With the warm weather recently, many have been out walking around the Arb. You may have noticed that it is the height of the blooming season for a certain purple flower: Scilla siberica, or simply "Scilla"....
Not all trees can handle living next to the Cannon River this time of year. Trees that thrive in Minnesota’s floodplains must survive when the river bursts its banks each spring, dousing them in deep...
You might not notice a Kentucky coffee tree if it weren’t for its distinctive pods, which can be seen dangling from branches or picked up from the ground around it. These tough brown pods each contain...
Walking through the arboretum earlier this month, student naturalists came across weird designs etched in the wood of a fallen tree. Was this a practical joke on curious students, or a particularly artistic...
Winter 2024 is on track to be the warmest winter on record for much of Minnesota, and with unprecedented warmth comes anomalies to the environment around us, one of which can be seen with ice. One of the...
The morning after the Midwinter Ball, campus was blanketed with silence. As I sluggishly trudged to the Libe to chip away at my mountain of homework, something stopped me in my tracks. A parade of five ...
What lies at the heart of the Arb? Is it the plentiful prairies? The lovely wooded paths for wandering? The Hill of Three Oaks? I would argue for the Cannon River. It provides a habitat for the fish of...
Have you ever noticed weird bumps on a plant? They might actually be scale insects!
These strange insects spend most of their lives in one spot, attached to one or two-year-old twigs. They begin their...
Not many things are still green these days in Minnesota, but this plant and family is one of them. Standing 6-20 inches, and maybe just above the snow, is the fan ground-cedar (Diphasiastrum digitatum),...
Winter has arrived in the arboretum, turning it from beautiful forest to frigid wasteland, right? Not so! There’s plenty to do and see in the arb, even in the midst of (admittedly quite a mild) Minnesota...
Photo caption: Tamaracks, a deciduous species native further north, begin to lose their needles for the season during the October snow. Photo by Klara Kjome Fischer ’26.
The first snow has come...
Several weeks ago, a gray fox was observed wandering around the Arboretum. Unlike the more familiar red fox, gray foxes are recognized by their beautiful coats, a gradient from a silver-gray on their back...
