This time of year, daylilies are far from the center of attention in most landscapes. The beautiful, vibrant flowers that adorn the scapes of most traditional varieties earlier in summer have long faded, leaving a much less interesting plant that very much resembles a clump of grass. As their...
On a beautiful, fall-like morning last week, a group of East Central Illinois Master Naturalists met around the tailgate of a truck at Meadowbrook Park in Urbana. Everyone was handed a pair of hand pruners and a few paper bags before heading out into the Meadowbrook prairies. Urbana Park...
In the last few years, my wife has added sunflowers (Helianthus annuus) to various locations in our landscaping and vegetable garden as an impromptu filler where we had unused space or an empty spot from something that didn’t make it through the winter. The towering plants adorned...
How many times have you been kept up at night worrying about a poisonous plant? Hopefully, for most of us the answer to that question will be ‘not many’. For better or worse, humankind has not always had a well-defined separation from the plant world as we often see today.
With...
The management of Illinois’ forests has become an increasingly difficult task for landowners focused on maintaining and enhancing native plant diversity. I have often thought of it as a similar process to weeding a vegetable garden, with a diverse mix of our native forest trees as the vegetable...
The management of Illinois’ forests has become an increasingly difficult task for landowners focused on maintaining and enhancing native plant diversity. I have often thought of it as a similar process to weeding a vegetable garden, with a diverse mix of our native forest trees as the...
In early July, the Illinois Department of Agriculture submitted a press release detailing the detection of a new pathogen in Illinois that threatens our native oaks. This non-native pathogen is the causal agent for a very serious disease known as sudden oak death. However, there may be some good...
In recent years, milkweeds have gained attention from the public due to their exclusive relationship with the imperiled monarch butterfly.
I think many of us are familiar with common milkweed (Asclepius syriaca), which reminds me of childhood leaf picking experiments to see the characteristic sap...
I always love it when a particular plant that I know from the natural world doubles as a landscape plant. Not everything that is beautiful in nature can handle what we throw at it in human landscapes, some native plants are just too sensitive. However, one old favorite of mine from...
As you might imagine, my family spends a considerable amount of time out observing the wonders of the natural world, and I am always fascinated by the way my kids view and interpret things in nature. Many times, their straightforward and simple perspective makes me feel like such a dummy. There is...
