UWGB Botanist to Detail ‘Flora of Niagara Escarpment’

Photo by Kate Hutton.

The Door County Master Gardeners Association announces another free public program on Feb. 7 at 7 pm in the Collins Learning Center at Crossroads at Big Creek in Sturgeon Bay. The program is “Flora of the Niagara Escarpment” with Botanist Gary Fewless, Emeritus Curator, Herbarium, UW-Green Bay.

Door County’s landscape is famous for its scenery and botanical delights. The Niagara Escarpment dominates the peninsula. Fewless will explain the relationship between this major geological formation and the plants that make this place so special.

The Niagara Escarpment is a prominent and often awe-inspiring geological feature running from southeastern Wisconsin through the length of Door County and north through upper Michigan, the Bruce Peninsula of Ontario and on into New York. The rocks that comprise the escarpment provide difficult challenges for plants, but in doing so they also provide important habitat for a select group of plants that are adapted to it. This talk will present photos and discussion of the common plants of the escarpment as well as some rarer species, and will briefly discuss the unusual habitat and some threats presented to the escarpment and its flora.

Fewless has had a lifelong interest in the wild plants of Wisconsin and their natural communities, and has created illustrated webpages for Wisconsin trees, ferns, wetland plants, invasive plants and others.

The program is free and open to the public. For more information visit dcmga.org.