In honor of National Pollinator Week...

Since last week was National Pollinator week (no joke), I went crazy with pictures of various pollinators doing their thing. Here's a picture of a honeybee on Purple Milkweed (Asclepias purpurascens). The milkweeds are a magnificent group of flowers and are out in full bloom this time of year. My favorite is Butterflyweed (Asclepias tuberosa):

Well, that's all for now. I've been busy designing a survey to measure plant diversity in various brushland areas, and I'll be on vacation for the latter half of the week. In the meantime, enjoy the weather and take time to smell the milkweeds.

The summer continues

I haven't been keeping up with the blogging, but I promise to pick up the pace this week. I have been very busy with work, and I am usually very tired by the end of the day. Also, I seem to be constantly misplacing either my camera or the USB cable for it, but I'll have pictures up as soon as possible.

My work so far has been a lot of the same as last year, with several new projects as well. The wildflower guidebook I started last year is keeping me busy, and I plan to make a few new additions (Yellow Flag Iris, Blue Flag Iris, Two Flowered Cynthia, and more). For some bizarre reason, I seem to be liking trail maintenance more and more, and I've been doing it with some of the other summer interns as well, which makes it much more entertaining.

Today, I helped one of the year-round employees here with some research he is conducting in conjuction with Rutgers and Montclair State on Japanese Barberry. It involved cutting hundreds of leaves off of several bushes, which was terribly tedious. However, I think it will contribute to some very compelling research, which I will elaborate on in a later post. Anyways, I'm going to help with a frog call survey in a few mintues.