Ozark Roots Native Plants

With Latest Rollback, the U.S. Essentially Has No Clean-Car Rules

“The U.S. no longer has emission standards of any meaning,” said Margo T. Oge, who served as the E.P.A.’s top vehicle emissions regulator under three presidents and has since advised both automakers and environmental groups…

“Nothing. Zero,” she added. “Not many countries have zero.”

See how climate change is accelerating The fastest warming period since 1880 occurred in the past 30 years, according to a Washington Post analysis of NASA data.

meanwhile

www.washingtonpost.com/climate-envi...

Unsurprising yet still deeply, deeply disappointing.

Pale purple coneflower seedlings with leaves turning orange and yellow

A young aromatic aster plant with slender reddish leaves

Amsonia seedlings covered in a profusion of very thin, very yellow leaves

A bright yellow Ozark witch hazel leaf

Some little splashes of fall color in the greenhouse these days 🍂

A graphic for the Wild Ones Ozark Chapter’s Fall Native Plant Sale that reads: Planting in fall reduces stress/shock, watering, weed competition and pests, and promotes strong roots, healthy plants and early support for pollinators (next year). What you’ll find at the sale: native flowers, grasses and trees, six native plant vendors, native plant products, expert advice from local native plant enthusiasts, and Wild Ones members get 10% off! Happing Oct. 11 at GoatLab Brewery, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., 722 S Bloomington St., Lowell, AR 72745

The last big sale of the year is this weekend, and if you’re a gardener looking for native plants, there’s no better place to be. More info on that and other native plant stuff is in my latest newsletter: ozarkroots.net/2025/10/07/f...

Tall, rounded post oaks glow in the morning sun in KJ Memorial Park in Lowell, Arkansas.

The gnarly, twisted branches of a post oak, covered in light green leaves

A leathery-brown post oak leaf in autumn, showing the distinctive cross shape

For a little light reading this Sunday morning, here’s an appreciation post for the post oak, Ozark Roots’ mascot and the epitome of everything I’m trying to do with this native plant nursery: ozarkroots.net/2025/09/21/b...

Trump Is Dismantling Climate Science at a Dangerous Pace The White House has blocked efforts to measure, respond to and fight global warming. That puts all Americans at risk.

At an alarming pace, the Trump administration has fired climate scientists, rolled back regulations, interfered in data collection, and cut planning and emergency response funds. That puts all Americans at risk.

Read The Big Take ⬇️

End-of-summer newsletter It’s been a hot, dry marathon of a summer, but school’s back in session, fall is on the horizon, and I’ve got several updates to share with you all. First, some dates. My summer hiatus is over, and…

I’ll be back at the Bentonville Farmers Market this Saturday! More info on that and other updates is on the blog.

A metallic green little bee crawling on light pink swamp milkweed flowers

A tiger swallowtail, with black-striped yellow wings, drinking nectar from purplish great blue lobelia flowers

A little yellow and black bee crawling on a black eyed Susan, with bright yellow hind legs covered in pollen

Skipper butterflies with triangular brown wings jostling with each other to reach pink swamp milkweed flowers

A little sample of the pollinators visiting the garden this week. It’s a nice reminder of the the visitors of all shapes and sizes that will come when you plant native species — there’s so much more to pollinators than honeybees and monarchs 🐝🦋

A metallic green little bee crawling on light pink swamp milkweed flowers

A tiger swallowtail, with black-striped yellow wings, drinking nectar from purplish great blue lobelia flowers

A little yellow and black bee crawling on a black eyed Susan, with bright yellow hind legs covered in pollen

Skipper butterflies with triangular brown wings jostling with each other to reach pink swamp milkweed flowers

A little sample of the pollinators visiting the garden this week. It’s a nice reminder of the the visitors of all shapes and sizes that will come when you plant native species — there’s so much more to pollinators than honeybees and monarchs 🐝🦋

Those invasives!

Rereading Rachel Carson's THE EDGE OF THE SEA, from 1955, where she casually mentions that species are migrating northward and that this is "of course, related to the widespread change of climate that seems to have set in about the beginning of the century and is now well recognized."

A monarch butterfly in a patch of prairie blazing star, which looks like fuzzy purple spikes of flowers, in Chesney Prairie Natural Area in northwest Arkansas

A closeup of the dense, pink/light purple flowers of prairie blazing star in my garden

A stalk of dense blazing star, which has bigger and more spaced-out purple flowers than prairie blazing star

A patch of prairie blazing star, which looks like fuzzy purple spikes of flowers, in Chesney Prairie Natural Area in northwest Arkansas

In the prairie and the garden, Liatris has arrived.

Floods are getting more dangerous around the country, not just in Texas The deadly floods in Central Texas were caused by extremely heavy rain. Climate change is causing even more rain to fall during the heaviest storms.

The deadly floods in Central Texas were caused by extremely heavy rain. Climate change is causing even more rain to fall during the heaviest storms.
By @rhersher.bsky.social and @lsommer.bsky.social

Appreciate it!

Like I've said before, if you have any doubts about climate change, just go to a super-boring insurance conference and listen to the super-boring panels where they dryly talk about the growing threat of disasters so catastrophic and unpredictable in scope they simply cannot be insured at any price.

Butterflyweed, to my great shame

Let's check in and see how summer temperatures are trending in Alaska. 🔥🔥🔥

Prickly pear seedlings with two thick leaves going in opposite directions and a spiny round green leaf (?) sitting in the middle

If you’ve ever wondered what baby cacti look like, now you know. It’s me, I’ve wondered. I always get a kick out of native succulents.

Swiss glacier collapse renews focus on risks of climate change as glaciers retreat around the world The landslide that buried a Swiss village and riverbed is refocusing attention on the role of global warming in glacier collapses around the world.

The landslide that buried a Swiss village and riverbed is refocusing attention on the role of global warming in glacier collapses around the world.

Farmers win legal fight to bring climate resources back to federal websites “It feels good to win one, right?”

USDA says it will return information about climate change to its webpages after the Trump administration took it down www.theverge.com/news/666150/...

A low-growing Missouri evening primrose, also called Ozark sundrop, is covered with big, bright yellow, four-petaled flours

The Ozark sundrop, aka Missouri evening primrose, is absolutely exploding in the garden right now. Looking almost tropical with its giant yellow flowers, this lovely, tough plant grows low and sprawling in full sun and can take crappy and dry soil, too. I’ve got several seedlings in progress now.

April showers…

... have brought the May flowers, y'all. It's a good time to have a garden full of native plants. And this is just the first wave of the growing season.

The purple blossoms of blue false indigo (Baptisia australis)

The reddish orange, long, thin blossoms of coral honeysuckle (Lonicera sempervirens)

The red and yellow bell-shaped blossoms of eastern columbine (Aquilegia canadensis)

White, flat blossoms on a dogwood tree (Cornus florida)

Native plants looking gorgeous in the garden amid all this rain.

Ginger leaves are so satisfying to look at for some reason

A small sprout in my hand, with leaves less than an inch tall but a root system already several inches long.

I take the same type of picture every spring, but I just never get tired of it. Look at the incredible root system on this tiny purple coneflower sprout. That’s the special sauce for many native species: building in drought tolerance, absorbing carbon and pollutants, and holding onto soil.

A banner for the Earth Day Garden Market at Botanical Garden of the Ozarks, happening Saturday, April 26, in Fayetteville. Opens at 10 a.m. for garden members and noon for the public, closes at 4 p.m.

Happy #EarthDay! It’s the perfect time to remind folks that no matter what environmental issue they care about — climate, pollution, birds, bees — native plants can help solve it. And I’ll be at Botanical Garden of the Ozarks’ big spring garden market is this Saturday to sell some. See you there!

How Pope Francis Helped Inspire the Global Movement Against Climate Change (Gift Article) Francis framed climate change as an urgent spiritual issue and helped push the world to take action.

🧪Pope Francis had a scientific background. He understood the threat to humanity posed by #ClimateChange, and he was not afraid to speak out on the issue.
Explore this gift article from The New York Times. You can read it for free without a subscription. www.nytimes.com/2025/04/21/c...

The State Department is changing its mind about what it calls human rights The agency's annual human rights reports are being purged of references to prison conditions, political corruption and other abuses.

The agency's annual human rights reports are being purged of references to prison conditions, political corruption and other abuses.