Viola sororia Willd.

Common blue violet

Photographer Robert Freckmann

• Botany Blitzes 2008- cooperative project between BCW and the WI DNR, where BCW members will have the opportunity to conduct plant surveys on DNR state natural areas. See our April, 2007 (2M) and January, 2008 (352K) Newsletters for more information.
  
  

  1.	Red Banks Alvar - State Natural Area #332	May 17, 2008	2007 Report                    (PDF- 68k)
  2.	Lawrence Lake – State Natural Area #404	June 14-15, 2008
  3.	Trempealeau River Meadow - State Natural Area #346	Sept. 6, 2008	2007 Report                   (PDF- 41k)

  A New Cooperative Project Between the Botanical Club of WI and the WI DNR
  
  The BCW is excited to announce this brand new project for our organization. What is a Botany Blitz? It’s a one-day scouring of a area to discover and document as many plant species as possible, using as many botanists as possible. Both common and rare species are documented. Why do this? The goal is to compile a plant species inventory that captures a snapshot of what’s there on a specific date.

  More significant is where we are doing this. It turns out that Wisconsin has many State Natural Areas where the plant species are almost unknown. Wisconsin now has over 400 SNAs, and plant inventories have not been done for many of the newer ones. Go to: www.dnr.state.wi.us/org/land/er/sna/info.htm for a complete list. Working with the DNR, BCW has come up with a candidate list of SNAs which need plant inventories. Rather than do them slowly over many years, we thought we would try the blitz approach, and see if we can do them quickly. We will visit these sites again next year, but at a different time, so as to survey more of the plants. Hopefully as many amateurs and experts as possible will participate. 

  We will assemble as many members as possible at each of these three SNAs. Each SNA will have a Blitz leader, who will organize the blitz. The leader will explain the SNA’s geographic layout, where the plant communities are, where trails are, how to collect, if necessary, how much time to spend, and other rules for the blitz. Each individual search group will have at least one expert and a data recorder. At the end of each day, participants will spend a brief time organizing the results and delivering them to the Blitz leader for assembling them into a plant inventory for the DNR.