The Jim Gilbert Teaching Pond
Welcome to this first edition of our new online newsletter, Prairie Smoke. We felt we needed to launch this for at least two reasons:
Prairie Smoke takes its name from the flower of the same name found in the Arboretum. Note the photo to the left, but for a better picture please see the June photo in Anders Bjorling's 2009 Linnaeus Arboretum Calendar.
A view of the beautiful north side landscape of the David and Delores Johnson Waterfall Garden. The water area is on the other side of the rock garden.
A signature view of the Waterfall Garden.
1. We think we should reach out to Friends more than we do with Twinflower four times/year. The plan is to publish Prairie Smoke three times/year -- February, July, and October.
2. We need to use color for photos and other illustrations and we can do this electronically MUCH less expensively than with the standard print format.
Prairie Smoke takes its name from the flower of the same name found in the Arboretum. Note the photo to the left, but for a better picture please see the June photo in Anders Bjorling's 2009 Linnaeus Arboretum Calendar.
A view of the beautiful north side landscape of the David and Delores Johnson Waterfall Garden. The water area is on the other side of the rock garden.
A signature view of the Waterfall Garden.
And a side view.
Note the rich variety of flowering plants in the established Uhler Prairie. Orange flowers left and front center: Butterfly Weed, yellow flowers right: Heliopsis sp. (wild sunflower). This prairie covers about an acre of land in the Arb and offers a wondrous taste of a prairie landscape, but in about 5 years. . . .
. . . .you'll be able to look at 70 acres of these plants, which are just getting started in our new Coneflower Prairie shown here.
I'm sure you realize that the summer so far has been drier than normal over much of southern Minnesota. This map from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) confirms your observations and illustrates the geography of the warm season precipitation over the state this year. The orange/tan color in the St. Peter area indicates that just 50-60% of the normal precipitation has fallen since 1 April.
Arb plants are under some stress because of this deficit but it's the drastic shrinking of the wetlands and ponds in the Arb that give the best indication of our area's below normal precipitation.
Bob Moline
Prairie Smoke Editor (this time!) with much help from Arboretum Naturalist Bob Dunlap
Note the rich variety of flowering plants in the established Uhler Prairie. Orange flowers left and front center: Butterfly Weed, yellow flowers right: Heliopsis sp. (wild sunflower). This prairie covers about an acre of land in the Arb and offers a wondrous taste of a prairie landscape, but in about 5 years. . . .
. . . .you'll be able to look at 70 acres of these plants, which are just getting started in our new Coneflower Prairie shown here.
I'm sure you realize that the summer so far has been drier than normal over much of southern Minnesota. This map from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) confirms your observations and illustrates the geography of the warm season precipitation over the state this year. The orange/tan color in the St. Peter area indicates that just 50-60% of the normal precipitation has fallen since 1 April.
Arb plants are under some stress because of this deficit but it's the drastic shrinking of the wetlands and ponds in the Arb that give the best indication of our area's below normal precipitation.
Bob Moline
Prairie Smoke Editor (this time!) with much help from Arboretum Naturalist Bob Dunlap
