Saturday, April 30, 2016

Ramps near Chicago


Found these ramps (Allium tricoccum) in Cook County, Illinois.  Allium tricoccum provided the name for the city of Chicago.  In Algonquin language, -shikm- means something stinky, and was the word for this plant.  If you were talking about an animal, you might use the word -shikm- for the animal we call a skunk.  This language uses GO to denote a place, so -shikm-GO was the place name for the flat swampy land where the river goes into Lake Michigan, as it was habitat for and had a considerable population of Allium tricoccum.  Now this place is downtown Chicago, and likely not any habitat suitable for ramps.  Probably there is a wild remnant population of ramps somewhere within the Chicago city limits.

Link to ramps in Chicago:

These ramps in this photo are at Chippewa Woods, a Cook County Forest Preserve, which seems to be just outside the actual Chicago city limits.

Photo taken April 19, 2016.

Links to Chippewa Woods:

http://fpdcc.com/downloads/maps/pdf/ChippewaWoods4_13.pdf

http://fpdcc.com/downloads/maps/trails/english/FPCC-Des-Plaines-Trail-Map-10-15.pdf

Link to previous posts on Allium tricoccum:

http://lafayettereport.blogspot.com/2009/04/allium-tricoccum.html

http://lafayettereport.blogspot.com/2009/09/ramp-seeds.html

http://lafayettereport.blogspot.com/2009/05/ramp-with-bulb.html

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