Environment

Keep that pumpkin out of the trash. Halloween night may be filled with frights, but garbage day is where the real horror lurks. Every year, discarded pumpkins and decaying jack-o-lanterns are hauled off to landfills by the thousands. The masses of orange flesh piling up in landfills produce...

Dawn is breaking over a quiet pond.  An early December wind sweeps through rustling Big Bluestem, Bottlebrush Grass, and seedhead ghosts of late-season blooms. A muskrat slowly retreats to a half-built lodge as the morning grows brighter. It is unseasonably cold. All is quiet, until a feint...

Chances are if you have driven along any country road in Illinois, you have seen a tall plant with a spiky silvery thistle-like flower head swaying in the wind. What you may not know is that this plant hides a sinister side. Cutleaf teasel (Dipsacus laciniatus) and...