By Katie Koerten
I’ve written in the Earth Matters column twice before about the magic of the color blue in nature. First, in “It’s not easy being blue in nature,” I wrote about how rare blue is in nature due to its relative costliness to produce. Then I described the two pigments found in bird eggs in “Cracking the mystery of how birds’ eggs are blue.” Today I want to share with you what made me fall in love with blue in the first place: chicory.
By Lawrence J. Winship
Every spring our car windows, decks and sidewalks are blanketed by layer upon layer of yellow powder. A seemingly unending rain of tiny particles filters down from birches, oaks, pines and other trees, sticking to every horizontal surface — and making about 25% of the human population sneeze. Lawrence J. Winship explains what wind-dispersed pollen does for plants and to people- and ends his tale with very curious questions.
By David Spector
I enjoy plants — foliage, flowers, and relationships of plants with humans, relationships often reflected in names. English plant names, for example, show a complex history of invasions into England, invasions by the English into the rest of the world, and interaction with dozens of languages from around the world. Here I consider a handful of western Massachusetts plant names.
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Hitchcock Center for the Environment
at Hampshire College
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