Kalamazoo Seasons

The Cowles Bog Trail in the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore is about a two hour drive from Kalamazoo. I stopped there recently on the way...

Virginia Creeper ( Parthenocissus quinquefolia ) is a common vine in the Kalamazoo area and it is widely distributed throughout the Eastern...

The Sarett Nature Center is a great outing, not far from Kalamazoo, with trails, wildlife, water, and woods, but somehow it had been a few y...

Poison Sumac ( Toxicodendron vernix ) is a relative of poison ivy and poison oak and like those plants it contains urushiol , the chemical t...

There are a number of species of praying mantises in Michigan, some native and some introduced. I don't really know them apart, but bas...

Wooly bear caterpillars ( Pyrrharctia isabella ) are an immature stage of the Isabella Tiger Moth. Superstition has it that the width of th...

The Burr Oak ( Quercus macrocarpa ) is a tree of the open grassland. They're native to the Great Plains and prairies and are a charact...