A few years ago I began to notice a very tall, stately grass growing on the roadsides on my daily commute. I only seemed to find it growing in southernmost Illinois. Without any good places to pull over my car on the roadsides, I wasn’t able to get a closer look. Then one day I got an email asking...

A year ago my family moved. As a gardener, I was looking for a house with a big yard with lots of potential to plant huge gardens. We found a home with almost a blank slate of a yard – after spending a few weeks removing invasive trees and shrubs we were ready to establish landscape beds and get...

About a month ago I was in the Chicago region for a conference, and I took the opportunity to stop by Volo Bog. If you’ve never been, this unique spot is home to an open-water quaking bog, which you can see if you hike the boardwalk loop. While hiking I found some clumps of Bluejoint Grass, which...

The first time I saw Beakgrass was at the Missouri Botanic Garden in a parking median. I was struck by the attractive mass of this grass, which was bowed to one side from the weight of its seed heads. I mentally filed this grass away as one that I wanted to make sure I added to my landscape one day...

As someone who learned grass identification in Midwest prairies, I don’t often focus a lot of time on grasses that grow in the woods or wetlands. But today I wanted to highlight a grass found in wetter sites that serves as a great food source for ducks and other waterfowl. It’s an annual grass that...

Summer is here, which brings a very busy programming schedule. In the past few weeks I’ve driven across the five counties I work in to deliver youth programs at local libraries. A lot of time on the road means I’m paying more attention to what’s growing on our roadsides. Last week the grass I saw...

When we think of prairie grasses, often the tallest grasses come to mind, like Big Bluestem, Indiangrass, and Switchgrass. But that doesn't mean there aren't shorter grasses growing in our prairies too.A lesser known prairie grass is Junegrass, and since we are now in the month of June, it’s only...

The first Saturday in June is recognized as National Prairie Day. Prairies hold a special place in my heart, since my work in prairies jumpstarted my love of plants and eventual path to graduate school and my current job. I’ll never forget my environmental studies class in college when we...

While hiking through an open woodland, I saw a grass that looked different from any other I’ve seen before. I bent down and snapped some pictures, using iNaturalist to check for a quick identification. I was disheartened to see that it was yet another non-native, weedy grass. This one is called...

I love when plant identification is easy, when there’s one distinctive characteristic that makes a plant stand out from others around it, leaving no doubt what plant I’m looking at. It’s even better when that characteristic sticks around all year long, making the plant identifiable no matter the...