Wild Weeds at Our National Parks

The National Parks Service has a great website with regularly updated information on all the parks across the country and the history of the Parks Service and the parks themselves. It’s great if you are planning a vacation (or if you have a child who has to do a project on one of the parks!) If you are interested in nature and science, that section of the site alone will keep you interested and entertained for days!

But my favorite part of the site at this time of year is “Weeds Gone Wild: Alien Plant Invaders of Natural Areas,” a web-based project of the Plant Conservation Alliance's Alien Plant Working Group. (File that under Government projects you never knew existed!)…might sound a little frivolous, but spend some time reading the fact sheets and look at the damage that “alien” and “invasive” plants can do to the environment. Fascinating!

You might wonder why I said “at this time of year” above…well, every year the APWG creates a calendar which highlights a different alien plant species with each month. That would be interesting enough…but they do it with humor. 2008’s calendar pictures were all fake movie posters, December was “The GIANT Salvinia” 2009 is fake magazine covers “Plante Nasty Invader” (instead of Conde Nast Traveler). Funny and informative (and often pretty)! All you need is Adobe Acrobat and this link to print yourself a great FREE calendar…if you didn’t get too many for Christmas!

Tim C. - Main Library