Good news! Ministers have finally given green light to new #NaturalHistory GCSE. We’ve campaigned so long for this! Big hats off to tireless advocate Mary Colwell 🙌 Now our young people will have a chance to get to know & love the natural world, to feel awe & wonder, & gain skills to protect it 🌷🌳🦡
Long-awaited course to examine human effects on natural world and explore everyday ways to aid biodiversity
Happy phylogenetic networks Friday! This one by my friend and colleague Gabe Ribicoff.
Slime mold time! Maple Grove this morning.
The Codex Azcatitlan, with Malintzin (La Malinche) at the far right.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Mali...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_A...
houstonsymphony.org/gabriela-len...
Downers Grove after the tornado warning passed
Red headed woodpecker, @mortonarboretum.bsky.social this afternoon (in this savanna.... If you can see the bird you have better eyes than I).
Rainy morning in Downers Grove, with woodpeckers, wood pewees, mushrooms sprouting, and a passage from Boethius (The Consolation of Philosophy, revisiting after 32 yrs) and Abraham Verghese's magnificent The Covenant of Water.
botanistsfieldnotes.com/2026/06/11/j...
Crayfish on the pavement on the morning bike ride in, abandoned by a robin, @mortonarboretum.bsky.social East Woods.
botanistsfieldnotes.com/2026/06/13/j...
“In order to become a sacred wood, a wood must be tangled and twisted like the forests of the Druids, and not orderly like a French garden.”
– p. 128, Umberto Eco, Six Walks in the Fictional Woods
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Wal...
If you're in Chicago and have the time tonight, try to get down to the Grant Park Music Festival. I went for Brahms Symphony #4, but I was blown away by Gabriela Lena Frank's (2017) Conquest Requiem. And there were plenty of seats in the free section.
www.grantparkmusicfestival.com/digital-prog...
