Charlie Harper mosaic "Web of Life" and detail (Io moth, Pacific starfish, woodcock, bullfrog, redbeard sponge), 81 organisms in total. Miami University Department of Biology this past week.

Sugar maple sea, Maple Grove Forest Preserve this evening.

Moon this morning, trail along Four Mile Creek, Miami University (with barred owls wooing in the background)

Maple Grove Forest Preserve this morning: sugar maples, yellow; waterleaf (probably Hydrophyllum appendiculatum), still green; sugar maple seed lodged in a hole in a fallen ash; puffballs.

Human-mediated land-use and climate change occur simultaneously, but how do they interact to shape adaptive dynamics? Super excited to share the first paper from the Kreiner lab, led by postdoc extraordinaire @rpineau.bsky.social

Great new postdoc fellowship for foundational plant research. If you’re into genetics and genomics of plant reproductive evolution or adaptive convergence (incl in the cool and charismatic nightshades!) I’d be happy to talk about possible projects! www.simonsfoundation.org/grant/simons...

A podcast that I did an interview for got turned into an article. www.dw.com/en/what-us-s.... @melissaarctic.bsky.social and @ncse.bsky.social were also a big part of this great discussion on the importance of climate change education.

I'm honored to be giving the Ethel Belk Lecture at @miamiuniversity.bsky.social, 7 p.m. on Weds, Nov 6. It is a public lecture, so please join us if you can! It is also live-streamed if you can't make it in person. Either way, I hope to see you... details below: events.miamioh.edu/event/copy-o...

Not to sound like a Luddite, but the auto-complete feature of VSCode in whatever prose I happen to be working on bugs and worries me. I mute it, but until I do, it chugs along in the background (with millions of other computers), gobbling up resources and draining creativity. Muting it again now.

This would be a great team to work with! and a project that potentially integrates ecosystem ecology, grassland restoration, and community ecology (unless I'm misunderstanding). Reach out to @hennhouse.bsky.social @schwilk.org et al. learn more.

October light on swamp white oaks, @mortonarboretum.bsky.social East Woods this evening.

A judge on Tuesday ordered senior U.S. Border Patrol official Greg Bovino to meet with her at 6 PM each evening to discuss the government’s immigration crackdown in the Chicago area, an extraordinary step following weeks of street confrontations, tear gas volleys and complaints of excessive force.

Ginkgo, east border of Garfield Park this morning

Night and day, the seasons, are as if someone had arranged them. They were never arranged. Oh, how marvelous the world is and I without the strength sometimes to know. William Bronk, The Insufficiency

Witch-hazel blooming this morning at Starved Rock State Park. www.inaturalist.org/observations...

A magnificent swamp white oak, floodplain of Salt Creek, Fullersburg Woods Forest Preserve this morning.

Sunrise and mist over Salt Creek this morning.

Frosty cordgrass morning, tallgrass prairie on the east side of @mortonarboretum.bsky.social www.inaturalist.org/observations...

Venus (I believe) over the BNSF tracks this morning. Downers Grove.

My colleague AP bio teacher @jeffgrantscience.bsky.social in @science.org (10/9/25), on the now-shuttered climate.gov: "I always provide [students] with the latest research." By contrast, Donald Trump on climate change: "the biggest con job ever perpetrated." Plus side? Jeff is the one teaching.

Clouds over Lake Michigan this morning, from the Roosevelt CTA Station.

Peromyscus from the prairie, photographed 5 yrs ago. www.inaturalist.org/observations...

White snakeroot, wild ginger, severed sugar maple nursing elm seedlings and hosting a happy, healthy poison ivy. Maple Grove Forest Preserve this afternoon.

A near-perfect Friday collecting at Warren Woods Ecological Field Station, University of Chicago, with @mortonarboretum.bsky.social Team Herbarium. Featured: R Mohn, L Worcester, B Kim, C Rodriguez, E Bretl, skunk cabbage, beechdrops. warrenwoods.bsd.uchicago.edu/about/ marramcollaborative.com

So it looks like this coming year I'll be able to visit three states I haven't visited before (ME, LA, and RI) between seminars and conferences 😎 Soooo if anyone in AY2627 needs a seminar speaker in SC, DE, NJ, MD, or NV... just saying, I might know someone, lol

Friday, 11/7 at 5:30 pm, join NEBS for Dr. Chris Martine's lecture, “‘Discovering’ Species, Exploring Plant Partnerships, and Spotlighting Sexual Diversity While Using a SciComm & SciArt Underdog Outreach Approach.” *Free, held in Cambridge, MA and over Zoom. Non-members must register rhodora.org

Sign up for @laymonstera.bsky.social's free ASPT @amsocplanttaxon.bsky.social webinar, "Phylogenomics and macroevolution of a florally diverse Neotropical plant clade," featuring phylogenomics, biogeography, niche & pollinator evolution! us06web.zoom.us/webinar/regi... @tropicalbotany.bsky.social

Educators! Here's one idea to disrupt the narrative and recognize contribution over attribution. Try telling the stories of discovery in a different order eg. instead of starting with Watson and Crick, start with Franklin #HigherEd #AdaLovelace #WomenInSTEM 🧪

@andrewlhipp.bsky.social gave a stirring talk promoting #NaturalHistory at the #Botany2025 @amsocplanttaxon.bsky.social lecture. He has preprinted an essay based on this lecture which is worth a read if you need some hope in ecology. doi.org/10.32942/X2MS85

Evening snack time, The Morton Arboretum. @mortonarboretum.bsky.social

A clear illustration of at least one reason why inferences from macroevolutionary (Ornstein-Uhlenbeck) adaptation models don't reliably predict microevolution. Schluter D. 2024. Evolutionary Journal of the Linnean Society 3: kzae016. doi.org/10.1093/evol...

A small sample of oak heroes who have had a disproportionate influence on my thinking and work, from Mexico, France, and the U.S. Names in the alt text; from the International Oak Society meeting last week in Oaxaca. Join www.internationaloaksociety.org today!

My last letter for Poetry Clinic, responding to the question, "what is an individual?" poetryclinic.org/what-is-an-i...

Gems from Sierra Norte de Oaxaca, Friday: Conopholis (@skunkcabbages.bsky.social), dahlia, butterwort, witch's butter.

First afternoon in Oaxaca... International Oak Society meeting starts tomorrow night!

Silver-spotted skipper on purpletop vervain. The Morton Arboretum this afternoon. @mortonarboretum.bsky.social

Burnham Park this evening, looking over Lake Michigan towards Gary IN.

"Even the strongest and greatest of trees is built up of minute cells, which constitute its stout trunk with its wood and bark, its leaves, flowers, and acorns. All the potentialities of this massive tree were packed into the cells of the acorn." - Knight and Step 1913, Popular Botany

Amaranth in the garden.

Get symposium and colloquium proposals together for Botany 2026, the joint meeting of @amsocplanttaxon.bsky.social @botsocamerica.bsky.social @herbariumcurators.bsky.social @iaptglobal.bsky.social + Am Bryological Society and Am Fern Society... best meeting of the year! mailchi.mp/botany.org/b...

And definitely check out @andrewlhipp.bsky.social's outstanding essay (and address from #Botany2025), Fostering a natural history community. Soon to appear in Systematic Botany. ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v...

In a broken, evasive world, reality is what we mean to celebrate, to be partakers of, within this music's sound: look, where the world comes, listen, hear. -- William Bronk

Woolly bear time!

Asters and goldenrods, Maple Grove Forest Preserve, yesterday morning. Fight for democracy, science, human decency, and the natural world, and continue celebrating what you are fighting for.

Herbarium tour starts in 5 minutes... Focus on the Mexican oaks! We have another one at 2:00 p.m. if you feel like joining us, Morton Arboretum herbarium.

Fascinating essay by @martinebotany.bsky.social on spiny solanums (tomato et al. relatives) as an example of all the important natural history research left to be done. Great observations on pollination and symbiosis... A very inspiring Sunday morning read! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Earthball (Scleroderma) growing beneath planted bur oaks, The Morton Arboretum. This week my lab group and collaborators are sampling 300 bur oaks out of a 1000-tree experiment planted in 2021 / 2023 and reveling in the soil world as we do so. More to come! www.inaturalist.org/observations...

Rock wall and gate, wire sculpture. West Tisbury Public Library yesterday afternoon.

Quercus dentata acorn, Polly Hill Arboretum this a.m. This is a white oak relative, from a lineage of about 25 spp that made their way from eastern North America to Eurasia ca. 20 million years ago. More closely related to eastern white oak than to East Asian ring-cupped or cork or holly oaks.

sunrise, Polly Hill Arboretum