The mourning dove (Zenaidura macroura) is truly an All-American bird that can be found from coast to coast. It is brownish gray in color and around 1 foot in length with a wingspread of 20 inches. The dove has a long, slender tail that is white bordered and a black spot behind the eye. The species is monomorphic, meaning the male and female look alike. Birds that show distinct differences between the sexes are classified as dimorphic.

No one can deny that we humans like to see nature. It’s why we set aside land for city parks, national parks, and greenways. It’s why we get our fingernails dirty planting trees and flowers in our yard. And I don’t think anyone would dispute that being in a forest or quiet natural area has a calming effect. Some recent research is verifying that there is a relationship between the natural environment and improved health outcomes. Science guys love to hang impressive titles on things, and in this case enjoying nature is receiving “spatial emotional stimulus”.

Skunks need no introduction, with their black and white markings and universally known odor. The most common species in our area is the Striped Skunk (Mephitis mephitis), also known locally as a "polecat". This is another example of old English making it over the ocean and then preserved in mountain speech. Polecat was the name of a similar skunk species in the old country, which was particularly bad for raiding hen houses on farms. Poule is an old French word for "fowl”. The other alternative is that the first element is from the Old French pulent, which means "stinking."

The standard definition of a plant is a life form that is green and capable of making its own food through photosynthesis, and for the majority of plant families that is true, and designated as autotrophs, meaning “self-feeding”. But there are plants that defy the status quo and lack the green chlorophyll needed for food production, and must get their nourishment through other means, some by taking it from other plants by sucking their version lifeblood, sap.

One of the joys of summer is watching bright colored butterflies flutter from flower to flower feeding on nectar. Some moths are also beautiful to see, but most tend to be dull in color and only seen at night. Because of this you probably notice more butterflies than moths, even though there are four times as many moth species.

My fun and my work for decades has involved walking over rough terrain, so finding practical but comfortable shoes or boots has been critical. They’re so important to me that I end up emotionally attached to them and mourn when they finally wear out and I must let them go to shoe heaven. I’m teary eyed right now just thinking about it, so today’s article is advice on choosing footwear that will be your close friend.

I’d heard of Dog Days all my life but only knew that it referred to the sweltering heat of late summer when dogs laid around more and were prone to go mad (with rabies). I had a request from a reader to write on the subject in more depth, so if you’re curious as well, read on.

My uncle Cas Newton Day remained a kid at heart to his last days. I loved him for it and I think (and hope) a little of it rubbed off on me. To illustrate, he and I, both grown adults, were helping hang tobacco in a barn that had very soft dirt at the entrance. We noticed funnel shaped indentions in the soil, and he suddenly got down on his hands and knees, put his mouth near one of the indentions and yells “Dooodlebug, doodlebug, house on fire!” After I got over my fit of laughter he pointed to the hole and upon close inspection, I saw that a small bug had surfaced at the bottom of the hole and was squirming around fit to bust. He had called up what I now know is an Antlion, but to generations of youth before me were called Doodlebugs, and it was a common fun activity to yell at them in this manner so that the sound vibrations would disturb them and make them surface from their lair.

By Steve Roark
Volunteer, Cumberland Gap National Historical Park

It interests me how trees are so often intertwined with our culture and history. The 250th July 4th celebration of our Independence is a good time to review the history of the Liberty Tree, a symbol for individual liberty and resistance to tyranny.

By Steve Roark
Volunteer, Cumberland Gap National Historical Park.

Confession time: I am not good at math.

I use it, it’s great, we went to the moon with it, yada yada. But I don’t think well mathematically and strive to understand it. But I was amazed to discover that trees use mathematics to arrange their leaves on a twig to optimize their collection of sunlight for the photosynthesis thing. Leonardo da Vinci picked up on this long ago. The “impress your friends” word of the day is phyllotaxis: the arrangement of leaves on a stem in relation to each other.

Trees arrange their leaves in three major ways: whorled, opposite, and alternate. Whorled is where several leaves encircle the stem at one point, which is uncommon. Opposite is where the leaves are arranged in opposing pairs on each side of the twig. Dogwood, all the maples, ash and buckeye use this arrangement. Usually, each successive pair of opposing leaves forms at right angles to the original pair, thus minimizing shading each other from the sun.

The math really starts kicking in with the alternate leaf arrangement, which I used to define as leaves forming on the twig randomly and not in pairs―but they are not random. With alternate arrangement the leaves form in a spiral along the twig, and how many leaves form per complete spiral is predictable by species.

Imagine you have a tree twig in your hand; focus on one leaf and its location; from that leaf start counting leaves along the twig and how many turns around the twig it takes to return to a position matching the original leaf but further along the branch. For example, if you are looking at sycamore, you will count two leaves with one turn around the stem. With cherry, you will count three leaves and two turns around. Oaks and a bunch of other hardwoods have a 2/5 arrangement: 2 turns around the stem in 5 leaves. There are other spiral leaf arrangement ratios as well: 1/3, 3/8, 5/13 and so on.

But there is a common thread in all of them in that they are all Fibonacci numbers, named after a mathematician who figured them out in the 13th century. I know it is getting a little deep but hang with me. Fibonacci numbers include the sequence 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, etc. Note that when you add two numbers in the sequence together, they add up to the next highest number.

So if you look, 1+2=3, 2+3=5, 3+5=8, and so on. Interesting yes, but what is critical about Fibonacci numbers is the ratio between them. If you divide a Fibonacci number by the next highest number, it will be 0.618034 times as large as the number that follows. The Greeks called this ratio the “golden mean” because the proportion 0.618034 to 1 is the mathematical basis for almost all spirals in nature: leaves spiraling up a twig, the arrangement of bracts on a pine cone, sunflower seed arrangement on the flowerhead, even the spiral of a snail shell.

What it boils down to is that in nature, a spiral based on Fibonacci numbers is a very efficient design form, and in the case of trees it minimizes how much each leaf shades another, meaning better sunlight collection and thus more food production. So next time you are in the woods, keep in mind that there is purpose in almost everything you observe. This is both awesome and humbling.