Don and Espie, Cache Prairie, and a Hollow Weed

Look at those faces! Can a rare plant (hollow Joe Pye weed) really be that much fun? 

The Nelsons are long-dedicated conservationists. How did they get started? The answer is as roundabout and unlikely as most things in life. When young, they both came from agriculture backgrounds and both worked at Argonne National Laboratory. Don measured low concentrations of radioactive isotopes ("both natural and from weapons testing").

Espie had a job in the newly formed High Energy Physics division. She worked as part of a small dedicated team ("always more fun, and you get more done"). As a "scanner," she manually looked at phonographic films and recorded data that had to be analyzed by a computer. Since the new division did not have any computers or computer programmers, she was sent for three weeks of training in California. Espie became the first computer programmer at HEP, writing code for accelerator experiments. (Later, when Fermi Lab started up, she left Argonne and became the first computer programmer there too. See Endnote 1.)

The grounds of Argonne had originally been an estate which had a tennis court. Espie and Don met there while playing on it. A group of Argonne friends enjoyed outdoors activities (tennis, skiing, camping, canoeing), and some of these folks had a passion for nature. As Espie described the their introduction to conservation, "We knew about spring wild flowers with our group of Argonne friends. Several of them had taken classes with Ray Schulenburg at Morton Arboretum, and one worked with him at Morton. No one mentioned summer flowers. We did not even know prairies existed."

They married and had two boys. Upon retirement, they tried to volunteer on a to-be-created fire team at Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie. That didn't work out, but they began working with botanist Eric Ulazek who helped them discover what it is to be a steward. (See Endnote 1 for this too. It's a great endnote.) They developed a reputation and in 1998, when Will County Forest Preserves acquired the the Vermont Cemetery Prairie, they were invited to become stewards of the great one-acre site. Thanks to Dr. Betz and Ray Schulenberg, the Nelsons and the Forest Preserves, it is now a model of small ecosystem health.

But the nature preserve wasn't enough for them. Espie’s dad had farmed vegetables for the Chicago and Joliet markets. Her brothers went into the same business, buying a few tracts including a thirty some acre patch along Lily Cache Creek. It consisted of the creek, bordering shrubby, marshy, wet prairie areas that flooded frequently, and the two agricultural fields that flooded less often.

The Nelsons developed an interest in that land – as wet as the cemetery was dry. With their background in science, they like to experiment. What would happen if they tried restoring a prairie their own way? The Lily Cache 37 acres weren't working out for the brothers (increasingly too much suburban traffic to move their farm equipment in and out; too much flooding). Don and Espie decided to attempt something unheard of. They bought the farm to restore the natural ecosystem adjacent to a residential neighborhood. 

This is the neighborhood of Lily Cache Prairie. Top right are abandoned gravel mines. Top left is Lake Renwick Heron Rookery Nature Preserve. The highway on the right is US 55. The diagonal road southwest of the suspiciously green Lake Renwick is IL 30. Lily Cache Prairie is the strip on both sides of the creek, north of Route 30 and south of Renwick Road (see also the close-in aerial photo, below). 

They approached the restoration in an organized way. First, the brothers agreed to herbicide and grow soybeans for two years – to reduce weeds. Next, they contracted with two restoration companies, J.F. New and Pizzo Associates, to assemble a basic seed mix and install the initial plantings, one for each field. Comparing the work of two companies appealed to them.

But the main challenge, as they perceived it, they’d take on themselves. Over time they’d install more diverse species; they’d burn annually; and they’d combat the invasives they knew would descend during the healing process. 

There are few healthy examples of floodplain prairies. This one is an inspiration. Perhaps the most impressive species for me was the towering “hollow Joe Pye weed” (Eupatorium or Eutrochium fistulosum). I didn’t know the plant, had never seen it, and apparently made a quizzical expression. Don hastily said, “I wouldn’t have put it in, but it was already here.” 

Nine feet tall with fat purple stems.

Hollow Joe Pye weed is up to nine feet tall with fat, delicate-purple, hollow stems. According to the Flora of the Chicago Region, this species is found in swamp forest openings of the Indiana Dunes - not Illinois. Don is making an important point. Conservation is not gardening – in that we do not choose and assemble our favorite plants.

The conservation ethic for rare species has long emphasized that we do not introduce plants beyond their natural limits. But at this point we have to think twice. Why did it already grow along the stream here? Yes, we don’t want to force “oh my!” plants into every restoration. But the highest quality remnants often have species that no one would ever have expected. Nature was unimaginably rich, and all our remnants are now to some extent depleted. We should have some restorations that give opportunities for such richness to return. In the case of hollow Joe Pye weed, it naturally occurs west, east, and south of DuPage county. Lily Cache Prairie gives another chance to figure out what its needs are. Perhaps it should be restored to other carefully selected gravelly places, with seed from here.

The Nelsons think about these things. They are part of a little community of volunteer stewards who work all over Will County, including Midewin. The Forest Preserve web site has a great "Meet the Volunteer Stewards" video starring the Nelsons. Aerial shots show them working, as specks in the ecosystem. In the video Don says, “We're both beyond 75 at this point, so we know we're not going to be doing this 25 years from now.” Probably not, but currently their passion for the rare nature in their care seems youthful.  

Lily Cache Prairie
On both sides of Lily Cache Creek
north of IL Route 30.

Drier species grow in a small, more upland section.
Shown in bloom here is Illinois tick-trefoil (Desmodium illinoense).
For more on what Don, Espie, and Matt were talking about, see the two links below.

A related post, "The Future of Prairie?", grew out of Matt Evans' questions to Don and Espie Nelson about the Illinois Nature Preserves System, as did the post "Vermont Cemetery Prairie" which has some additional fun facts about that apparently "longest burned" prairie in Illinois.

Endnotes

Endnote 1

Espie writes the following splendid little history:

We knew about spring wild flowers with our group of Argonne friends. Several of them took classes with Ray Schulenburg and one worked with him at Morton. No one mentioned summer flowers. We did not know prairies existed.

At the beginnings of Midewin, there was a local newspaper blurb about a training session to do burns at Midewin. Who isn't fascinated with fire? We took the regular USFS fire training to fight fires out West. We passed the written test. Not a chance we could pass the Back-Pack or the Step Test. About the same time, the USFS also scraped the possible use of volunteers to do burns at Midewin. We noticed that there was another volunteer possibility there. We met up with Eric Ulazek and learned that there were summer wild flowers and that there were prairies. Brand new to us!! We wandered with him collecting seed along RR tracks, remnants along Old Rt 66, Midewin and other spots. Did seed cleaning, planting in trays, weeding, transplanted seedlings, planted plugs in the seedbeds, did more weeding, etc. It was great fun with a small enthusiastic group of volunteers, and of course, Eric. He was a great teacher and still corrects my ID errors. Eric was the catalyst for both of us.

Now for the Fermi part. I was the first computer programmer for High Energy Physics at Argonne and the first computer programmer at Fermi. HEP obtained its first computer, a Recomp II, to analyze experimental data. This was before personal computers existed. The memory was small; input was a typewriter or paper tape. Output was a typewriter, paper tape or as a graph. And the language was octal (machine language). I was asked to attend a 3 week course in CA. That was my introduction to computer work. Later, I used other languages with different computers. As HEP grew, more computer programmers were hired.

When Fermi was started, it had no computer. All the computation was done at Argonne on IBM equipment. The computer program that was to be used to test the accelerator magnets was an existing one from Berkley, CA. But Berkley did not use IBMs. I switched to Fermi and helped the experts convert the program. My badge number was 170.

I don't think the prairie was started while I was at Fermi. It was a busy time working with eager people all focused on one purpose. Same thing with a new HEP Division. Same thing with Midewin. Same thing with Langham Island. Same thing with Lily Cache Prairie, etc, etc. You always have more fun, get more done, when a core of people working together are reaching for the same goal.

Thanks

To Kathy Garness and Eriko Kojima for editing and proofing.