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Mudpuppy Night in Oxford Mills

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....the only place in Canada where you can wade among giant salamanders every Friday night through the winter!   ...every Friday evening from the firstFriday after Thanksgiving until spring high water. The best Mudpuppy viewing in Ontario! Flat bedrock and clear shallow water provide safe footing for researchers and spectators of giant aquatic Salamanders pursuing their winter activities.  The rocky clear-water Kemptville Creek from the dam at Oxford Mills to the Prescott Street Bridge in Kemptville is the best place to see Mudpuppies in eastern Ontario.  On a cold winter night we have seen up to 180 Mud-puppies prowling the creek bottom - and afterwards, retire to the Brigadoon Restaurant to drink coffee, eat desserts, and talk about Mudpuppies and everything else! We begin each Friday evening at 8:00, assembling on the County Rd. 18 bridge below the dam. Wear gumboots and put new batteries in your flashlights! Mudpuppy Night in Oxford Mills has been bringing people face to

Are Daylilies Invasive?

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This summer we've been mapping Orange Day Lilies (Hemerocallis fulva) along eastern Ontario roads to see what kinds of places they're growing in. This was inspired by the good season this species has had, the thought that we had neglected them in comparison to other alien roadside plants, and comparing them to Lupines (Lupinus cf polyphyllus) in New Brunswick, which are a wildly popular invasive species which spreads along roadsides from plantings at homesites.  With the spraying that municipalities are doing against 'poison parsnip,'  killing off all the broad-leaved Dicot herbs, there's the real possibility that Day Lilies will be favoured and become even more widespread along roadsides. We saw the first bloom on 19 June, and were are still a few coming out on 10 August. Wikipedia  says: "Triploid... Hemerocallis fulva var. fulva ... native to Asia from the Caucasus east through the Himalaya to China, Japan, and Korea... has escaped from cultivation acro