1000 Cool Ways to Touch Nature

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Dear FF Freinds:

    Our Conservation Education Programs are creating a booklet to encourage teachers to bring their students and classrooms outdoors. The guide will contain a collection of nature education "tips" from resource professionals—YOU!

    Do you have special ways of remembering nature facts (like "M.A.D. Horse" is a great way to remember opposite-leafed trees...maple, ash, dogwood and horse chestnut)?

     Are there things you always do when you're in the woods (like suck on a sassafras leaf to taste citrus)? If so, we want to know about it!

     We're looking for any interesting, quirky, fun, and/or surprising facts and blurbs you know about nature that's relative to Michigan nature. We hope to come up with 1000 facts to put into the guide for teachers all throughout Michigan and will include your first initial, last name and job title.

Please either post it here or go to http://www.michiganplt.org/1000-ways.htm to submit it! 

I appreciate any help you can give us on this, Ada

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The Flowering dogwood has properties to prevent tooth decay. Show kids how to make a 'toothbrush' from a dogwood stem. They are called 'chew-sticks', made by cutting off a small stem a few inches long, removing the outer bark and chewing on the tip to soften fibers, can then be used to brush teeth and massage gums.

Do you have the 'Northern Catlapa' tree in Michigan? If you do then here's another tree with medicinal value. Tea from the bark was formerly used as an antiseptic, snakebite antidote, laxative, sedative, and internal worm expellant. Tea from the seeds was used for asthma, bronchitis, and applied externally for wounds.*

*may not want the kids to try this one  :P