When you look closely at our Mystery Plant, you can rather easily tell that it belongs to the bean family. Each flower is what we call “papilionaceous,” and in a fanciful way, butterfly-shaped. Five petals are present, all a beautiful pink or...
Yesterday’s class field trip took us deep into the Sandhills, within the confines of Clemson University’s Sandhill Research and Education Center not so far from downtown Columbia. Up and down we plodded through a variety of habitats, which...
Here’s one of the finest oaks around. In the summer, its branches may form a huge, rounded canopy of brilliant green leaves, providing a beautiful dappled shade on the ground below.
Here’s a charming little creepy-crawler. It shows up just about anywhere in the eastern USA, quietly creeping along on a variety of substrates: sand, rock, damp or dry ground, tree stumps, rotten logs, often in shady woodlands, where it...
Here’s a cold winter moon, slowly rising and bathing the trees below with its pale gold light. Winter is a good time to remember that in the world around us, natural processes are still very much occurring, although often slowed down a good bit. And...
