-23T08:38:00.000-07:00

Thursday, September 21

Staring at the sheathed tomato plants this morning, taking stock of what still needed protection, I was struck by how different they look from row-covered peppers. The ghostly white sheets of spun-bond polyester completely hide the pepper plants, so I can't see them unless I hunch over and peer through the covers. Even then I can detect only their blurred shapes and an occasional leaf or fruit close to the surface of the cloth. But the clear plastic sleeves on the tomato plants hide nothing. In fact, they reveal everything -- stems, leaves, and pendulous fruit -- like a see-through woman's sheath, an in-your-face bit of haute couture from an Italian or Parisian designer. Come to think of it, the row of tomato plants looks somewhat like a parade of avant-garde bridesmaids, each one sheathed in a billow of plastic from head to toe, from the gathering at the top of the one at the bottom. Up close, the effect is even more daring, what with all the holes punched in the plastic to keep the plants from overheating on warm sunny days. But there is no danger of overheating today. Overcast skies, light rain, temperatures in the mid-forties, and a northwest wind, like the end of October or November. Thirty degrees below normal for this final day of the traditional summer season. One of the coldest ends on record.

Carl H. Klaus, My Vegetable Love: A Journal of a Growing Season

Tree of the Week

2011-09-21T09:02:00.000-07:00

Eastern White Pine, Pinus strobus L.

DISTINGUISHING CHARACTERISTICS: Leaves in bundles of 5, very slender, 2 to 5 (usually about 3) inches long, marked with fine white lines (seen with magnifying glass), very flexible. Cones elongate, 4 to 5 (rarely to 8) inches long; scales without prickles. Bark dark grey to nearly black with flat plates separated by shallow fissure; eventually dark and deeply furrowed with scaly, blocky plates.

SIMILAR TREES: No other pine commonly planted in Iowa has leaves in bundles of 5.

IOWA DISTRIBUTION: Native in northeastern Iowa and along Pine Creek in Muscatine County and the Iowa River in Hardin County, growing on bluffs, ridges, and wooded slopes, usually in well-drained soils. Planted throughout the state.

Forest and Shade Trees of Iowa (Third Edition), by Peter J. van der Linden and Donald R. Farrar

Rain Garden Update

2011-09-19T10:00:00.000-07:00

In August the rain garden got a much-needed facelift. Jeremy Bril and a team of University of Iowa engineering students rebuilt the berm—using mulch provided by the university—edged the perimeter, cleaned up the outlet on the rim, added a couple of stepping stones within the garden, and cleaned up the area by the downspout by taking away the plastic and adding some limestone. Thanks to support from UI Facilities Management and the Iowa Department of Agriculture, we are getting ready to aerate the soil in the Kuhl House yard in another effort to enrich and manage our small habitat. Newly blooming in the rain garden—and also in our prairie garden—are turtlehead, goldenrod, asters, and the ever-present cup plant. All signs point to an early frost, but we will hope to enjoy our garden for at least one more month.

UI Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Gardening in September

2011-09-16T09:34:00.000-07:00

Thursday, September 14

My old neighbor Herman. The mere thought of him yesterday, and I could see him again in his garden, as if he were still there. His wide German forehead topped by a thinning shock of white hair, his short, broad-chested body supported by a pair of wooden canes -- checking on his grapes, harvesting his red raspberries, cultivating his Chinese cabbage, watering his lettuce, or just contemplating his tree roses from the perspective of his red metal chair. His deeply lined face, his icy blue eyes, his large arthritic hands tell all. Through his lot is small -- fifty by a hundred feet -- his ambitions are large. So large that almost every bit of his land is devoted to some kind of gardening, except for a small border of grass around the front and side of his house. Annuals, perennials, flowering shrubs, fruit trees, berries, herbs, vegetables -- something of every kind. A cherry tree, a peach tree, a plum tree, a pear tree, a five-in-one apple tree. Everything pruned just so.

Carl H. Klaus, My Vegetable Love: A Journal of a Growing Season

Gardening in September

2011-09-09T09:28:00.000-07:00

Friday, September 8

...the sun is now up and the air is warm and the sky is clear and the breeze is mild, and it feels like the promise of spring all over again, until I kneel down to seed in the spinach and notice the zucchini plants to the left, most of their leaves chewed off overnight. Then I remember Jim telling me just two days aho that th edeer had come back and eaten his whole back patch of beans. Times for a quick therapy session, focusing on the remedy of Hinder, and the recognition that my zucchini plants are still alive, still bearing more than we can eat or give away. Back to the spinach, so buoyed by the sweetness of the morning and my self-help treatment that I finish the row in a trice and hustle my way up to reseed the beets and turnips. As i kneel down to plant the nubby beet seeds with the sun at my back and the warm coffee cup in my hand, the sensations of the moment are so comforting that my mind is filled with a renewed awareness of the truth that one cannot force nature, as I had tried to do during the late August heat wave. There's a time to plant and a time not to plant, and now at last is the time to do it.

Carl H. Klause, My Vegetable Love: A Journal of a Growing Season

Gardening in September

2011-09-02T09:20:00.000-07:00

Friday, September 1

Nothing like the farm forecast to start one's day. "Above-average temperature with limited precipitation expected during the first ten days of September in the corn belt. The overall effect will be continued degeneration of crop conditions and some crop withering." Some hope withering, too. At this rate, I won't be able to transplant the broccoli, cauliflower, and lettuce seedlings until it's almost mid-September, so they won't have a chance of coming to maturity until November, even with the polyester row covers in place. I also noticed this morning that the spinach seedlings I was bragging about several days ago were actually weed spouts. In fact, only one seedling is up in the entire fifteen-foot row. Spinach, after all, is a cool-weather crop from start to finish, preferring to germinate at temperature between forty and fifty degrees. So, if I hope to get it going this fall, I'll have to pregerminate the seeds in wet paper towels in the icebox, or seed up some flats in the house and try to transplant them later on. I'll also have to reseed the beets, because most of the sprouts burned our the last few days of the heat wave, despite my daily waterings. But there's no point in trying to redo the beets or start the radishes until the upcoming heat wave is past.

Carl H. Klause, My Vegetable Love: A Journal of a Growing Season

August Gardening Tip

2011-08-24T09:12:00.000-07:00

Cure onions, squash, pumpkins, potatoes, and other garden vegetables before storing. Spread on newspapers in a shady, well-ventilated area protected from rain, such as a porch. Store onions and potatoes in mesh bags or old, clean panty hose in a cool, dry location. Store squash and pumpkins at room temperature.

-- Veronica Lorson Fowler, Gardening in Iowa and Surrounding Areas

Gardening in August

2011-08-19T12:22:00.000-07:00

Sunday, August 20

Just this morning when I was watering the peppers again, I stopped to look at the Ichiban eggplant bushes, their dark purple stems branching upward and outward, their light purple blossoms and dark purple fruits hanging downward -- every part of them so colorfully coordinated and balanced they seemed like studies in purple. The eggplant, of course, is one of the most ornamental bushes in the world of vegetables. But even the lowly cucumber vines have a visible appeal. Even now when they're stressed out from the heat and from a month of pumping out a dozen fruit a day, their dark green leaves still float above their bright yellow blossoms and dark green fruit below, somewhat like waterlilies.

Carl H. Klaus, My Vegetable Love: A Journal of a Growing Season

August Gardening Tip

2011-08-17T09:08:00.000-07:00

In mid to late August, pinch off all the blossoms and new growth from your tomatoes. It will force the plants to put their energy into ripening the remaining green tomatoes before the last frost. Also, to encourage ripening in vining-type tomatoes, prune the top by several inches once they reach six feet.

-- Veronica Lorson Fowler, Gardening in Iowa and Surrounding Areas

Prairie of the Week

2011-08-15T12:38:00.000-07:00

Little Missouri State Park
5,900 acres, NDPRD, (701) 794-3731

Mixed-grass prairie amid dramatically eroded landscape surrounding confluence of Little Missouri and Missouri Rivers, which is now submerged in Sakakawea Reservoir. Best interior access is by horseback.
From Killdeer, go 16 miles north on Highway 22, then east 3 miles on gravel road.

Suzanne Winckler, Prairie: A North American Guide

Gardening in August

2011-08-12T11:55:00.000-07:00

Sunday, August 13

So, yesterday morning, I dug the buried treasure, eager to see if they actually looked like giant buried Peanut Fingerlings, three to four inches long. I shoved my garden fork in the ground, at a distance from the dried tops, not wanting to spear any of the fingerlings with a tine. The soil turned over easily, still a bit moist from the recent rain, and there they all were -- peanut-shaped all right. But so small they looked like midget peanuts, no more than an inch or an inch and a half long. Not to worry, I thought, just a result of being a bit shaded by the pin oak tree. So I moved to the next spot and eagerly turned over the soil, only to find another handful of midgets. And another, and another. And so few potatoes, the whole batch of eight plants yielded no more than two or three meals' worth. The six red potato plants produced a somewhat better yield. Still, I felt as if the Irish potato famine had been replayed right in my own back yard.

Carl H. Klause, My Vegetable Love: A Journal of a Growing Season

Habitat of the Month

2011-08-10T12:27:00.000-07:00

Tallgrass Prairie
Bobolink

Look out over a tallgrass prairie on a breezy summer day. The gently waving grasses and wildflowers that make up the prairie move like ocean waves. There are very few trees, but some prairie plants grow more than eight feet high. Rich soil and the right amount of rain and sunshine give tallgrass prairies all they need to thrive. This wide-open grassland is an ideal habitat for a songbird like the bobolink.
If you spy a small bird with a white back, an all-black underbelly, and a cream-colored cap on its head, it's a male bobolink.
Bobolinks eat the seed and insects found in the open prairie spaces. They build grassy nests on the ground. The bobolink's nest and egg color blend well with its surrounding to keep the young birds hidden.
Because prairies don't have many trees to perch on, a number of prairie birds sing as they fly. Boblinks pour out lovely liquid songs as they soar above the grasses.
Tallgrass prairies once grew across a large area in the middle of North America. Now, most have been plowed under and replaced by farms and cities. Fortunately, many people are preserving the tallgrass prairies that remain, and in some places, they are planting new prairies. You can visit some of these prairies. Where there are prairies, there will be homes for bobolinks.

Claudia McGehee, Where Do Birds Live?

This Week in Iowa Nature

2011-08-08T09:39:00.000-07:00

Summer flowers of damp woodlands include Joe Pye weed and jewelweed, which soothes the itch from stinging nettles, often encountered in the same lowland habitat.

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

Gardening in August

2011-08-05T11:44:00.000-07:00

Friday, August 4

Now, when all the plants and vines are pumping out vegetables like a mass-production line, I'm suddenly tempted to put the gardens on automatic pilot and take a few days' break from the constant vigil of tending them. And I mean break -- a complete break. No weeding, no dusting, no watering, no hindering, no cultivating, no pruning, no trying. No checking on this, no fretting about that. Not even any harvesting. No gardening activities of any kind. The yearning to be free of it all takes hold of me every year around this time, brought on no doubt by the long and continuous labor of bringing the gardens to this point of abundance.

Carl H. Klaus, My Vegetable Love: A Journal of the Growing Season

This Week in Iowa Nature

2011-08-03T09:38:00.000-07:00

Before school starts, explore the corals, crinoids, and brachiopods preserved on the ancient sea floor at Devonian Fossil Gorge in Johnson County.

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

Prairie of the Week

2011-08-01T09:31:00.000-07:00

North Dakota:
Little Missouri National Grassland

1.2 million acres, USDA-FS, McKenzie Ranger District, (701) 842-2393;
Medora Ranger District, (701) 225-5151

Subtleties of mixed-grass prairie compete with eye-popping badlands, creating landscape that has made a big impression on countless visitors, including the young Teddy Roosevelt. Hikers and horseback riders can strike out on the 120-mile-long Maah Daah Hey Trail, which begins at Sully Creek State Park south of Medora. A 58-mile self-guided auto tour of the grassland begins at the Medora office.
Information and maps at McKenzie office, 1 mile south of Watford City on Highway 85; Medora office, 161 21st Street West in Dickinson.

Suzanne Winckler's Prairie: A North American Guide

This Week in Iowa Nature

2011-07-29T09:36:00.000-07:00

Sphinx moths, hovering over flowers at dusk, are sometimes mistaken for hummingbirds.

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

July Rain Garden Update

2011-07-28T11:24:00.000-07:00

What can we say about June except rain, rain, and more rain? We can only imagine what our office’s basement would have looked like if it were not for the rain garden and the berm that help siphon water away from our building. The rain garden proved its ability to handle large amounts of precipitation without sending it flooding into the street in one big gulp. We are now looking at aerating the soil in back of our building in another effort to enrich and manage our small habitat. Newly blooming in the rain garden—and also in our prairie garden—are gorgeous red beebalm, brown-eyed Susan, purple coneflowers, and cup plant. We also transplanted little bluestem and prairie dropseed from our home gardens.

Ragbrai Week

2011-07-27T11:36:00.000-07:00

John Karras

   No question, it changed my life, and all for the better.
   Because of it, I stopped smoking, kept biking, discovered the beauties of the state of Iowa, met thousands of friendly, decent and upstanding people and a few scoundrels, and formed dozens of friendships that have lasted years and years...What I have enjoyed most on RAGBRAI, however, and especially in the earlier years, is seeing middle-aged women find independence.
   Modern feminism was in its adolescence when RAGBRAI began in 1973, and a lot of women in their 30s, 40s and 50s were still laboring under the illusion that they couldn't do much of anything or go much of anywhere without a man at their side. RAGBRAI helped demonstrate to at least one and perhaps two generations of women that they could pretty much go any damn where they pleased without a guy hanging around. The demonstration dismayed as many traditional men as it pleased traditional women. I was more than pleased to have been a part of its happening.

John Karras and Ann Karras, RAGBRAI: Everyone Pronounces It Wrong

Ragbrai Week

2011-07-25T11:29:00.000-07:00

RAGBRAI -- XXV, 1997

   Another year, another birthday, this time the twenty-fifth.
   And the weather on this one was as bad as the weather was good the year before. In fact, I have no doubt that the weather on RAGBRAI XXV was the worst, the most difficult the ride has ever experienced. The humidity was in the 90s the entire week. And it was hot, hotter, hottest. Overcast skies through the middle of the week, and a drizzle at least one morning helped, but then the sun came out with ferocity Thursday afternoon and stayed out all day Friday and Saturday.
   There were places on the road at the bottom of hills and in sheltered areas untouched by breezes where the temperature had to be well over 100 degrees.
   The route was no help. The first day, Missouri Valley to Red Oak, was 82 miles of unrelenting hills. The rest of the route went mainly through southern Iowa, overnighting after Red Oak in Creston, Des Moines, Chariton, Bloomfield and Fairfield and ending in Fort Madison.
   I knew it was a difficult route from the start, writing in the February announcement story, "This year's route could be characterized as the answer to a masochist's dream -- it is guaranteed to make strong men weep, strong women stronger and young children old." And that was before anyone knew anything about the weather.

John Karras and Ann Karras, Ragbrai: Everyone Pronounces It Wrong

Scarth Exhibit Premiere

2011-07-25T08:37:00.000-07:00

Gardening in July

2011-07-22T11:19:00.000-07:00

Sunday, July 23

If it were just a simple matter of having fresh, tasty, organically grown vegetables, I'd have given up gardening several years ago, when the co-op and the farmers' market started selling a wide variety of locally grown produce, just a fifteen-minute walk from home. Last night, for example, the leeks that Kate got at the farmers' market tasted as earthy and fresh as the ones I've grown in recent years. And the flat green beans we had from our own garden didn't upstage the leeks, even though I'd carefully dressed them with a light coating of olive oil, a sprinkling of marjoram, a squeeze of fresh lime juice, a twist of grated pepper, and a dash of salt. That austere dressing balanced the intense Creole vinaigrette on the leeks and artichoke, and together they provided a fitting accompaniment to the charcoal grilled swordfish.
But when we were sitting in the gazebo last night, dining on the fish and leeks and the beans and the cucumber salad and the beet salad, it was a special pleasure to look out at the vegetable garden just a few feet away and behold the row of plants from which I'd harvested those beans.

Carl H. Klaus, My Vegetable Love: A Journal of the Growing Season

Ragbrai Week

2011-07-20T11:12:00.000-07:00

RAGBRAI - XXI, 1993

   This was the year of the flood, the summer that Des Moines went 12 days without tap water.
   Fortunately, we had chosen a northern route that year that avoided the worst hit areas of the state -- Sioux City to Dubuque, with overnight stops at Sheldon, Emmetsburg, Clarion, Osage, Decorah and Manchester. At one time, we had considered ending the ride that year in Muscatine. Good thing we didn't, because the riverfront ending area in Muscatine was still under water at the end of July.
   As it was, the mud in the cornfields was one of the memories everyone took away from the 1993 ride. That and the areas of washouts. It was something to look down on the way to Emmetsburg and find a two-foot dropoff where only weeks before there had been a solid shoulder.

John Karras and Ann Karras, Ragbrai: Everyone Pronounces It Wrong

Scarth Art Exhibit at the UIHC

2011-07-18T14:03:00.000-07:00

If you're in the Iowa City area, come over to the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics to see art by Robert and Linda Scarth, photographers of Deep Nature: Photographs from Iowa! Their photos will be in the PVAC Gallery 1 wall on the 8th floor of the Colloton Pavillion in the University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics on July 25.

Ragbrai Week

2011-07-18T10:32:00.000-07:00

   The main feature of the next year's ride in 1985, of course, was the astoundingly large horde of cyclists that rode out of Hawarden on the way to Clinton. Benson was quoted as saying that that was the first year any applicants for the ride had been turned away, but methinks he dissembled because he later said that everyone who applied got tags, and there had to be at least 10,000 cyclists on the road out of Hawarden.
   And with that number, we finally got the answer to a question that had been haunting us from the start: What happens if this ride gets too big?
   We'd imagined all sorts of things -- towns running out of food, water, toilet paper, patience -- but had never even considered the real answer, which was: There was hardly any room on the road to ride. It was wheel to wheel for the first three days. By Tuesday, I wanted to go home, but by the end of that day the cyclists, displaying more wisdom than all of the RAGBRAI managers put together, had spread out on the road and relaxed.

John Karras and Ann Karras, Ragbrai: Everyone Pronounces It Wrong

Ragbrai Week

2011-07-15T09:49:00.000-07:00

   The acronym, RAGBRAI, first appeared in print in the Sunday Register's Iowa Living section on Jan. 5, 1975, in a brief story I wrote announcing that The Register had decided to sponsor another cross-Iowa bicycle ride, the third annual.
   The acronym came about this way. The first ride was called simply the Great Six-Day Bicycle Ride Across Iowa. All of us assumed at the time that the first ride also would be the last. How wrong we were. Popular sentiment -- in the form of a flood of mail to The Register -- demanded at least a second ride, which was called the Second Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa, or SAGBRAI. Again, the public response called for another and it became obvious by the third year that the event was going to have a much longer life than any of us had expected. This raised the prospect of a TAGBRAI and even a NAGBRAI.
   Something, obviously, had to be done. So I determined to make up an acronym that could go the distance, whatever that distance turned out to be, by simply tacking Roman numerals on it in each succeeding year. Further, as noted in the introduction to this book, I wanted it to be so long and ludicrous that everyone would think of it as a good-natured joke (which didn't work, alas, people took it seriously).
   And finally, Michael Gartner, then the editor of the Register and Tribune Company, suggested (actually, he told me to), "Get The Register's name in it, for crying out loud." He might not have said, "for crying out loud," which I did.
   The result in 1975 was the title we've used ever since: RAGBRAI (the Register's Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa) with a Roman numeral.

John Karras and Ann Karras, Ragbrai: Everyone Pronounces It Wrong

This Week in Iowa Nature

2011-07-13T11:35:00.000-07:00

July heat triggers the hatching of millions of short-lived mayflies along the Mississippi; their remains often have to be shoveled from streets and sidewalks in Dubuque and other river towns.

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

Connie Mutel Interview: Part 2

2011-07-13T11:04:00.000-07:00

Given the rainfall and snowfall in 2010, climate change in the Midwest and across the nation and world seems to be intensifying. What’s your opinion?

Research clearly shows that climate change is now affecting us and that we are changing farming and other activities as a result. Iowa is growing warmer and wetter—with temperature increases especially in winter and at night and rises in soil moisture, atmospheric humidity, precipitation (particularly in the first half of the year), and heavy precipitation events being especially great. Floods now rise faster and higher than they did in the past, with climate change and landscape alteration both factoring in. Climate change is not the sole cause of today’s floods, not at all. But it confounds today’s floods and increases environmental and water stresses. Without taking many more steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, even as we adapt to future changes, I feel that our future is indeed grim.

You have made tons of presentations in the wake of A Watershed Year’s publication. What’s been the most common question?

People want to know why we are not more energetically adopting solutions for environmental problems such as flooding and climate change. Why do many politicians, decision-makers, and business owners refuse to consider that these problems are indeed intensifying and may well challenge the integrity of future lives and our planet in a major way? How can we come together to work energetically on solutions?

Tell us about your current projects.

This last winter, I helped put together a report on the impacts of climate change on Iowa (http://www.iowadnr.gov/iccac/files/executivesummary.pdf). I’m now working to complete another book, a scientific biography that’s been in the works for many years. I’d then like to do more writing about our coalescing environmental dilemmas, perhaps something on climate change in the Midwest. We’ll see.

—Cornelia F. Mutel, editor, A Watershed Year: Anatomy of the Iowa Floods of 2008

Gardening in July

2011-07-08T10:19:00.000-07:00

Friday, July 7

Last night with dinner, we had a bowl of fresh cherry tomatoes from the garden. Also a Walla Walla sweet onion, a Dutch purple onion, and sprigs of dill in marinated beet salad that Kate made with her own red wine vinegar. And this morning, I harvested another meal's worth of broccoli shoots, another picking of snow peas, and two quarts of black raspberries. But it's not just the bounty that makes the difference, it's the harvesting too, as I discovered again this morning, back in the corner of the lot, behind the larch tree, picking the raspberries. The cool air, the little fruit clusters, red, purple, and black, the beaded surfaces of the ripe dark fruit lit by the rising sun, the thorns brushing my shirt sleeves, the slight rustle of leaves, the seclusion.

Carl H. Klaus, My Vegetable Love: A Journal of a Growing Season

Connie Mutel Interview: Part 1

2011-07-06T10:02:00.000-07:00

Earlier you said that “the 2008 floods can serve as our wake-up call, prompting us to take steps that will reduce future flood damage.” What steps have been taken? What remains to be done?

A Watershed Year was the impetus of about a dozen community flood forums held across the state in 2010. But thankfully we’ve gone beyond just talking. The Rebuild Iowa Office reports that some progress has been made on all 12 of its flood-mitigation legislative initiatives, which ranged from establishing support for flooded individuals to initiating regional watershed plans. Some cities have made tremendous advances. Cedar Falls is the poster child here: it passed legislation in 2009 that discourages building in the city’s 500-year floodplain, and it also has installed rain gardens, permeable pavement, and other structures that reduce runoff into the flood-prone Cedar River.

When it comes to future floods, you’ve said, “Don’t try to return to business as usual.” Yet when it’s not actually pouring rain, most people seem to be doing just that. Where can we go for information to help us make better decisions about flood prevention and control?

The Iowa Flood Center (see next question) is a tremendous asset. The Iowa Homeland Security and Emergency Management Division is another information source, and the Iowa Department of Natural Resources has people who work with communities on flood-sensitive development plans.

Tell us more about the Iowa Flood Center.

This is an exciting new center at the University of Iowa. The IFC is the nation’s first academic research and training center devoted solely to flood research. It is a unique resource for Iowans and already has a number of products available on its website. For example, anyone can access current stream-level data from the IFC’s statewide network of 50 stream sensors. The web-based “Iowa Flood Information System” allows Iowans to view maps of watersheds upstream from their communities and overlay other data on these maps, such as current precipitation, river stage data, and water travel times throughout the watershed. This is an example of a powerful new tool that will help Iowans better understand flood risk and prepare for imminent floods. I’d encourage readers to look up their community and bookmark the website (www.iowafloodcenter.org).

—Cornelia F. Mutel, editor, A Watershed Year: Anatomy of the Iowa Floods of 2008

Gardening in July

2011-07-01T10:04:00.000-07:00

Friday, July 1

I kept to my course, gazing at everything along the way, from the recently opened pink and rose hollyhocks in front of our neighbor's peeling white shed, to the yellow Hyperion day lilies just beginning to open behind the currant bushes, to all the summery colors and shapes on display in Kate's perennial border, now at the climax of its third bloom phase. The tall fuchsia spikes of the lythrum, the sky blue of the stirrup-flowered delphiniums, the navy blue of the salvia spikes, the violet blue of the veronica spikes, the orange and pink and white of the tiger lilies, the yellow of the yarrow, the white of the small-petaled feverfew. So many colors and shapes so carefully arrayed from back to front, from one end to the other, I was momentarily transfixed by the spectacle.

Carl H. Klaus, My Vegetable Love: A Journal of the Growing Season

Plant of the Week

2011-06-29T10:11:00.000-07:00

Purple prairie clover
Petalostemum purpureum (Vent.) Rybd.
scientific name, 2008: Dalea purpurea Vent.
other common names: thimbleweed, red tassel flower

White prairie clover
Petalostemum candidum (Willd.) Michx.
scientific name, 2008: Dalea candida Michx. ex Willd.
other common names: thimbleweed, white tassel flower
Petalostemum: from the Greek, meaning “petal and stamen,” referring to the way the petals and stamens are joined
Purpureum: meaning “purple”
Candidum: meaning “shining white”
Legume family: Fabaceae (Leguminosae)
Photo: Dalea purpurea

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

Interview with Peter van der Linden and Donald Farrar Part 2

2011-06-27T09:16:00.000-07:00

When did you begin writing the first edition of this classic book? How did you divide the labor?

Peter: I wrote the text as a graduate student at Iowa State in the late 1970s. The academic year was organized into quarters then, and I alternated between teaching and research. I taught botany labs in the fall and spring quarters, working on the book during the evenings. In the summer and winter I worked on the book full time. I tried to write one species account every day. That included the research necessary to complete the descriptions and text.

Don: A few decades ago, Peter, as a beginning graduate student, came into my office at Iowa State as a rare commodity—a student who knew exactly what he wanted to do for his MS thesis. It would be a book on the trees of Iowa, the best ever written, and that is what he did! Peter was in charge of all of it, including obtaining funding and working with ISU Press. I just read the manuscript and made suggestions. For the second edition, while Peter was employed at the Morton Arboretum, I added a little more on forest ecology, including a number of text photos of Iowa tree communities. Upon Peter’s return to Iowa, as director of the Iowa Lakeside Laboratory, the University of Iowa Press extended the opportunity for us to work together again. For the third edition, Peter concentrated on the text revision and I on the new color images.

Keys can be daunting, but you have managed to create keys that are as user-friendly as possible. How did you do this?

Peter: You are right, keys are a challenge. By the time you become expert enough to prepare one, you can recognize small differences between species that are not obvious to everyone else. So you include those obscure characters in the key, and people who use it say “huh?” What helped me most, I think, was that I was teaching young people who had no previous experience in plant identification, and I could see the trees as they see them.

Don: During the course of the book’s development, we built on knowledge gained through teaching dendrology. Later I could tell my dendrology students that the book’s keys were the best keys ever written…because they had written them. There was a lot of truth in this because their repeated testing of the early versions of the keys revealed many characteristics that didn’t work, as well as some that worked better. The terms and monikers they came up with for new characteristics were often humorous, but invariably they were based on real characteristics that we were able to incorporate into the keys. It’s easy to construct a key that works in your mind, but one that works for others is another matter. Without question, it is the multiple testing by thousands of students over the years that is a primary reason why these keys are superior.

Do you have favorite trees or families of trees?

Peter: I have always been partial to oaks, but no particular species stands out. They’re all great trees.

If I had to pick an individual species of tree, I would probably choose the eastern white pine. The Lake Superior Highlands are my favorite place in all the world, and the white pines are a characteristic part of the forest there. I love how they stand so tall above everything else, and how the wind sounds in their foliage.

Another favorite is the three-flower maple, a beautiful small tree from eastern Asia that is hard to find but very nice for landscaping. I have planted one at every house where we have lived.

Then there are the tulip tree, katsura, and ginkgo…so many wonderful trees. How do you choose one?

Don: My favorite tree is the white oak, because of a very special white oak. In the mid 1880s, my great grandfather purchased the land in southeastern Missouri where I grew up. My grandfather cleared a site in the virgin forest to build my family’s home. As a little boy, I explored the giant stumps left under the house. My grandfather also left a few trees for shade—two huge black oaks in the front yard that survived into the 1940s and a white oak in the back yard that looms especially large (as it was) in my memories. That old white oak sheltered us from generations of summer suns and was the site for picnics, watermelon feasts, and the making of home-made ice cream. It was the site for work projects and innumerable games. Its trunk supported our basketball hoop and served as backboard! I recall, in the fall, the thumps on the roof of its large acorns—just the right size for little hands to gather and throw. Though hollow at the time of my earliest recollection, the old white oak of my childhood still stands, more majestic than ever, its giant spreading limbs still sheltering the home it has always been part of.

How did you become interested in trees in the first place? And what other species interest you?

Peter: My dad was a journalist but very interested in trees. One day we were driving down the highway on a family vacation, and Dad pointed to a tree about a hundred yards away, and said, “Look at that beautiful elm.” I thought he was joking…how could you identify a tree from so far away, moving so fast? It intrigued me and I started looking at trees more closely. I must have had a genetic predisposition to liking trees; something just clicked.

Don: Growing up on an Ozark farm in the 1940s, I had no choice but to be interested in trees. Electricity had not yet come to that part of the country, and propane or natural gas was also not available. We heated our house and cooked by wood-burning stoves. Through one of my early chores of splitting kindling wood for the cook stove, I quickly learned to identify which kinds split most easily and to select these from the wood pile by their bark. Later, as I helped my father select trees from our woods for felling and preparing for various uses, I learned which were best for firewood, fence posts, and telephone poles and which could be sold for stave bolts or used for construction lumber. Our telephone system was a local co-op for which all members had to supply poles. I learned to cut, debark, and cure telephone poles, choosing the species that would last the longest.

My dad was an excellent woodsman. I remember how surprised I was at his knowledge when in college, working on an oak identification project, I found a species new to me, chinkapin oak, Quercus muehlenbergii. I couldn’t wait to tell my dad about it. His reply—“yep, there’s one of them down there in the thicket.”

Coming to Iowa State, I did not expect to be teaching dendrology for 36 years. But, as often happened at that time, the new hire was expected to teach all the courses taught by the professor he replaced, even though he may not have been informed about what those were going to be. Looking back, inheriting dendrology this way was a most fortunate accident. I loved teaching tree identification and forest biology to the future caretakers of our forests. It is a special pleasure now to see so many of those students currently employed in influential positions in Iowa and around the country.

Where should we go to see a variety of trees, something more interesting than the lindens and maples that line the streets in our community?

Peter: Arboretums are the best places, really, because the trees are accessible and usually labeled. A new chapter in the third edition describes several of those, plus a few state parks and other places people can go. Some readers may question why our list isn’t more complete, but it isn’t meant to be exhaustive, just a few places Don and I recommend. We included a broad geographical representation so people in all parts of the state can see a variety of trees without traveling far.

Peter van der Linden and Donald Farrar, Forest and Shade Trees of Iowa

June Gardening Tip

2011-06-24T10:19:00.000-07:00

Once you have good-sized green tomatoes, you can hasten ripening by pruning some of the plants roots. Simply take a spade and plunge it into the soil on one side of the tomato plant, four or five inches away from the main stem.

Veronica Lorson Fowler with the Federated Garden Clubs of Iowa, Gardening in Iowa and Surrounding Areas

This Week in Iowa Nature

2011-06-22T13:05:00.000-07:00

June 21 - 22: Summer solstice. Look in ponds for painted turtles basking on logs in the sun.

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

Plant of the Week

2011-06-22T10:09:00.000-07:00

Tall cinquefoil
Potentilla arguta Pursh
scientific name, 2008: Drymocallis arguta (Pursh) Rydb.
other common names: five-finger, glandular cinquefoil, white cinquefoil
Potentilla: from Latin, a diminutive form of “powerful,” probably applied because of the significant medical powers once attributed to another species of this genus
Arguta: from Latin, meaning “sharp,” referring to the sharp teeth of the leaf margins
Rose family: Rosaceae

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

Interview with Peter van der Linden and Donald Farrar Part 1

2011-06-20T09:14:00.000-07:00

This edition of Forest and Shade Trees of Iowa has all-new color photos that are amazingly detailed, almost three-dimensional. Tell us how you accomplished this.

Don: Digital imagery has revolutionized the production of biological images. More than 10,000 photos were saved for this project. This number doesn’t include many, many more that were immediately discarded as “not in the running” for the final selections. These are numbers that would be prohibitive for film photography. A further advantage of digital photography is the depth-of-field that is easily obtainable without cumbersome equipment or a photographic studio. Macrolens capability and a dedicated flash that senses the correct amount of light are all that is required for stunning close-ups. Digital images are also more adaptable to cleaning and alteration of backgrounds to display the subjects more clearly.

This having been said, it is also important to know the subject and the most important characteristics to emphasize. For example, to identify red maple vs. silver maple at flowering time, it is important to show the tiny red petals that are present in red maple but absent in silver maple flowers. To display these differences, the flowers are best photographed from a particular angle at just the right stage of development.

About 10 years ago, the late Anna Gardner and I discovered the utility of flatbed scans for botanical images. Anna prepared full sets of these for the nearly 200 species of trees the students in our dendrology class were required to know. We were amazed at the popularity and effectiveness of these images. The clarity and lifelike three-dimensionality were amazing, and the close-up scans of buds and leaf scars allowed students to see these useful characteristics as never before. This became the inspiration for the species plates in Forest and Shade Trees of Iowa.

Accumulating the images for the book was a three-year project. The first 80 percent was easy; the remainder was more challenging than I ever anticipated. Finding a perfect leaf is relatively easy, but try finding a branch with no leaves ravaged by insects, wind, diseases, or other trauma. Most fun were the fruits, because of their menagerie of colors and textures and the fact that most remain in good condition over a fairly long period of time. Twigs, buds, and leaf scars proved more challenging than one might think. To be useful for winter identification, they must appear in the book as they do in winter, thus necessitating collection after all the leaves have fallen naturally, i.e., in winter.

The most challenging were flowers—they have to be found and photographed during the short time of their appearance. Tree flowers, more often than not, are pretty inconspicuous. I was already familiar with the flowers of most species, but for a few, I came to realize that I had never seen flowers and had no clue as to when the trees bloomed. The sycamore, Platanus occidentalis, for example, necessitated periodic visits to trees that I knew had produced fruits the previous season. After a few weeks, when I finally found sycamore flowers, I was delighted at the beauty of the tiny balls studded with forked red stigmas. A special challenge was the hedge apple, Maclura pomifera. Not only did I not know when it bloomed or what the flowers would look like, I also didn’t know where to find mature trees that I could be sure would flower. I finally found appropriately large trees in Red Rock State Park but had to continue to visit them until very late spring in order to photograph mature flowers. I now know that this species is among the latest of all Iowa trees to bloom.

How did you decide which species to include?

Peter: Actually, this was the most difficult task we faced in preparing the first edition. We decided early on to include all Iowa’s native trees, but there was no complete list of those, so I had to prepare one. Some of those are rare and obscure, so we had to figure out how to cover them in the book; we didn’t think mountain maple deserved the same treatment as sugar maple, for example. Selecting the introduced species proved to be an even greater challenge. They range from species you see on almost every corner, to species you might find once or twice in an entire town, to species you almost never see. I knew that whatever we decided to include, someone would say, “Why isn’t so-and-so in the book?”

The decision was easier in the third edition. We covered everything from the first two editions plus some additional introduced species. Still, I am sure there will be readers who question why we included or excluded a particular species or didn’t give more coverage to their favorite trees.

Don: There is not much of a secret here. We wanted to include all the species that readers are likely to see in Iowa, both native and introduced. Experienced readers will see that we didn’t quite accomplish this due to the large number of introduced trees in arboretum and similar plantings. A few native species also are not included because of the difficulty of their identification to species. We included some species that might more properly be called shrubs, but can be confused with young trees, and some that are especially important in landscaping.

We have not included full descriptions of a number of species that are found just over the border in adjacent states to Iowa’s north and south, but many of these are included in the discussions of similar Iowa trees. With these few exceptions, Forest and Shade Trees of Iowa should be usable in adjacent parts of all neighboring states.

What’s different about the organization of this edition compared to the first two editions?

Peter: Users of the first two editions will be surprised at how different this edition is. The format of those editions was a bit rigid, with only one page for each species, regardless of the tree’s importance. That limited how much we could write about the natural history, culture, and uses of the trees, and for some species we wanted to write more.

We solved this problem in the third edition by separating the descriptive information from the text. The photographs and descriptions come first, and only the most common species are covered in that part. In the following part, we discuss those species plus many others, with the amount of text varying from species to species depending on their ecological and economic importance in Iowa.

In the first two editions, species were arranged in an esoteric taxonomic sequence that was once followed in most botany books but is now outdated and rarely used. In the third edition, the descriptive information is organized by similarities in foliage. The text is arranged alphabetically by botanic name.

Don: The basic information about trees and the keys haven’t changed much from the earlier editions, and I would be embarrassed if they did. The organization has changed a lot. Peter has completely rewritten the text in a user-friendly style, and we have reorganized the parts to make identification faster and easier. A major change is the full-color images of the trees and their parts. These are crisp images of real plants made possible by digital photography and by the use of computer scanning. Through the latter it is possible to “flatten” branches into entirely “in-focus” images while still retaining a three-dimensional appearance. Flowers are now included for nearly all species. Although flowers are not necessary for most tree identifications, they provide fuller insight into the species’ biology, and, although often tiny, they can be surprisingly beautiful. Finally, the University of Iowa Press has done a wonderful job of combining everything into a very attractive, user-friendly format.

Peter van der Linden and Donald Farrar, Forest and Shade Trees of Iowa