To listen to and tell a rush of stories is a method... Its research object is contaminated diversity; its unit of analysis is the indeterminate encounter. To learn anything we must revitalize arts of noticing and include ethnography and natural history. - Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World

20 minutes post-sunrise, Roosevelt stop this morning.

The Morton Arboretum Herbarium website is live! Check it out... and more importantly, come visit us for great collections of: * Lichens! * Bryophytes! * Vascular plants of Chicago! * Oaks! * Sedges! ... and so much more. We look forward to meeting you. mortonarb.org/science/herb...

Join the next lecture in @amsocplanttaxon.bsky.social webinar series “Taxonomy: What is it good for?” Dr. Susan Pell, U.S. Botanic Garden: “Taxonomy in Public Gardens: Engaging People and Conserving Plants” Friday, March 6, 12pm ET. Register & please share! us06web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

We're excited to be recruiting an NSF funded postdoc to work in the Villanea lab at CU Boulder. We're specifically interested in candidates who want to work at the intersection of population genetics, ancient DNA, and computer modeling. Please RT jobs.colorado.edu/jobs/JobDeta...

Budbreak on prickly gooseberry (Ribes cynosbati), Lyman Woods yesterday morning.

Afternoon visit from an opossum.

I'll be talking about oaks this Thursday, 7pm at the Lisle Public Library. It's a free public event, with a lot of oak photos and oak stories... join us if you can! Registration info below: lisle.librarycalendar.com/event/chicag...

"You can't pretend this isn't happening," Maisy said. I couldn't, and I don't. Nor do I pretend that all of us being together doesn't fill me with joy. I understand that joy is inappropriate these days, and still we feel what we feel. - Ann Patchett, Tom Lake

Tree bark of Lyman Woods this morning: black cherry, cottonwood, hackberry, white oak with Aleurodiscus oakesii fungal caps.

Looking Southeast over Lacey Creek, Lyman Woods this afternoon.

Tulip tree sunset @mortonarboretum.bsky.social this evening

Lovely Quercus rugosa. North of Oaxaca, 10 Oct 2025.

I love this specimen from the Field Museum insect collection: Gray's leaf insect, Pulchriphyllium bioculatum.

No joke: I got angry hate mail today for writing an obituary of a Black woman scientist—because the person felt she did didn’t deserve the recognition. Which just makes me want to share it again: www.nature.com/articles/d41...

An accidental Arisaema, in the Field Museum herbarium yesterday.

"I'm neither a tsadik nor a bodhisattva", I said. "No," said Roland, with a queerly emphastic note in his voice, "definitely not. What I said was that you can strive to become one." - David Bentley Hart, Roland in Moonlight, p. 235

An enjoyable lab meeting today, keying out winter twigs (using Harlow's Fruit Key and Twig Key, same one we all used in dendrology at one time...). Led by postdoc Rebekah Mohn in @mortonarboretum.bsky.social East Woods and oak collection.

Register for the Smithsonian's National Botanical Symposium, “American Botany: 250 years of Discovery” 29 May '26. I'll be speaking on American oaks, w/ several greats: @barbarathiers.bsky.social, Caroline Strömberg, Wes Knapp, & Rose Bear Don't Walk. Join us! naturalhistory.si.edu/research/bot...

Remnant of a burned red oak. @mortonarboretum.bsky.social east woods this morning

Finally joined Bluesky, so to kick things off I will share my most recent publication on the resurrection of Cyrtandra kipahuluensis! Such a fun find and story to tell 🌱 phytokeys.pensoft.net/article/1554...

I'll be speaking on access to trees and related land justice themes at the @arbassociation.bsky.social conference on 'Green Equity' this April. Drop me a line if you're going!

Sometimes the story begins with the epilogue. Avenue of mysteries, John Irving

Almost sunrise, Downers Grove this morning.

This explains why Loggerhead shrikes were so fond of barbwire in Oklahoma, a manically consistently thorned larder that stretches on for mile long segments and all… Be interesting to compare spacing to other thorned-prickly taxa like P. angustifolia or S. lanuginosum.

One of the thousands of artful historical interpretations in May T. Watts' Reading the Landscape: An Adventure in Ecology. Osage orange --> barbed wire

2025 ASPT Cooley Award winner @laymonstera.bsky.social (Louisiana State University) is now Dr. Laymon Ball! Congratulations to Laymon and advisor @tropicalbotany.bsky.social!

Shifting prairie-forest ecotone over the course of the holocene. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

With a lot of looking and pondering and comparing photos, I'm thinking this is striped skunk... anyone out there have thoughts on this? No clearer tracks that I could find. Lyman Woods (Dupage Co., IL) yesterday afternoon.

Snowy forest and Peromyscus highway, Lyman Woods this afternoon.

Although Americans of our day enjoy a material wealth unknown in human history, we sacrificed certain valuable things to attain that distinction. One of these was the unbroken prairie. - Joel Greenberg, Natural History of the Chicago Region

East Woods @mortonarboretum.bsky.social

An example setup for herbarium tours. This is a general setup, as we have 8 groups coming today. I've prepared for discussions of taxonomy, floristics, history, and of course the basic: What is an herbarium? Herbaria encourage questions in these areas and many more. @mortonarboretum.bsky.social

This fly dead in exactly this pose when I arrived at @mortonarboretum.bsky.social herbarium this morning.

The human mind, we can all agree, traffics in generalities, abstractions, and categories. Another way to say this is that form is central to human thought. -- Eduardo Kohn, How Forests Think

Snow, East Woods, @mortonarboretum.bsky.social this evening.

ASPT is launching a free 5-part webinar series, “Taxonomy: What is it good for?” on the real-world impacts of systematics. Join us Feb 6 for @sandyknapp.bsky.social's “Of course taxonomy matters! The story of the mega-genus Solanum (Solanaceae).” Register and share! us06web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

Good short-read personal description of what it is like to be detained by ICE agents in Minneapolis for no cause. No paywall.

why we need botany departments more than ever:

Magnificent street corner oak, Madison, Wisconsin this afternoon.

Java Cat coffee, Madison, Wisconsin

I live an hour north of Minneapolis and they’re here too. They’re rounding up workers in chicken processing plants and breweries.

This work by @usa-npn.bsky.social @theresacrimmins.bsky.social strengthens the natural history community and builds our knowledge of organisms' responses to environment. It is an outstanding resource to scientists, educators, naturalists, and enthusiasts of all stripes. And we can all contribute!

Flecks of snow on a red oak, flocks of ice crystals on St. Joseph Creek.

There's a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted who disappeared into those shadows. [1/4]

What times are these, in which A conversation about trees is almost a crime For in doing so we maintain our silence about so much wrongdoing -- Bertolt Brecht, To those who come after (An Die Nachegeborenen)

DHS "initially blocked state agents from examining the scene of the shooting, said Drew Evans, the bureau’s superintendent. Minnesota officials were also blocked from accessing evidence and pursuing an investigation into Ms. Good’s death." www.nytimes.com/2026/01/24/u...

State Terror Has Arrived www.nytimes.com/2026/01/24/o...

St. Joseph Creek flowing under the ice this afternoon, Maple Grove Forest Preserve.