“Leaves of three, let it be.” What elementary school child doesn’t know this couplet, about one of the most dreaded plants in our New England landscape, poison ivy? At this time of…

Imagine that you live in a dense forest of rough, dark trunks rising to an outside world you cannot see. You travel endlessly through this monotonous jungle, feeding when hungry on nourishing fluid…

Q: Why did the witch hazel cross the street? A: To grow on the other side. Of course shrubs can’t really cross the street, but their seeds can. The seeds of witch hazel are shot out of capsules…

“Coydog” is an established word in the North Country vernacular, but are there really half-coyote, half-domestic dog hybrids roaming our forests and fields? Wildlife biologists say…

It’s easy to blame your parents if you’re shy or reckless or overly self-critical. Nature may play a role, but nurture (or junior high) is most often the culprit when it comes to such…

I own 110 acres of northern hardwoods in a valley west of Mount Mansfield in northern Vermont. There are no oaks in my area, so when I built my home in 1978, I planted six red oaks around the house.…

Frank Tozer is part of a growing group of people who see knowledge of wild plants as an important contribution to our collective future. This pursuit of knowledge need not be just an entertaining…

If you consider that an estimated 25 percent of the energy used in the U.S. is spent heating buildings, and you feel that it would be beneficial if that energy came from sources other than the burning…

In Golden Wings and Hairy Toes: Encounters with New England’s Most Imperiled Wildlife, Todd McLeish takes the reader on a lively and enlightening adventure with field biologists working to…

The prices reported here are those that log buyers—mostly sawmills and wholesalers—are paying for logs. Because these are prices paid for delivered wood, landowners need to adjust the…

Aldo Leopold wrote, “There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot.” I am definitely among the latter. It refreshes my soul to see wild animals up close and at ease,…

Can you name the three most heavily forested states in the United States? The answer might surprise you: Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont, in that order. All three are 80 percent or more forested.…

At the end of this column in the last issue, we reported that we had subscribers in 48 states, and that in order to make it a perfect 50, all we needed were subscribers from Louisiana and Mississippi.…

On warm days in September and October, puzzling specks of wool are sometimes seen sailing along on the breeze. Some of these fuzzballs might be woolly alder aphids, insects that have been sitting…

The large, deep green, lustrous leaves of black walnut give the tree a luxuriant appearance that is more suited to the tropics than to our clime, where, typically, trees are far more restrained.…

Sapwood is the living, outermost portion of a woody stem or branch, while heartwood is the dead, inner wood, which often comprises the majority of a stem’s cross-section. You can usually…

Global warming threatens to profoundly alter our forests, yet forests can also play a vital role in protecting the climate. If strategies for combating climate change, such as the Regional Greenhouse…

Just as there is no grandchild who is not talented, clever, beautiful, and charming, the land that each of us calls home is never ordinary.  After Mary and I bought our land nearly 20 years ago,…

Photo by Catherine Tudish Northern Woodlands is a 501(c)3 public-benefit, non-profit organization. As such, we depend upon the generosity of individuals like you to help make our work possible. The…

Powdered dancer. Wandering globetrotter. Common sand dragon. These are only a few of the exotic creatures encountered by Pam Hunt on her quest last summer. Hunt, a conservation biologist with New…