The Marjorie McNeely Conservatory

Last weekend I took a trip to the McNeely Conservatory in St. Paul. I can walk there from my house in nice weather and this place is truly one of the gems of Minnesota. The conservatory underwent a major renovation lately and the building complex now includes the visitor center, gift shop, restaurant and Tropical Encounters portion of the Como Zoo. It becomes a little muddy as to where the conservatory ends and the zoo begins. It is all part of Como Park and it is all enjoyable. The photo at the top of the post is the original conservatory building. Below is the new addition.


The new building is a completely different style though the portion to the left is sort of a more modern conservatory. This is the tropical encounters area. Whereas the old conservatory is more like a formal garden indoors, the new Tropical Encounters is more of a re-created landscape. It is a wonderful retreat on cold winter days. The humidity is near 100% and it is wonderfully warm. Here's a wide shot of how the two buildings blend together. I'll save description of Tropical Encounters and the Zoo for another post.

The area that connects the two sections houses the seasonal bonsai display area, orchid greenhouse and the new fern room. Let's start there.
I wish I had taken more photos in the fern room. One of my favorite rooms in the old conservatory before they remodeled was the fern room and this new fern rooms is nice as well. It doesn't seem as dank which I'm sure is a welcome relief to some but I kind of like the old dank room. The fern room contains what you would normally think of when you think ferns but equisetum and epiphytes as well. There is a nice reflective water feature (not pictured) and nice signage. All of the signs about plants in the conservatory are on this nice slate material.

One really cool feature of the fern room is often over looked, or rather perhaps underlooked. People are so busy looking at the plants they don't look up.

The glass ceiling of the fern room has built in solar cells. Ferns are understory plants that don't like full sun so why not block some with solar cells and make a little electricity? It is cool to see these kinds of innovations.

Coming into the old section of the Conservatory we can see the building was built between 1914 and 1915. World War I had just began in Europe with the US entering the battle in 1918. It is interesting to surmise whether or not the conservatory would have been built had the plans been delayed by just a few years. This plaque is located in the Palm Dome at the center of the conservatory.


The dome contains many species of palms as well as a circular path and a central fountain. The old main entrance to the Palm Dome is still open for visitors who don't want to enter though the visitor's center and fern room.

An interpreter was on hand explaining the many uses of coconuts while we were there. The Fern Dome is also where a lot of the orchids grown in the Orchid House end up. Here's a few beauties that were on display the day we were there.


I would have written down the scientific names of these beauties but I barely had time to take the photos as my toddler son was leading the way.

There are two gardens off of the Palm Dome. The garden to the south is the beautiful sunken garden. It is pretty routine to see people walking around the Conservatory wearing tuxedos on any given weekend. It isn't because we St. Paul residents have impecable taste (which is true) but rather because this is a popular site to have wedding photos taken. My wife and I had ours taken here years ago when we got married down at Lake Como. That's a younger me with a pony tail hanging out in at the doors to the sunken garden while I enjoy the view.








The plants in the garden change seasonally and are always beautiful. The pond has a beautiful bronze sculpture and lots of koi. While the color in the photos are mostly geraniums there were fun surprises as well such as this colorful Swiss Chard.

The sunken garden is a rare colorful retreat in the middle of the winter when the whole world seems white. The other garden off the Palm Dome is the aptly (though not very creatively) named North Garden. The North Garden contains tropical plants and focuses on plants we tend to use such as fruits and cocoa.


This garden also contains a large koi pond with some really beautiful fish.

One plant that caught my eye was this silver dollar maiden hair fern from South America. Most people probably never give it much attention but I was blown away by the size of the leaves. We have maidenhair ferns in Minnesota but the leaves are smaller than a dime.

There's more to see at the Conservatory, especially in the summer when the outdoor gardens are at their full splendor. The Japanese Garden is especially wonderful. The last photo is a glimpse into the kids room at the conservatory and the real reason we came. It is a great place to hang out with your kid on a cold day.

~Kirk

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Twin Cities Naturalist on Twitter

I've decided to open a Twitter account for the Twin Cities Naturalist. Why twitter? Twitter will allow me to share cool links and snippets of phenology without having to write up a whole long post. Sometimes another blog has an excellent story and it is faster to simply shoot a link up to Twitter rather than try to essentially re-write an already great post. If you want to keep up to date on what's going on then head over to http://twitter.com/tcnaturalist and become a follower. There's only a little up right now but we'll see how often I post. It will probably depend on how interested people are.

~Kirk

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Twin Cities Naturalist Podcast: November 2009

The November 2009 edition of the Twin Cities Naturalist Podcast is now online. Click the player below to listen.



This month's show topped out at a new record of 29 minutes. We usually try to keep them shorter but we had a great time interviewing two guests this month, Jamie McBride and April Rust. Jamie was the outgoing president and April was the incoming president of the Minnesota Naturalists' Association. We caught up with them at Lake Shetek in southern Minnesota at the annual Minnesota Naturalists' Association conference.

Last Month's Trivia Answer:
Last month's question asked what piece of land was set aside as the first state park by the Minnesota legislature but never actually became a park? Who now owns the land and by what name do we call it?

The person with the correct answer was Oakley. Way to go! She knew that the land is Minnehaha Park which is now owned and operated by the City of Minneapolis.

Will you be the first to answer this month's question? Listen to the show and post your answer in the comments section. You can comment on the show by clicking on "comments" at the top of the post.


Community Calendar
These are the events mentioned on the Community Calendar for the show. If you have an event you'd like promoted on the December episode send it to kirkmona (at symbol) yahoo (dot) com.

• 
  
October 17, 2009, through May 9, 2010
Hungry Planet: What the World Eats at the Bell Museum
Grocery lists and dining tables of people around the globe captured in fascinating photos and hands-on displays that explore issues of food in the 21st century.


• December 3, 2009, 7:00 p.m.
  Dakota Lodge, Thompson County Park, 360 Butler Ave. East, West St. Paul
  The Minnesota Native Plant Society is hosting the program “Salvage Logging in St. Croix State Park,” by Gretchen Heaser, St. Croix State Park Resources Specialist
  
  
• December 5, 2009, 9:00-5:00 Minnesota Ornithological Union annual paper session at the Bell Museum.
  
  

Thanks for listening!

~Kirk & Paul

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Saw-whet Owl Release

I had the opportunity to watch the release of a Saw-whet Owl back into the wild today. One of our volunteers brought our captive American Kestrel back from the Raptor Center where it was having a check-up and when they realized she was heading back to the nature center they asked if she would mind releasing a Saw-whet Owl on our property. We have good habitat for them so we said it would be great. It is always interesting to see a release. The Saw-whet owl is the smallest owl in Minnesota and almost the smallest owl in the world. After the release the bird flew to a nearby tree and I was able to get this shot.

Photo Credit: Kirk Mona

Stay away from buildings little guy (or girl.)

~Kirk

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Bloody Mary Mix

One of the more interesting parts of my job as a professional naturalist is that I get to work with live raptors. These are what we call education birds. They are wild raptors iving in captivity and all have some reason they cannot be released back to the wild. Our Barred Owl is blind in one eye from a head injury. Our Red-tailed Hawk has a slightly misaligned jaw and our American Kestrel is an imprinted bird. We have a new fourth bird in training right now but you'll have to stop back as we're not revealing what it is yet.

With all these hungry raptors around we need a lot of raptor food. Unfortunately, you cannot pick it up at the grocery store. One of the main things we feed our raptors is pocket gopher. We are often able to get them for free from local trappers who remove them from farmer's fields. The animals would normally just be thrown away so we're happy to take them off their hands.

The reason I'm telling you all this is that it sometimes makes for interesting photos. For example, there are very few places of work where you need this sign on a garbage can.

The odd thing I've seen lately is that we've been storing gophers in the freezer in this Bloody Mary box. Once you've seen or had to eviscerate a gopher yourself, the box actually starts to make sense.
~Kirk

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More Nuclear Waste at Prairie Island

Xcel energy got approval last Thursday from the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) to store more nuclear waste at their Prairie Island Nuclear facility. I have some mixed feelings about this but mostly they are negative. Back in the 1990s I was in high school and just starting out as an environmental activist. I remember telling my American History professor that I was going to miss class because I was going to go to the state capital for a march, rally and chance to talk to my state representative. There was a big public demonstration against then plant owners Northern States Power when they wanted to install the first round of dry cask storage of nuclear waste on site. I remember my teacher said something to the effect that I would learn a whole lot more about America by going to the march than being in his class so I should go. He then proceeded to give me all kinds of advice on protest marches. It seemed he had some experience himself from back in the day. His biggest piece of advice? Don't get pushed to the front. The people in the front are always the ones who end up having to face the police if things turn ugly. He said, watch for where the organizers are, they are always smart enough to lead from behind.

The reason I was heading to the capital was that Northern States Power (the then owner of Prairie Island) wanted to store nuclear waste outside their facility. Their holding area inside was almost full and they would have to shut down the plant if they could not get more storage. The waste from the storage inside the plant was supposed to be shipped off to a government national repository years earlier but one had never been built. NSP was asking for temporary storage until the Yucca Mountain storage facility in Nevada could be completed. Even as a high school student I could see that the Yucca Mountain facility would never be ready in the optimistic time frame they proposed. The waste "temporarily" stored at Prairie Island has been there for over ten years now and there is no reason to believe it will ever be moved. Yucca Mountain is dead and it now looks like waste will never be stored there.

There is a push right now for more nuclear power as a solution to global warming. Even if we assume we can safely run a nuclear power plant (which is a big if) we still have the problem of how do we safely store the radioactive waste for millions of years. Modern humans only evolved somewhere between 250,000 and 400,000 years ago. Isn't it arrogant to think we can safely store something for millions of years?

The point is moot however because we have already generated huge quantities of highly radioactive fuel waste and it needs to be stored. I'm still not convinced storing high level radioactive waste ON AN ISLAND in the Mississippi, a river that has moved and meandered hundreds of times since it was created, is a good plan. Heck, as little as 10,000 years ago the Prairie Island site was under a mile of ice when glaciers covered Minnesota. I'm interested to see if the law can be changed so that commercial waste can be stored in the WIPP.

Until we have a long term storage plan in this country, nuclear waste will continue to be stored on-site which is just asking for trouble.

I remember talking to my representative at the time and proposing that we instead store the waste in dry casks under the water tower down the street (my representative lived a couple of blocks away.) If it was really so safe we had nothing to fear. He clearly didn't want it in his back yard but he had no problem putting it in someone elses.

Once again, the final decision on whether or not they can store more waste on site will be made by the legislature. Last time around we used it as a bargaining chip for more renewable energy in the state. Lets make sure our legislators do the work of the people and get something in return for the devil's bargain proposed by Xcel.

(photo credit- Prairie Island Plant: Jonathunder)
(photo credit- Dry Cask Storage: Nuclear Regulatory Commission)

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Snacking Bird Shuts Down Large Hadron Collider

I'm going to be really nerdy an assume more than a handful of my readers are familiar with the Large Hadron Collider. For those not in the know, the LHC is the largest particle accelerator in the world. It is operated by CERN and sits on (or rather under) the French/Swiss border. The LHC was built to smash protons together at 99.9999991% the speed of light to split then into parts we we can learn more about the nature of the universe. Specifically the scientists are looking for the Higgs-boson particle. It is theoretical since it has never actually been detected. Some of you may remember the LHC being started up last year to some fan fair as well as some doomsday predictions by those who were concerned it would create strangelets that would devour the earth. The initial start-up had to be scrapped because of a liquid helium leak. Now, a few million dollars later they were ready to start it up again last week and had to do an emergency shut down, again.

When they went up above ground to investigate they discovered a bird sitting on a equipment munching on a piece of a baguette. A crumb of the bread had fallen into the compensating capacitor and caused the short-circuit that caused the temperature rise. When the temp rose the super cooled magnets shut down and everything ground to a halt.

Nice to know a 5.5 billion dollar machine can be foiled by a bird eating a baguette.

The system was re-cooled and some test beams of particles have been shot at least half way around the collider. They will bring the last sections online this week and then start doing low energy collisions shortly thereafter. I'll let you know if the universe unravels.

~Kirk

(photo credit: Arpad Horvath)

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Steger on Global Warming Video

Will Steger answered questions this morning on KARE 11 news. Be sure to check it out and do your part for global warming.



~Kirk

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Go check out I and the bird #113

Fellow naturalist blogger, Matthew Sarver, is host to the latest edition of I and the Bird over at The Modern Naturalist and wow did he ever work on this one. It will take a couple of days to digest it all. He found poetry to go along with the theme of all the submissions. Be sure to check it out. ~Kirk

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Another Triceratops

I couldn't resist last night at the grocery store. In the little section with cheap toys I saw a box of dinosaurs on the bottom shelf. Damn you Ja-Ru! I dug though the box and sure enough there was a lone Triceratops. I have a little herd of triceratops on my desk and I didn't have this one. It is similar in size to the other "museum lines" that other companies make. It is about 40:1 scale. The price was right so I bought myself an early birthday gift. Behold the fierce Beast!



Note: Don't anyone go buying me triceratops stuff. I only have a few and they are all ones I have found on my own. I don't want this to become a thing where everyone thinks I am obsessed with these things and buys me a ton of them.

Here's the current herd. Interesting color choices.


For those interested in such things, the manufacturers are (from left to right) Ja-Ru, Schleich (Replica Saurus "Musuem Line") , Wild Safari, Schleich (Play World Dinosaur Series) and Ja-Ru (Explore Planet Earth Series)

If you are into toy dinosaurs, why not check out The Dinosaur Toy Blog. The Dinosaur Collector Site is also a great reference for historic and modern dinosaur toys.

~Kirk

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Hiatus

The blog is on hiatus for a couple of days while I recover from whatever this is going around. Seriously, get out of my body.

The good news is that we recorded most of the November Podcast while at the Minnesota Naturalists' Association conference down at Lake Shetek in southwestern Minnesota. If I'm feeling better I'll try to mix it all this week and have it up soon.

~Kirk

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Leonid Meteor Shower November 17th

The Leonid Meteor Shower will be visible this month in the Twin Cities (the rest of the world as well.)

Science has come a long way on these showers to the point that astronomers are getting better at predicting which years will be good and at what exact times the earth will encounter the most dense clouds of debris. The debris that burns up in a meteor shower is from dust trails left by passing comets.

There are two predicted peaks to the Leonids this year. Unfortunately, the best peak will be mostly visible to those in Asia. The predicted peak is 100 meteors per hour. Keep in mind though that these predictions assume you are in a really dark site. Many of the meteors will be faint. A second, less impressive, peak is predicted for North America. The peak will be on the morning of November 17th from 2:30 to 4:30 am CST. That's a pretty vague window but the comet stream that produces this peak is spreading out so the intensity is spread over a longer time period. The Asia peak and the North America peak are from the same comet (Tempel-Tuttle) but from trails left in different years. The predicted rate for the North America peak is about 12 per hour. Look in the southeastern sky. The meteors should appear to come from that direction.

People have asked me where the best place is to view meteor showers in the twin cities metro area. That's a tough question. It all depends on how many you want to see. I've seen plenty of meteors from my light polluted St. Paul back yard. Shield your eyes from any stray light such as street lamps and turn the lights off in your house. Most of all, let your eyes adjust to the dark. Fifteen to thirty minutes of letting your eyes adjust to the dark will let you see many many more meteors.

Suppose you want to drive a little though to get a good view? Check out the Minnesota Astronomical Society website. They have a really cool light pollution map created by Craig Cotner. If you look at the map, you can see light pollution is pretty bad anywhere near the metro. What direction to travel depends a little on where in the metro you live. Heading out to an area in the yellow zone on the map will at least give you somewhat darker skies. You need a minimum of a two hour drive to get to a truly dark site and likely it will take even longer. Think boundary waters for true darkness! At any rate, you can most likely easily see a few good "shooting stars." from your own back yard.

~Kirk

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The Ghosts of the Forest

This is a video from PBS about albino deer in Wisconsin. Back when I first started working at the nature center we actually had a full mount of a white deer in our collection. We didn't really have a good spot for it so it went back into the collection at the Science Museum of Minnesota (which is where it came from originally.) Sadly, it isn't on display to the public there either. Seeing photos of albino deer is completely different than seeing the video. Very cool.

~Kirk

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