At the May meeting, SEMBA members were treated to a plant identification hike lead by Carol Clements through Ellsworth Trail in Holliday Nature Preserve across from Nankin Mills.

          Ellsworth Trail was named for the first Wayne County naturalist, Mary Ellsworth.
          Holliday Nature Preserve is over 500 acres from Westland to Canton, named for William P. Holliday, who raised his nephew Arthur Richardson in the area and taught him to love nature.
          When Arthur became a wealthy man he donated the money to Wayne County to purchase the land he learned to love from his uncle for the nature preserve.
          During the plant identification hike Carol pointed out several species of plants, some of which were invasive.  The hike lasted approximately 90 minutes and covered a few sections of the trail.

How many butterfly species are there in the world ?
          A study in 1968 concluded that the 920,000 species of insect then known to exist accounted for 85% of all known animal species on Earth. The insects already known at that time included no less than 300,000 species of Coleoptera ( beetles ), 90,000 Diptera ( flies ), 108,000 Hymenoptera ( bees, wasps and ants ), and 113,000 Lepidoptera ( butterflies & moths ).
          Since then the number of known butterflies and moths has increased dramatically. This is partly because vast areas of formerly inaccessible rainforest have now been surveyed, and new species discovered. Another reason is that advances in taxonomy, phylogenetics and cladistics have led to many taxa that were formerly considered to be subspecies, being "elevated" to full species status.
          In "Butterflies of Mexico & USA" ( Scott, 1992 ) a census estimated that there were approx 14750 butterfly species ( including skippers ) worldwide. In 2007 Hoskins collated data from a number of sources and produced a World Butterfly Census which enumerates 17657 currently known species. The true total will never be known, as many species will become extinct before they are discovered, but is likely to be in the region of 18,000 - 21,000 species.