Picture Perfect Iowa

Come see Linda and Robert Scarth, photographers of Deep Nature: Photographs from Iowa, on Sunday at the WOW! Wonder of Words Author Fair. They will be giving a background of their books and reading selections, and speaking about why they write and their writing processes.

What: "Picture Perfect Iowa"
When: Sunday, October 28
Where: Capital Square Downtown Des Moines (400 Locust Street), in the ISU classroom on the ground level of Capital Square
Time: 1:30pm - 2:50pm

Interactive Des Moines Parking Map

Other WOW! Events

Deep Nature, photographers: Linda and Robert Scarth

UI Press Gardens update

The rain and wind of the last few days and the frost earlier in the month have pretty much finished the blooming season; fall is definitely here. We are determined to rein in the exuberance of the cup plants and the brown-eyed Susans next year and try to keep them from taking over the sidewalk; UPS and Fed Ex deliveries are now in constant danger of being snagged by overgrown prairie plants. If possible we will add another layer of mulch to the rain and the prairie gardens, and we need to clip the dead flower stalks, but otherwise there is little to do to prepare the plants for the winter ahead. After three and four summers respectively, the rain and prairie gardens are well established, healthy, and lovely. We need to increase their diversity next season, and we need to continue to fill in areas where plants are not thriving, but overall we are very pleased with the rain garden's design and with the ability of the long roots of its plants to keep water out of our basement.

Thomas Rosburg Interview Part 2

You include information about champion trees—the tallest trees and trees with the largest diameter—in your new guide. Tell us about the Big Tree program.

The Big Tree program was conceived and is sponsored by American Forests, the oldest nonprofit conservation organization in the United States. It was established about 70 years ago to find, protect, and appreciate the largest individuals of tree species in all 50 states. American Forests maintains the National Register of Big Trees, which lists the biggest trees in America. Big trees are determined by combining together three measurements – the circumference (or diameter), the height, and the diameter of the crown. More than 870 species of trees are eligible for the register. Each state has its own register to recognize the largest individuals in the state. Big trees epitomize an important natural resource value – one that is embedded in the quality of old-growth forest. For most species, big trees exist because they have lived a long time, at least relative to the typical life span for the species. That suggests to me that they deserve our respect and admiration. They are not replaceable.

Do you have favorite tree families? Favorite species?

It would probably have to be the oaks because of their predominance and ecological importance in much of the country. Also most oaks are capable of very long lives, so they provide a bridge to the past. A big 300-year-old oak was beginning its life before America fought for its independence. If they could talk, they could tell us many interesting (and ecologically valuable) stories.

Of the oaks, the bur oak is my favorite. The big old trees often display a lot of character in their gnarled, twisted, and worn-out appearance.

You’re wrapping up another project for UI Press: all-new photographs for a second edition of Wildflowers and Other Plants of Iowa Wetlands. How has this summer’s extreme drought affected Iowa’s wildflowers and plants in general?

In ways that most of us have never seen before, but mainly because of the very early phenology initiated by the extremely early spring. Many plant species bloomed up to 4 weeks early. This combined with wetlands that are or have dried up has made the task of finding wetland plants in photographic form (in flower) very difficult. The extreme drought has certainly decreased plant growth and productivity and in some cases flowering. This has generally resulted in lower vigor and photogenic quality.

Some species, however, have bloomed at their normal time, which indicates that those species are responding to photoperiod for phenology. It would have been a good growing season to study phenology and determine which species are keyed into temperature (growing degree days) or photoperiod. 

Thomas Rosburg, author of Trees in Your Pocket: A Guide to Trees of the Upper Midwest

Thomas Rosburg Interview Part 1

You’ve been photographing plants since 1977, when you received a 35 mm SLR camera as a graduation gift. What kind of cameras and equipment are you using now?

I am using Nikon cameras and lenses. I have an F4 and F3 for film photography and a D200 for digital work. I prefer the film for several reasons – the main overarching reason is that I believe it more fully embraces the art and challenges of photography. Lenses include wide angle (17–35, 28 mm), macros (105 and 200 mm), and short to long telephotos (70–200, 300, 400, and 600 mm). I often use extension tubes and diopters to increase image size and diffusers and umbrellas to control light. And I always use gray cards to determine exposure.

Tell us about the challenges of photographing trees, especially in the small format of the laminated guides.

Obviously trees do qualify as content for plant photography, but they are vastly different subjects compared to herbaceous plants. This is because of their vast size. Making a portrait of a tree is not really even possible, at least not in the same way a portrait is made of an herb. A different approach is necessary for trees, one that implements close-ups of small portions of the tree. A photographic challenge for the guide was in combining images of leaves and fruits in the same photo in order to present diagnostic information helpful for identification. For a few species, like elms, the fruits are produced before leaf-out. Another challenge was in representing the natural variation in shape and size of the leaves. The small format of the pocket guides made it unlikely that images of entire trees (the complete individual tree) would be useful, as very little of the tree’s features would be discernible.

Since the leaf is the single most important diagnostic characteristic of trees, I decided that showing a few to several leaves detached from the tree was the best way to visualize their morphology. Some leaves in each image were turned over to provide views of both the top and bottom surfaces. 

Thomas Rosburg, author of Trees in Your Pocket: A Guide to Trees of the Upper Midwest

Carl Kurtz's Photo Essay: Prairie Spiderwort

In preparation for the upcoming second edition of A Practical Guide to Prairie Restoration by Carl Kurtz, we're excited to be sharing Carl's beautiful photos and observations about nature!

Carl Kurtz is a professional writer, teacher, naturalist, and photographer. He and his wife and partner, Linda, live on a 172-acre family farm in central Iowa that is one of the few prairie seed sources in the Midwest.

Some flowers are tough and last for weeks, others for only a single day or as in the case of prairie spiderworts for just a few hours.  As the morning light level increases spiderworts open and then begin to close by mid-day.  On cloudy days, however, they often remain open until late afternoon.  Whether pollination occurs often determines how long a flower stays in bloom, which is influenced by light, heat and insect activity.  

Interview with John Price: Part 7

How have you encouraged your own children to connect with the natural world? 

Our three sons are young—eleven, nine, and two—but when it comes to nurturing a connection to nature, I don’t think you can start too young. There are many ways to do this, I think. The final chapter of Man Killed by Pheasant describes an afternoon we spent as a family on a small Iowa prairie, identifying wildflowers and telling the stories of our immigrant ancestors, in the hopes that our children will see their lives as being intimately entwined with place. We’ve also taken extended family trips to natural areas, but that’s not always possible given limited time and resources. So, most of our efforts are concentrated on the daily, often unexpected, but still informative encounters with nature occurring closer to home—in the backyard, with pets, in the garden. I write about a number of these small encounters in this memoir, in the lives of my children and in my own childhood. I think children can teach adults a thing or two about intimacy with nature, as well, and that has certainly been the case for me. They’re more willing than most adults to explore the world with their senses and to openly marvel at what they find there. They’re also more willing to defend the defenseless—to help the injured bird, to mourn the fallen tree, to pick up the stray can or candy wrapper. They’re not afraid to get their hands dirty. I think part of my job as a parent is to be a good steward of my child’s sense of kinship with the natural world, to nurture it and learn from it myself. I don’t know if it will make a difference in their lives or in the life of this planet—I certainly hope it does—but I already know it has made a positive difference in my own.   

Excerpt from "On Kalsow Prairie (A Postlude)" in Man Killed by Pheasant and Other Kinships

When viewed from the road, Kalsow Prairie is nearly invisible against the taller corn of the surrounding fields. If not for the wooden sign, we might have missed it entirely. At 160 acres, Kalsow is what is commonly called a postage-stamp prairie, one of the last scattered vestiges of native tallgrass. I've always been intrigued by that metaphor, the idea that such places convey messages across space and time, which is true in a way. To those trying to restore prairie on cultivated or otherwise disturbed ground, these postage stamps are the guardians of heritage, the deliverers of seed and ancient knowledge. If they disappear, as many do, then it may not be possible for the land to go home again. "They are the last lingering scraps of the old time," John Madson wrote in Where the Sky Began: Land of the Tallgrass Prairie, "fragments of original wealth and beauty, cloaked with plants that you may never have seen before and may never see again." He was referring specifically to Kalsow Prairie, which is only a few miles west of Fort Dodge, though I don't remember hearing about it while living there. Like other treasures, I had no idea it was so close to home.


John Price is the author of Man Killed by Pheasant and Other Kinships

Interview with John Price: Part 6

Who are your inspirations among nature writers and writers of place?

Henry David Thoreau, Ed Abbey, and Annie Dillard were some of my earliest influences. Also, Loren Eiseley and Aldo Leopold, both of whom were midwesterners who blended science and ethics and art in ways that are still a revelation to me—I admire writers who seem to live in the boundaries, as they did. Following the floods in 1993, I sought out conversations with contemporary grasslands nonfiction authors committed to living in the region they write about—Linda Hasselstrom, Dan O’Brien, William Least Heat-Moon, and Mary Swander—and those visits became part of my first book, Not Just Any Land: A Personal and Literary Journey into the American Grasslands. Their example helped guide me through an important stage of my life as a writer, when I was just considering the possibility of committing to place. Since becoming a father, I’ve been especially drawn to authors who are writing about nature and animals from within the context of family, work, and community. These include contemporary writers Wendell Berry, Scott Russell Sanders, and Tom Montgomery-Fate but also E. B. White, James Herriot, and Gerald Durrell. In Man Killed by Pheasant, I write from within a similarly personal context, exploring the ways nature has informed everything from the decision to get married to our efforts to have a baby to the ways I memorialize my grandfather.         

Tell us about the tallgrass prairie reader you are editing. And your next book, Daddy Long Legs: The Natural Education of a Father.

I’m very excited about the anthology, which will gather literary nonfictional accounts of the tallgrass prairie, from early exploration narratives to contemporary nature writers. Some of the authors include George Catlin, Walt Whitman, Mary Swander, and Louise Erdrich. It will be the first anthology of its kind, presenting a portrait of how the tallgrass prairie has inspired the human imagination over several centuries. Daddy Long Legs is another nature memoir that continues the story of my life as a parent and about how nature has influenced and enriched that life. It is also about the death of my grandmother and about how nature provided my family with a way to understand and articulate the meaning of that loss—especially my children, who were very close to her.   

Excerpt from "Man Killed by Pheasant" in Man Killed by Pheasant and Other Kinships

So I'm driving east on Highway 30, from our new home in Belle Plaine to Cedar Rapids, Iowa. It's a four-lane, and because I'm the eldest child, I'm driving the speed limit, around fifty-six, sixty miles per hour. I'm listening to Jimi Hendrix cry "Mary"—imagining, as usual, that I am Jimi Hendrix—when in the far distance I see some brown blobs hovering across the highway: one, then two. By the way they move, low and slow, I suspect they're young pheasants. As I near the place of their crossing I look over the empty passenger seat and into the grassy ditch to see if I can spot the whole clan. Suddenly, there is a peripheral darkness, the fast shadow of an eclipse, and something explodes against the side of my head in a fury of flapping and scratching and squawking. In an act of extraordinary timing, one of the straggling pheasants has flown in my driver's side window. And being the steel-jawed action hero I am, I scream, scream like a rabbit, and strike at it frantically with my left arm, the car swerving, wings snapping, Hendrix wailing, feathers beating at my face until, at last, I knock the thing back out the window and onto the read. I regain control of the car, if not myself, and pull over, undone.


John Price is the author of Man Killed by Pheasant and Other Kinships