Sent: Saturday, December 20, 2003 10:40 PM
Subject: RE: book club meeting: Thu, 12/18

Present: Jim, Wendy, Marge, and Peter.  We discussed the
last 10 chapters of "Natural History of the Chicago Region",
by Joel Greenberg.

We had some confusion about the various cranberries.
Large cranberry (Vaccinium macrocarpon) is the native
shrub grown commercially. Small cranberry (V. oxycoccus)
has (you guessed it) smaller fruit, also edible but
not as appealing commercially. Its native range is the
northerly regions of the northern hemisphere, including
Europe and North America, and sometimes is called
"European cranberry", not to be confused with "Highbush
cranberry", Viburnum opulus, a true European but not a Cranberry.

There is an error on p. 193; the Common Carp should be
Cyprinus carpio, not Carpiodes carpio, which is something
called River Carpsucker. One of the valuable aspects of
this book is its emphasis on local species, and I have
taken the opportunity to put together a small list of
fish we can find in local streams:
http://www.for-wild.org/sketches/tours/wetland/fish.html

Jim claims to have seen a fairy shrimp at Willoway Creek,
that species will be my goal next year. On p. 119 is a nice
description of adaptations of the Tussock Sedge, Carex stricta.
We decided to try to resume our long-delayed field trip to
visit the sedge meadow at Knoch Knolls Park, Wendy will be
our guide. Stay tuned!

For show and tell, Wendy brought in a bag of Calcium
Magnesium Acetate, a "formulation of dolomitic lime"
used as a substitute for road salt and supposedly more
environmentally benign; the acetate smell is quite
strong. Coincidentally, the latest issue of Chicago
Wilderness Magazine has an article on the effects of
salt by Peter Friederici, author of "The Suburban Wild":
http://chicagowildernessmag.org/issues/winter2004/salt.html

Our next meeting will be Thu 2/5, 7pm, the book will be
"The Founding Fish" by John McPhee.
 
After that, our next book will be "Winter World: The
Ingenuity of Animal Survival", by Bernd Heinrich.

Peter
http://www.wideopenwest.com/~peterwchen/book.html