Chuck Lura

Are you seeing yellow? As you look out on the North Dakota landscape this time of year, it seems that there are yellow flowers everywhere. It is the color of the season!

Much of central and eastern North Dakota is pothole country. As you look out at all those sloughs, it appears that the vast majority of them are dominated by cattails. Those sloughs have been changing more than most people realize.

When traveling across North Dakota and looking out at the rangeland, some people see just a bunch of grass. However, it is much more than that! An important step in understanding the ecology of our rangelands is to have a working knowledge of what range ecologists call ecological sites and their associated ecological site descriptions.

Driving down the roads in North Dakota this time of year, particularly gravel roads, one is likely to occasionally see a sunflower in bloom with broad leaves, producing a flower head, and growing to around 3 to 6 feet tall. That is probably the common sunflower (Helianthus annuus), the same species that is grown in the sunflower fields.

Traveling across North Dakota, particularly areas northeast of the Missouri River, you'll occasionally see signs near wetlands that identify the area as a Waterfowl Production Area, or WPA.

This time of year, the prairie landscape is awash in color. Two of the more commonly known wildflowers, prairie coneflower and purple coneflower, will soon be flowering across the state.

When was the last time you laid back and savored the cosmos on a warm summer night? The stars, of course, are brightest during a clear night with a new moon. There was a new moon on July 5, so we are heading toward a full moon on July 21.

I mentioned in last week’s Natural North Dakota that estimates for how many seeds a cottonwood tree could produce in a year may range up to 48 million. Clearly all those small seeds do not develop into cottonwood trees. But a very small number do fall on the ground with the right conditions of soil, moisture, sunlight, little competition, and other factors to become the next generation of cottonwood trees. It is a different story for some other plants — acorns from oak trees, for example.

If the cottonwoods in your area have not started releasing their cotton, they will be soon. It is that time of year!

If you spend time around marshes during the summer months you are likely to become familiar with the yellow-headed blackbird. The name of this bird is quite descriptive, but it is occasionally referred to (with tongue firmly in cheek) as a “black bodied yellow bird.”