Friday, September 22, 2023
Helping Species Survive
Wednesday, September 20, 2023
Explore Outdoors ~ Fall Flowers
Happy Fall! Saturday is the fall equinox, and fall flowers are coming into their own. Like this aster...
Asters are composite flowers, being a composite of yellow disc flowers and purple ray flowers. The center disc flowers open a few at a time, from the outside in - you can see their cup shape and the stamens that hold pollen. Sometimes they look like spirals.
This week take a closer look at the centers of flowers. What do you see?
Friday, September 15, 2023
Game-Changer
Wednesday, September 13, 2023
Explore Outdoors ~ Bees are Still Busy
The bumblebees are busy, too, out slurping nectar and getting pollen all over their legs and faces. Which is great for these late-bloomers that will be going to seed in a couple weeks.
- what color are most of the flowers growing along your roadsides?
- what kinds of bees do you see?
- how is the landscape changing as summer comes to a close?
Friday, September 8, 2023
Sloths on a Blog Tour!
Wednesday, September 6, 2023
Explore Outdoors ~ Shadows in the Flowers
Friday, September 1, 2023
This Giraffe teaches Math
Wednesday, August 30, 2023
Explore Outdoors ~ Disc Flowers on a Coneflower
So a couple of weeks ago I followed a leafcutter bee around. And I noticed that the conehead of my purple coneflowers had tiny pollen-laden stars on the disc flowers.
Okay, a digression: composites have disc flowers and ray flowers. In the coneflower, the ray flowers are the purple petals and the disc flowers are the ones that make up the center cone that looks a bit like a porcupine.
At first, I thought that the pollen was on top of the orange spike of the disc flower.
Then I looked closer...
Turns out each "porcupine quill" is a bracht, and the flowers are next to it. When you look closely (a handlens is helpful) you can see the two-lobed stigma and the star-like anthers.
According to the Outdoor Learning Lab (Greenfield Community College), the disc flowers mature sequentially, beginning with those on the perimeter and moving toward the center. Only one whorl of flowers matures each morning, and there is only a small amount of nectar - so pollinators have to visit many flowers on one plant and then visit more on another plant. What a great way to ensure cross-pollination! You can read more about coneflowers at the OLL page here.
This week take a close look at composite flowers you find in your neighborhood. They might be coneflowers or sunflowers, black-eyed Susans or ox-eye daisies, asters or fleabane, or even dandelions and their relatives. If you have a magnifying lens, take it with you.
Friday, August 25, 2023
A Little Night Science
Wednesday, August 23, 2023
Explore Outdoors ~ what pops up after rain
Lichens. Who doesn't like lichens? They grow on tree bark, old picnic tables, rocks... in and around moss. Some are crusty and some are like flat leaves.
Coral fungi look just like ... corals! Some come in fantastic colors. Those growing under our trees are white, sometimes yellow.
These are Pinesap (Monotropa hypopitys) - a plant that uses fungi to get its food from the surrounding pine trees. They have scaly stems and many nodding flowers. They range in colors (reddish to white) though ours look a lot like bleached pinesap!
Sometimes I'm just curious about what eats the mushrooms. I don't know, but it would be neat to catch fungus-nibbling squirrels, slugs, insects in the act of dining.
Friday, August 18, 2023
If you Burn a Forest Down...
Wednesday, August 16, 2023
Explore Outdoors ~ Contrasting colors
Wednesday, August 9, 2023
Explore Outdoors ~ Spider in the Garden
Tuesday, August 8, 2023
The Pie That Molly Grew ~ Blog Tour next week!
Aug. 18 - at Carol Baldwin’s blog & a giveaway!
Aug. 23 - with Kathy Halsey on the GROG blog
Aug. 25 - over at Beth Anderson's blog
Aug 28 - with Lauri Fortino at Frog on a Blog
Wednesday, August 2, 2023
Explore Outdoors ~ Garden Cats
Friday, July 28, 2023
Curious and Amazing Critters
Wednesday, July 26, 2023
Explore Outdoors ~ Flower Spiders
Friday, July 21, 2023
Everything is Connected, sometimes by dust
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some of the research papers I read... |