Smart Stuff with Twig Walkingstick: Prairie Plant-apalooza

Twig lives in and around the Wooster campus of the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center, where he enjoys the prairie plant in Secrest Arboretum. His alter ego is Kurt Knebusch, one of our super-talented writers and editors on campus. Each month, look for Twig to answer a reader questions and some additional interesting facts below. After Twig's post, we will be providing some ideas and suggestions on how to incorporate the info in Twig's column into fun science learning for your students and children.

Q. Twig: What's with all the prairie plants? I'm seeing special sales of them. There's a whole garden full at my school. I'm waiting to see a buffalo! What gives?

A. You're right. Prairie plants are getting more popular. One reason is that more gardeners are interested in native plants -- in this case, plants that are natural to North America. (A lot of U.S. garden plants were imported from Europe and Asia.)

Another reason is that prairie plants are easy to care for. They're perennials -- they come back every year -- so you plant them only once. They shade and crowd out weeds, so you rarely if ever have to hoe them. And they don't mind hot, dry weather, so you don't have to water them (except when they're young), unlike a green, grassy lawn.

Also, prairie plants give food and shelter to birds and butterflies. Walkingsticks, too!

A downside, of course, is that you can't play baseball on them. Bob the Bug keeps getting lost.

What are some prairie plants? Wildflowers like purple coneflower and black-eyed Susan and grasses like big bluestem and Indian grass.

Great names. Great plants. Great Plains. You, too, can have a little house on the prairie! Or a big one! Or a modest, well-kept bungalow!


Using this information for education:
There are tons of ways to learn about prairies! First, the most obvious is to visit somewhere where there are prairie plants! One such place is Secrest Arboretum on OARDC's Wooster campus. We have a mega-cool prairie plant garden in the arboretum. Admission is free and open to the public seven days a week during daylight hours. Most of the plants in the garden are labeled with their common and scientific name...which means you'll actually know what plants you look at enjoy.

There are also tons of great lesson plans available on our North American native prairies:


Teacherlink has several social studies lessons
National Geographic's Incredible Prairie Picture Show
Illinois State Museum's Historic Native American Plant Dyes
Discover Education's The American Prairie
Living Roadway Trust Fund of Iowa's Create a Prairie Roadside


And that just scratches the surface! So get out there, explore and enjoy our native prairie plants!! Summer is their season of glory!

Smart Stuff with Twig Walkingstick: The Quills of Prickly Porky

This is the first of many (we hope!) monthly guest blogs from Twig Walkingstick. When not on vacation, Twig lives in and around the Wooster campus of the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center. His alter ego is Kurt Knebusch, one of our super-talented writers and editors on campus. Each month, look for Twig to answer a reader questions and some additional interesting facts below. After Twig's post, we will be providing some ideas and suggestions on how to incorporate the info in Twig's column into fun science learning for your students and children.

Q. Dear Twig: Why don’t porcupines stick to things? All those pointy quills and all ...
 
A. First, the quills (“kwills”) on a porcupine mostly point backward. So when a porcupine climbs up a tree, for example, its quills don’t aim forward and poke into things by mistake. Like branches, tree trunks or the back ends of bears.

Second, besides pointing backward, the quills also usually lie flat, near the body. This cuts down on the chance of accidents too. The quills do stick up when a porky feels threatened. Maybe a wolf or a dog tries to bother it. The stuck-up, stuck-out quills serve as protection. Special muscles around each quill pull tight and make the quill stand up.

Third, if the stuck-up, stuck-out quills do get stuck into something, like the nose of a dog or the snout of a wolf, they dislodge — come loose — from the porky very easily. This lets the porcupine get away — not stay stuck — while the predator deals with a snootful of quills.

Prickly,
Twig

P.S. Porcupines can’t throw their quills. Nor shoot them. And the quills aren’t poisonous.
--

Notes from Twig: 

• The quills of the North American porcupine are barbed, hollow, modified hairs. A porcupine has about 30,000 of them.
• Scientists call the muscles that make quills stand up “piloerectors,” while a special quill-holding skin part called the “spool” lets stuck-up, poked-into-something quills pull loose much more easily than relaxed ones do.
• Sources included “A Facilitated Release Mechanism for Quills of the North American Porcupine” by Uldis Roze, Queens College, New York, in Journal of Mammalogy, 2002; and “Smart Weapons” by Roze in Natural History, 2006.
• Twig has been vacationing in a place where porcupines live but hasn’t, unfortunately, run into any.

Using this information for education:
Right about now, families across the country are planning their summer vacations or are looking forward the vacations they already have planned. Students may not be in school during the summer, but that doesn't mean they should pass up the opportunity to make learning fun....like on their vacation!

If you're planning a trip this summer, whether across the country, camping, to the beach, or even to your local zoo, take the time to learn about the animals and wildlife that are native to the area you'll be visiting. Almost every species has fun facts about its members that will amaze and astound your friends and family.

Learning more about the animal sciences can lead to lots of great educational discussions about habitat, animal adaptations, food chains and more.  So go on and have fun on your vacation this summer, but take the time to teach and learn a little, too!