Teeth of the Lion

Teeth of the lion - that's the translation of the French word for dandelion - that most common of "weeds" in lawns and school yards. When I show children a dandelion leaf and ask them what it is they call out "It's a weed!" I respond that a weed is just a plant that someone doesn't want - a rose is a weed if you don't want it. If you like dandelions then it's one of the most beautiful flowers you're going to see in your yard.

Dandelions are a great plant to investigate. Take a group out to look at some dandelions on a sunny day. You'll get a chance to watch insects stopping by for a visit. I like to share with others that flowers like dandelions are sending out this message "Eat here!" (not to be confused with "Eat me!" another plant strategy for survival - a lesson for another day) - they do it with visual and fragrant clues.

There are many teaching opportunities that can be centered on dandelions. You have the opportunity to observe and record all the visitors to the dandelion - honey bees, ants, butterflies, beetles. Find a dandelion seed head and delve into the adaptions of wind borne seeds. Where might they end up? What places would be good places? What would be bad? Why are there so many seeds? You can use dandelions as the focus for an exercise in estimating - "How can we estimate the number of dandelions in our school yard?" Toss out a bunch of hula-hoops randomly around the school yard. Figure out the area inside the hoop. Count the number of dandelion plants inside each hoop. Compute the area of the school yard. Get your math wizards working on how this information can be used to come up with the number of dandelions out in you "science laboratory". More interested in language arts - gather around a dandelion and use it to inspire poetry or creative writing.

Want to know more about dandelions? I happen to have the inside scoop on a great book that's coming out in October. Well, I have to admit I'm biased because it's written by my wife, Anita Sanchez. The books is "The Teeth of the Lion: The Story of the Beloved and Despised Dandelion". Check out the link for it.

Changing Leaf Color at Woodstock Day School

My program today was at the Woodstock Day School in Saugerties, NY. It was a complimentary program donated to the New York State Outdoor Education Association and auctioned off at their 2005 conference. A parent of a student at the school was the winning bidder and my day was set. We started of with nature songs and stories, operated a recycled paper factory, explored mammalogy and ended with a nature walk focused on trees.

We had a chance to look at leaf color change and discuss what was going on. This cool example of how sunlight reacts with the chlorophyll can be found in our school yards right now - especially with ash trees and Virginia creeper (pictured here). Color change happens when the leaf stems shut down - nothing can get in, nothing can get out. The leaves can’t make chlorophyll, which gets used up making sugar. The sugar that’s made is trapped in the leaf. As the chlorophyll is used up other pigments that have been in the leaf all summer long but masked by the chlorophyll start to show through - carotenes and xanthophylls producing orange and yellow. The sugars react with the anthocyanin pigments and result is deep reds and purples.

What you want to look for is leave that overlay one another - this often shows up nicely with white ash trees or Virginia creeper vines. Move the leaves aside and you will find a green “shadow”. The green is from the chlorophyll that is still in the leaves since the sun was shaded by the overlap. Where the sun shone on the leaf the chlorophyll was used up to make sugar and reacts with the anthocyanin to show up reddish-purple.

A great book to get on leaf color changes is Autumn Leave: A Guide to the Fall Colors of the Northwoods by Ronald M. Lanner, published by Northwoods Press, Inc.

Ecologist-in-residence at Sapphire Elem School

I've just spent the last three days as an ecologist-in-residence at the Sapphire Elementary School in Harriman, NY. We explored the school grounds learning to be ecologists. We focused on questions that helped us to understand the living things of the school yard environment including - Who is who? What they do? Where they go? How they grow? Culminating our exploration we looked at the leaf litter habitat at the edge of a forest. We had discussed that the habitat provides creatures with FOOD, WATER and HIDING PLACES. So we were excited to find various beetles, spiders, centipedes, millipedes, worms, slugs, ants and other insects. One of the most interesting finds was a caterpillar, which I had to research to find out what kind is was. Pictured here is the caterpillar which is a Giant Leopard Moth Hypercompe scribonia. I looked this up in Caterpillars of Eastern North America: A Guide to Identification and Natural History byDavid L. Wagner.

hiking in the adirondack high peaks

Hiking at Hawk Mountain

Today was my second annual hike on the AT to Pinnacle along the Kitaniny Ridge to enjoy the outdoors with a friend and catch glipse of hawks in migration. I had high hopes for a good day since the weather prediction were somewhat hopeful and on my way south through NJ on Friday I saw a kettle of about 100 broad-winged hawks. Unfortunately we woke up to intermittent rain, which did slightly clear up. So it was good hiking, a few sprinkles of rain but no hawks - on Pinnacle we were in the clouds with almost zero visibility. Already making plans for next year to catch the broad-wing migration with a hike to Pinnacle.

I'm piggybacking my trip to PA for hawks with a meeting with staff and parents at the Bushkill Elementary School in Nazareth, PA to plan an ecologist-in-residence program for winter. Had a chance to view the school yard for potential environmental education nature walks - plenty of deer tracks, goldenrods with ball galls and monarchs migrating by (they'll be long gone by January).

Right now the monarchs are very abundant - still quite a few caterpillars on milkweeds.