u/nick-native-plants

Friends of Hickory Hill Park will have a workday on 10/3/2026 to remove invasive species in the park - mostly honeysuckle and autumn olive. Meet at the Conklin Lane entrance to the park at 9 am. This work can be a little messy so wear work clothes and shoes!

Edit: Pictured is some butterfly milkweed growing in one of our prairies. This is a native plant we want to encourage to spread. We do invasive species removals to help ensure these native plants have the space to grow :)

Picked up an old genesis on marketplace. It’s going to need some new flavor bars and grill grates. Can the control area be cleaned up or is that a lost cause?

I went for a hike with the Cedar Rapids Iowa City Wild ones at Ryerson’s Woods (just south of Iowa City) and we found another Iowa crabapple. First two photos are from yesterday, the other photos are from May of 2025 in coralville where I found another one on the Mormon handcart trail (I didn’t get the best photos yesterday since I was carrying my daughter 😅).

These don’t seem to be super common trees and I’ve never seen one which looks very happy. This one at Ryerson’s was getting really shaded out. Some cool and unusual characteristics about our state crabapple:

- the leaves have large irregular teeth. This is in contrast to many other crabapples which have consistent smaller serrations.

- the leaves are fuzzy on the underside, similar to rough leaf dogwood. But they’re fairly soft. Not quite like lambs ear but close. The leaf stems and some of the early fruit and flowers also have this fuzz. An interesting thing I noticed on the tree yesterday is that this varies somewhat between trees. The one at Ryerson’s had a lot less fuzz. Maybe this is environmental or age related?

- the fruit is large and green, about the size of a ping pong ball.

- they usually grow as a thicket similar to American plum, though probably less aggressive/ slower growing.

- the bark is a light grey color and very smooth.

I’m hoping I can grow a few small saplings of these trees from the fruit I collected last year. 🤞