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Tag Archives: botany

What a difference a year makes

By Diana Robson | Published: September 20, 2017

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 thing I learned was that the flowering season starts much earlier than I had anticipated. Initially I thought August would be the month with the most flowers blooming but now I know that May has more due to the abundance…

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I always feel like something is watching me

By Diana Robson | Published: July 12, 2017

Usually when I do field work I’m by myself. But sometimes I get the feeling that I’m being watched. The main things that have been watching me this year are the cows. The Yellow Quill Prairie Preserve, owned by the Nature Conservancy of Canada, is sustainably grazed by a herd of cows. Aside from using some of my plot stakes as scratching posts and knocking them down, they generally leave me alone and I leave them alone. Sometimes, though, they get a little curious and stare at me with those slightly vacant eyes as if they are expecting me to do something spectacular, and that’s when I start to feel…

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Spring has sprung

By Diana Robson | Published: June 1, 2017

Once again I am studying pollinators at the Nature Conservancy’s Yellow Quill Prairie Preserve (http://www.natureconservancy.ca/en/where-we-work/manitoba/featured-projects/yellow_quill_prairie.html) just south of Canadian Forces Base Shilo. Last year I made the mistake of starting my field surveys too late and missed the blooming of a number of early flowering plants like prairie crocus (Anemone patens), three-flowered avens (Geum triflorum) and chickweed (Cerastium arvense). This year I did my first survey on May 11, which was already almost too late for the crocuses but just in time for the others. Spring is not the busiest time on the prairies as bee populations are not at their peak yet. However, it is a very important time…

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Make Goldenrods Great Again!

By Diana Robson | Published: May 18, 2017

This is a blog about pollination. It’s gonna be great! You’ll love it. I write the best blogs. There’s this one plant—it’s a Goldenrod—it is THE best plant for pollinators. Manitoba has THE best plants for pollinators. Not like Ontario. All the pollinators love Goldenrod: bees, flies, butterflies, moths—even beetles. All the other plants in the prairie—losers. Can’t attract the pollinators! Can’t do it! But that Goldenrod! So many pollinators visit it that there’s this bug—it’s an ambush bug—that it sits on the Goldenrod and eats the pollinators that show up. It eats them! Totally devours them! Nothing left but a pathetic husk. Sad. Goldenrods are the best. They used…

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More about Mycorrhizae

By Diana Robson | Published: April 12, 2017

Have you ever seen an uprooted tree while walking in a forest? If so, you might have noticed strands of white thread-like structures attached to the tree roots and running through the soil. What you were seeing were mycorrhizal fungi. These fungi surround and bind almost all of the plants growing in an ecosystem together. Some of them, like the honey fungus (Armillaria mellea) are even luminous, glowing in the dark. The honey fungus is also the world’s largest organism (that we know of, at least); one specimen stretches for an astounding 2.4 miles (3.8 km) (Ferguson et al. 2003)! This fungus is attached to hundreds of trees, which are…

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Mycorrhizal Mushrooms

By Diana Robson | Published: March 6, 2017

Have you ever wondered why the only fresh mushrooms you can get in stores are button, cremini and portabello (all different varieties and stages of Agaricus bisporus)? Or why the fancy mushrooms, like morels (Morchella spp.) and chanterelles (Cantharellus spp.) are generally only available dried? And why are those dried mushrooms so expensive anyway? Can’t they just plant them in a field like wheat? To understand the answer to these questions, you need to know a few things about what mushrooms really are. A long time ago scientists classified all organisms as either “plants” or “animals” largely based on whether they had a means of locomotion. For this reason, mushrooms…

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Legacies of Confederation: Endangered Orchids

By Diana Robson | Published: February 24, 2017

When Manitoba became part of Canada in 1870 the stage was set for one of the largest land transformations in history. In the last 150 years nearly all of Manitoba’s wild prairies fell to the plough. The little patches that remain as ranch land, private nature preserves, and federal and provincial crown lands are home to a suite of increasingly rare organisms, among them two spectacular prairie orchids: Western Prairie Fringed Orchid (Platanthera praeclara) and Small White Lady’s-slipper (Cypripedium candidum).  Models of these two species are on display in the Manitoba Museums’ Legacies of Confederation: A New Look at Manitoba History exhibit. Found only in moist, tall grass prairies with calcium-rich or alkaline…

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Everything you know about taste is wrong

By Diana Robson | Published: January 23, 2017

Tasting is something we do everyday but many of the things we think we know about taste are actually wrong. So let the debunking begin! Myth #1: You taste food with your tongue. Fact: Your sense of taste involves your tongue AND your nose. When you are sick with a cold, food doesn’t taste very good. This is not because your taste buds aren’t working-it is because your nose isn’t working. To test this, close your eyes, plug your nose and pop a flavoured candy in your mouth. Can you tell which flavour it is? Then unplug your nose and see if you know. What you are experiencing when you…

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Drinking Christmas (trees, that is)

By Diana Robson | Published: November 22, 2016

At the Museum’s recent Surviving the Apocalypse Night participants were asked a variety of questions about the nutritional value of certain foods. Sadly, very few people knew that you can make a beverage high in vitamin C from…Christmas trees! The Indigenous peoples of North America have long known of the health-giving properties of some cone-bearing (also called evergreen) trees. In Canada, First Nations peoples drank an herbal tea of evergreen needles to ward off scurvy, usually in winter when fresh fruits and vegetables were hard to come by. This simple remedy was not known by early British and French explorers, who often succumbed to this disease. Scurvy causes weakness, gum…

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Death caps, stinkhorns and honey mushrooms

By Diana Robson | Published: October 13, 2016

Late fall is when a number of interesting Canadian fungi produce mushrooms. Some are edible, some are smelly and some are deadly. It was with great sadness that I read of the recent death of a 3-year old Canadian boy who ate a poisonous mushroom (http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/death-cap-mushroom-victoria-boy-poisoned-1.3802245). It appears that he ate the most deadly species in the Amanita genus: the Death Cap (Amanita phalloides), shown in the photo above in various stages of development (image from Wikimedia Commons). His unfortunate demise serves as a warning to anyone who is interested in foraging for wild mushrooms: be absolutely, 100% certain of the identity of any wild mushroom before you eat it….

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