A longtime CFC member has moved to western New York but contacted us with this question when she and her friends couldn’t find the answer anywhere else. She indicated that they were seeing massive quantities of acorns falling from the oak trees. The ground was covered with them. What was happening? When a large acorn crop occurs as on this …

  Recently we received a plant identification question from S.B. of North Barrington. A plant that was new to her had shown up in her woods. She sent this photo, and I identified the plant as Phytolacca americana, pokeweed. It is a weedy native species that shows up in disturbed, moist woods. She had mentioned removing buckthorn, so pokeweed found …

Those yellow bugs are aphids which are sucking the juices of the milkweed. Small aphid populations are not serious; they may cause a little distortion of the leaves or buds, but they rarely harm the plant. This is especially true since beneficial insects will be attracted by the aphids and will control them. The most familiar of these predators is …

Citizens for Conservation receives many questions about restoration, gardening, conservation, and other nature-related topics.  When we get a good question that we think others will benefit from, we will post it, along with an answer from one of our many CFC experts for that topic.