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A spooky plant to look for this Halloween is Cuscuta, usually referred to as dodder but also known as strangle vine, witch’s shoelaces and even devil’s guts. Cuscuta is also an example of a “vampire

For the second year in a row, summer monsoons have blessed the Southern Rockies. With the rain came the mushrooms, making an incredible appearance at the 2022 Telluride Mushroom Festival. This year

In soil, there is a natural storage of seeds—known as the soil seed bank—even in urban areas. These soil seed banks can serve as a potential source of species diversity for plant communities

Urban areas are increasingly becoming important as we look to conserve and restore wildlife and ecosystems. Our newest partner in better understanding the biodiversity in Denver and surrounding areas

This June, I attended the annual Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections (SPNHC) meeting in Edinburgh, UK. SPNHC is an international society whose mission is to improve the

The steppe is a vast, treeless plain. A seemingly endless horizon interrupted only by the faint jagged line of mountains in the distance. In summer, the grasses dance in the warm breeze. In the winter

July is a busy time for botanists – so many flowers to see and never enough time! One trip I always make time for, though, is guiding hikes for the Crested Butte Wildflower Festival. Crested Butte is

I began researching rare alpine plants of Colorado a few years ago, progressing from understanding basic germination requirements to studying seed longevity in storage to examining the effects of

Every spring the City Nature Challenge provides city-dwelling naturalists with the opportunity to observe and document the wildlife around us. For three days from the end of April into early May

We have a goal at the Kathryn Kalmbach Herbarium of Vascular Plants to have a collection with a representative specimen of every species of vascular plant occurring in the state of Colorado. This

I have been working with some old rose plants recently. Roughly 80 years old, we think, and last week I saw them bloom for the first time. The plants grow in the concrete rubble of a bunk house at

The geographic distributions of plants that we see today provide a glimpse of the past. They are snapshots in a much longer story driven by major events such as the formation of mountain ranges