why they make a difference –
and how people are learning to restore high-quality prairies and savannas.
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When discovered in the 1970s, Chevy Chase Prairie was the best that survived in Illinois. Its intentional destruction was one of the great ecological crimes of the modern age. Will we ever see its like again? Perhaps yes. Read on.
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Aldo Leopold did not sound hopeful as he wrote an elegy for a last Silphium (compass-plant) in his Wisconsin county:
“What a thousand acres of Silphiums looked like when they tickled the bellies of the buffalo is a question never again to be answered, and perhaps not even asked ... Few grieved when the last buffalo left Wisconsin, and few will grieve when the last Silphium follows him to the lush prairies of the never-never land.”
Yet, the visionary Leopold conspired with other University of Wisconsin academics to try to “restore” a prairie in their Madison arboretum. They had little idea of how good it could be, or how to go about it (no one ever having “restored” any natural ecosystem before). Their early efforts were dismal failures. But in time they progressed, and their example spread from Madison to Chicago.
In the 1960s, another visionary, Robert Betz started searching for and trying to figure out Illinois’ last real prairies. He gradually learned which species indicated quality. At first, he found them mostly on the rights-of-way of railroads (see Endnote 1). Then he discovered prairie in pioneer cemeteries, similarly fenced, occasionally mowed, but mostly left alone. Betz sensed a potential reawakening. When he got approvals from cemetery boards and burned, the rare plants exploded back.
I wonder if Betz ever heard of the prairie in the Chicago suburb of Riverside – in a forest preserve near Brookfield Zoo. Early ecologist Victor Shelford had tried to promote it. In 1926 he had edited the “Naturalist's Guide to the Americas” and for Illinois listed two surviving prairies, one in Riverside at 31stStreet and 1stAve. He wrote,
“Since very few original tracts of prairie now remain, it is of the most urgent importance that some be set aside in perpetuity before it is forever too late.”
Indeed, his book also tried to spur conservation by listing Chicago area eco-groups such as they were in 1926 including …
Chicago Academy of Sciences
Friends of Our Native Landscape
Illinois Audubon Society
Prairie Club
Riverside Wildflower Preservation Society
… and many more, nineteen in all. But the next reference I find to the Riverside Prairie wasn't until 33 years later, in an American Midland Naturalist journal article from 1959 by the same V. E. Shelford along with G. S. Winterringer. The article is titled “Disappearance of an Area of Prairie in the Cook County, Illinois, Forest Preserve District.”
Riverside Prairie was filling with trees – the prairie vegetation was reduced from ten acres in 1927 to three acres in 1959. The authors thank Roberts Mann of the Forest Preserves for help with the article. Mann assured them that there had been no fire there since 1930. (Forest preserve handouts of that era emphasized the importance of protecting all preserve land from fire.) A few paragraphs later the article states, perhaps optimistically: “There is a consensus of opinion among those who are planning on protecting prairie that burning should take place about every three years.”
I found no references to what happened following Shelford’s second article. But his diagram (above) shows the exact street corner, so I went there. The photo below shows what I found.
It was a nightmare. This prairie was:
a) protected by a conservation agency,
b) famous (or at least well known to science),
c) well documented, and
d) dead.
Under the buckthorn and other trees, I could find no hint of prairie vegetation beyond a few nodding onions along the road edge.
Shelford had done a lot of the organizing that led to the formation of The Nature Conservancy – out of frustration that other organizations weren’t conserving much. But later he also didn’t hesitate to criticize when the Conservancy seemed to be losing its focus. “The Nature Conservancy is turning into another God-damned Audubon Society,” he told
Richard Brewer in 1958. According to Brewer, the 80-year old Shelford saw Audubon as mired in “empire building and image polishing.”
Shelford and George Fell lost influence in The Nature Conservancy. Then they started over, on the local level, establishing the Illinois Nature Preserves Commission as a down-to-earth nature preservation organization. To buttress the vision, Fell hired the staff that in the 1970s, conducted the first-of-its-kind Illinois Natural Areas Inventory. The Inventory’s job was to define nature and locate it precisely on the ground – for setting conservation priorities.
Betz had been making lists of prairie indicator species. Some of these species (now called "high-quality" or “
conservatives”) were the ones, like scarlet painted cup, that vanished first, when a natural prairie began to degrade from brush or overgrazing. These same species he found to be the most difficult to restore in prairie restorations. Betz (see Endnote 2) listed the pinnacle of these royal species as:
Scientific Name
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Common Name
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Asclepias meadii
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Meads milkweed
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Cypripedium candidum
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White lady-slipper
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Gentiana puberulenta
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Prairie gentian
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Habenaria leucophaea
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Prairie white-fringed orchid
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Hypoxis hirsuta
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Yellow star grass
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Lilium philadelphicum
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Prairie lily
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Oxalis violacea
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Violet wood sorrel
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Scutellaria parvula
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Small skullcap
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Viola pedatifida
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Prairie violet
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He taught us to assess the quality and conservation value of prairie remnants in part as a function of how many such plant were present and common. He saw restoring such species as the ultimate and most challenging goal of prairie restoration.
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In this seed production bed, the short, seed-covered plant in the foreground is one of Betz’ ultimates - small skullcap. Other conservatives visible here include prairie milkweed, bastard toadflax, bearded wheatgrass, and savanna blazing star. |
Fell’s Illinois Natural Areas Inventory discovered the Chevy Chase Prairie, briefly famous as the best surviving in Illinois, until then unnoticed behind a trailer park near Buffalo Grove. With its hundreds of rare species and likely thousands of rare (mostly small) animals, it should have been at the top of the conservation list. But before conservationists could act, it was purposefully bulldozed by the owner so it wouldn’t stand in the way of his development plans.
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Dr. Robert Betz (white shirt) burns Markham Prairie with media in tow. When Betz went looking for remnants, “the Illinois prairie” was a myth and a vision. He coaxed the un-dead back toward thriving life through collaboration, detective work, fire, weeding, public relations, and passion. |
Betz said that all our prairies – even the most pristine we could find – had been badly diminished. They’d all suffered various harms. They’d all lost species. It was often thrilling for us to discover a high-quality little prairie, protect it legally, start to burn it, and then see at least some of the rare species re-assert themselves.
Our understanding of quality or “conservativeness” was gradually expanded and refined – first by the Illinois Natural Areas Inventory – and in a different way by Gerould Wilhelm. Those lists of quality species are now basic to prairie evaluation. For example, the list below shows the nine mesic black-soil prairie species that rate highest on Wilhelm's conservatism scale. On a range of zero to ten, they are “perfect tens.” CC equals "Coefficient of Conservatism."
Common Name | CC | Scientific name Wilhelm and Rericha | Scientific name Swink and Wilhelm |
cream wild indigo | 10 | Baptisia leucophaea | Baptisia leucophaea |
scarlet painted-cup | 10 | Castilleja coccinea | Castilleja coccinea |
white prairie clover | 10 | Dalea candida | Petalostemum candidum |
prairie gentian | 10 | Gentiana puberulenta | Gentiana puberulenta |
prairie white-fringed orchid | 10 | Platanthera leucophaea | Habenaria leucophaea |
prairie lily | 10 | Lilium philadelphicum | Lilium philadelphicum |
prairie panic grass | 10 | Dichanthelium leibergii | Panicum leibergii |
prairie dropseed | 10 | Sporobolus heterolepis | Sporobolus heterolepis |
heart-leaved Alexanders | 10 | Zizia aptera | Zizia aptera |
If a mesic black-soil prairie remnant has large numbers of “10s” (and “9s” and “8s”) – then it’s high quality. If it does not, it probably would not be judged high quality by most experts.
All of these species were rare and vanishing until the prairie conservation movement began to pick up steam. Most conservative species are now thriving in at least a few large restoration sites. Two restored grasslands have hundreds of blooming plants of the (Federal-endangered) prairie white-fringed orchid. One of these sites is thousands of acres; the other is 150 acres.
We can give much more intensive care to smaller sites. From 1-acre sites, we learn to restore 10-acre sites. As we ramp up by orders of magnitude, we have to find replacements for our more intensive-care approaches. When 100-acre sites teach us to restore 1,000-acre sites, we lose some capabilities, but we can add the bison, which are thought to promote many rare forbs (wildflowers) by preferentially eating grass. We learned much from Somme that helped in the early stages of restoring Nachusa. Wise managers would learn much from
Nachusa and other ambitious efforts to restore the tens of thousands of acres at
Midewin.
Some “10s”, “9s” and “8s” are dropping out (or barely holding on) in some small remnants. Can they make it in larger remnants and prairie restorations? Conservative species are already tentative successes at a few sites. (For examples, see Endnote 3.)
So here’s an early report on scarlet painted cup – the star of the photo that opened this post. Decades ago we got a few seeds from Chevy Chase Prairie before the bulldozing. We saw one plant emerge at Somme, bloom gloriously, then vanish a couple of days later, probably eaten by deer, which at that time were censused at a devastating rate of 160 per square mile at Somme. We kept our eyes open for more painted cups, but despite deer control, we found none, for decades. Scarlet painted cup was also nearly gone from Wolf Road Prairie, the other iconic “big” Illinois site with 25 acres of very high quality. (See Endnote 4.) Then a few years ago, we learned that a fine prairie owned by a local land trust had just what we were looking for – a thriving mesic black-soil population of those conservative scarlet painted cups. We had helped those folks out on a few projects, and they admired the work at Somme, so they donated seed.
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We had feared that the northeastern Illinois ecotype was largely gone. Then we learned of a substantial population in a fine nearby prairie. |
Two years ago Somme had 45 blooming scarlet painted cups. Last year we had one (the plant is apparently a biennial in some situations and an annual in others). This year seven patches appeared (1 to 26 plants each) for a total of 73 plants. Next year: what? Do these numbers represent the beginnings of new health and richness – or temporary not-to-be-sustained ephemera? Only time will tell. But many of the high conservatives have made great progress thanks to temporary (we hope) intensive care. (For an annotated list see Endnote 5.)
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Cages to exclude both deer and voles seem needed for Somme's current small numbers of scarlet painted cups. We hope that in time they’ll increasingly thrive and graduate out of such “intensive care” – as many other conservative species have done. |
The prairie was almost a myth, but these days it is increasingly real. "Myth" doesn’t necessarily mean that something wasn’t true. It may have been true or not. Some myths are fakery. But the classic myth is a story about the past that has deep truth in it. Science barely knew the prairie as an ecological community because it was “gone” before ecology was “born.” Now, in many ways, conservationists and ecologists enjoy meeting it for the first time.
Endnotes
Endnote 1: Railroad Prairies
True prairie survived best where railroads had been laid across original unplowed prairie and then fenced – to protect settlers’ livestock – which meant that cows, horses, pigs etc. didn’t graze those areas to death. The railroad companies also were said to burn their rights of way, to keep the brush down. Betz found the rare Mead's milkweed only on the highest quality railroad strips. Some "railroad prairies" today are nature preserves. But a true prairie also needs animals to function well (see Endnote 6), and these strip fragments are not big enough to preserve most animal species.
Endnote 2: Indicator Species
Betz would teach us the indicator species as we prowled the wilds looking for remnants. In his postumously published book "The Prairie of the Illinois Country" (2011) he listed the quality species under "Prairie Succession" - writing that the "climax" or highest quality species would be restorable, he hoped, as the restorations aged. In his careful way, he wrote that "it is doubtful whether any restoration has reached the climax stage" - but he gave "proposed" and "tentative" species lists to help define the concept. These "third stage" and "fourth stage" lists are shown below.
Prairie Plants of the Third Stage (proposed)
Scientific Name
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Common Name
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Amorpha canescens
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lead plant
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Asclepias hirtella
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tall green milkweed
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Asclepias viridiflora
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short green milkweed
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Aster azureus
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sky-blue aster
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Aster laevis
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smooth blue aster
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Baptisia leucophaea
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cream wild indigo
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Bromus kalmii
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prairie brome
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Chelone glabra
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turtlehead
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Heuchera richardsonii
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prairie alum root
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Lithospermum canescens
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hoary puccoon
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Lysimachia quadrifolia
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whorled loosestrife
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Panicum leibergii
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prairie panic grass
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Polygala senega
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Seneca snakeroot
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Spiranthes magnicamporum
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great plains ladies tresses
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Sporobolus heterolepis
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prairie dropseed
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Valeriana ciliata
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common valerian
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Prairie Plants of the Fourth Stage (tentative)
Scientific Name
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Common Name
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Asclepias meadii
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Meads milkweed
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Cypripedium candidum
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White lady-slipper
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Gentiana puberulenta
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Prairie gentian
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Habenaria leucophaea
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Prairie white-fringed orchid
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Hypoxis hirsuta
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Yellow star grass
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Lilium philadelphicum
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Prairie lily
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Oxalis violacea
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Violet wood sorrel
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Scutellaria parvula
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Small skullcap
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Viola pedatifida
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Prairie violet
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These lists have something of a "draft" feel to them. Most of the species are mesic black-soil species, but some are species more typical of wet, or dry, or sand prairies. Gerould Wilhelm would improve this approach dramatically as shown in Endnote 3.
Endnote 3: Coefficients of Conservatism
Indicators of high-quality prairie from Swink and Wilhelm
The list of the nine species that have “Coefficients of Conservatism” (CC) of 10 was nice, short, and easy to read. But for prairie remnant evaluation (and restoration trend evaluation), the following longer list may be more helpful. These 26 characteristic mesic black-soil prairie species have conservatism coefficients 8, 9, or 10.
Scientific Name
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CC
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Common Name
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Amorpha canescens
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9
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Lead plant
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Asclepias sullivantii
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8
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Prairie milkweed
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Aster azureus
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8
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Sky-blue aster
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Aster laevis
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9
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Smooth blue aster
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Baptisia leucophaea
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10
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Cream wild indigo
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Bromus kalmii
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10
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Prairie brome
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Carex bicknellii
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10
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Prairie oval sedge
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Carex meadii
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9
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Mead’s stiff sedge
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Castilleja coccinea
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10
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Indian paintbrush
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Eryngium yuccifolium
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9
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Rattlesnake master
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Gentiana puberulenta
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10
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Prairie gentian
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Platanthera leucophaea
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10
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Prairie white-fringed orchid
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Heuchera richardsonii
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8
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Prairie alum root
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Hypoxis hirsuta
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9
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Yellow star grass
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Lilium philadelphicum
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10
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Prairie lily
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Lithospermum canescens
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8
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Hoary puccoon
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Oxalis violacea
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9
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Violet wood sorrel
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Panicum leibergii
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10
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Prairie panic grass
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Pedicularis canadensis
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9
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Prairie betony
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Petalostemum candidum
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9
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White prairie clover
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Petalostemum purpureum
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9
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Purple prairie clover
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Potentilla arguta
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9
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Prairie cinquefoil
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Phlox glaberrima
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8
|
Smooth phlox
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Sporobolus heterolepis
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10
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Prairie dropseed
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Viola pedatifida
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9
|
Prairie violet
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Zizia aptera
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10
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Heart-leaved Alexanders
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Endnote 4: Wolf Road Prairie
Greg Jerzyk reports that at Wolf Road, scarlet painted cup “has been present every year that I have looked for it for many years.” This year he found two stems and photographed them on June 11th (see below).
Then on July 7, 2018, Greg found the plants again to report on associated species. (Conservative species typically do best with other conservative species.)
“What I found today amidst high growth was a barely visible pair of stems of Castelleja. They were fading and about 5 inches apart.” I had asked for associated species that within a quarter meter of the painted cups. He reports, “I found with the help of Rita McCabe: sawtooth sunflower (Helianthus grosseserratus), yarrow (Achillea millefolium), Culver’s root (Veronicastrum virginicum), smooth phlox (Phlox glaberrima), prairie violet (Viola pedatifida), bastard toadflax (Commandra umbellata), wild quinine (Parthenium integrifolium), mountain mint (Pycnanthemum virginianum), dogwood (Cornus racemosa), prairie dock (Silphium terebinthinaceum), starry false Solomon’s seal (Smilacina stellata), rosinweed (Silphium integrifolium), and what I believe was cord grass (Spartina pectinata) as it was NOT in flower.”
Endnote 5: Changes After 38 Years of Restoration
Typical "fair or good quality" prairie restorations don’t have large numbers of most of the 26 species listed earlier and below. Indeed, most “remnant” prairies are also too small or too degraded to have many. One way to evaluate a prairie is to just walk and look. If many of the species below are in most every square yard or meter, that's impressive. A more nuanced, quantitative, and replicable method is to "sample" random quadrants. You may use the
Floristic Quality Assessment (which weighs the species below most heavily - along with diversity) to compare sites or determine trends over time.
The table below shows the status of the 26 highest-quality mesic prairie species after 38 years of restoration at Somme Prairie Grove (SPG) – a black-soil savanna and prairie complex with about 20 acres of habitat for mesic prairie species.
Scientific Name
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CC
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Common Name
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1980 Status at SPG
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2018 Status at SPG
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Amorpha canescens
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9
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Lead plant
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absent
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common
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Asclepias sullivantii
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8
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Prairie milkweed
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rare
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frequent
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Aster azureus
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8
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Sky-blue aster
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absent
|
common
|
Aster laevis
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9
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Smooth blue aster
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rare
|
frequent
|
Baptisia leucophaea
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10
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Cream wild indigo
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absent
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common
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Bromus kalmii
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10
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Prairie brome
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rare
|
common
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Carex bicknellii
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10
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Prairie oval sedge
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absent
|
occasional
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Carex meadii
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9
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Mead’s stiff sedge
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rare
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occasional
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Castilleja coccinea
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10
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Indian paintbrush
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absent
|
rare
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Eryngium yuccifolium
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9
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Rattlesnake master
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rare
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common
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Gentiana puberulenta
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10
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Prairie gentian
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absent
|
rare
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Platanthera leucophaea
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10
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Prairie white-fringed orchid
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absent
|
frequent
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Heuchera richardsonii
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8
|
Prairie alum root
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rare
|
frequent
|
Hypoxis hirsuta
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9
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Yellow star grass
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rare
|
common
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Lilium philadelphicum
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10
|
Prairie lily
|
absent
|
occasional
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Lithospermum canescens
|
8
|
Hoary puccoon
|
rare
|
frequent
|
Oxalis violacea
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9
|
Violet wood sorrel
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rare
|
frequent
|
Panicum leibergii
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10
|
Prairie panic grass
|
absent
|
common
|
Pedicularis canadensis
|
9
|
Prairie betony
|
absent or rare
|
common
|
Petalostemum candidum
|
9
|
White prairie clover
|
absent
|
frequent
|
Petalostemum purpureum
|
9
|
Purple prairie clover
|
absent
|
common
|
Potentilla arguta
|
9
|
Prairie cinquefoil
|
rare or absent
|
rare
|
Phlox glaberrima
|
8
|
Smooth phlox
|
rare
|
common
|
Sporobolus heterolepis
|
10
|
Prairie dropseed
|
rare
|
common
|
Viola pedatifida
|
9
|
Prairie violet
|
rare
|
common
|
Zizia aptera
|
10
|
Heart-leaved Alexanders
|
absent
|
rare
|
Progress toward quality has been great, and there's still a long way to go.
Each of the above species has a Somme Prairie Grove restoration story worth telling. Earlier posts told conservation stories about some techniques and gave details on some of these species, for example the prairie lady-slipper and white-fringed orchid. We hope to continue such posts. Another earlier post summarized Somme's goals and methods.
Endnote 6: Hummingbirds
They're said to be the principal pollinators of scarlet painted cup. Over millions of years evolved the relationship that influenced this plant to become red, a color that insect pollinators don't see. That saves nectar for the humming birds - and rewards the birds for flying their "pollination missions" over the often long distances between isolated populations. (See also "
What Difference Does Fire Pink Make?"
Hummingbirds don't nest in grass, so scarlet painted cup must have been a plant of savannas, open woodlands, and prairies near trees. Maintaining and restoring the relations among plants, animals, fungi, and other parts of the ecosystem are crucial to research and conservation.
References
Floyd Swink and Gerould Wilhelm, Plants of the Chicago Region, 4th edition, 1994
Gerould Wilhelm and Laura Rericha, Flora of the Chicago Region, 2017
Acknowledgements
Marlin Bowles took the haunting photo of Chevy Chase Prairie. The area where he snapped that photo is now a huge (and mostly empty) parking lot.
Greg Jerzyk generously provided the Wolf Road reports and photo.
Eriko Kojima and Kathy Garness caught typos and offered helpful editing suggestions.
Great notes on the conservative prairie annual "scarlet painted cup" - it is a hemi-parisite too, I think. If aggressive non-conservative plants are out-competing the conservative species, such as the painted cup, then management in the form of cutting, careful herbicide, or browsing would benefit the habitat. you've done great work to enlighten me to the relationship of Dodder to diminish sunflower, goldenrod, and other non-conservative plants. More research is needed on the integral role these obscure but important components of the natural plant community can function to return resilience and "stability" to conservative species assemblages... thru natural succession.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Will. I agree. I also can't help wonder if the word "parasite" doesn't give a distorted impression about the painted cup. If the whole community works better in its presence, perhaps it's contributing as much as it's taking? Only two of the 26 "top quality" species are known to me as partly parasitic (Castilleja and Pedicularis). But I suspect that all these species are putting out defensive chemicals, working collaboratively with fungi, pollinators, etc. and in endless ways regulating and benefitting from each other. Fun to study. Also fun to learn restoration judo that works, whether we fully understand it or not!
DeleteWhat about the role of mycorrhiza? Could it be that the conservative species require conservative species of mycorrhiza? And what species might they be? Native potatoes in the Andes were found to have as many as 25 mycorrhiza species on one plant; and many of those were new to science.
ReplyDeleteDoug, I suspect you are right. Most species on the prairie are likely unknown to science (and very small). Many may be difficult to restore (and impossible at our current state of knowledge). The fact that Somme Prairie Grove had remnant savanna and prairie may give it great advantages that cornfield restoration doesn't have. Those mycorrhizal fungi may survive. In many cases, when we find populations of missing species, we try also to bring in some soil from original populations. Does that successfully bring in missing bacteria, algae, nematodes, etc.? We don't know. We'd like to.
Deletegreat article and insightful as always mr packard. can i ask if there are any more photos of buffalo grove prairie? it looks like quite the magical place. i am saddened by its and most of the prairies destruction as well. =( i love seeing them in these unique photos
ReplyDeleteDimitrios, thanks for asking. Chevy Chase Prairie had three parts. This is the only photo I know of that shows the original 40-acre super-good Grade A part. I have a lot of photos of the other two. Those other two parts were to the east. The first, now known as Buffalo Grove Prairie, is under the Com Ed power lines. It was not considered worthy of being put on the Illinois Natural Areas Inventory at that time, although there are patches of very good prairie surviving there. One person (who was in a position to know) said that the main reason it didn't make it was "bitterness and depression" about what happened to the best part. The "technical" reason may have been that there wasn't quite the needed Inventory "minimum" of one-quarter acre of Grade A. The third part was east of the railroad tracks. None of it was Grade A or B, but it had huge numbers of prairie lady-slippers and a great deal more (including, according to one report that seemed to be taken seriously, grass-pink orchid). We gathered a great deal of seed there for the North Branch Prairie Project, until it too was intentionally bulldozed. But that's another long story. (I keep thinking that more of this kind of history should be recorded.)
ReplyDeletethanks for your reply stephen.. would love to see the photos you have. i don't have as a discerning eye as to distinguish the different grades.. i just love looking at how it was.. maybe a follow up post entitled Historical images of buffalo grove/chevy chase prairie.. i remember the raupp museum had an exhibit from a Mr Apfelbaum and it had very few photos. thank you again for so much that you do.
DeleteExcellent article, as always. I greatly fear that as we take two steps forwards, four steps backwards are taken as more and more natural areas are stressed perhaps beyond saving. The loss of the prairie in the first image...makes me sickened, but if we can restore just a wee bit of that magnificence... then it's a good thing.
ReplyDeleteTo Mary Jo Adams: I agree. It's good for conservation organizations to buy more land. But the biggest losses these days are the "four steps back" taken annually by unmanaged (especially unburned) existing "preserves." Studies show them loosing 2% to 4% of their quality per year, decade after decade.
DeleteI believe the five most important priorities for conservation land are:
1. Burn, at very least, until we can do more.
2. Volunteer as stewards and work as advocates - to encourage conservation agencies to burn, control deer (if out of balance), and control invasives.
3. Develop ever better "Best Management Practices" (including restoration by seed and plugs). Then advocate for and apply them.
4. Use good science to measure whether every preserve is taking two steps forward or two steps back or what. Do that annually if possible - but at least once every five years.
5. When other resources are not available, empower volunteer stewards to do all of the above. Dedicated, creative, quick-study volunteers are available everywhere - with just a bit of facilitation and support.
Thanks again for the good thoughts.