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March 25 to April 2
Open daily from 10 am to 5 pm
See Planetarium show
schedule, here.
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Hours of operation vary for different holidays.
Plants and fungi were challenging organisms to include in our new Prairies Gallery because most of our 50,000+ Museum specimens are preserved in a flattened, dehydrated condition. Not very attractive! Further, because these organisms don’t move the way animals do, people don’t seem to find them interesting. But are they really the passive, immobile creatures that we think they are? Our new exhibit case called Travelling Plants and Flying Fungi,…
I recently read that, thanks to Covid-19, there’s been a run on Christmas trees because so many people are staying home for the holidays this year. In a world that suffers from plant blindness (i.e. an inability to see the trees for the forest), “Christmas trees”, are among the most well-known “species” of plant. Except that “Christmas tree” is not actually A species; it is ANY kind of coniferous (i.e….
Closed Gentian (Gentiana andrewsii) was always a puzzle to me. When I first saw a picture of it in a field guide, I assumed that the photographer had simply taken the picture before the petals fully opened up. It was many years before I finally figured out what this plant’s deal was. Back in 2004, while doing field work out at the Tall Grass Prairie Preserve, I had to walk…
A week ago I posted a blog about a rare plant that I had been searching for in the West Hawk Lake area: climbing fumitory. Since then I’ve had several people ask me how to tell this plant (shown in in the picture above) apart from other similar species. In Manitoba there are only five species in the fumitory family and they are fairly easy to tell apart: two are…
Now that the weather is nice and warm, you’re probably seeing pollinators flying about. The main insect pollinators in Manitoba in order of decreasing abundance are: bees, flies, butterflies, moths, wasps and beetles. If you’d like to tell them apart, there are a few key features you need to look for. First off, count the number of wings. Are there four or just two? What is the texture like: membranous,…
The loss of biodiversity and plight of wild pollinators has been all over the news lately. If you’re interested in doing something to make life easier for these creatures, you might want to consider making your garden more pollinator friendly this year. Pollinators have three basic needs: food, nesting/breeding habitat and shelter. Food The best thing you can do is grow at least some native plants in your yard. Native…
I personally feel a little sorry for plants. When plants want to have sex they can’t just go to a bar to meet someone; they are stuck in the ground. So what’s an amorous plant to do? For most of the earth’s history plants lived in water. When they wanted to have sex they just released their sperm into the ocean where it would swim around for a while before…
For the last 13 years I have spent part of my summer studying beautiful plants; plants with big displays of nice-smelling flowers. The reason I was studying them was because I was interested in learning which insects like to visit them for their nectar and pollen. However, this year I realized that for too long I have been neglecting the ugly plants; you know the ones that we step on…
One of the first papers on pollination I tried to publish got rejected because I had data from only one field season. So I withdrew the paper and did another year of research. But why is having two years of data so important? It is mainly because the world is a messy place. This year I conducted a second year of pollinator surveys at the Yellow Quill Prairie Preserve. One…
It was with some sadness that I finished my last field work of the season at the Nature Conservancy’s Yellow Quill Prairie. It will be many long, cold months before I get to go out again. However, I was eager to get back to the office to crunch some numbers and see how the pollinator community in mixed grass prairie differed from the fescue and tall grass prairies that I’ve…
The Manitoba Museum acknowledges we are on Treaty No.1 land, the ancestral lands of the Anishinaabeg and Ininíwak. These lands, water, and waterways are the unceded territories of the Dakota, and the homeland of the Métis Nation. The Museum is committed to reflecting the continued legacy of all the original peoples of this province, including the Ithiniwak, Denesułine, Anishininiwak, Inuit, and Nakota.
We acknowledge the harms of the past, are committed to improving relationships in the spirit of reconciliation, and appreciate the opportunity to live and learn on these traditional lands in mutual respect.
Manitoba Museum is accredited by Imagine Canada for excellence in non-profit accountability, transparency and governance.
