By Liz Deleeuw Editor’s Note (by Patsy Cotterill): Fall is the time when ENPS members start cleaning and packaging the seeds that have been collected throughout the season. I was once asked “What is the best time to collect seeds?”, the questioner obviously looking for me to name a date, but I said “When they are ripe.” This isn’t entirely true. The seeds of some species can be taken off the parent plant before they are ripe and they will subsequently ripen. (Beaked hazelnut,

By Patrick Kyle My interest in native flowers started by taking photos of native flowers in the National Parks and then looking up the names of these flowers in the many books I have acquired over the years. I am an amateur photographer and amateur naturalist. I was born and raised on a southeast Saskatchewan farm where some native prairie surrounded the farm thanks to road allowances and some pasture land where native flowers grew.  I worked for Environment Canada Weather Se

By Patsy Cotterill Understory: An Ecologist’s Memoir of Loss and Hope , by Kevin Van Tighem, 2025. Rocky Mountain Books Ltd. , rmbooks.com Albertan nature writer, Kevin Van Tighem, has published his latest book, Understory , a candid and self-reflective memoir of his life and career as an ecologist and administrator in the mountain national parks. It is probably his best exposé yet of what it is like to be a conservationist in present-day western Canada.  Both background and

By Patsy Cotterill The genus Ribes The currants and gooseberries belong in the genus Ribes,  the single genus that constitutes the family Grossulariaceae. It is primarily a Northern Hemisphere group, with some 150-200 species, of which we have 13 in Alberta. Of these, seven are common locally in the Parkland, and all prefer habitats with an adequate supply of water, from moist woodlands and meadows to the shores of wetlands and creeks. Ribes  species are ecologically importan