Know Your Thistles!

Know Your Thistles!

Let’s touch on a prickly kind of subject. Know your thistles before you kill them! When I was a young kid, I clearly remember my beloved Welsh pony eating thistle heads while I was riding him. From my vantage point I could see his soft lips stretch away from his teeth...
Soil: It’s So Much More Than Dirt

Soil: It’s So Much More Than Dirt

All orchids, including this Colorado native orchid, Coralroot, Corrallorhiza maculata, are completely dependent on mycorrhizal fungi to begin their life cycle and and this reliance  continues to varying degrees throughout their life. Photo credit: SPD Unseen, unheard,...
Spring Comes to Joder Ranch

Spring Comes to Joder Ranch

Purple partners: Pulsatilla nuttalliana, commonly known as Pasqueflowers. Often found in colonies one of the first showy blooms in spring. The first flowers of the year always bring a boost of exhileration, don’t they? And when spring comes to Joder Ranch lucky...
The Gambel Oak

The Gambel Oak

The leaves of Gambel oak are pinnately  lobed at least halfway to the midrib, and are rounded. The lower leaf surface has stellate hairs, with five or fewer arms. Fall colors are vibrant! It’s no gamble at all with the Gambel oak, Quercus gambelii, which is Colorado’s...
The UN Decade of Restoration – Are You Helping?

The UN Decade of Restoration – Are You Helping?

 A multitude of insects will be feeding on this native plant, Yucca glauca, in spring, just in time for the Western Meadowlark to feed them to its nest of chicks. The majority of songbird babies must have a high-protein, easily eaten, and digestible diet of insects. ...
Hall Ranch

Hall Ranch

Hall Ranch was calling this afternoon, and I had to go. As the scenery spread out before me, buildings, signs, and overhead wires giving place to brown fields dotted with the occasional ponderosa, I found myself filled suddenly with gratitude for the fact that Hall...
Get A Little Moonwort Madness

Get A Little Moonwort Madness

“I have moonwort madness,” explains Steve Popovich, “Botrychulosis. It’s an incurable disease caused by a passion for moonworts.” After listening to his interview on a recent ‘In Defense of Plants’ podcast, it was easy to understand what that passion was...
Big and Little Bluestems Not So Blue in Fall

Big and Little Bluestems Not So Blue in Fall

Perhaps you missed the flowers, they’re pretty tiny, but during the rich light of a late sunny afternoon, you can’t miss the brilliant shine of the seed heads of our two native grasses, Big bluestem and Little bluestem. So alike, yet so different, and each is from a...
Meet the New Executive Director – Maggie Gaddis!

Meet the New Executive Director – Maggie Gaddis!

Sue: Maggie, I am so excited that the Colorado Native Plant Society now has its first ever Executive Director, but I’m especially excited that it is you! At my first CoNPS conference three years ago you gave a presentation called ‘Botany and Ecocities: Restoring...
Edible, Medical and Useful Plants

Edible, Medical and Useful Plants

Bob Kennemer acquired more than a casual taste for collecting edible, medicinal, and useful plants soon after leaving the University in Denver when he attended the legendary National Outdoors Leadership School (NOLS). Considered the Harvard of outdoor schools, NOLS...