While many organisms thrive solely feeding on the leaves, roots and fruits of trees, very few are capable of efficiently incorporating wood into their diets.

This attractive plant is not found in Wisconsin, and until the last few decades, was not found anywhere in North America. It is native to Australia, Asia, Africa and Europe, but it is extinct in many of those original locations due to habitat destruction.

A burl is a tree growth where the grain has grown in a deformed manner. Burls yield a very peculiar and highly figured wood sought after in woodworking.

Pumpkins hold a unique place in the hearts, minds and stomachs of Americans; and they should, considering they are one of the oldest cultivars native to North America.

Susan Knight, a scientist at UW-Madison's Trout Lake Station, breaks down a research project to understand the decline of wild rice.

In this month’s Field Notes , Susan Knight of Trout Lake Station tells us about the genetics of apples and the real story behind Johnny Appleseed. Before I ever got to college, I knew I wanted to be a biologist, in fact, a zoologist, or so I thought. I grudgingly signed up for a few plant classes, including plant taxonomy. Well, the professor wasn’t all that interesting, but I would have followed the teaching assistant anywhere. I was completely smitten… with the plants, of course. My class

Many of us have wood interiors in our homes. It is the norm rather than the exception. My home has wood doors, wood floors, wood cabinets, and wood base and window trim. It is a beautiful material, and I really enjoy living with and working with wood. Today, I would like to talk about the health benefits of wood. You might be thinking that wood is renewable, stores carbon, and uses far less energy to manufacture than non-renewable materials. It is true that using wood makes for a heathier planet

Making national headlines, the 17-year cicadas were making a ruckus throughout eastern parts of the US leaving me to wonder, why don’t we see cicada swarms in the Northwoods of Wisconsin? Cicadas have a limited and mostly eastern distribution in the United States, reaching as far north as New York state, down to Louisiana and Georgia in the south and barely extending into Kansas and Oklahoma in the west. They hatch on 13- or 17-year cycles and specific cohorts, which are also known as broods,

Here is an old story and a new story. Unfortunately, both involve the death of some of our favorite birds because of complications resulting from aquatic invasive species. Maybe you have heard about loons dying in Lake Michigan due to a tangled story about the lake’s food web. Lake Michigan has been hugely taken over by quagga mussels, a bivalve that by now covers almost the entire floor of Lake Michigan – nearly shore to shore. Like zebra mussels, the quaggas filter water, consuming all the

I spent most of my life not knowing that porcupines could climb trees. While I am a little embarrassed to admit this fact, I am also not sure I spent a ton of time in my younger years thinking about it. Now that I know, I have become obsessed with staring toward the tops of trees trying to find a bound-up ball of quills, nested in the highest branches. Early spring, before the trees fully leaf out, is an ideal time for spotting tree-dwelling porcupines who often move into the upper canopy of

As we move from winter toward spring, (a little sooner than I would have liked) I am getting excited to start biking around the Northwoods. I spend quite a bit of time road biking, which is not always compatible with one of my other favorite pastimes, looking for flowering plants. By early summer, my bike group and I will be logging 50 or more miles at a time, and there is plenty of Northwoods plant life to appreciate from a bike. We mostly ride on county and town roads out of town, so we aren’t

Humans have used wood as fuel for millennia. It has been used for cooking, heating, and more recently power production. I thought this topic would be timely given that we are experiencing our first real cold snap of 2021. In fact, I’ve had our wood stove burning all weekend – enjoying the fire inside while looking out our frosty windows. Many people believe that wood is an old-fashioned fuel. It’s great for smores on campfires but ends there. What surprises people is how much wood is used as

Last summer, COVID-19 pushed more people outside and onto Northern Wisconsin’s lakes. For this month's Field Notes, Susan Knight tried to take the pulse of how residents felt about increased boat activity on our area lakes. I was incredibly lucky to be able to spend most of my 2020 summer workdays conducting aquatic plant surveys on area lakes. I was hardly the only one out there – by all accounts, the place to be last summer was on a Northwoods lake. As a member of the Vilas County Lakes and

Walking from my truck into work last week, I noticed a frail looking insect flitting along the surface of the snow on the trail in front of me. On closer inspection, it was a stonefly. Stoneflies are small insects that live most of their lives in streams and rivers, emerging only to complete their reproductive life cycle. Like stone flies, many aquatic insects, including many flies, mosquitos, dragon flies and damselflies have a life cycle that is partly in water and partly above water. But,

In this month's installment of Field Notes Scott Bowe of Kemp Station discusses sugar in trees, how Mother Nature makes trees and plant with simple sugars.

For this month's Field Notes, Susan Knight explores the ecology of Indian Pipe, spooky looking white plants that skip photosynthesis and steal sugar from their forest neighbors.

As air temperatures in fall fluctuate between freezing at night and sunny 70 degree days, many deeper lakes within the region experience a phenomenon known as turnover. Journeying into the science of fall turnover can lead you into a wide berth of topics including physics, chemistry, thermodynamics, and biology. While complex and varied across systems, fall turnover influences how we use and interact with our beloved regional lakes.

In this month's installment of Field Notes, Scott Bowe of Kemp Station discusses bees in Wisconsin’s Northwoods.

For this month’s Field Notes, Susan Knight of UW-Madison’s Trout Lake Station shares three stories about strange lakes from around the world.

Have you ever seen a bee emerging from a hole in the ground in the spring? There are many ground nesting bee species in Wisconsin and for this month's Field Notes, Gretchen Gerrish tells us more.

For this month’s Field Notes, Susan Knight talks about the elegant , but short-lived mayflies common in our lakes and streams.

In this month's installment of Field Notes, Scott Bowe of Kemp Station discusses how maple trees produce sap for real maple syrup.

For this month’s Field Notes, Gretchen Gerrish of UW-Madison’s Trout Lake Station tells us of the life and death of leaves.

In this month’s Field Notes, Susan Knight looks at the thin ice situation this year, and discusses why ice is so cool.

If you are a winter enthusiast, we are off to a great start this year. Snowshoers, skiers, and snowmobilers have had excellent snow conditions. To add to the great snow conditions, we have enjoyed relatively mild temperatures. So how does snow form and what are the different types of snow?