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Plant vs. Bike
Summer is drawing to a close in the northern hemisphere. Days are getting shorter. Nights are getting cooler. Fall flowers are beginning to bloom. And bicycles are getting more flat tires. As an avid...
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What Shall We Do About Invasive Species?
I think about invasive species a lot. This blog doesn’t really reflect that though. I have been avoiding a deep dive into the subject mainly because there is so much to say about it and I don’t really...
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Introducing Invasive Species
The terms “invasive” or “invasive species” get thrown around a lot. They are frequently used to describe anything that is “misbehaving,” or acting in a way that doesn’t fit our idealized vision for how...
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Love and Hate – The Story of Purple Loosestrife
In the early 1800’s, seeds of purple loosestrife found their way to North America. They arrived from Europe several times by various means – accidentally embedded in the ballast of ships, inadvertently...
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Summer of Weeds: Common Mullein
The fuzzy, gray-green leaves of common mullein are familiar and friendly enough that it can be hard to think of this plant as a weed. Verbascum thapsus is a member of the figwort family and is known by...
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Highlights from the Western Society of Weed Science Annual Meeting
Earlier this month, I went to Garden Grove, California to attend the 71st annual meeting of the Western Society of Weed Science. My trip was funded by an Education and Enrichment Award presented by the...
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How to Identify Puncture Vine (a.k.a. the Goathead Monster)
This post originally appeared on Idaho Botanical Garden’s blog. With the first annual Boise Goathead Fest fast approaching, the purpose of this post is to help people in the Treasure Valley identify...
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Party Time for Puncture Vine at Boise Goathead Fest
When the Goathead Monster revealed itself before the big bike parade at the first annual Boise Goathead Fest, it was worried that the thousands of people it saw gathered before it were there out of...
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Party Time for Puncture Vine, Year Two
A noxious weed brought Boiseans together for the second year in a row. After a successful inaugural year, the Boise Goathead Fest returned to downtown Boise, Idaho on the 2nd and 3rd of August. The...
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From Cut Flower to Noxious Weed – The Story of Baby’s Breath
One of the most ubiquitous plants in cut flower arrangements hails from the steppes of Turkey and neighboring countries in Europe and Asia. It’s a perennial plant with a deep taproot and a...
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Dispersal by Bulbils – A Bulbous Bluegrass Story
The main way that a plant gets from place to place is in the form of a seed. As seeds, plants have the ability to travel miles from home, especially with the assistance of outside forces like wind,...
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Awkward Botanical Sketches #4: Boise Goathead Fest Edition
Covid-19 be damned, Boise Goathead Fest is happening in 2020. However, since we’re in the middle of a pandemic and the number of infections in Idaho have been far greater than we’d like them to be,...
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The Weeds in Your Bird Seed
With February comes the return of the Great Backyard Bird Count, a weekend-long, worldwide, bird counting event that Sierra and I have enjoyed participating in for the past few years. While you can...
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Weeds of Boise: Railroad Tracks Between Kootenai Street and Overland Road
Walking along railroad tracks is a pretty cool feeling. It’s also a good place to look for weeds. Active railroad tracks are managed for optimum visibility and fire prevention, which means that trees...
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What Is Cheatgrass and Why Should I Care?
To understand the current state of rangeland wildfires in the Intermountain West, you must first familiarize yourself with a plant commonly referred to as cheatgrass. This annual grass moved into the...
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Weeds of Boise: Boise State University Campus, part one
If you live in a major city (or even a minor one), there is a good chance it is home to a college or university (perhaps several). Universities tend to take up a lot of space, which means there is...
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Weeds of Boise: Boise State University Campus, part two
In part one of this two part series, I introduced you to the Boise State University campus, located in the heart of Boise, Idaho. I’ve been spending the past year walking the campus and cataloging the...
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