Making It Grow Minutes

The eastern cottonwood is illegal to plant in some places.

Cottonwoods are found in places where there is plenty of water.

The leaves on eastern cottonwood are known for making "the lullaby of the prairies."

Cottonwoods are usually found in nature growing by water sources or in wetlands.

Mountain Laurel has a fascinating pattern of twisting and turning branches, very decorative to look at but hard to maneuver through.

A relative of our beloved mountain laurel is Kalmia angustifolia, called white wicky or sheepkill.

Although the common name of Kalmia latifolia is mountain laurel, you can find this handsome evergreen native plant growing, often in thickets, from the mountains to the sea, including on South Carolina's Fort Jackson.

Kalmia Gardens in Hartsville was the creation of Mrs. D. R. Coker, affectionately called "Miss May."

At Kalmia Gardens, a northern type of mountain laurel, galax, and a specific witch hazel have persisted in that unusual ecosystem.

Cicadas are native to our area and have been coexisting with their ecosystems for eons and eons.

Residents of the Palmetto State won’t have to go too far to experience the emergence of maybe a billion periodic cicadas.

When Thomas Jefferson was president, there was an event that is finally repeating itself this year -- a concurrent emergence of two specific broods of periodic cicadas; and it won’t happen again until about another two hundred years.

Unlike some people these days, cicadas don’t have dating apps; they use sound to find a mate.

Naturalist Austin Jenkins talked to us recently about the periodic cicada emergence in South Carolina. Our state’s cicadas that will come out in huge numbers in the Piedmont are on a thirteen-year cycle.

The South Carolina Botanical Garden is a treasure located on the campus of Clemson University.

If you can eat those delicious pine nuts without trouble, you probably aren’t allergic to pine pollen.

Agriculture is the largest industry in South Carolina, with timber being by far the most valuable crop, and pines are the largest component of that.

Pine trees produce male pine cones on the lower part of the tree and female ones towards the top, a clever way to prevent self-fertilization.

There’s actually a scientific method to establish when pines will be releasing pollen: by keeping a record of the number of degree-days above 55° Fahrenheit after February 1st.

If you can safely leave dead branches or even a dead tree on your property, you could end up with at-risk birds happily cohabitating with you.