Many of us are aware of honeybees. But did you know that honeybees are actually nonnative and that there are 400-500 native bees that live in Wisconsin? Most of these bees are small and inconspicuous, lead solitary lives, and nest in the ground. Despite their small size, however, they play a huge role in pollinating many of the plants that grow in our area, including on the remnant prairies that Friends of the Blufflands has been restoring. On July 11th please join Friends of

Let's say a new guy arrives in town from Hungary and joins Friends of the Blufflands which by this time has grown significantly and has expanded throughout the Upper Midwest. He calls himself Pólya. He is a rather odd fellow who is obsessed with numbers but is a hard, steady worker and falls in love with prairies. Here he is: He eventually joins the board, becomes a site steward for one of the biggest prairies in the area, and schedules frequent work days. One day his enthusi

Trees rightfully get a lot of attention, especially in April during Arbor Day. This year, Arbor Day falls on April 24th following on the heels of Earth Day on April 22nd. It is almost as if the two days are linked- plant a tree, and all will be well on planet Earth. The majesty of a large, old tree like a centuries-old oak stirs a passion in many. Like this beautiful bur oak in Onalaska: Aldo Leopold wrote a captivating elegy in A Sand County Almanac for a massive oak that

In 1879, Charles Darwin wrote to his good friend and fellow botanist Joseph D Hooker that "the rapid development as far as we can judge of all the higher plants within geologic times is an abominable mystery". In this famous quote, Darwin was referring to the flowering plants or angiosperms and was perplexed and mystified about their rapid appearance in the fossil record which seemed to upset his theory of evolution occurring slowly and incrementally over long periods of time