Skunk Cabbage

by Susan Post

Skunk cabbage, found in the northern 2/3's of the state in open swamps, marshes, and wet woodlands, is Illinois earliest flowering plant. Before the woods awake in spring it begins to bloom in late February or early March. Sheltered and hidden by a few decaying leaves, it bravely pokes through the moist earth to face howling winds, freezing temperatures, and sometimes even snow.

The first part of the plant to appear is not the leaves, but a fleshy protective hood, called a spathe. The hood, emerging dark and ruddy from the mud, is brownish-purple with yellow and green streaks and spots. Although the hood may be 3 to 6 inches tall, its color blends with the surrounding decaying leaves on the forest floor. Using energy stored for months in starchy, tuberous roots, the plant generates enough heat not only to melt through leftover snow, but to maintain summer-like temperatures inside the hood on subfreezing mornings. This is important as each hood incubates a knob-like structure, called a spadix, which is covered with tiny, cold-sensitive blossoms. The insulating walls and curved design of the hood allow eddies of warmed air to circulate around the developing flowers.

All parts of the plant, when bruised or crushed, give off an offensive odor that has been described as a cross between garlic, onions, and decaying flesh. The heat produced by the plant as it grows helps to volatilize the odor, which in turn, attracts carrion flies that are necessary for cross pollination.

A few days after the hood emerges, the leaves pierce the mud. Still unsure of the weather, they remain rolled into compact cones and cower behind the protective hood. As spring advances the odor subsides, the flowers shrivel, and the leaves begin to grow and spread. By summer the skunk cabbage is no longer the ground hugging spathe, but knee-high clumps of caladium-like leaves.

Winter Stoneflies

By Susan Post

The life of fall and winter stoneflies is an exception to the rule that insect activity ceases with the approach of cold weather. Twenty species of the state's 65 native stoneflies emerge during November through March. With a habit of congregating in places exposed to the warming sun's rays, you can see them crawling about on exposed tree trunks, fence posts, or on rocks located close to a stream. The white concrete bridges characteristic of Illinois' highways are a beacon of warmth to a stonefly.

Stoneflies belong to the insect order Plecoptera. In appearance stoneflies are about a half an inch in size, have two pair of wings, and are rather drab in color. The adults, although terrestrial, are seldom found away from water. They are poor fliers with crawling the preferred mode of transportation. The eggs and nymphs are aquatic. The nymphs are often found under stones in streams, hence the common name —stonefly. The nymphs of the winter stoneflies are chiefly plant feeders. The adults feed on blue-green algae or not at all. The nymphs emerge from the water, find a suitable perch and metamorphose into an adult. The adults mate, lay eggs and die, usually living less than a month. The whole life cycle is complete in a year.

Although sunbathing in Illinois from November through March generally lacks appeal to most humans, the bridges over creeks emptying into the Middle Fork of the Vermillion River, or the clear, rocky streams of Southern Illinois are perfect places to absorb the fleeting sunlight of winter and to see Illinois winter stoneflies.

January 24, 2010

White concrete bridges

Beacons of warmth

Nude sunbathers gather

Looking for love

Absorbing weak sunlight

Coupled in pleasure

Winter stoneflies above Stoney Creek

On 8 March, 2010, winter stoneflies were observed on the bridge over the Middle Fork of the Vermilion River at Kickapoo State Park.

What Are Natural Divisions?

Scientists have divided the terrestrial part of the earth into large ecological regions called biomes. Examples of worldwide biomes include tropical rainforest, Asian steppe, African savanna, and a host of others. The North American continent also has biomes, such as the Arctic tundra, Sonoran desert, and Appalachian forest.

Illinois, too, has a diversity of landscapes that can be described by differences in topography, glacial history, bedrock, soils, and the distribution of native plants and animals. Using these natural features, Illinois can be divided into 14 natural divisions. The natural divisions of Illinois were defined in 1973 in a technical report authored by then state botanist John Schwegman and colleagues. According to Schwegman, “Natural divisions are geographic regions of a larger entity like a state or a continent. A division contains similar landscapes, climates, and substrate features like bedrock and soils that support similar vegetation and wildlife over the division’s area. Natural divisions help conservationists classify land for purposes like protecting natural diversity.”

These 14 divisions were further partitioned into 33 subdivisions. Over the years, Illinois’ natural divisions have proven very useful to the natural area preservation movement within the state. They have helped biologists categorize and prioritize Illinois’ 90+ natural habitats for preservation efforts. Illinois was one of the first states to have its natural divisions defined and this classification system has guided the development of the state’s nature preserve system, the Illinois Natural Areas Inventory, and the Illinois Natural Areas Plan.

We will showcase each of these 14 Natural Divisions in the coming weeks, as well as the newly determined 15th Natural Division for Illinois.

Photojournaling: Completing the Picture

By Michael R. Jeffords

Webster defines photojournalism as the “photographic presentation of news stories or stories in which a high proportion of pictorial presentation is used.” I could find no definition for photojournaling as I believe I’ve concocted the word to apply to a new artistic endeavor. We are all familiar with the various ways nature photographers and nature writers present their work.

Great photographers provide great images, mostly with short captions or identifying text and an accompanying essay by a well-known writer. The captions often interpret what is viewed within the image. Upon occasion photographic books have images accompanied by excerpts, quotes, and other text from the historical literature. These are meant to inspire by the use of both types of imagery.

Nature writers who rely on only the written word to describe nature and natural phenomena must enter into great detail, describing colors, shapes, relative positions, and overall landscape elements that would be readily evident in a photograph. In this instance the old adage about a picture being worth a thousand words is likely to be true. It simply takes time and words to “create a picture” in the reader’s mind.

So, what exactly is photojournaling and where does it fit into this overall picture? Photojournaling, if I had to define it, is somewhere between all of the above and involves visual images that enlighten, depict, and portray features and organisms in the natural landscape, but fail to complete the entire “aesthetic picture” the individual seeks to portray. The images should be strong enough to negate the need for much explanatory text, yet benefit from the written observations of the photographer. These images basically originate from a “clear mind,” one free of the need to create lengthy descriptive text on what has already been portrayed in the image. In short, these observations can serve to complete the imagery began in the photograph, can even serve to anthropomorphize the subject matter, or create a complete aesthetic picture of an image or series of images.

As a scientist, I have been taught to steer clear of any kind of anthropomorphizing in my research and written words about science, but I’ve found as a photographer, relating what may be viewed as stark nature to the human condition can instill a sense of wonder and enjoyment in the viewers. We all know this is the first step toward developing an engaged public and is the first and perhaps most important step in developing a conservation ethic.

Numbers...

By Michael Jeffords and Susan Post

We have not seen the great, massed migration of wildebeests and zebras of the Serengeti, struggling to cross the crocodile-infested Mara River, but we hope to. The legendary march-out of tens of thousands of juvenile flamingos from the famous soda lakes of east Africa has eluded our gaze. We have failed to experience the watery migrations of massive humpback whales along the eastern shores of the Pacific or even the great salmon runs of the Pacific Northwest. The mosquito-ridden northern migration of the seemingly endless caribou through the endangered Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is, sadly, also not on our resume of great animal spectacles. Nor can be boast of having stood among the sights, smells, and black and white grandeur of penguin colonies sprawling across a rugged, gray-white Antarctic summer. The colossal seaside colonies of walruses, seals, and the millions of seabirds that call the rocky coasts and islands of the north and south Atlantic home are just hoped-for visions. We do, truly, plan to see all these great worldwide phenomena, someday. Having failed in all of the above, what then can this essay be about? What can we be attempting to depict in something entitled Numbers . . . without including these most famous manifestations of the earth’s biodiversity? Our answer lies somewhat outside the realm of “the rich and famous,” somewhat, but not exclusively “off the radar” of the seekers of amassed Nature. However, what we have chosen to depict is no less spectacular, no less important, no less beautiful than the massed wildebeests, penguins, and caribou of the world. Some images definitely require a closer look, some a trek to a well-known spot but with a different perspective, some, well, are just pure happenstance.

We have hiked into the heat of a Sonoran desert summer and experienced the linear migration of sphinx moth caterpillars; climbed desert sky islands to find multitudes of lady beetles; seen the fly-outs and fly-ins of sandhill cranes in a cold, darkening Indiana fall; observed legions of yellow trout lilies tumbling down an east Tennessee slope in spring like so much golden lava; marveled at the white-on-green spectacle of great white trilliums clinging to an Appalachian mountainside. These, and a host of other experiences have made up a significant portion of our adult lives together. They have inspired, awed, even cowed us with our own attempts to portray these natural wonders.

While some reoccur on an annual basis and provide multiple opportunities, some occur only sporadically, and others may even be once-in-a lifetime events. When this happens, the pressure is on! If we fail to somehow capture these marvels of nature, they may become part of our rich treasure of personal memories, but pale when they surface among the ‘life stories’ we all tell again and again. Without some sort of physical manifestation of what we have seen and experienced, we ultimately fail to ‘communicate nature.’ And if we fail in this, we run the danger of having few people know about, understand, or care about nature and its conservation. What follows represents examples of a lifetime full of observations, some subtle, some not-so-subtle, some miniscule, but all, important manifestations of nature and the natural world.