A Wetlands Story

The Shape of Betts Meadow by Meghan Nuttall Sayres with pictures by Joanne Friar is as much a gem as the story it tells. It is a children's picture book, but the story is ageless.  In this true story Dr. Gunnar Holmquist and his mother, Lavinia, buy a  dry, lifeless valley in eastern Washington state. Dr. Gunnar discovers that his land  was once a rich wetland habitat for plants and animals. But through the years the land's purpose changed. Streams and rivers were diverted to create crazing land for livestock.

  The Shape of Betts Meadow shows how one person can make a difference.  Sayres' poem, along  with Friar's beautifully illustrated landscapes-each one with more details as  plants and animals return to the meadow-takes the reader from barren to fruitful, not only in mind and spirit, but in physical changes that we and, especially, children, can understand through concrete examples.

 Since many of her readers might not be familiar with the "sedges, cheat grass, microbes, or kingfishers." the author also provides a mini key with explanations and pictures of these wetland features.

Finally, Sayres answers,"What is a wetland?" and lists places to gather more information, including an internet source, additional reading, and references.
So much from one picture book!

Skunk Cabbage Can Generate Its Own Heat

If you time your skunk cabbage adventure just right, you can warm your finger inside  the teardrop shaped plant.  How does the skunk cabbage do this?  Just like those insulated gloves that keep your fingers warm on the coldest winter day, the hood, or spiral leaf that curls around itself, keeps the air space inside the hood that protects the spadix warm.  Keep an eye of the temperature, however. Skunk cabbage can turn off their heat if the temperature drops below freezing. Since they can't compete with this degree of cold, they do not try.  But when the air is above 32 degrees, the spadix, or the spike-like bud that is covered with fuzzy flowers that never bloom,  can produce a temperature of 70 degrees by drawing on the starches in the roots.
Read More About It!
Skunk Cabbage, Sundew Plants and Strangler Figs: And 18 More of the Strangest Plants on Earth by Sally Kneidel
Did You Know? Skunk cabbage can have roots as long as a foot and live for a hundred years? You may be smelling the same plant that the American Indians used for soups, stews and medicine. Or that  young, mischevious  tribesman may have kicked the same plant you did while running through the stream to spread its smelly odor.