Before leading scorpion night hikes, my fellow naturalists and I would crack a California bay nut, put it into some water, and shine a UV light on it. A chemical in the nut fluoresces nicely, which is a good primer for scorpion searching.
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Kids love puffing puffballs
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That’s the first one that came to my mind, too - always fun and safe for kids. Other plants around here, such as jumpseed, also shoot their seeds away from the mother plant.
Clinging seeds/plants have been mentioned but some invasives spread like that so I’d be careful to pick them off clothing etc before moving on and potentially introducing them to other areas. I see a lot of certain invasives around parking areas and along popular trails, having hitched a ride on someone’s hiking boots, for example.
In general, any plant that moves in response to touch gets a “wow, cool” reaction. Mimosa comes to mind, closing up its leaves, but the best one is showing kids how to feed Venus flytraps. These are more tricks for a greenhouse tour than a nature hike though.
Yes, anything that involves senses other than sight can add to the experience. I joined a guided walk yesterday and the leader mentioned getting ready to give a tour to a group of blind children. That makes you “look” at things a little differently. What plants might be interesting and safe to touch? We talked about trying to distinguish trees based on the feel of their bark, for example.
Another sense is smell and people love getting a sniff of something pleasant, or even unpleasant like skunk cabbage. Yesterday, we crushed mountain mint and bee balm leaves to tell them apart by their smell, and did a few scratch-and-sniff explorations of shrubs and trees to identify sweet birch and spicebush.
Taste can be good, too, but sometimes it’s better not to mention it to protect the plants as foraging has apparently become something cool and trendy. I’ve been on hikes where there were people who always wanted to know what they could eat and then hang back and collect that stuff. So I’ve become more careful about mentioning the uses and edibility of plants found along the trail. Unless it’s something invasive like garlic mustard, for example. The more people pull that one out, the better!
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That is GOLD. Wish I lived near some of these ‘pine mimics’. I wasn’t familiar with the tree but prompted by your comment I did a little digging—wow! What an amazing tree. Salt and drought tolerant, an extremely dense, strong wood, and a nitrogen fixer. And you can have fun with the needles too.
Now I have to ask my good friend who works at a botanical garden here if she can find me some needles to play with.
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Excellent point. And great examples. Thanks very much!
Oh, one of my favourite ‘smell’ tricks is to crush a leaf or berry of wintergreen, which is small and easy for most people to overlook. When they take a whiff, a lot of kids will instantly say, “Toothpaste!”
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If you live in a cooler climate with no Cassurina (a horrible invasive in places like Florida), you can pop apart and reassemble horsetail stems. Equisetum hymale is great for that here in Kentucky.
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Kirstenbosch has 2 sections deliberately laid out. One with raised beds and fragrant plants, suitable for wheelchairs. The other winds thru trees, with a rope handrail to follow and notices in Braille.
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Ceanothus flowers (California Lilac) suds up nicely when crushed in the hand and mixed with an ounce or two of water. The dried flowers work just as well or better. Just put a pinch of flowers in someone’s cupped hand, dribble on some water to wet well, and have them rub their hands together briskly. I’ve seen similar demos of Soap Root bulbs.
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/49674-Ceanothus
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Didn’t know that! And we have plenty of those about. Thanks! I will give this a try and maybe post some pics.
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Some fun ones I can think of off the top of my head:
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Taking ripe cattail heads and rubbing them until the fluffy seeds all disperse off the stem by the thousands.
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‘shooting’ the plantain weed heads at others by wrapping the stem around the base and pulling it towards the heads.
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Russula xerampelina, or the shellfish-scented russula, a fun trick to get people to smell it, it smells like a fish market on a warm humid day.
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Fun topic!
Shaking tiny seeds out of dry, ripe seed pods (fruits), such as coneflower or mullein is always fun and interesting. Most kids (and adults) for that matter aren’t familiar with the relationship between flowers and seeds in plants that produce ‘dry fruits’, so shaking seeds out into their hands can be illuminating.
Another good trick with jewelweed (Impatiens capensis): remove a leaf and place it in a clear glass of water; the leaf surface will appear a shimmery silver. (Also works with a clear plastic water bottle, but I don’t want to encourage the use of those.)
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That’s a good point. Out here we have several species of plant that give off different smells when crushed:
Wintergreen(eastern teaberry)
Sassafras
Sweetfern
Sweet goldenrod (smells like licorice)
Alium sp. but those aren’t as shocking for obvious reasons
Also shaking seed pods that makes rattles is fun, like yellow wild indigo
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I probably have a few, some which probably have already been covered, but one of my favorites is daring someone to pop a wild chiltepin/chile pequin in their mouth! Best and only native pepper in the USA.
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That’s a great list of scented plants and reminds me of yet another one where smell can be the distinguishing feature between two species: Osmorhiza longistylis leaves when crushed have a distinctive anise smell, while O. claytonii leaves do not or only very faint. There are trails around here where you can find both species in spring and demonstrate the difference.
In general, it seems people feel excited and like they just learned a superpower when you teach them how to distinguish between two species that are easily confused or not even recognized as two separate species by the casual observer. The two spring beauties in our area (Claytonia caroliniana vs. C. virginica) and wingstem (Verbesina alternifolia) vs. crownbeard (V. occidentalis) are good examples for this as you can often find both species close together providing an opportunity to point out the importance of paying attention to the leaves as well and not just the flowers.
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In my area a good third of mockingbird singing is mimic of car alarms, which people never seem to notice for themselves but then recognize instantly when I point it out.
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Are they the after-market alarms that go through a set of different patterns? I think I’ve only heard those being “mocked”, never the kind that just honk the car horn repeatedly.
Yes the ones with the series of different patterns.
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I made several puppets besides these 2 shown. Of course, kids will recognize Abby Cadabby” and the other one is a woodland sprite. She often changes her name from “Dawn” to “Fern” so I never know what mood she’s going to be in for her next event. At first I was going to bring her to the North Carolina Native Plant Society’s Earth day celebration table, knowing that once kids see her waving to them or peeking behind parents, also called “grown-ups”, they’d want to pull their parents over to talk to her and not at the tables that the grownups are talking to other grownups. Boring.
Yet the next event the NCNPS is co-hosting is a Kids Day at our meeting place park in Charlotte,NC. So, if planned surgery won’t interfere with the day, she’ll be there or I’ll bring both puppets.
Yes, I move my mouth when the puppets talk, yet kids don’t see that! It’s fun watching them interact with the puppets and talk back to them. The grownups get really nervous when the puppets start talking to them and they are hesitant to reply back. I have feisty puppets who don’t give up! They will get up and close to grownup and say stuff, anything almost to get them to cooperate. “Can……you……talk?” To the dad’s:” Is that your wife or girlfriend with you?” Plus, they like to get up and close and give kisses! Once I can get parents to respond, I got them! Of course I always start with the kids first cuz they’re the easiest. They understand make believe and enjoy believing that could be possible. My puppets ask the child’s name first and uses it throughout our conversation. Also she never puts the kids on the spot and asks them questions they know, or else whispers the answers to them. Dawn’s dress is made if silk leaves and clear quartz crystals, her crown and wand are constructed of spider web silk (very fine invisible thread, that’s thinner than human hair) with crystals and other natural gems and flowers. I don’t think the wand is shown in the picture and the crown may be pushed back, yet when she’s ready, she thinks she looks “au natural” and sparkly when the sun shines on her dress. Her hair is tied up in 2 long ponytails and there are always about 10-15 bits of ostrich feathers that wave and add movement when she speaks and moves her head. She is quite animated.
She’s really fun to be around and will walk up to unsuspecting people and suddenly sit on their shoulder and introduce herself. Then the grownups have no idea what to do next, so she starts asking them questions, nothing intimidating or personal. She can be quite the mischievous one though. And she gives the kids nature trivia, things their parents most likely don’t know. Being an entomologist, I can find all kinds of cool (or gross, depending how you look at bugs) and hope to find a jumping spider like the bold or regal and place it in a habitat I made. If I can find one before the event in Aug, I hope I can tame him down a bit so I at least show kids that they don’t bite, if handled carefully and always near their enclosure so they can go back home. That will hopefully bring in the guys. Now, if someone will be able to catch me a snake I can use also, I’ll be in heaven.
Finally I brought some Jewelweed to my dentists office and the ladies at the front desk were popping them and laughing when someone new tried it. The dentist came up and wondered what all the noise was about, so he was given the option to touch one pod also. First he asks “what’s going to happen?” I just told him that the seed pod will open. So he takes one between his fingers and nothing happens. Then I said to lightly roll it back and forth a bit. Then it exploded and his hand and arm flew back and his elbow nearly gave a hygienist a black eye. To get them to the office I had to cut stems, add them to a glass if water and tape them to the sides of the glass so they wouldn’t touch each other while driving. Walking through a field of Jewelweed also known as “Touch-me-nots” feels like you’re going through a mine field with seed pods and seeds flying in all directions! I learned about them by my cousins when I was younger. So we have some planted next to our cardinal flowers and humming birds and bees are frequent visitors while we sit in the screened back porch, barely seen by the pollinators.
Well that’s my story and I’m sticking to it! And as long as surgery doesn’t interfere with the timing, my fairy and sprite will be there for the children!
And we’ll all have fun! Cathy
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I’ve had quite a few shown to me.
The ones that come to mind first are the tactile, sensory or interactive experiences:
- collecting pinecone seeds with the wings, dropping them, and watching them twirl
- a small plant called a ‘sensitive plant’ that, when gently touched, folds up its leaves
- stepping on milkweed/balloon plant (a weed here) fruit to make a pop noise
- Rhinoceros beetles and some other scarab-type beetles also squeak (if they came inside during summer nights catching them for release made them squeak)
- click beetles clicking in your palm (similar situation to above)
- gently handling leaf beetles and the feeling of their feet
- watching the movement of inch worms
- searching at night and catching ‘armadeetle beetles’ (I’m guessing these are roly-poly bugs, we didn’t know their name, and they looked kind of like armadillos)
- the smell of crushed tea tree or eucalyptus leaves
- shedded snakeskin
As well as the ‘magical’ ones like luminescing fungi, earthworms, glow worms and fireflies.
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