Hollis

LATEST ARTICLES ( 455 )

• The Monthly Fern—More Quirks of Quillworts

  

  Jon Keeley with several of his beloved quillworts (date unknown).Once again The Monthly Fern series is featuring the Prairie Quillwort and its relatives—genus... Read more

  Posted on 21 October 2025 OUTDOORS

• Monthly Ferns—Prairie Quillwort & Scale Tree

  

  Prairie Quillwort is 50 centimeters tall (© 2015 Robbin Moran); Scale Tree is 50 meters tall (source). Both are lycophytes—formerly "Fern Allies".This episode o... Read more

  Posted on 16 September 2025 OUTDOORS

• Desert Mountain—Utah's Latest GeoSight

  

  "now a quiet, remote monument to that violent geological time." (Smith 2025)Desert Mountain's peaks and ridges lower right quarter of photo; white mark is high... Read more

  Posted on 07 September 2025 OUTDOORS

• The Monthly Fern??—Prairie Spikemoss

  

  Selaginella densa—moss, fern, fern ally, or none of the above? Coin is 19 mm across.This month the South Dakota fern series features another oddity—a... Read more

  Posted on 22 August 2025 OUTDOORS

• Those Birds Unknown, That Left Only Footprints

  

  Big toes! Huge bird!!Along the rim of Bull Canyon, on the north slope of the La Sal Mountains in southeast Utah, my field assistant and I followed footprints... Read more

  Posted on 23 July 2025 OUTDOORS

• The Monthly Fern: Water Clover & Its Odd Spores

  

  "It is worth clarifying that these plants are not clovers." (Photo by Bill Dodd).For July, South Dakota's fern-of-the-month is the Hairy Water Clover, Marsilea... Read more

  Posted on 07 July 2025 OUTDOORS

• A Restless Region on the Colorado Plateau

  

  Castle Valley, 20 miles east of Moab, UT; Round Mountain rises from the valley floor on the right.The Colorado Plateau is a thick block of crust in the Four... Read more

  Posted on 15 June 2025 OUTDOORS

• Monthly Fern: Polypodies & Fern Sex (or Do They?)

  

  Left, Polypodium saximontanum, leaves to 25 cm long (Matt Berger); right, P. virginianum, leaves to 40 cm long.For May, the South Dakota "Monthly Fern" series... Read more

  Posted on 03 June 2025 OUTDOORS

• The Monthly Fern: Bracken—dreadful Or Delightful?

  

  "Shelter" by Colin.Come my sweet and let us lie inSome idyllic wooded glade And let us stay til merry-made Amid the Bracken.For April, the South Dakota... Read more

  Posted on 21 April 2025 OUTDOORS

• Peculiar Eruptive Mountains on the Colorado Plateau

  

  The La Sal Mountains rise 8000+ feet above the Colorado Plateau (source).In 1875, two geologists employed by the US government were studying mountains in... Read more

  Posted on 08 April 2025 OUTDOORS

• The Monthly Fern: Northern Holly Fern, a Spore Shooter

  

  This month's South Dakota fern is Polystichum lonchitis, Northern Holly Fern (Andre Zharkikh).It was the first paragraph on the first page of Robbin Moran's... Read more

  Posted on 17 March 2025 OUTDOORS

• Upheaval Dome, the Most Peculiar Structural Feature in Southeast Utah

  

  Severely contorted innards of Upheaval Dome.Last September I visited two anomalous features on the generally orderly Colorado Plateau. Read more

  Posted on 26 February 2025 OUTDOORS

• The Monthly Fern: Sensitive Or Bead Fern

  

  "... the fertile ones being so unlike the sterile, that no one who is unacquainted with the plant would suppose they had anything to do with each other." Photo... Read more

  Posted on 09 February 2025 OUTDOORS

• Wishing Happiness to All!

  

  Are you wondering about "my families" in this year's botanical greetings? Nothing aberrant here, it's just that there is no all-encompassing Fern Family. Instea... Read more

  Posted on 25 December 2024 OUTDOORS

• Osage Orange—God's Gift to the Prairie Farmer

  

  "this curious fruit, which, when first discovered lying neglected beneath the tree, led the voyagers to fear and report it as a poison" wrote Thomas Nuttall... Read more

  Posted on 08 December 2024 OUTDOORS

• Does Dog Exist? A Tail of Philosophy, AI, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

  

  Dog?In a scan of The Atlantic homepage recently, I came across Are You a Platonist or an Aristotelian? I was especially intrigued by the subtitle: "Your answer... Read more

  Posted on 04 November 2024 OUTDOORS

• Tree Following: Killer Cottonwood in Utah

  

  On a hot afternoon several weeks ago, I pulled into Hittle Bottom Campground on the Colorado River in southern Utah. After parking in the only site with shade, ... Read more

  Posted on 08 October 2024 OUTDOORS

• South Dakota Trees: Black Walnut

  

  Black Walnut with spring leaves—its "yearly trick of looking new" (Philip Larkin, The Trees). Union Grove State Park, South Dakota.Walnuts from a previous... Read more

  Posted on 12 September 2024 OUTDOORS

• South Dakota Trees—why a Mulberry is Not a Blackberry Even Though It Looks Like...

  

  Geek alert! (ʘ‿ʘ)╯(photo modified from Flickr).Continuing my exploration of the South Dakota sylva, this month's featured tree is the mulberry. Supposedly... Read more

  Posted on 14 August 2024 OUTDOORS

• Missouri River, South Dakota's Great Divide

  

  "What does the Missouri mean to you?" I was asked.South Dakota is one of those roughly rectangular states in the heartland of the USA. Read more

  Posted on 05 August 2024 OUTDOORS