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We pause our berry gathering to more closely examine the kinnikinnick. On many parts of the shrub, the smooth, leathery green leaf margins are accented by bulbous, yellow-red growths. Unmistakably, these are galls, tumor-like growths of the leaf tissue. Each gall was induced by a manzanita leaf-gall aphid (Tamalia coweni), a female aphid who probes along the leaf to form a tiny home.
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As the temperature drops and the leaves turn brown and drop as well, it gets hard for a botanist in Montana to find anything interesting to study outside.…
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As you travel about Montana’s fall and winter landscape, you’re bound to see the brown and gray patchwork of roadside weeds. We tend to classify weeds as…
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This spring I went out for a walk on one of the bald hills on the outskirts of Missoula, just east of Hellgate Canyon. I walked the crest of the hill and…
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Cat-o-nine-tails, reedmace, bulrush, water torch, candlewick, punk, and corn dog grass. The cattail has almost as many names as it has uses. Humans have…
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Break off a sprig of big sagebrush and inhale its aroma: the fragrance is clean, sharp and as cool as the smell of winter. Call it camphor blended with a…
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The story of noxious weeds is the classic love story gone wrong. You see that beautiful so-and-so across the room, you hang out for a while, decide to…
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In the poor soil of fens, marshes and bogs, sundews have evolved to be carnivorous. While on a field course last fall in the Swan Valley of Western…
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The Efik people of the region that is now Nigeria used to force people accused of crimes to suffer a trial by ordeal: they'd be fed calabar beans, a known…
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Amy Cilimburg talks with naturalist and Lolo National Forest Wildlife Interpreter Sue Reel about native bees, the plants they need, why we need…