Alex Palmer's Natural History Notes and Thoughts

 For anyone living in the eastern half of the United States who does not spend 100% of their time in a cave knows that we have had an early spring.  The cherry blossoms in Washington, DC for example bloomed over a month early.  This early spring also gave naturalists such as myself something to be excited about, as well:  spring wildflowers.  In fact, in a blog post last year , I could not help but show off some of the amazing wildflowers that bloomed around the hilly forests of Southern Ohio.  This season though, I don't want to overwhelm you too much.  I'm instead going to introduce you to Redbud ( Cercis canadensis ) .  Redbud is a common understory tree that is found in abundance along the margins of moist woods in the eastern United States, particularly in the more forested regions of the Ozarks, Appalachia, the Deep South, and the Mid-Atlantic (Sibley, 2009).  It is also a common ornamental tree, as it requires little watering and maintenance and, as you can see below,

Who hasn't tried pineapple before?  It always seems to end up in fruit salads at family reunions, there's always someone in the crowed ordering "Hawain pizza", and the grocery stores always seem stocked full with showy pineapples displaying their rough-textured, compartmentalized skin with bizarre green leaves on top (Photo A).  To most people living in temperate regions such as most of the lower 48 United States, pineapples are nothing short of exotic and unusual - and not like anything we have growing in the wild on our landscape...or do we? Photo A:  A pineapple grows wild along a woodland edge in a tropical park in  Ecuador, South America. Pineapples are in the family Bromeliacea, which includes a large group of mostly tropical plants that are primarily  epiphytes - plants that grow on top of other plants (see photo B). Photo B: Bromiliads, shown in the center of this photo, are a common group of tropical epiphytes throughout rain forests and

My father first introduced me to the wild and rugged outdoors when I was very young.  He would take me on long hikes through vast marshes, steep gorges, extensive forests, and across scenic vistas…or at least that is what I thought at the time.  I grew up in an inner ring suburb of Cleveland, Ohio.  In fact, the Cleveland city line was only a few blocks from where I lived.  We lived in an aging tutor style house, with neighboring houses practically in arms reach away from the window of my bedroom.  As with any urban living scene, the rush of traffic was virtually continuous, with trains, sirens, and honking along the busy corridors of city life.  Sometimes some teenagers would drive past our house with the bass on their car’s stereo turned up so high it was as if we now had frequent earthquakes in Cleveland.  Nevertheless, within a walking distance from my house was a local nature center with hiking trails.  Most importantly, this nature center was a part of a long chain of parks whose