Articles Archive
-
How to Help Your Best Trees Grow
If we were to arrange optimal conditions for growing the perfect tree, we would provide a site that’s a perfect match for the species’ particular needs. It would begin its life in strong competition with trees of similar size. I’m partial to sugar maple, so let’s assume the tree is a sugar maple seedling growing in a pure stand… (more)
-
Fiddlehead Season
The emerald green stems of newborn ostrich ferns (Matteuccia struthiopteris) poking out of the decaying leaves on the forest floor are one of the early signs of much-awaited spring in the Northeast. Foragers of wild edibles can’t wait for their first batch of this woodland vegetable, known as the fiddlehead. Although found in an almost continuous belt in the… (more)
-
Dirt and Blossom
In the late 1920s, Franklin and Leslie had a lean-to camp in the Toma country, smack in the middle of nowhere at all, back then. Timber got moved on water in those long decades before the lumber companies cut roads almost everywhere. You can drive a car right to the two men’s campsite now.
These were old-time woodsmen,… (more)
-
Ghost Moose: Winter Ticks Take Their Toll
The tracks and splattered blood stains in the snow told the story. Hours before, a cow moose trotted through the deep late-March snowpack and, where she passed, drops of blood, patches of hair covered with tick feces, and dislodged ticks revealed that she was host to thousands of winter ticks, Dermacentor albipictus. Moose with heavy infestations of these parasites… (more)
-
The Great Glyphosate Debate
It seems almost quaint, or perhaps naïve, to imagine a time, not too too long ago, when black and white film strips proclaimed the wonders of chemistry and suburban children danced gleefully behind fumigators in fluffy, white clouds of pesticide. We live in a more skeptical time today, and for many people, the word pesticide is more likely to evoke… (more)
-
Clouds: More Than Meets the Sky
I grew up near the water in Brunswick, Maine, where warm mornings are often shrouded in a thick deck of clouds. On the coastal plain, moist south winds cool as they pass over the chilly waters of the Gulf of Maine, causing blankets of fog. It can be mid-morning before the sun breaks free and puffy fair-weather clouds dot the… (more)
-
Cloud Quiz
Open Your Eyes to the Sky: Test Your Cloud Knowledge!
Wondering what the future holds? You only need to look to the sky. Clouds – with their ever-shifting, nearly always-present appearance above our heads – can give us clues about weather patterns and upcoming changes in conditions.
Think you know your clouds? Test your knowledge with our Cloud ID Quiz… (more)
-
Cloud Quiz Answer Eight
Answer: Stratus and cirrostratus
Painting by Shawn Braley (more) -
Cloud Quiz Answer Seven
Answer: Stratus or altocumulus
Painting by Adelaide Tyrol (more) -
Cloud Quiz Answer Six
Answer: Cumulus, cumulus congestus and cirrus
Painting by Adelaide Tyrol (more)