For my friends who missed it: this year I finally took the plunge and invested in my growing love of botany: The Wilhelm-Rericha seminar series sponsored by Conservation Research Institute. It is a six part series, with three five-hour classroom sessions, and three full-day seminars on the flora, geology, pollinators, and ecology of our Southern Lake Michigan region. The first day was a deep dive into the study of native bees and consilience.
What is consilience? E.O. Wilson wrote a book about it. I will refer you there. But basically it's an understanding that in nature, all things work together, with the resulting awareness that the loss of one thing is a loss to all of us. To quote Aldo Leopold, "The first principle of intelligent tinkering is to keep all the parts."
What's alarming is the rapidly growing use of neonic insecticides, which have devastated all our pollinator populations. We need our bees, at the very least to pollinate our food plants, but also because they are an integral part of Nature's gift to us.
Also: the latest updates to Common Plant Families of the Chicago Region are now available here:
https://fieldguides.fieldmuseum.org/guides/guide/503
I was fortunate to recruit the renowned Dr. Gerould Wilhelm to review the pages last year and add very helpful information. We are in the process of adding seven more pages to the series. Hopefully that will be complete by the end of this year.
And... we are also in conversation with the Illinois chapter of the Nature Conservancy regarding designing more bandanas for their stewardship volunteers - stay posted!
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