Newsletter title

November 2008

In This Edition

Visitor’s Center Interactive Kiosk Project

—Karen Moore

Scheduling meetings is tricky now that our Kioskers are in 7th-Grade. Yet, we continue to meet about once a month. Their dedication is awesome. Will did a superb job of correcting the errors on the home icon. The change he made was to set all to index, thus providing consistent references throughout (one setting was topic index.) Will is getting very good at trouble shooting. He will be transferring Jamie’s work on grasses. James has her slides, but hasn’t had time to transfer them yet. Aaron is a superb text editor. He is editing all the work that needs to be transferred. He is trying to complete a few slides on controlled burns, too. I wish he had been at our sixth-grade School Out Of Doors stop at the Tallgrass Prairie Research Station. Ryan completed his reptile slides well. James or Will will handle transferring his work to our kiosk computer. Julian has agreed to work on butterfly slides Rosie started. Jordan’s bison slides are finished. However, we need to change a few pictures and have Aaron proof her text. Now, considering the time spent—just one to two hours once every few weeks—coupled with a steep learning curve, these students have produced excellent work. I am very proud of them.

My new 6th grade students this year rated their visit to the Research Station as the third most fun thing they did at School Out of Doors. The Tallgrass Prairie visit came in behind canoeing (100%), drumming (94%), then Research Station (77%). Isn’t that great! Bingo (75%) and hike 64% trailed the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve rating. 6th-graders this year took notes from our Kiosk work before they went. They had some good questions to ask. The researcher, Matthew, was at the Research Station. He gave an excellent explanation of the burn trucks and process to the second group; students liked it. Once again, scheduling problems interfered, eating into our available time. Overall, to get a 77% ranking on the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve visit was fantastic. I was very pleased.

Visitors to the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve

—Iris McPherson

The total number of visitors signing in during September was 488. There were 30 states (448) represented with the highest counts after Oklahoma (297) being Arkansas (24), California (17) and Missouri (15). There were 15 foreign countries (40) represented with the highest being Switzerland (7) and England (6). Vietnam was added to the list of foreign countries.

So far this year there have been a total of 4064 visitors with 3800 from the U.S. and 264 from other countries. There have been 48 states and 41 countries represented. The missing states are still Delaware and Hawaii.

Please remind people to sign the visitor’s register.

All in the Family

—Van Vives

It has always been a mystery to me how plants get their scientific names and how they get put into particular plant families. One would think that members of the same family would resemble one another, but that is not necessarily so. Lets look at two family members.

Picture by Van Vives.I have growing in my yard a plant that is six feet tall with a very sturdy central upright stem. It came up without me planting any seed and is among my wild flowers. In early fall I cut it down to about 18 inches. Now even with the frost we had it is all sprouted out with new leaves. With the help of Mike Palmer I now know that it is an Oenothera biennis of the Primrose Family, the Common Evening Primrose. It really wasn’t common to me. I looked up some information about it. The flowers emit a creosote smell that attracts night-flying sphinx moths. Native Americans ate the seeds and the first-year roots. It was introduced to Europe in the 1600s and Europeans ate the roots and put the young leaves into salads. The entire plant was used to treat whooping cough, hiccups, and asthma.

Picture by Van Vives.So now I looked at the delicate Showy Evening Primrose and wondered why they were put in the same plant family. They certainly don’t look the same. Compare the two pictures. They are both of the family Onagraceae. If one looks at the blooms you see that they both have four petals with the same general shape. Of all the species of Onagraceae, the Showy Evening Primrose is the only one having a white to pink flower. It is low trailing or slightly upright in growth with branching extending up to two feet.

We would have to consult with a botanist to learn the more subtle similarities.

Back Issues

Back issues of the Docent Newsletter, to October 2008, can be found in the two green and one blue-black zip-binders, stored in the Perspex rack by the file cabinet in the office of the Visitor’s Center.

Newsletter Publication

Deadline for submission of articles for inclusion in the newsletter is the 10th of each month. Publication date is on the 15th. All docents, Nature Conservancy staff, university scientists, philosophers, and historians are welcome to submit articles and pictures about the various preserves in Oklahoma, but of course the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve in particular.