Welcome

Our facility is open on weekdays from 9am to 4pm and on weekends from 10am to 2pm.

As always, our grounds and trails featuring self-guided tours are free and open daily from dawn until dusk.

All events for January 2016 – Polar Express

« All Events

January 2016

January 2016 – Polar Express

January 3, 2016 @ 10:00 am - 2:00 pm

|Recurring Event (See all)

Aldo Leopold Nature Center | Monona Campus, 330 Femrite Drive
Monona, 53716 United States + Google Map

Take a trip to the poles with the Aldo Leopold Nature Center this month! Interesting, stark, and beautiful, our globe’s polar ice caps function as the planet’s air conditioners and play a critical role in climate change research and life on our Earth. Check out our hands-on exhibits, watch stunning ice sheet imagery, learn about glacial explorations and polar research, and more. It’s a great time of year to visit the North and South Poles! Programs include: FROZEN on the 6-foot…

Find out more »

Aldo Leopold Nature Center

35 minutes ago

Today is National Eat a Cranberry day!Wild cranberries are native to the Americas, growing throughout the Northeastern and central parts of the US and Canada. They were an important and abundant fruit harvested by indigenous peoples for centuries. They used the berries as a food source and ingredient in many recipes, for medicinal purposes, and, in some areas, even as a dye. Wild cranberries became an important item for indigenous peoples to trade with European colonists in the early days of colonization. The long lasting, healthy, and portable fruit was imperative for fur traders and explorers who would often be out on long journeys over the winter months. The colonists gave the fruit the name we all know it by today, cranberry, named for the plant’s flowering stem that resembles a sandhill crane, ‘crane-berry’. Many indigenous groups have their own names for the berry because they have their own languages and Wisconsin’s first nations are no exception. The Ho-Chunk call them Hoocake, the Menominee refer to them as Piakemenan, the Ojibwe call them Mashkiigimin, and the Potawatomi call them Bokmenen.It’s a common misconception that cranberries grow in water, maybe because of the iconic imagery of people standing in flooded cranberry fields. The berries are actually grown on dry beds most of the year and, when it's time to harvest, because cranberries float, farmers flood the field as a quick way to separate the cranberries from their stems. This innovation began in the 1960s and is known as wet harvesting. From a distance, cranberry harvesting looks fun! Today, cranberries are Wisconsin’s state fruit and over 60% of the nation's cranberries are grown here. This is because Wisconsin’s geography is well-suited for growing the crop with many bogs and marshes that create the perfect growing conditions. In fact, the cranberry highway is a stretch of cranberry farms 50 miles long that you can visit. It runs from Wisconsin Rapids to Warrens, Wisconsin. Photo: Rob Routledge#PhenologyUpdate #Cranberries #IndigenousPlant #WIEnviroEd #NatureIsEverywhere #NatureIsForEveryone #EveryBodyOutside ...

Photo

View on Facebook

Welcome

Our facility will be closed on Thursday, July 4th, and Friday, July 5th in observance of the Fourth of July holiday. Our building will reopen to the public at 10am on Saturday, July 6th.

Our facility is open on weekdays from 9am to 4pm and on weekends from 10am to 2pm.

All events for January 2016 – Polar Express

January 2016

January 2016 – Polar Express

Sign up to receive updates

Aldo Leopold Nature Center

Our facility will be closed on Thursday, July 4th, and Friday, July 5th in observance of the Fourth of July holiday.
Our building will reopen to the public at 10am on Saturday, July 6th.