Karen Z. – Page 4 – My Chicago Botanic Garden

5 Fall Family Activities at the Chicago Botanic Garden

Fall is the season to spend outdoor time with the family. With school occupying the weekdays and thoughts of the busy holidays ahead, every autumn weekend counts!

For some families, “Let’s go look at the leaves” works as an autumn weekend rallying cry year after year (Welcome back!). But other families need a little more than color for motivation. Here are our suggestions for some fun fall things to do together at the Chicago Botanic Garden—and what to say to get the kids interested:

PHOTO: Beekeeper Ann Stevens adds bees to a hive this past spring. — Beekeeper Ann Stevens adds bees to a hive this past spring. Find out how those bees did this summer, and get more beekeeping questions answered in person!

“Let’s go meet the beekeepers.”

Harvest Weekend is September 19 to 20. The whole family can head out to the Regenstein Fruit & Vegetable Garden for a day full of fun and interesting topics: talk face-to-hood with the beekeepers; sample the apple expert’s varieties and discuss how to plant an apple tree in your yard; learn how to pickle, can, and preserve and how to keep growing veggies into winter; and join in on a honey tasting! There’s fun stuff for little kids, of course, and for foodies there’s a cookbook swap—bring a gently used cookbook and take a “new” one home!

Also that weekend: It’s the final Malott Japanese Garden Family Sunday of the season, a good day for exploring more about Japanese culture (creative kids will dig the gyotaku, or fish prints).

PHOTO: Biking to and from the Garden is better than ever with the North Branch Trail connection, and newly-available bike rentals. — Biking to and from the Garden is better than ever with the North Branch Trail connection, and newly available bike rentals.

“Let’s go for a bike ride.”

Rent a bike on site at the Garden or BYO (bike your own) here via the spiffy new Green Bay Trail linkup and North Branch Trail addition along Lake Cook Road. Park your bike at the Visitor Center or Daniel F. and Ada L. Rice Plant Conservation Science Center, and hike around to see the mums, the first fall color in the McDonald Woods, and the taller-than-your-head grasses in the Dixon Prairie.

Every weekend in September: free, fun activities for your toddlers, preschoolers, and elementary school kids! Bring them to Family Drop-ins under the arbor at the Regenstein Fruit & Vegetable Garden. Hands-on activities for fall include making pumpkin prints and playing sniff & guess!

PHOTO: Selfie spot! Gourd Mountain is a great backdrop for your fall photo. — Gourd Mountain returns as the favorite photo op at the Fall Bulb Festival!

“Let’s go see Gourd Mountain.”

Fall Bulb Festival is October 2 to 4. Everybody loves Gourd Mountain, the giant pile of picture-perfect gourds on the Esplanade (holiday photo, anyone?). It’s the centerpiece of Fall Bulb Festival, which combines the always-anticipated indoor Bulb Sale with an outdoor harvest marketplace. Sip a cider while you munch on cinnamon-roasted almonds, or enjoy a glass of wine or beer while you browse the booths. The straw-bale maze is a giggling playground for kids or all ages. Add live music, and brilliant fall color and enjoy the Garden in its full fall glory.

Also that weekend: Take advantage of the October 4 Farmers’ Market to buy freshly harvested fruits, vegetables, and fall crops, with an eye toward canning and preserving. (Did you get your recipes from Harvest Weekend’s cookbook swap?)

PHOTO: Elsa and Olaf know the place to trick-or-treat is Hallowfest! — Elsa and Olaf know the place to trick-or-treat is HallowFest!

“Let’s go trick-or-treating.”

We have three weekends to show off your costumes at the Garden this year!

Come in costume to Trains, Tricks & Treats (October 17 to 18) and HallowFest (October 24 to 25), and bring the dog in costume, too, for Spooky Pooch (read more below)! The Model Railroad Garden: Landmarks of America hosts Trains, Tricks & Treats especially for toddlers and preschool train enthusiasts, with spooky-friendly decorations and the garden’s famous miniature landmarks decked out in Halloween style. We’ll be handing out small treats and treasures, too—and a Halloween plant to take home! (Admission applies.)

“Things” get a little creepier at HallowFest, as night falls at the Garden: start with scar-y face painting, then check out the bat cave, the haunted forest, the awesome carved pumpkin gallery, and the ghost train at the Model Railroad Garden. Then…dance party! Excellent family photos, right?

PHOTO: Spooky Pooch parade favorite Cerberus (or "Fluffy" to Harry Potter fans) "pawses" for a photo op. — Parade favorite Cerberus (or “Fluffy” to Harry Potter fans) “pawses” for a photo op.

“Let’s dress the dog up!”

Spooky Pooch Parade is on Halloween this year—Saturday, October 31! If you haven’t been to Spooky Pooch Parade yet, you’re in for a “treat!” For two hours only (11 a.m. to 1 p.m.), the Garden throws open its doors to human’s best friends (on leashes) for a truly zany costume contest and pet parade, and one of the most fun and popular days of the year. The competition is stiff—last year’s overall winner was the entire cast of The Wizard of Oz!

Also that weekend: the Roadside Flower Sale is the best resource in town for the beautifully crafted dried flower arrangements, cornucopia, wreaths, bouquets and decorations you crave for the holidays. Dried flowers, grasses, and pods are collected all year long by a dedicated group of volunteers, who spend months designing and crafting the 300-plus items for sale; it’s been a Garden tradition since 1980.

See you at the Garden this fall!

Pollen 101

Did you have a flashback to science class when you saw Spike, the titan arum? I sure did.

PHOTO: Tim Pollak and Dr. Shannon Still point out plant parts of the titan arum to the gathered crowd of visitors. — With Spike’s frilly spathe removed, Tim Pollak and Dr. Shannon Still had a rare opportunity to show the crowd the titan arum’s beautiful and astonishing inner plant parts.

At my not-really-science-minded high school, botany (the study of plants) was taught as a subsection of biology (the study of all life) class. During the botany rotation, we learned a bit about plant names and plant parts, sprouted a few seeds, and dissected a plant. That was about it for my formal plant-science education.

PHOTO: A young girl sniffs the titan arum's removed spathe. — Hands-on plant science at the Garden: a young visitor gets a whiff of Spike’s removed spathe, looking for that telltale stench.

Flash forward a couple of decades and, despite now being an avid gardener, I found myself struggling to keep up with the scientists who were looking deep into Spike’s structures and processes. By the time Dr. Shannon Still and floriculturist Tim Pollak removed the spathe (the frilly bract that never opened) from Spike’s spadix (the flower tower that grew to 6 feet tall), I’d had to learn all about the titan arum’s morphology (see below) and crack open books and laptops to review the basics about male and female flowers.

And then they started talking pollen.

Flashback: What is pollen?

PHOTO: Closeup of pollen emerging from male Amorphophallus titanum flowers. — Tiny squiggles of pollen emerge from the male flowers about three days after Spike’s spathe was removed.

Think of a grain of pollen as a tiny packet of one plant’s genetic material that needs to meet up with another flower’s female genetic material. Technically, pollen is a haploid or gamete, the cell that carries the male half of the plant’s chromosomes.

The covering of a pollen grain is directly related to how the pollen travels to the next flower. That’s why wind-pollinated plants like sweet corn or oak trees have pollen as dry and fine as dust (indeed, the word “pollen” derives from the Latin for fine flour or dust). Orchids have developed waxy balls of pollen (pollinia) that stick to the heads and bodies of the many insects, hummingbirds, and mammals they use as pollinators. And, notoriously, the pollen of ragweed is a tiny spike—the better to hold on to moist spots like the inside of human nasal passages, where the grains never germinate, but cause all sorts of sneezing and snuffling.

Honeybee-pollinated plants (like many fruits, nuts, and vegetables) have evolved along with the bees themselves, offering up both nectar and pollen as food in exchange for the movement of pollen from plant to plant.

Flashback: Why are insects pollinators?

In a word, efficiency. Plants that rely on the wind are at the mercy of the wind: much of the pollen is wasted, as it never lands anywhere near a female flower’s stigma. Ditto for plants that rely on water. Insects are much more reliable, traveling directly from one flower to another, greatly increasing the chance of pollination. Bees are especially reliable, as they prefer to work an entire plant or crop of the same flower rather than skipping from one kind of flower to another. (That’s why attentive beekeepers can get a harvest of “pure” clover or linden blossom honey, rather than a wildflower mix.)

In nature, Spike’s pollinators are carrion beetles and dung flies—insects that would be attracted by the titan arum’s rotten smell and nighttime bloom.

Flashback: How does pollen work?

PHOTO: A single female flower from titan arum Spike lies in Dr. Shannon Still's hand. — Dr. Shannon Still shows the crowd gathered around Spike one of the titan arum’s female flowers .

When a grain of pollen lands in the right place—the tip of the female flower’s reproductive structure, called the stigma—the pollen grain chemically tests the landing ground via proteins that signal genetic compatibility…or not. If deemed to be a good place to germinate, the pollen grain sends a rootlike sprout down into the style (the tube with the stigma on top), eventually reaching all the way down inside the ovary and ovule…where the male chromosomes and female chromosomes meet for fertilization and seed development.

Flash forward: What’s next for Spike?

Spike’s pollen never got the chance to hitch a ride on a carrion beetle’s back to the next titan arum in the rainforest. That’s why “Titan Tim” Pollak collected the pollen when it developed a couple of days after Spike’s operation.

Pollak says that they didn’t collect much of the bright yellow, talc-like powder—just a few test tubes’ worth (further proof that Spike ran out of energy). The pollen will be mixed with powdered milk—yes, powdered milk—in order to absorb moisture and separate the grains. Next, it will be frozen at minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit and stored in the freezer at the Garden’s seed bank.

PHOTO: As the spadix collapses from age, horticulturist Tim Pollak harvests the pollen from Spike's male flowers. — As the spadix collapses from age, horticulturist Tim Pollak harvests the pollen from Spike’s male flowers.

Spike’s pollen could then be shared with other botanical gardens or arboreta that would like to pollinate their blooming titan arums. The American Public Gardens Association has a listserve that shares notice of pollen needed or available; the Chicago Botanic Garden is a contributing member. By sharing Spike’s pollen, the hope is to increase diversity among the rare flowers blooming outside of Sumatra, the titan’s native habitat.

Pollen means that Spike lives on! Can’t wait for the next titan arum to bloom (we have seven more besides Spike in our production area)…and for the next plant flashback.

So you want to be a plant scientist?

PHOTO: Amorphophallus titanum pollen in a test tube. — An *Amorphophallus titanum* pollen sample is ready to be stored for future pollination.

The science of botany runs deep; at our Daniel F. and Ada L. Rice Plant Conservation Science Center, you can see scientists in many of the fields below in action. Got a STEM-minded kid? Perhaps he or she would like to study this list, which was compiled by Boyce Tankersley, director of living plant documentation, in response to the question, “What is the study of flowers called?”

Botany is the study of plants.
Arboriculture is the study of trees.
BioInformatics is the art and science of recording biological information.
Cellular biology is the study of cell constituents.
Floristics refers to the geographic distribution of plants.
Genetics is the study of gene interactions.
Horticulture is the art and science of growing plants.
Nomenclature is the naming of plants.
Paleobotany searches out and examines plant fossils.
Plant breeding does what it says.
Plant morphology is the study of plant structures.
Plant pathology studies plant pathogens and plant interactions.
Plant physiology is the study of plant functions such as photosynthesis.
Palynology studies both living and fossilized pollen and spores.
Taxonomy studies the relationship of one plant to other plants.

Spike’s Teachable Moment

What an amazing plant science moment occurred in the Semitropical Greenhouse this morning, as a fascinated crowd gathered to see what was happening with Spike, the titan arum.

On Saturday, it was determined that Spike had run out of the energy it needed to continue its bloom cycle. Spike is powered by energy from the sun, stored in its beach-ball-sized corm—a tuber-like underground structure. A tremendous amount of energy goes into producing the single, giant flower structure that a titan can send up in its first decade or so of life (Spike is about 12 years old).

Overheard: “I wish my biology teacher was here.”

As this week’s expected bloom time passed, our science and horticultural staff went into action. Spike wasn’t dying—but the flower structure had stopped maturing, and the spathe did not open. On Friday, Dr. Shannon Still, conservation scientist, and Tim Pollak, the floriculturist who had raised Spike from a seed, peeked inside the frilly spathe to check for pollen.

“If there had been pollen, it would have been all over my hand,” Still said. Pollen’s absence meant that the male and female flowers might not be fully developed. The possibility remained that pollen might still develop, even though the spathe would not open—and THAT led to the decision to remove the “frozen” spathe to see what was happening with the real flowers inside.

Overheard: “We were watching it every day. Every 20 minutes or so.”

First, Still assembled a working kit: scalpel, probes, test tubes, paintbrushes and a “scoopula” (to collect pollen).

At 10 a.m. today, staff gathered for the delicate procedure. Pollak and Still fist bumped…and the operation began.

As Still began cutting just above the peduncle (stalk), the crowd grew quiet. Dr. Pat Herendeen, senior director, Systematics and Evolutionary Biology, narrated for the crowd. As the spathe started to come away from the towering spadix, the internal color started to be visible.

Left: a cross-section of the spathe reveals the cell structure inside. Right: close-up on the hundreds of male (top) and female (bottom) flowers inside Spike's spathe. — Left: A cross-section of the spathe reveals the cell structure inside. Right: A close-up of the hundreds of male (top) and female (bottom) flowers inside Spike’s spathe.

“The spathe feels a bit like cabbage leaves, with a rubbery texture,” Herendeen said. “The color inside varies from one plant to another in nature. It is dark maroon, the color of rotting meat, which is meant to attract the flies and beetles that are the plant’s natural pollinators.”

Pollak held the spathe steady as Still continued to free it from the stalk. With one last cut, it came free—and the crowd gasped as the inside of the spathe was unfurled and the true flowers at the base of the spadix were revealed—pale rows of bumpy-looking male flowers atop a strip of orange and brown female flowers.

Left: Tim Pollak and Shannon Still make the first cut. Right: Tim Pollak reveals the spathe’s ravishing color.

Herendeen answered as questions flew: The male flowers do not appear to have produced pollen yet. Spike’s fabled scent is only detectable very close up to the spathe—much less apparent than it was earlier in the week.

Cameras focused in on the flower structure, as Still and Pollak carried the two large pieces of the cut-away spathe over to the crowd. Hands reached out for a touch; noses leaned in for a sniff. Spike’s spathe was set out on a gallery table so that everyone could touch and admire it before it begins to wilt.

Overheard: “Spike was the topic of dinner conversation with our two sons every night for the past week.”

While television camera crews stepped in for close-ups on the plant’s flowers, interviewers questioned the scientists: Where does the scent come from? (It’s believed that the tall appendix helps produce the scent, though scientists are also investigating the female flowers themselves.) Would Spike bloom again? (Probably, but the corm would have to recover first, by sending up an annual leaf for a few years to gather more energy.)

Cross-legged on the floor opposite Spike sat Chicago artist Heeyoung Kim, who sketched intently during the entire process. Her intricate pencil markings captured Spike’s pleats and tightly clustered flowers—the beginnings of a botanical illustration that could inform future scientists studying the titan arum’s beautiful structure for years to come.

We have been so thrilled with the intensity of interest in Spike—it’s not every day that crowds gather to watch a plant grow! We’ll continue to keep you posted about possible pollen development, our scientists’ thoughts about Spike’s arrested development, and on the progress of the eight other titan arums now growing in our production greenhouses.

Left: what a great vibe! Right: Kris Jarantoski explains Spike's spathe to a young visitor. — Left: What a great vibe from the gathered crowd! Right: Kris Jarantoski, executive vice president and director, explains Spike’s spathe to a young visitor.

For more information please visit our titan arum page.

Can Spike’s “Perfume” Be Captured in a Jar?

Of the many Spike-related questions asked by visitors this week, our favorite came from 8-year-old Prairie! In the video below, Prairie wants to know, in essence, if she can transport Spike’s malodorous odor from the Chicago Botanic Garden to her classroom.

Good question, Prairie!

Conservation scientist Dr. Shannon Still has a fascinating response. Dr. Still will attempt to pollinate Spike’s flowers during bloom with pollen shared by our friends from The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, and Denver Botanic Gardens.

Prairie, your experiment with scent would make a great science project! If you come to the Garden on the night Spike blooms, perhaps you’ll get to see Shannon Still working on “Operation Pollination.” Introduce yourself if you’re there!

Watch Prairie’s question on YouTube.

Watch Shannon’s response on YouTube.

Beer From Here

Begyle Brewing, Chef Cleetus Friedman and the Garden are launching a series of seasonal, small-batch saisons—Change of Saisons. The beer captures the best flavors of the season.

Chef Cleetus Friedman has had a long relationship with the Chicago Botanic Garden. You may know him as the executive chef of Fountainhead, the Bar on Buena, and the Northman, soon to open in Chicago. Perhaps you have enjoyed his appearances at the Garden Chef Series, where he teaches visitors to prepare local, seasonal recipes at the open-air amphitheater of the Regenstein Fruit & Vegetable Garden. If you are lucky, you have experienced one of our Farm Dinners over the past six years, where Chef Friedman dreams up memorable meals with local food and drink for guests to enjoy in a garden setting.

And now, that relationship has grown into something even more mouth-watering…

PHOTO: Cleetus Friedman of Fountainhead / The Bar on Buena. — Chef Cleetus Friedman of Fountainhead and the Bar on Buena!

Together with Begyle Brewing, a community-supported brewery in the Ravenswood neighborhood of Chicago, Chef Friedman and the Garden are launching a series of seasonal, small-batch saisons—Change of Saisons. The beer will capture the best flavors of the season at the Garden, beginning with a strawberry rhubarb saison, sourced this spring. The team worked fast to bring this brew right back to the Garden for visitors to enjoy. The small batch of strawberry rhubarb saison will be followed by a berry-based saison and each will be available for only a limited time.

“It’s a versatile beer for everyone coming to the Garden,” said Chef Friedman.

Beer Rhubarb and Laura — On May 21, Laura Erickson, market manager of Windy City Harvest, harvested rhubarb from the Regenstein Fruit & Vegetable Garden. Chef Friedman cooked it down to make a puree to use in the brew.

“Change of Saisons furthers our commitment to serve food and beverages that are sourced locally,” said Harriet Resnick, vice president of visitor experience and business development, “and you can’t get more local than our own backyard.”

What is a Saison?—The Garden’s new beer is a saison, a lighter type of ale originating from a French-speaking region of Belgium. It typically contains fruit and spice notes. Farmers brewed this ale during the cooler months and stored it until the following summer, where it was given to seasonal workers, or “saisonniers.”

Change of Saisons is available on tap (while supplies last) at the Garden Grille on the Garden View Café deck. You may also sip saison at Autumn Brews on Thursday, October 8, 2015.