It’s great to see landscaping with native plants becoming mainstream. Many nurseries now carry at least some native species and seed mixes, while PEI’s Rural Beautification Society has added a Native Planting & Biodiversity category to its popular annual competition. The Island has many common, native plants that make beautiful additions to backyard gardens. One example: Alternate-leaved Dogwood (Cornus alternifolia). PEI has four native Dogwoods, which are all easy to spot

It’s almost conifer-tip season, that time of year when we can enjoy the tasty, Vitamin-C-rich, new growth of our needle-leaved trees. While all of our conifer trees are edible, PEI does have one poisonous, native conifer shrub. Can you tell which of the needles in the photo are tasty and which are toxic? When it comes to conifer tips, White Spruce (Picea glauca) is the species most commonly used in the kitchen, as well as my personal favourite (you can find more details in

Welcome back to Ask a Naturalist, your own personal Google for information on all things natural on PEI. Today’s topic is courtesy of...

Fall is a great time to collect some of PEI’s aromatic wild leaves, perfect for spicing up food and drink during the cold winter months....

Imagine a plant so lovely that the person who created the global system for naming living things – a person dubbed ‘Princeps botanicorum’...

It’s that time of year when winter wildlife tracking is over, but most spring plants and fungi are still a few weeks away. I’m looking...