Arboretum & Wildlife Center Fall Report 2011
Activities of students and volunteers working in the WSU Arboretum & Wildlife Conservation Center (AWCC) are highlighted in the Fall Report 2011. This report illustrates and describes fieldwork and development projects on the AWCC, including the new citizen science project on pollinators in Palouse Prairie that was prototyped by students during the fall. NOTE: The … Read more
Bees in January
What do honey bees do in January in eastern Washington? Why, they come out and fly around, of course! At least they might if the weather is as warm as its been on the Palouse Prairie and the campus of Washington State University through early winter. One day in early January, while stopping to take … Read more
Are Worms Natural? The Global Worming Debate
To be more specific, are earthworms natural? For the chronically busy and distracted, the short answer to that question is – absolutely not! Earthworms are not natural! Not even a little bit! At least they’re not natural if they’re non-native, introduced earthworms that are devouring the forest floor and radically changing the ecology of some … Read more
A Natural Education at WSU
I just witnessed a race to survive on campus – quite literally. And the winner managed, but ever so barely, to survive. That’s what I call reality – and it’s certainly not like the fake, highly contrived reality offered on television. It makes me wonder how much natural education students miss by spending their days … Read more
How to Grow a Tortoiseshell
If you’re an ordinary tortoise, growing your shell might take you more than 150 years. But if you’re a tortoiseshell butterfly, life goes by much more quickly than that. It was such a cool and wet spring on Palouse Prairie in eastern Washington, that it didn’t seem like there were as many butterflies around as … Read more
Fall Crocus in the Garden
It was tempting to use the title, “Naked Lady in the Garden”, to attract the attention of those who don’t ordinarily dwell much on fall flowers, but I thought perhaps it was a bit risque for a university arboretum story. But it’s entirely true that fall crocus, meadow saffron, or naked lady, are common names … Read more
Stalking the Wild Bee
Hunting season is open in the WSU Arboretum – at least if you’re a student or visitor with a camera and are looking to carefully watch or shoot a picture of a bee or other pollinator! Students in WSU’s class in Restoration Ecology currently are prototyping a future “Citizen Scientist” project to census bees and … Read more
Throwing the Frogs Out With the Bath Water
Say hello to our new Columbia spotted frog friend, Fred, or Fredricka, as the case may be. We don’t know which it is yet, but we were quite surprised recently to discover this little frog sitting in our amphibian breeding pond at the Endangered Species Lab in the Wildlife Conservation Center at Washington State University. … Read more
Tree Quiz
For those of you who love trees, here’s a little quiz. We discovered this three tucked away in the naturalized woodland in the WSU Arboretum & Wildlife Conservation area. The arboretum woodland has naturalized from tree and shrub plantings that were originally made by the USDA, Pullman Plant Materials Center, starting back in the 1930s. … Read more
Vertical Farming Part 2: Pumpkins in the Sky
Imagine if we could grow vegetables and other crops up in tall trees. Just think of all the space we could save. Okay, maybe not. I can see some of you are thinking about pumpkins and watermelons dropping out of wind-blown tree tops, like David Letterman throwing things off of a five story building … Read more
Earth Day / Arbor Day in the Arboretum
Any day that you can plant a tree that might live to be 300 – 500+ years old is a good day. And when you plant that tree on Earth Day or Arbor Day in the WSU Arboretum and Wildlife Conservation Center, it’s even better. We want to thank the members and friends of Beta … Read more
Build It and They Will Come: Beavers in the Arboretum
While driving past the WSU Arboretum today, I noticed a small 2-3 inch diameter aspen (Populus tremuloides) toppled over on the ground on the banks of our small Airport Creek that runs through the arboretum. In a split second, the thought flashed in my head – you don’t suppose it could be the work of … Read more
The First Flutterby (…Butterfly) of the Season
I saw my first butterfly of the season today on April 9th. It was orangish, medium size, maybe with some darker spots or patterns of some kind on the wing, moving fast – okay it’s already gone! What was it? How in the world can I figure out what species of butterfly that might have … Read more
How to Save an Endangered Species
I recently had an interesting dialogue with Brian Palmer, who writes for the Green Lantern series for Slate Magazine, an online publication of the The Slate Group, a Division of the Washington Post Company. Brian contacted me to see how I would answer a question that a reader had posed to him, “Which endangered species … Read more
Camas Flowers in the WSU Arboretum
The native camas (Camassia quamash) flower is beginning to emerge in the Arboretum, although it is not yet blooming. However, the leaves from some surplus bulbs that we planted in a garden plot in the arboretum last fall are growing vigorously already and it might not be that long until we see the central flowering … Read more
Green Grass, Muskrats, and Geese
While checking on the Arboretum yesterday to see how the spring rains were treating the landscape, I came across a pair of Canada geese (Branta canadensis) grazing on new grass emerging from the seeding of a constructed area we call the Gathering Circle. The geese brought back memories of my relative youth as a budding … Read more
Why Endangered?
“Why?” asks one of the most fundamental questions in science, or for that matter, human existence. Scientists spend a lot of time asking how and why does this or that particular phenomenon, event, or circumstance happen, and not another? “Why?” is always a good question for everyone to keep in their mind whether thinking about … Read more
Are Polar Bears Really Endangered?
The technical answer to this question is no. Polar bears (Ursus maritimus) were declared to be a threatened species by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service in May, 2008. The threatened classification means that the species is vulnerable to becoming endangered in the future. Perhaps the more interesting question is – how many of the … Read more
Vertical Farming Part 1: Could WSU Feed the City of Pullman?
Vertical farming is a brand new concept that originated in about 1909. No, that’s not a typo. So why are we getting excited about it now, over 100 years later? In 1909, the burgeoning growth of the world’s human population and the need for food production didn’t seem quite as pressing as it does today … Read more
Authors
Rod Sayler
