When the Exploring project began back in mid-April, the inaugural collection of materials scanned were 2,200 botanical photographs from the collection of the Department of Botany (precursor to the Department of Plant Sciences). The final scan of this collection was…
I thought the name of this plant was implicit, but apparently not… Touch-Me-Nots, circa 1900 (Image taken by Thomas Sadler Roberts, part of the glass plate negative collection from the Bell Museum of Natural History records.)…
Last Friday, I traveled out to the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum in Chaska, MN. The Arboretum, part of the College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences at the University of Minnesota, is home to over one-thousand acres of gardens and…
Within the past few days, I have seen multiple reports of the demise of the Monarch Butterfly (Danaus plexippus) – the official State Butterfly of Minnesota. Multiple local media sources have reported recently that extreme weather conditions in the south…
This week’s Friday Flora is not from the collection of the Department of Botany as regularly featured, but comes from the documentary nature photography of Thomas Sadler Roberts. Though birds are Roberts’s most common subject, several examples of flora and…
In 1920, Warren Upham, contributor to the Minnesota Geological and Natural History Survey, published Minnesota Geographic Names, which included 15,000 names of locales and geological entities in the state of Minnesota. The current and third edition, titled Minnesota Place Names:…
From the collection of the Department of Botany, Box 17, photo 287: – Lycopodium clavatum, Running clubmoss, Tofte ’00 (1900)…
From the collection of the Department of Botany, Box 17, photo 148: Burl on oak, Glenwood ’00 Burl: a hard woody often flattened hemispherical outgrowth on a tree (Merriam-Webster)…
Earlier this week I received an email announcement from the Bell Museum of Natural History about BioBlitz 2013, an event slated for this upcoming Saturday, June 15th. At the event, scientists and nature lovers will participate in a 24-hour natural…
– Wellcome Photographic Exposure Diary, F. K. Butters, 1911, from box 83 of the collection of the Department of Botany. “The most dainty, compact and useful pocketbook for photographers. Handsomely bound and beautifully illustrated.” So reads an advertisement for…