Winter Botany

Today a sibling and I took a botany class at the Maplewood Nature Center. This center is located just north of the intersection of Minnehaha and Century in Maplewood.   Our speaker was a botanist.  He said there aren't many of him around.  It's more difficult to get a degree in botany now because the nature sciences aren't as profitable as the technical sciences.  His job involves searching for rare species in the Chippewa and Superior National Forests.  He took us on a hike around a small wetland. He was well versed in the Latin names of many plants.  He wasn't as familiar with the common names.  He pointed to different plants and rattled off the Latin names.  After a while, it didn't sound like he was speaking English anymore.  I think it got to another woman in the group too because towards the end she pointed into the field and said, "Look!  It's an orangemus flagimus."  She was pointing at an orange flag.  I think I might have retained .1% of all he said.  I remember taking a botany class in college.  I'd like to do that again because I've forgotten almost all of it.  We went through a small section of prairie.  He pointed out bergamot. I like that so I stuck some seed pods in my pocket.  He pointed out big bluestem and Indian grass so I put more seeds in my pocket.  I didn't have enough pockets to keep things separate so I started combining.  I gathered some seed pods of another plant but I can't remember the name of it.  Please don't tell on me.  I don't think I was supposed to do that.  We talked about the white oaks and the red oaks, the silver maples and the red maples.  Maplewood Nature Center has the state champion red oak next to their parking lot.  This champion isn't listed in literature yet because it was newly crowned.  We saw a humongous cottonwood tree with at least four trunks.  I'll try to post a picture of it later.  There was a big hole in the center.  He said oak trees gather the nutrients from the leaves before they let them go.  Maples don't do that so maple leaves make better compost.  We saw raspberries, grape vines, high bush cranberry, current, elderberry, wild ginger, several wild violets, lady ferns, maidenhair ferns, ostrich ferns, interrupted ferns, and wood ferns, red dogwood, gray dogwood, pagoda dogwood, plantain, white snake root, buckthorn, bittersweet, spurge, pincherry, chokecherry, wild cherry, duckweed, arrowhead, zigzag goldenrod, Canada goldenrod, giant goldenrod, and many more.  Like I said, I didn't retain much.  I could have photographed and written down every thing we saw but I had more fun absorbing some of it and enjoying the 3 hour hike through the woods.  I was dressed for a much colder day and I had to take off some layers.  I could tell we had a light rain by seeing the drops fall in the wetland but I didn't really feel like we got rained on very much.  We had a fun day there.  After our hike, we went to the Savoy Inn on East Seventh Street.  I had the best pizza ever.  If you decide to go, bring a flashlight.  Even in the middle of the day, it's so darn dark in there you can't read the menu.  It's darker than a theater but the food is delicious and reasonably priced.