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Happening
at the Crossroads
May 12,
2008
by Coggin
Heeringa
Spring
flowers bordering the Heritage Garden at Crossroads are beautiful, but
beauty has very little survival value. To make seeds, flowering plants
must be pollinated and many of our spring wildflowers depend on bees
and other insects to carry pollen from blossom to blossom.
The
colors of flower petals attract insects, but so do the scents. The
scents of flowers have the same effect on insects as the aroma of fresh
popped popcorn has on me. Sweet odors attract bees and butterflies.
Other flowers and plants which smell like, say, dead meat are more
likely to attract flies and beetles. Many of the odors come from flower
petals, but some plants exude volatile oils which evaporate into
the air.
Those same essential oils, when added to food, give
off aromas which makes food more palatable. We call the
plants that give off these provocative odors
“herbs.”
On Tuesday, May 20, at 7:00 Door County Master Gardeners offer
a free program “Herbal Lore”, presented by local herbalist Jane
Knaappen Cole. These days, when people think of herbs, they think of
cooking, but that is only a small part of the history of these
remarkable plants.
When written records of herbs showed up about
3,000 years ago, there were more “receipts” for medicine, cosmetics,
dyes and magic, than for culinary uses. Jane will share what she has
learned about these very special plants.. The program is free and open
to the public.
Thursday, May 15, at 6:00 PM, an informational
meeting about the upcoming research on Little Lake will be presented in
the lecture hall of the Collins Learning
Center.
The second foreign film
in the Global Lens Series will be screened on Friday, May 16 at 7:00.
This free presentation is “Let the Wind Blow” which was filmed in India
is in Hindi and English with English subtitles.
On Saturday
and Sunday at 1:00, families and individuals are invited to join the
naturalist in a search for spring wildflowers and perhaps, if it warms
up, wild asparagus.
Crossroads at Big Creek is a learning center
dedicated to science, history and the environment. It is located at the
Intersection of Highway 52/57 and Michigan Street (County Highway TT)
is Sturgeon Bay Wisconsin. For more information, see
www.crossroadsatbigcreek.org.
The
Collins Learning Center at Crossroads is located at on County Highway T
across from Whitetails Unlimited. To reach the Leif Everson Observatory
and Stonecipher Astronomy Center, use the Utah Street Entrance. If
skies are clear, call 746-5896 for a recorded message announcing
whether the observatory will be open.
Many of the Past News articles may be retrieved from this directory,
indexed and named in the following manner: 080101-news.htm where
the first two numbers are the year, the second two the month and the
last two the date.
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