Wildflowers of the Rensselaer Plateau & Beyond

Thursday, March 17, 2022

Chris Graham, a field botanist at Hudsonia, focuses on rare species conservation, the description & classification of plant communities, and the effects of resource extraction and global change on these communities. In this webinar, hosted by the Rensselaer Plateau Alliance in March 2022, Chris walked us through a few of his favorite flowers, including skunk cabbage, our earliest native flower. Familiar as the early green may be, it’s less well known that reproduction structures can poke through the snow as early as February, and create their own metabolic heat that helps melt the snow, and nebulizes chemicals that attract early flying pollinators; spring beauties, early ephemerals that come and go within a few weeks; and jack-in-the-pulpit, a favorite food of box turtles.