The Rosy Apple

By: Lacy Sellent, Writing Fellow at the Cable Natural History Museum

          

An apple tree grew along my childhood driveway.  I passed by this tree each morning on my way to the bus stop.  Sometimes I would race past it without much thought -- besides that I was going to beat my brother to the bus.  Other days I would walk slower down the gravel and think of how few people got to appreciate the world at six-thirty in the morning.  Taking my time, I would make my way over to the apple tree and grab a few rosy-red apples.  Then I’d give a little whistle and walk over to the horse pasture. 

It wouldn’t take long for the horses to spot me and they’d come trotting across the dewy grass to see if I had any goodies for them.  I’d stretch my arm out across the fence; keeping my hand flat as they approached.  With a little sniff or a slight stomp, one would come up to take the first bite.  My hand would be full of horse slobber but I didn’t care.  It was worth it to hear the satisfied crunches as the horses bit into their apples.  What a lovely thing to have an apple tree so conveniently located!

Apple didn’t always grow here.  The apple tree (Malus domestica) is a species that originated in Asia.  We’ve loved it and changed it for so long, that there are over 7,500 known cultivars of apples in the world today!  Their fruits can range in size from smaller than a golf ball to larger than a tennis ball.  

Apple trees probably arrived in America in the 1600s.  When colonists moved here, many brought seeds to plant in the New World—including apple seeds.  After several years of hard work, the colonists managed to set up the country’s first apple orchard near Boston in the 1620s.  When people began to move westward they often took small sacks of seeds with them.  One pioneer, John Chapman, became famous for doing just that. You may know him as Johnny Appleseed. 

Born in Massachusetts, John Chapman made his way from the east to the west.  In a kindly gesture, he would journey ahead of other pioneers and plant apple trees along the routes he assumed they would take.  In 1797, when Johnny was only twenty-three, he planted his first nursery along Broken Straw Creek, in Pennsylvania.  That was only the beginning.  He went on to plant seeds in Ohio and Indiana as well.

With apple trees already growing in Indiana during the early 1800s, it was only a matter of time before the trees spread from there, across Illinois and into Wisconsin.  Whether through the dispersion of seeds by animals or the planting of seeds by pioneers, the apple tree made its way to Wisconsin.  By 1850, Wisconsin was home to several apple orchards.

Many of those first orchards didn’t produce tasty apples that you would want to munch on.  Apple trees that grow from seeds are often wildly different than their parent trees.  Most uncultivated apples are far too tart for eating plain, but are just right for making cider.  That is exactly what many of Johnny Appleseed’s first orchards were used for.  In order to grow the consistently sweet apples we enjoy today, clones of the parent trees must be made by grafting twigs, called scions, onto other rootstocks. 

Although apples aren’t native to North America, many of their relatives are.  Apples are in the Rosaceae (Rose) family, which contains about 2,830 species worldwide.  In Wisconsin, members of Rosaceae include: wild plums, chokecherries, black cherries, strawberries, raspberries, thimbleberries, serviceberries, cinquefoils, mountain ash, and hawthorn.    Many of them, like apples, are edible and beautiful.  Understanding their history can help us appreciate the amazing variety of apples we will find in farmer’s markets, produce isles, and along driveways next to horse pastures this fall! 

For over 44 years, the Museum has served as a guide and mentor to generations of visitors and residents interested in learning to better appreciate and care for the extraordinary natural resources of the region. The Museum invites you to visit its facility in Cable at 13470 County Highway M. The new exhibit, The Joy of Birds: Feathers in Focus opened in May, 2011. Find us on the web at www.cablemuseum.org to learn more about our exhibits and programs. Also discover us on Facebook, or at our blogspot, http://cablemuseumnaturalconnections.blogspot.com/.

The Grand Old Badger

By: Lacy Sellent, Writing Fellow at the Cable Natural History Museum

It was early in the morning.  The dew still clung to the grass as I ran down our deserted country road.    I was concentrating on my breathing, and just putting one foot in front of the other, when I came upon it.  I don’t know how long it had been sitting there, but by the time I saw it, it was less than ten feet away.  I jumped sideways as I saw it looking at me with intimidating eyes.  It growled.  I froze.  I wasn’t sure what to do but I decided I needed to do something.  I flung my arms into the air and began yelling and flailing like some kind of crazy person.  It worked.  The badger seemed to stare me down for a few seconds; then he turned and ran.  Like with any wild animal, it needed space.  It was a rare and exciting chance encounter, but I would rather have seen him from a safer distance.

Although badgers are known as aggressive fighters, they are more likely to flee if given the opportunity.  If a badger is confronted near a hole, the badger will quickly burrow into it—all the while flinging dirt at its foe.  It may also release a strong musty smell in hopes of stinking out the assailant.  If a badger does happen to be grabbed by a predator (such as a coyote), its fur is so thick and its skin is so loose that the badger is able to turn on its attacker and fight back.  Claws that aid the badger in burrowing can also be turned into powerful weapons.  When cornered, the badger earns its fierce reputation.

For the most part, badgers don’t have to worry about predators.  An eagle may grab a small one, but not many animals are willing to take on this thirty-pound fighter.  Badgers are part of the weasel family and therefore are related to another aggressive fighter—the wolverine.  Unlike the wolverine, badgers typically prey on smaller animals and are more likely to dig up a burrowed animal than to chase one down.   Sometimes, after the badger digs up its burrowed prey, it decides to inhabit the old burrow.  Now that’s efficient!

The American badger (Taxidea taxus) is a mammal that uses burrows for just about everything.  Burrows are good for protection, shelter, food storage, and raising young.  A burrow can be over twenty feet in length but may have an entrance that’s not even one foot wide.  The burrow has a mound of dirt outside, and if threatened, the badger may use it to plug up the entrance.

Wisconsin has been unofficially nicknamed the “Badger State” since the 1800s, when lead miners found shelter in old mine shafts, just like a badger taking over other animals’ old burrows.  In 1957 a small group of schoolchildren suggested that, because of this history, the badger should be the official state animal. So, while the white-tailed deer is Wisconsin’s state wildlife animal, the dairy cow is the state domesticated animal, it is the badger that is the overall state animal of Wisconsin.  In the words of the state song, this is the “grand old badger state!”  I’m so glad to have met one in person on that dewy morning.

For over 44 years, the Museum has served as a guide and mentor to generations of visitors and residents interested in learning to better appreciate and care for the extraordinary natural resources of the region. The Museum invites you to visit its facility in Cable at 13470 County Highway M. The new exhibit, The Joy of Birds: Feathers in Focus opened in May, 2011. Find us on the web at www.cablemuseum.org to learn more about our exhibits and programs. Also discover us on Facebook, or at our blogspot, http://cablemuseumnaturalconnections.blogspot.com/.

Happy Trails

By: Lacy Sellent, Writing Fellow at the Cable Natural History Museum

Fall—the season of change and brightly colored leaves.  I smiled to myself as I made my way down the rocky trail.  It had been awhile since I last set foot on the North Country Trail—mainly because of the constant cloud of mosquitoes.  I’d barely take two steps into the woods, when the grey mass would begin to circle my head and hum in my ears.  In my opinion, nothing can ruin a hike faster than a bloodsucking swarm of persistent mosquitoes.  That’s part of the reason why I enjoy fall hiking so much—cooler temperatures mean fewer mosquitoes.  The far-reaching views and glistening streams of northern Wisconsin are wonderful, too.

The North Country National Scenic Trail (NST) is on its way to becoming the longest such trail in all of the United States.  Over a hundred miles are already completed across northern Wisconsin. These segments take hikers down valleys, past waterfalls, and into beautiful forests.  One 60 mile section even goes through the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest.  

There are many segments to choose from.  For a short but eventful hike, Copper Falls State Park (northeast of Mellen, Wisconsin) offers a two mile jaunt down the trail.  While there, visitors can view old lava flows and rushing waterfalls.  The Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest immerses hikers in its woodland realm.  Deer, rabbits, and grouse are quite common.  It was from this northern segment that the trail’s name—North Country—originated.

 And then there’s the Porcupine Mountains.  Located in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, the Porkies (as the Porcupine Mountains are sometimes nicknamed) also have access to great scenery.  Hikers can see the Black River waterfalls, the Sturgeon River Gorge and a section of trail known as the Trap Hills segment.  Although this bit of trail is in a remote area (located at the eastern end of the State Park), the location combined with the fall colors makes it quite the gem.

Another fascinating location the trail passes through is the Penokee Mountain Range near County Highway GG.  It may not look like a mountainous location today, but seven hundred million years ago it was.  Back then, the area would have looked as rough as the Rockies.  Over an immense amount of time, the mountains withered away from the effects of such damaging forces as wind and water.  The land changed a lot in the following several hundred million years.  At one point, it was all under water.  As of two hundred million years ago, the land began to become more like what we see today.  Hiking the North Country Trail means hiking in the mountains, sort of.  It’s mind boggling to think about. 

As I walked along the trail, I thought of these things.  It made me feel small but also full of awe.  I listened to the sounds of the forest.  I could hear the creak of the birch as they swayed with the breeze.  I could hear the pitter patter of squirrel feet.  I could hear that I wasn’t being followed by the constant hum of the mosquito.  Thinking of this made me smile again—no mosquitoes, how peaceful. This beautiful fall weather is the perfect time to get outside and enjoy the local woods and trails that make this area so great.

For over 44 years, the Museum has served as a guide and mentor to generations of visitors and residents interested in learning to better appreciate and care for the extraordinary natural resources of the region. The Museum invites you to visit its facility in Cable at 13470 County Highway M. The new exhibit, The Joy of Birds: Feathers in Focus opened in May, 2011. Find us on the web at www.cablemuseum.org to learn more about our exhibits and programs. Also discover us on Facebook, or at our blogspot, http://cablemuseumnaturalconnections.blogspot.com/.

Long Live the Queen!

By Emily Stone, Naturalist/Educator at the Cable Natural History Museum

There’s something in the air this time of year.  The sunshine is especially golden, red leaves are beginning to appear on the trees, and “Mosquito Hour” is reduced to “Mosquito Five Minutes.”  It’s easier than ever to spend quality time outside with loved ones.  There is love in the air, as some species prepare for winter by finding a mate before they hibernate. Many insects do this, including bees and bald-faced hornets.

Bald-faced hornets (Dolichovespula maculata) are ¾ inch-long wasps with black and white markings. The queens are the only ones that survive the winter, and now is the time when they are preparing for hibernation.  Newly-hatched queens will mate with a male drone, and then the mated females will burrow into the ground, an old tree stump or squeeze behind a nice comfy flap of tree bark to spend the winter.  All the rest of the colony (the male drones, female workers and old queen) die of old age or freezing temperatures. 

Late fall is a good time to find the abandoned nests, long after all the nest-defenders are gone.  The nests are as large as a basketball, shaped like a football, and usually attached to a twig in a shrub or tree. If you cut open an abandoned bald-faced hornet nest you’ll notice several papery layers of insulation surrounding the nursery combs.  Paper wasps have similar habits, but their nests are open, with no insulation surrounding the combs. 

Early next spring, in April or May, the queens will emerge from hibernation and begin the life cycle anew.  Each queen will make her own nest by chewing up wood fibers and mixing them with her sticky saliva, making paper.  The colony starts with just a few paper cells arranged in a honeycomb-like structure attached to a twig.  The queen lays one fertilized egg in each six-sided cell, and once the eggs hatch she feeds the larvae with a high-protein baby food of chewed up insects. At some point, when the larvae have had enough, they spin a white silk roof over their cell to pupate. They later emerge as infertile female workers. 

Once the queen raises the first generation of workers, they take over all the nest-building and child-rearing duties, and she spends her time laying eggs.  As adults, the hornets don’t grow, because their exoskeleton is hard and fixed.  They mostly eat sugary foods like nectar and rotten fruit for energy.

When workers are in the nest they shiver to produce heat.  The heat is retained by the layers of insulation, allowing the larvae to develop more quickly, and the adults to stay at the 95 degree body temperate required for fast flight and nest defense.  If you accidentally bump a nest in the summer, the thin paper shell will rip and hundreds of hornets may fly out to sting you.  They don’t have barbs on their stingers, so they can each sting multiple times.  This fierce defense is necessary, because the larvae in the nest are tasty, protein-rich treats for birds, bears, foxes, skunks, and raccoons.

In late summer and early fall the queen lays two different types of eggs.  One set will be unfertilized eggs that hatch into male drones.  Wasps, bees, and ants don’t have X and Y chromosomes to determine sex like we do.  Instead females hatch from fertilized eggs, and are diploid (having two sets of chromosomes like us), and males hatch from unfertilized eggs, so are haploid (having only one set of chromosomes).

The final set of fertilized eggs pupates into fertile females with more fat stores and chemicals to protect them against freezing damage – the new queens. They mate with a drone and then hibernate until the next spring, when the cycle begins again.

Spring and fall are the seasons when we are reminded again and again of all the cycles present in nature.  As the heat subsides, the humidity falls, and the kids go back to school, take a deep breath and appreciate the beauty of the season.

For over 44 years, the Museum has served as a guide and mentor to generations of visitors and residents interested in learning to better appreciate and care for the extraordinary natural resources of the region. The Museum invites you to visit its facility in Cable at 13470 County Highway M. The new exhibit, The Joy of Birds: Feathers in Focus opened in May, 2011. Find us on the web at www.cablemuseum.org to learn more about our exhibits and programs. Also discover us on Facebook, or at our blogspot, http://cablemuseumnaturalconnections.blogspot.com/.

Wild Ricing, A Tasty Tradition

By: Lacy Sellent, Writing Fellow at the Cable Natural History Museum

I remember when I went ricing for the first time.  I was excited because my mom and dad said we’d get to take the canoe out.  I loved going out in the canoe and skimming across the water.  Fun like that was not to be missed!  After the great feat of lifting the sixty pound aluminum canoe onto the back of the truck, we were ready to go. 

When we arrived at a lake there were several other people already standing around on shore.  I wondered what was going on.  As it turned out, we had arrived early and had to wait until the exact time the season opened.  Apparently, it’s not even legal to rice between sunset and ten in the morning.  So we waited.  After a few minutes, and a unanimous vote that the season had started, we all headed out.  At first it didn’t seem so different—we were just paddling after all—but then we found the rice.  It looked a lot like oats.  The narrow, greenish yellow stalks grew nearly four feet above the water.  Wild rice is a close cousin to the common rice that is indigenous to Asia. Both are in the grass family, Poaceae. Explorers in the 17^th and 18^th centuries encountered seven foot tall wild rice that grew so thick that it posed a challenge to navigation.  I just wondered how we would get the rice into the canoe. 

As we approached the edge of the rice, my dad quit paddling and took out one very long stick, which he called a duckbill.  It had a “V” at one end, and if I used my imagination, it did look a lot like the bill of a duck.  He used the pole to push us forward, making it easier and less damaging to move forward through the stalks. It is illegal to use a motorboat for ricing, since the motor would really tear up the rice beds.

My mom grabbed two short wooden poles, each less than three feet in length, and swept a bundle of rice across the side of the canoe with one pole as she gently knocked the rice into the bottom of the canoe with the other.  No wonder they are called knockers!  The Department of Natural Resources (DNR) requires knockers to be rounded, so that the rice stalks are not as damaged in the ricing process.

The rice began to rain down—some falling into the canoe, some falling into the water.  At first this worried me; we weren’t catching all the rice!  But then my parents told me that it was okay.  Wild rice is an annual plant, so it grows from seed each year. When the rice falls into the water, it is being replanted for the following year.  Despite knocking many seeds into the lake, we ended up with forty pounds of rice. This was enough for us, while still leaving plenty for others.  Wild rice is an important food source not only for humans, but also for muskrats, deer, and at least sixteen species of birds.

Humans and wildlife have eaten wild rice from Wisconsin’s lakes and streams for many hundreds of years.  It was first gathered by indigenous people such as the Ojibwa, Menominee, and Sioux.  Now it can be harvested by anyone willing to learn how.  Thanks to regulation by the DNR and representatives of local tribes, ricing can be carried out safely and sustainably.  By regulating which lakes and streams can be riced when, there is less of a possibility that an area will be overharvested. 

After collecting the rice, there are still a few more steps to go through before making a meal.  First, the rice needs to be parched.  This means that the rice is heated up and dried out.  Once it is no longer wet, it can be thrashed in order to break open the hulls.  The hulls are a type of casing around the rice—you could eat it, but must people just want to eat the rice on the inside.  That’s why the casings need to be broken and then winnowed.  By winnowing the rice, the broken hulls are blown away.  This process may be performed several times in order to make sure all the hulls are off of the rice. 

The ricing season may be open anytime from mid-August to mid-September.  Since each lake and stream is different, look for postings at public access points and check with the local DNR service center for information about when areas are open to ricing. Before heading out on the water, it is also necessary to acquire a permit from the DNR (which costs less than $10).

Even if all you do is cook up some wild rice from the store, you can still appreciate the history of this tasty tradition.

For over 44 years, the Museum has served as a guide and mentor to generations of visitors and residents interested in learning to better appreciate and care for the extraordinary natural resources of the region. The Museum invites you to visit its facility in Cable at 13470 County Highway M. The new exhibit, The Joy of Birds: Feathers in Focus opened in May, 2011. Find us on the web at www.cablemuseum.org to learn more about our exhibits and programs. Also discover us on Facebook, or at our blogspot, http://cablemuseumnaturalconnections.blogspot.com/.