The past year has been exciting for me, botanically speaking, as I pushed myself outside my somewhat monotonous prairie restoration monitoring to explore more remnant areas, learning the more obscure Illinois flora in my free time. With the new Flora of the Chicago Region in hand, I documented over 1000 plant taxa in the state …
Known to all birders, a “big year” is a competition to spot the most bird species within a given area in one year. Competition areas can be as large as the entire world to as small as a city park, but the popular competitions are country-(e.g. ABA), state-, or county-wide. And so, why not a …
On a quick trip to Langham Island in Kankakee River State Park west of Bourbonnais, IL this past August, I had the chance to see the rare Kankakee mallow (Iliamna remota) in fruit . (And in flower!) I was surprised at the fuzzy chestnut brown fruits, having never seen them in person or photos online. The land …
How do you distinguish Virginia and great waterleaf plants in the early spring? Swink & Wilhelm (1994): 1. Leaves predominantly pinnately compound or lobed, divided into 5 to 7 lobes or leaflets. . . . . Hydrophyllum virginianum 1. Leaves predominantly palmately lobed, or some with a small pair of pinnae at the base: Calyx …
NOTE: The statistics on page will be occasionally updated as we add more observations and make further species identifications. Bunker Hill Forest Preserve Bioblitz Participants Hard at Work (Play) Inspired by the San Francisco McLaren Park Bioblitz organized by Nerds for Nature, Save McLaren Park, iNaturalist, and Bay Nature Institute, we (Habitat 2030) decided to …
Bunker Hill Forest Preserve Bioblitz (9/14/2013) Read More »