Author: <span>Robert Narem</span>

Speculations on Natural History

For What It’s Worth

The title was picked without consciously referring to the Buffalo Springfield song of the late 60’s, but as the connection occurred to me, it seemed strangely appropriate. There is much angst about how divided our country is now, but it was even more divided back then, with many demonstrations escalating into riots and violence. Still, the paranoia and the closing off of alternatives because “we” could never trust “them” enough to collaborate and cooperate is all too familiar. There is an aspect of this adversarial tribal identification between many in the ag economy and the environmental community. I have worked as a consulting agronomist for forty years, but with one foot in the other world. I have no tribe. So here are a few thoughts on this topic, using recent examples from my life, which I can then tie back to my restoration.

A few months ago my wife, Linda, was talking to a U S Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) employee in Minnesota who had recently moved there from another state, and he related his surprise and dismay at the rancor shown to him by many farmers. They were openly angry with FWS (and with the Minnesota DNR) because of a perceived hostility to farmers and actions those agencies took which they felt were in opposition to their making a living on the farm. To borrow a line from another song from the 60’s, “I’ve looked at life from both sides now,” and I think I can put myself in both sets of shoes.

From the farmers’ point of view, it starts with the casual denigration of the way we farm today, our farms referred to as industrial or factory farms, in opposition to the small, diversified farms of 50 years ago. I grew up on one of those farms, and while it was a good life there were many aspects which no one would ask us to go back to. The work was brutal, even for children, vacations were unknown, and serious accidents were normal. I have a memory of being in church as a teenager and suddenly being struck by the number of physically damaged men, with fingers or even arms gone, hunched over with chronic back injuries. My father, who was without one finger from an accident and had a bad back his entire life from an attempt to stop a runaway team of horses was a good example. Public policy supports farmers financially on one hand, but limits them in other ways. A couple years ago Minnesota mandated perennial filter strips along waterways on all farms in the state. Without going into details, this mandate could easily cost an average size farm $5-10,000 per year in expenses and foregone income from those filter strips. Add in the competition for land from FWS and DNR purchased for wildlife areas, the problems landowners have with hunters trespassing on their land and fights over drainage issues, and some farmers feel besieged. We all are stuck seeing the world through our own eyes, and we like to see ourselves on the side of the angels, in this case feeding the world while caring for the land, and it is difficult to reconcile that with feeling you are viewed as a villain. The lament is, “Why am I viewed as a bad guy?”

On the other side, the FWS employee wonders what the hell he did to get yelled at. Visiting with someone about a voluntary easement for a fair price doesn’t feel like an aggressive or a hostile act. Buying land from willing sellers, which supports the land values of farmers, supports their balance sheets. The filter strips which limit silt and chemicals from impacting water users downstream furthers an important societal goal a farmer should understand and support. As an employee of FWS he is trying to build a richer and more abundant world to live in for farmers as well as everyone else. Most farmers hunt and fish, and all profess to love the land and the environment. But once again the lament is, “Why am I viewed as a bad guy?”

Still, we are all parochial and selfish; we are all weak vessels. We tend to group those with whom we disagree into a faceless group we can rail against or ignore, and a couple negative experiences indict an entire group. Witness how the 9/11 terrorists and ISIS became the face of Islam in many people’s minds, which is a bit like seeing violent neo-nazis or members of the KKK as emblematic of all Christian Americans. Thus has it always been, but I will forego other examples of these divisions to look at examples showing another path.

Recently I talked to a Farm Credit Services (FCS) loan officer about financing another potential project. He is my age, and very much a peer, having also grown up on a remote hill farm. He has made a good career for himself as a knowledgeable and very hard nosed banker. He also farms the land he grew up on and he was very interested in my prairie restoration and my conservation projects. He shared some of his ideas for his farm as he nears retirement, which includes putting several parcels into the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) both for the soil and water conservation aspect and as wildlife habitat. He smiled and said, “As we get older we think more about the legacy we are leaving, and hope we leave things better than we found them.” The CRP program will pay him rent, but it would be easier, and probably more profitable, to continue farming the land. Yet my conservative banker friend was very pleased with the idea of a small sacrifice to improve the environment, and pleased that an FCS loan might facilitate my conservation project.

The other example I will relate happened several years ago. A pair of burrowing owls, the first that I have seen within 200 miles of here, set up housekeeping in an old badger hole in the road ditch two miles south of my place. The adjoining landowner is a gruff older farmer, recently retired, who rents his farm ground to the most aggressive young farmer in our neighborhood. There is little land in our township that is not farmed, quarter after quarter of corn, soybeans and alfalfa blanket the countryside. What these owls were thinking when they settled there I cannot imagine, much like a young family moving to a nice house in the middle of a barren landscape of warehouses. My wife and I worried that someone would take a potshot at them, whether out of fear they might be an endangered species which would limit their land management (a worry far out of proportion to the actual implications of harboring an endangered species) or simply out of the old country ethos that animals are there to shoot.

Yet every day we would drive by and meet the otherworldly stare of a burrowing owl. Usually one of the pair would lift six or eight feet in the air as we drove by, lightly dropping back to the earth after we passed. Soon we found that not only had the rest of the neighborhood noticed them, they had adopted them as the mascots of the township. The landowner had given strict instructions to his renter that the owls were not to be disturbed. Though this gentleman obsessively mows his ditches as if they were an extension of his front lawn, no mower was allowed near the owl nest. Other neighbors would sneak their vehicles past on the side of the road opposite the nest, trying to get a look at our new residents without disturbing them. The burrowing owls were a happening.

Unfortunately we then got a four inch downpour, and the runoff came down the ditch and flooded the nest. We never saw the owls again, and we are bereft of our interesting friends. The entire township mourned the loss of the owl nest. If that can occur in this very conservative, practical, Republican area, it can and does happen everywhere. Given a chance, people will accommodate the natural environment. People are always the problem and the solution; the joy and the sadness; the giver and the taker. Yin and yang. The eternal question is how to stack the deck so we get a little more yin and a little less yang.

This brings me back to the project of the year (not the one I was talking to the banker about), a small supplement to the 100 acre restoration that could have big consequences. I will probably devote an entire post to the project in the future, but here is a summary, along with a short discussion on how it fits into this post’s thesis.

My home section. The parcel labelled “trade land” in the 40 in the NW 1/4 will be traded for the 20 acre parcel to its northeast

In the northwest quarter of our farm, we own the northwest 40 acres and a neighbor owns the other 120. On our 40 is a 17 acre crop field and to the north of the crop field is 23 acres of native prairie and wetland that had a prescribed burn in 2018. The prairie has not been hayed or grazed for almost 50 years, and badly needs a return to more active management. The neighbor and I recently agreed to trade the 17 acre field of mine for a similarly sized parcel to its northeast, east of my prairie as shown above. The parcel I am trading for is very rough ground with a draw through the middle where water has run steadily for the past two years, a very awkward area to farm. In the trade he would receive better farmground, but I receive an area that I would do another prairie restoration upon, fence it with the existing native prairie, and graze in two or three years, when the planting was well established. This small action hardly seems significant, but as the CRP contracts mature, it allows it to be part of a growing group of pastures which could eventually reach 400 acres in 6-8 paddocks, surrounding about 300 acres of crop ground.

On the one hand (yin) this allows great flexibility in management for the benefit of the prairies, native and restored. Almost the only reasonable tool to fight bromegrass takeover in mesic sites is grazing, specifically grazing early and late in the season. All the tools of grazing intensity and timing to benefit native plants and discomfit invader species can be used. The scale is such that habitat connectivity, not just within my farm, but with surrounding grasslands, is significant. It will also provide a large reservoir of native plant materials to gather seed from, whether for further projects of mine or for sale. When added to the other ecosystem services the prairies can provide it becomes an encouraging conservation project.

On the other hand (yang) this becomes a sizeable and hopefully profitable grazing unit for the neighbor’s son, a young man who would like to increase the size of their cowherd, allowing him to farm full time. Between the 400 acres of grass and the potential for grazing cornstalks and cover crops, this could support a cowherd of about 100 head for a 6 month grazing season. Right now their herd of 100 cows gets divided into 6-7 small groups, including on two small pastures of mine, creating inefficiencies and complicating management. Their cowherd could be increased by 60-80 cows with little extra work involved in the grazing.

In other words, one plus one could equal three, the definition of synergy. Yin and yang in harmony; a loud affirmation that we are all in this together. I am now planning, gathering information and gathering partners pursuant to a fall seeding, and am excited to see what can be accomplished. And though I am tempted to wrap this up with another old song lyric I will show restraint and not weary you with another 60’s reference. For what it’s worth.

Speculations on Natural History

Seeding List, 2018-2019

I thought it wise to get a list of the species that have been seeded in the restoration down somewhere other than a scrap of notebook paper, so here it is. First there is a list of the 99 species that have been gathered (mostly by me but with significant help from Ben Lardy and a few others) and spread over the field. In addition, and listed after, are the species that were seeded by the district to fulfill the CRP contract and a group of species that were purchased in small amounts. Identification was easy in most cases, but in a few cases my poor botanical skills mean that my ID was a guess at the species level. After the common and scientific names of the species that I gathered there is a number that is an indicator of the amount gathered. The code is: 1 = a lot, enough to provide a large contribution to the restored prairie, 2 = a moderate amount, enough to see throughout the restoration if establishment is good, 3 = a small amount, but still enough to establish new species scattered across the field, and 4 = a very small amount which I hope to see somewhere in the restoration eventually. The ratings are extremely subjective, but still give an idea of what was available and where I concentrated my energies.

Species list: Gathered

  1. Black Samson Echinacea angustifolia 1
  2. Dotted Gayfeather Liatris punctata 1
  3. Leadplant Amorpha canescens 1
  4. Stiff Sunflower Helianthus pauciflorus 1
  5. Prairie Cinquefoil Drymocallis arguta 1
  6. Porcupine Grass Heterostipa spartea 1
  7. Blanketflower Gaillardia aristata 1
  8. Purple Prairie Clover Dalea purpurea 1
  9. American Licorice Glycyrrhiza lepidota 1
  10. Slender Penstemon Penstemon gracilis 1
  11. White Penstemon Penstemon albidus 1
  12. False Boneset Brickellia eupatoroides 2
  13. Groundplum Astragalus crassicarpus 2
  14. Slender Milkvetch Astragalus flexuosus 2
  15. Canada Milkvetch Astragalus canadensis 2
  16. Tall Dropseed Sporobolus heterolepis 2
  17. Cudleaf Sagewort Artemisia ludoviciana 2
  18. Maximillian Sunflower Helianthus maximilliani 2
  19. Golden Alexander Zizia aurea 2
  20. Pasqueflower Anemone patens 2
  21. Prairie Onion Allium stellatum 2
  22. Early Figwort Scrophularia lanceolata 2
  23. Rough Blazingstar Liatris aspera 2
  24. Hoary Vervain Verbena stricta 2
  25. Prairie Rose Rosa arkansana 2
  26. Stiff Goldenrod Oligoneuron rigida 2
  27. Old Field Goldenrod Solidago nemoralis 2
  28. Heath Aster Symphyotrichum ericoides 2
  29. Silky Aster Symphyotrichum sericeum 2
  30. Hairy Goldaster Heterotheca villosa 2
  31. Prairie Smoke Geum triflorum 2
  32. Alumroot Heuchera richardsonii 2
  33. Whorled Milkweed Asclepias verticillata 2
  34. Canada Anemone Anemone canadensis 2
  35. Aromatic Aster Symphyotrichum oblongifolium 2
  36. Wild Bergamot Monarda fistulosa 3
  37. Swamp Milkweed Asclepias incarnata 3
  38. Prairie Turnip Pediomelum esculentum 3
  39. Downy Painted Cup Castilleja sessiflora 3
  40. Meadow Rue Thalictrum dasycarpum 3
  41. Northern Bedstraw Galium boreale 3
  42. Showy Tick Trefoil Desmodium canadense 3
  43. Downy Gentian Gentiana puberulenta 3
  44. Prairie Larkspur Delphinium virescens 3
  45. Standing Milkvetch Astragalus adsurgens 3
  46. Pennsylvania cinquefoil Potentilla pennsylvanica 3
  47. Prairie Ragwort Packera plattensis 3
  48. Thimbleweed Anemone cylindrica 3
  49. Fringed Sagewort Artemisia frigida 3
  50. Prairie Sandreed Calamovilfa longifolia 3
  51. Grooved Yellow Flax Linum sulcatum 3
  52. Common Milkweed Asclepias syriaca 3
  53. Missouri Goldenrod Solidago missouriensis 3
  54. Canada Goldenrod Solidago canadensis 3
  55. False Sunflower Helianthus helianthoides 3
  56. Yarrow Achillea millefolium 3
  57. Joe Pye Weed Eutrochium maculatum 3
  58. White Prairie Clover Dalea candida 3
  59. Wood Betony Pedicularis canadensis 3
  60. Indian Grass Sorghastrum nutans 3
  61. Prairie Cordgrass Spartina pectinata 3
  62. Textile Onion Allium textile 3
  63. Field Pussytoes Antennaria neglecta 3
  64. Sawtooth Sunflower Helianthus grosserserratus 3
  65. Big Bluestem Andropogon gerardii 3
  66. Sideoats Grama Bouteloua curtipendula 3
  67. Blue Grama Bouteloua gracilis 3
  68. Black Eyed Susan Rudbeckia hirta 3
  69. Little Bluestem Schizachyrium scoparium 3
  70. Green Needlegrass Nassela viridula 4
  71. False Toadflax Comandra umbellata 4
  72. Green Milkweed Asclepias viridiflora 4
  73. Prairie Jungrass Koelaria macrantha 4
  74. Silver Leaf Scurfpea Pediomelum argophyllum 4
  75. False Gromwell Onosmodium molle 4
  76. Unknown Rush Juncus sp. 4
  77. Prairie Blazing Star Liatris pycnostachya 4
  78. Meadow Blazing Star Liatris ligustylis 4
  79. White Deathcamas Zigadenus elegans 4
  80. Blue Eyed Grass Sisyrhinchium campestre 4
  81. Prairie Violet Viola pedatifida 4
  82. Rattlesnake Root Prenanthes racemosa 4
  83. Yellow Avens Bidens cernua 4
  84. Bottle Gentian Gentiana andrewsii 4
  85. Blue Vervain Verbena hastata 4
  86. Chickweed Cerastium arvense 4
  87. White Milkwort Polygala alba 4
  88. Plains Muhly Muhlenbergia cuspidata 4
  89. Panicgrass Dichanthelium oligosanthes 4
  90. American Vetch Vicia americana 4
  91. Switchgrass Panicum virgatum 4
  92. Sun Sedge Carex inops 4
  93. Threadleaf Sedge Carex duriuscula 4
  94. Wild Four O’ Clock Nyctaginea mirabilis 4
  95. Prairie lettuce Lactuca biennis 4
  96. Idaho Biscuitroot Lomatium orientale 4
  97. Scarlet Gaura Gaura coccinea 4
  98. Evening Primrose Oenothera biennis 4
  99. Yellow Coneflower Ratibida hirta 4

Species in the original CRP seeding, not also gathered and listed above, and seed bought (mostly in very small amounts) and spread with gathered seed over the past two years.

  1. Needle and Thread Heterostipa comata
  2. Slender Wheatgrass Elymus trachycaulus
  3. Western Wheatgrass Pascopyrum smithii
  4. Canada Wildrye Elymus canadensis
  5. Dudley’s Rush Juncus dudleyi
  6. Large Beardtongue Penstemon grandiflorus
  7. Showy Partridgepea Chamaechrista fasciculata
  8. Grayhead Coneflower Ratibida pinnata
  9. New England Aster Symphyotricum novae-angliae
  10. Sneezeweed Helenium autumnale
  11. Illinois Bundleflower Desmodium illinoensis
  12. Fox Sedge Carex vulpinoides
  13. Kalms Brome Bromus kalmii
  14. Plains Bluegrass Poa arida
  15. Hairgrass Deschampia sp.
  16. Marsh Muhly Muhlenbergia glomerata
  17. Compass Plant Silphium laciniatum
  18. Pale Spiked Lobelia Lobelia spicata
  19. Boneset Eupatorium perfoliatum
  20. Creamy Milkvetch Astragalus racemosus
  21. Butterfly Weed Asclepias tuberosa
  22. Culver’s Root Veronicastrum virginicum
  23. Mountain Mint Pycnanthemum virginiatum
  24. Western Spiderwort Tradescantia occidentalis
  25. Nodding Onion Allium cernuum
  26. Canada Onion Allium canadense
  27. Wild Mint Mentha arvensis
  28. Sullivant’s Milkweed Asclepias sullivantii
  29. Purple Giant Hyssop Agastache scrophulariifolia
  30. Marsh Betony Pedicularis lanceolata
  31. False Aster Boltonia asteroides
  32. Flat-topped Aster Doellingaria umbellata
  33. Heart Leafed Golden Alexander Zizia aptera
  34. Prairie Aster Symphyotrichum turbinellum
  35. Heart-leafed aster Symphyotrichum cordifolium
  36. Sky Blue Aster Symphyotrichum oolentangiense
  37. Marsh Muhly Muhlenbergia racemosa
  38. Prairie Sunflower Helianthus petiolaris
  39. American Sloughgrass Beckmannia syzigachne
  40. Sweetgrass Hierchloe odorata
  41. Bluejoint Calamagrostis canadensis
  42. Wood Lily Lilium philadelphicum
  43. Great Blue Lobelia Lobelia siphilitica
  44. Prairie Coreopsis Coreopsis palmata
  45. Virginia Ryegrass Elymus virginicus
  46. Rough Dropseed Sporobolus compositus

So, that adds up to 145 species. I think I’m missing 1-2 species found or bought in very small amounts, but all the major players are here. I haven’t started a list of species found in the restoration yet, but will next summer. It’s gonna be fun.

Speculations on Natural History

The Never Ending Seeding

Near the end of the year I thought it an opportune time to summarize the past couple years attempts to bring a prairie restoration to life on my land in Day County, South Dakota. Much of the work that was done in 2017 and 2018 has been discussed in other posts, but it seemed worthwhile to integrate that work with what has been done the past year in a single post.

Over the summer and fall of 2017 I planned for and received a contract to put 154 acres into the continuous CRP program, split between the wetland restoration program (CP 23) and the pollinator habitat program (CP 42). Much of the CP 23 CRP, 54 acres, was on my northeast quarter, following a linear wetland that bisects the quarter. This was seeded to a diverse mix of native species (about 25 species) by the conservation district in November of 2017. I was not attempting to do a comprehensive restoration on this land because the shape of the tract meant issues with pesticide drift were inevitable. Thus, I had limited goals for the services this land would provide.

The remainder, 100 acres on the southwest quarter where I planned to do a more complete restoration, were not able to be seeded at the same time because of concern I had for herbicide carryover on a few acres which had been spot-treated for tall waterhemp control in the soybeans in July, 2017. The spring of 2018 was late and wet, and it was mid-June before the field was seeded by staff of the Day County Conservation District with their drill. There were three different seed mixes for three different range sites: xeric, dry mesic and mesic. Each mix had 30-35 different species purchased through Milborn Seeds in Brookings, South Dakota. In addition to the official seed mix I spread seed that I had gathered the past growing season from adjacent native prairies I own, seed that had been gathered by Ben Lardy, a Pheasants Forever employee working in Day County and a variety of small amounts of seed that I had purchased from Prairie Moon Seeds in Minnesota. These were spread in appropriate areas about the same time.

I realized that the timing of the seeding precluded the seeds undergoing stratification, a period of cold needed to overcome dormancy, so my expectations for what I would see that summer were modest. However, even my modest expectations were dashed by what I observed. It became evident that the mixtures of seed had bridged in the drill box, and large areas had not been seeded. Perhaps 40 acres were showing no seedlings, 30 acres were showing scattered seedlings and 30 acres were already looking well established by Labor Day last year (most likely those 30 acres had received 70-80% of the seed). Most distressing, the largest empty area adjoined a native grass pasture where Dakota skipper (Hesperia dacotae) butterflies had been found. One of the main drivers for the project had been to extend the habitat for these skippers and so far I had nothing for them.

Approximate boundaries of management zones after original seeding.

Zone 1: 30 acres of dry mesic soils which have an excellent stand from the original seeding

Zone 2: 30 acres which showed scattered seedling growth by fall, 2018. The two main areas include both the wettest and the most xeric soils on the field. Thus, even though I have it listed as one zone it is actually managed as about four.

Zone 3: Zero stand on about 25 acres of mostly xeric soils in the heart of the restoration.

Zone 4: Zero stand on 15 acres of mesic soils adjoining the farm field.

During the summer and fall of 2018 I gathered substantial amounts of seed from my prairies, as well as several other prairies owned by friends, and augmented that with seed gathered by Ben Lardy. After evaluating what we had, I added to that with seed purchased from Milborns, primarily grasses. In November we spread this on Zones 2 and 3, with emphasis on Zone 3 near the skipper habitat, adding 20-25 seeds per square foot. On Zone 4 we spread primarily purchased seed, including what Milborns calls “Native Harvest” mix, seed harvested directly from a native prairie. All this would receive a full stratification over winter, putting the fall seeding on track to jump out of the ground in 2019. And in order to put the maximum effort in improving Zones 2,3 and 4 I had to accept that Zone 1 would be what it was.

Over the long winter of 2018/2019 I thought about all the problems of the 2018 seeding, all the weak spots and all the mistakes I had made. I decided that it was worthwhile to continue to provide even more seed to provide a veneer of redundancy to cover some of those mistakes. Here is the plan those winter musings became.

First, I was still concerned with the barren hills on Zone 3. Here is what it looked like in late May, 2019, a year after seeding:

Gravelly hill. The larger plants are wormwood sage. The green background is Zone 2.

Though I had worked very hard to cover this area with seed the previous fall I bought and blended about 15 species, all with minimal seed dormancy, to attempt to get more seedlings started on the gravelly hills. Ben brought the broadcast seeder out once more and we spread another 15 seeds/square foot on the 25 acres of Zone 3 and 15 adjacent acres of xeric soils of Zone 2.

During the summer and fall of 2019 I once more obsessively gathered seed from my prairies. Building upon the knowledge gained the past two seasons, and upon what turned into a good year for seed production, I was able to make more efficient use of my time, both in knowing locations to find various species and in having a better feel for the “Goldilocks” timing for harvest. I was able to gather 8-10 new species and gathered much larger amounts of 15-20 species that I had gathered minimal amounts of in 2018. It was a very successful and enjoyable venture.

Most of my 2019 harvest, cleaned and ready to go

Once more Ben brought out the broadcast seeder and after blending my gathered seed with some additional grass seed it was spread over all of Zone 3, all but the wetter areas of Zone 2 and a few adjacent acres of the Zone 1. About another 10-15 seeds per square foot were spread.

We spread a different seed mix over Zone 4, the 15 acres on the east side next to the farm field. It had been too wet to seed in the spring, but I had also been neglecting that area for another reason. A bad infestation of Canada thistle had established itself during the summer of 2018, and I feared that any additional seeding was futile until the thistles were controlled. I had the farmer who rents my farm ground spray the 15 acres in late June with Widematch, a common wheat herbicide with excellent thistle activity. Then in November I purchased a 14 species blend of native species with tolerance to Milestone, another excellent thistle killer. Hopefully I can get some forbs established through the weeds, and if not I will at least have a 15 acre native grass border to provide a buffer between the farm field and the restoration.

That brings us to today. In total, 145 native prairie species have been seeded, with perhaps 100 seeded in significant amounts. Zone 1 has its original CRP blend of 30-35 species and the density of plants is such that it will be very difficult to establish anything more (remember this area likely got more than a 2X seeding rate to start). Zone 2 filled in pretty well last summer, and is likely to fill in completely this summer, hopefully including much of the gathered seed that was spread a year ago. Zone 3 still looks like hell, but by the end of the fall I could find new perennial prairie seedlings every spot I looked (and I looked at hundreds of spots). And Zone 4 is a big question mark, but it will at least have a diverse grass cover.

CODA

Life is frustrating for all of us because it so rarely matches our expectations. I have certainly been frustrated by the poor job done on the original CRP seeding. Even now after several remedial seedings it is nowhere near my vision for a prairie restoration. However, I must not let the act of looking back come at the expense of doing my best today. I like the Buddhist take on this universal dilemma. To paraphrase: “Suffering is universal and caused by our desire for life to be different than it is; yet there is a path beyond suffering through changing how we think about and act in the world.” I read a book about 20 years ago called “The Dancing Wu Li Masters” which compared Eastern thought to the physics of relativity and quantum mechanics. Two things stand out from my memory of the book. The first is that everything is always interconnected and changing. The second is illustrated by the way chapters were labeled. Each chapter was Chapter 1. We are always beginning again, and what we are doing is always important because each action changes the world. So today I begin again, as I will again tomorrow. We boldly and bravely go out every day to remake the world.

Speculations on Natural History

The Interview from Hell

I know the title is a bit much. There was no physical or verbal abuse, just abuse to my spirit and self esteem.

The background begins in 1976, when I was an undergraduate student in the park management curriculum at South Dakota State University (SDSU). I received an internship from the South Dakota Division of Parks to develop and run interpretive programs for a new nature center opening near Sioux Falls. I had the opportunity to work with volunteers from the Biology Department at Augustana College who would help with school groups coming to the park. One of these interns was Dave Ode, a junior biology major, who was several years older than me as he had done a stint in the service. Though I was ostensibly his boss it soon became evident that Dave knew more than I did about the natural history of the area so I had a wonderful resource, and soon a good friend.

In 1979 we both entered MS programs at SDSU, Dave in botany and I in agronomy. Though we didn’t regularly hang out, we renewed our friendship and at graduation both received interviews for the same job. The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and the South Dakota Department of Game Fish and Parks (SDGFP) were cooperating on a position to develop what I believe was called the Natural Heritage Program, an attempt to research and document the natural attributes of every state. I assume that TNC funded the position and SDGFP provided an office and logistical support. When Dave and I realized that we were applying for the same position we decided to drive out to Pierre together for the interview.

We arrived at a house rented by a friend of Dave’s, a cavernous old house his friend was caring for in return for cheap rent. It was too expensive to heat more than a few rooms, however, so Dave and I changed into our interview suits in a huge, unheated dining room. I have a great memory of two pale skinny Norwegian farm boys in their underwear trying to jump into some dress clothes before frozen body parts began to fall off.

At the SDGFP offices I went in first for my interview, facing Doug Hofer, the director of the Parks Division and two very serious TNC employees. We shook hands, made about fifteen seconds of small talk, and the assault began.

Recently I had gone through a very tough oral defense of my master’s thesis with an adversarial professor. That was a walk in the park compared to this interview. Questions were technical and succinct, scripted and delivered in a clipped voice. Doug Hofer threw me a couple softballs, but then I received a series of botanical and ecological questions entirely outside my experience. As soon as it became clear I didn’t know the answer to one question my fumbling attempts would be cut off with the next question. The easiest question I remember went something like this: “Name as many plants as you can from the riverine environments of the northern Black Hills, scientific names only please.” At least I could rattle off a few species as an answer. The other questions all ended with some variation of, “I’m sorry, but I’m not really familiar with that concept,” which was a polite way of saying : ” I don’t know what the hell you are talking about.”

However, the magic of being a young man is resilience; nothing sets you back for very long. At the end of the interview, which they had mercifully cut short, I put in a plug for my friend, Dave Ode. I told them that I had no illusions about my suitability for the position, but that the next interviewee was someone special, who I had worked with and could unreservedly recommend. I’m not sure if I thought if they would care about my opinion, but I didn’t really give a flying you-know-what whether they cared or not. I felt compelled to speak up for Dave. I mouthed a “good luck” to Dave as we traded places and sat down to push my eviscerated innards back into my body cavity while I waited.

After an hour or so (my interview only lasted 20 minutes) Dave came out smiling and relaxed, shaking hands with everyone. As soon as we were out of earshot I asked, “Tough interview, huh? What sort of questions did they ask you?” He looked at me somewhat perplexed and said, “Not much really; We mostly visited about the goals of the program and discussed ideas to reach those goals.” My response was something like “???????!!!!!!!!!???????”

After I lost my wounded outrage, and after a bit of reflection, it was obvious they knew they would hire Dave before we came for the interviews. He was the only qualified candidate, something that may have contributed to their sour moods when they interviewed me. The pool of conservation professionals was very shallow at that time and TNC did not carry the cachet it does today. They would give me one chance to prove my resume wrong, and when it was evident that my resume properly characterized me as a poor candidate for the position I was kicked to the side of the road. Dave not only had the proper degree, he had serious botanical chops, laying a stack of publications, both technical and popular, that he had contributed to on the table as he entered the interview room. I am certain he had glowing recommendations from researchers they knew or knew of. Hell, he was and is just a helluva guy.

Dave did a wonderful job managing the Natural Heritage Program and then slid into the position of the state botanist, a job he held until he recently retired. Now he hunts a lot, works on some projects, and I hope will continue to give me advice on my restoration project. It is a luxury and a pleasure to have such a knowledgeable friend to lean on. Sometimes qualifications, intelligence and class win through. The consolation prize is that I got to enjoy being an agronomist for 40 years. There are many paths; we just have to keep our heads up to watch for them, and gratefully accept what life has offered.

Speculations on Natural History

The Gravel Pit

About 50 years ago there was some gravel mined from a small pit in the corner of my prairie restoration field. I don’t think there was a seeding made afterwards, but it soon grew up to bromegrass, with a few willows and cottonwoods in the lowest area of the pit where there is a perched water table. I often use the pit to store my trailer and ATV and finally took a closer look at it last week when I was up gathering seed from the existing prairies. What I saw was a bit surprising.

The pit from 200 yards away. The water in the front is in the restoration; the gravel excavation was done in the hill behind.
A group of leadplant (Amorpha canescens) on the edge of the cottonwoods in the lowest part of the pit.

While the majority of the vegetation that has reclaimed the disturbed area is bromegrass, there are about 20 native species which have found their way to the site from nearby pastures. Some of these are the typically weedy species which blow around and colonize bare spots everywhere, such as Missouri goldenrod (Solidago missouriensis) and heath aster (Symphyotrichum ericoides), but many aren’t. There is a sizeable colony of leadplant in a protected area under the edge of the excavated hill. There are many dotted gayfeathers (Liatris punctata) which have blown in and colonized some of the poorest soils. There are bits of big bluestem (Andropogon gerardii) and plains muhly (Muhlenbergia cuspidata) fighting the good fight against the brome on appropriate sites. I found a couple prairie onions (Allium stellatum) which have somehow made their way over from my pasture. I even gathered seed for an hour or two from the gravel pit that I am spreading on the prairie restoration.

What will the gravel pit look like in 50 or 100 years? Will we have continued progress of the natives spreading from the prairies nearby, and from the restoration which now surrounds the site? Or will the brome push everything back out, perhaps advantaged by our increasingly wet climate. Even without the gravel excavation this is a xeric site, so it would be reasonable to hope that the more drought hardy native plants should have an advantage. Does this provide any lessons for the restoration field?

I think that one lesson is patience. Life will find a way to reach a new home. All the richness of our prairies developed over about 10,000 years since the glaciers melted and the climate stabilized at something approaching recent conditions. I am sure some researchers have determined about when our plant diversity reached maximum levels through pollen analysis, but my uninformed speculation would be that most of the plant community development occurred in no more than 2000 years. My restoration will be evolving to some sort of stability over the rest of my life, but will continue for long afterwards. I will obviously not know the final outcome of my restoration seeding, because there is no such thing. Which leads to the next lesson.

I need to be humble about my abilities to “create” a prairie. It has been suggested by multiple authors that those of us seeding restorations shouldn’t focus on the unattainable goal of a perfect, or an authentic restoration, but rather on the ecosystem services we wish to provide. What the hell would an “authentic” prairie restoration look like, anyway? Nobody truly knows. My stated purpose at the beginning of this process was to enlarge and buffer existing Dakota skipper butterfly habitat. That can fit under the broader umbrella of pollinator support. Then there are all the other insects, birds and mammals which will use the area (I have already been kicking up sharptail grouse and various sparrows, probably eating the weed seeds which I have grown. Carbon storage, water quality improvement and providing good habitat for bird hunters all add to the benefits. One benefit I personally care about is to increase the local genotypes of the xeric prairie species I have been gathering the seed of and spreading over the 100 acres. It pleases me to have an opportunity to give them a new home on the restoration prairie. I don’t think it helpful to have an image in my head that the restoration should match, because I doubt that I have enough imagination to see any image other than a pale approximation of the nearby prairie in my pastures. Rather, I will hope to see what develops over the next couple years and manage for my enjoyment, and to achieve some of these goals.

And this leads to the third lesson, which is that I already should be planning for management on the restoration. The gravel pit has developed some species diversity and distribution without any management. Could we have done better with active management? I will probably find out in a few years, because the gravel pit will probably get burned with the restoration field in a few years. In eight years, when the CRP contract has ended it will likely become part of a grazing system with the adjoining restoration. In the meantime I will be doing some weed control, both mechanical and chemical, and perhaps some remedial seeding. But I need to remember the second lesson, humility, as well. Perhaps the changing climate means that brome and Kentucky bluegrass are integral parts of the restoration 100 years from now, or perhaps some invasive grass that has not even yet reached South Dakota. I am 64 years old with health issues. I may not even see the end of the CRP contract and management will then move to other family members or to someone who buys the land, something over which I will likely have no control. In the meantime I will humbly do my best to guide the management to accomplish some of the goals I mentioned and perhaps some other goals I haven’t yet discovered. Its going to be a lot of fun!

Plains muhly working its way into a disturbed area
A lonely switchgrass plant in a sea of brome

Speculations on Natural History

Summer’s End

Hard times are coming. Time is short. Be ready or accept the consequences.

I am not trying to riff on a revival style preacher, but I had the opportunity to spend several days last week on my prairies and there is almost an ominous feel to the countryside. The growing season is not over; hopefully we have a month or more with green, but the landscape is tired. The native grasses are turning various shades of tan and bronze; leaves have damage from diseases, insects and hard weather. Most wildflowers are done blooming, and many have senesced and are disappearing. Goldenrods and asters, the flowers of fall, are still blooming, along with a few sunflowers and gentians, hurrying to develop viable seed. With time short some plants just put their heads into the harness collars and pull for the finish. With some luck, there will still be blooms for 2-3 more weeks and the season won’t slip away too soon.

Silky aster (Symphyotrichum sericeum) and gray goldenrod (Solidago nemoralis)
Aromatic asters on a hilltop
Sawtooth sunflower (Helianthus grosseserratus) along the edge of a draw
Downy gentian (Gentiana puberulenta)

Some other denizens of the prairie are also feeling the weight of the oncoming hard times. For much of August our hills were covered with blooming stiff sunflowers (Helianthus pauciflorus). It appeared that I would be able to pick many bushels of heads for seed, but the maturing heads become an opportunity for some residents.

A garden of stiff sunflowers and dotted gayfeather (Liatris punctata). Looks like a bountiful seed harvest to come.

I had always assumed that deer were the culprit, fattening up for winter by filling their stomachs with sunflower heads; and that may be true, but then I saw evidence of another, unknown suspect.

Whose pantry is this?
And this is what is left after someone decapitated these plants.

Most likely, pocket gophers are storing the heads, or shelling out and storing the seeds, as there are usually mounds nearby, but my friend Ben Lardy suggested Franklin’s ground squirrels. Whoever or whatever is clipping and gathering the seedheads does so without harming the plants, which are still waving in the breeze, headless. Waiting for Ichabod Crane, I guess. In any case, I still hope to gather a substantial amount of stiff sunflower heads, though they aren’t ready yet. We will see what is left in a couple weeks.

This mystery of the sunflower thief is a good example of what draws me to these hills. I am increasingly protective of my time at the prairies and sometimes almost desperate for the opportunity to immerse myself in prairie life. My mortality is like a garment I wear these days, and fall has become very poignant to me. My breathing, and thus my stamina, is touchy. My trach means that I am always a half step from pneumonia. The days I spent at the prairie last week were warm and sunny, but now we are in for several days of cold fall rain reminding me of summer’s loss. But even with the rain I am drawn to the prairie hills. They call me with a gentle song: “Come to us. Abide with us. Join with our warmth and our life. Commune with us and become whole”

Speculations on Natural History

My Other Restoration

All the posts in this blog have so far referred to 100 acres in the southwest quarter of my home section that I have planted (and am still planting) as a prairie restoration. I have not yet mentioned that I have also seeded 54 acres in the northeast quarter to a diverse native mixture as well. This post will discuss the seeding, what I hope to accomplish with it and why I have made the decisions that I have made.

The easiest way to discuss this seeding is to refer to the aerial images below, because it tells several stories.

This is a blowup of a 30 year old photo of the quarter showing every acre farmed except the tree claim in the northeast corner. This was always considered the best farmground we had, growing wheat, oats barley, flax, rye, millet and alfalfa while I was growing up (before we became part of the corn belt). Even in very wet years my father would just be patient and all the acres would dry up enough to raise a crop. Over the past twenty five years that has not been true.

This is a map of the CRP planted of the quarter. There is now a linear wetland that starts in the northwest part of the quarter and bisects it as it continues to the southeast. The crosshatching are the acres now considered wetland by the Soil Conservation Service. The wetland then enters a marsh in our farmyard which is at the bottom, right of the picture. Part of this linear wetland has not been farmed for 20 years or so. The waterway hardly flows, as it is almost flat, but it has a perched water table that is near the surface in dry years and hovers several inches above the surface in wet years.

What caused the soil layering that creates the perched water table? A recent advance of the Wisconsin glaciation stopped just west of my farm. As the ice melted a large area of poorly sorted outwash sand and gravel was laid down to the east of the melting glacier, covering almost 200 acres on the west side of my farm. The meltwater also left about 40 acres of better sorted sand and gravel on my northeast quarter as the water flowed southeast towards the Big Sioux River. Layering in these soils is not consistent, but generally there is a layer of silt 2-3 feet deep over a layer of gravel 10-20 feet deep which covers older glacial till, When I was growing up there was never enough excess water percolating down to fill this gravel layer ( in which the water very slowly travels underground southeast to the Big Sioux River). It has often been full the past 20-25 years, causing the linear wetland. About 15 acres that had been excellent farmland 50 years ago is often not farmable.

Though the waterway was obviously developed from glacial water flowing east, there is a divide in the northwest part of the quarter where water now flows back west. As a teenager I had tried to determine exactly where my own “continental” divide occurred, but the grade is so subtle that it was impossible. As glaciers melt there are interesting changes in ground elevation as the ground rebounds as the weight of the ice is removed. Many times I have wished to be able to travel back in time to see the drama and spectacle of those geologic forces.

What does all this have to do with my decision to plant 55 acres back to grass? First, because of the newly created wetland acres I was able to enroll in the continuous Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) at a fair rental rate. I am retiring the 15 acres of wet ground plus about 25 acres of the droughtiest gravel soils, with only about 15 acres of the better crop ground going into CRP. The remaining 100 acres of the quarter are productive soils which will remain as farm ground. Second, as I wrote earlier, there is very likely a slow underground flow beneath the CRP and I consider the CRP a small step towards cleaner water entering the Big Sioux River and thence the Missouri and the Mississippi. Third, the grass habitat will almost finish a grass corridor between the grasslands which occur to my west and the grasslands along the Big Sioux River. I don’t know what species might be helped by this connection, but prairie grouse come to mind. Fourth, though I don’t hunt anymore, the CRP could provide an area for pheasant and deer cover, and an area someone might wish to hunt.

So why aren’t I looking at this as a prairie restoration? The main reason is the shape of the CRP acreage. It is narrow and surrounded by crop ground. Herbicide drift will inevitably affect forb species in this field. The conservation district planted this in the fall of 2017. Though the planting job here was better than the job on my restoration field, I have topdressed parts of it with a seed harvested from a native prairie in Minnesota, adding 15-20 new species to supplement the 20 that were planted earlier.

I am not going to use any of the seed I have gathered on my relict prairies on this field, however, nor any expensive purchased forb species. While I have committed to spending a lot of money on the 100 acre restoration, I feel the need to limit expenses elsewhere; I will go all out on the restoration on the southwest quarter and be a bit more conservative on the northeast quarter.

Finally, some of this will probably return to crop production when the CRP contract ends. I have nine years to evaluate options and put together a plan, but I am likely going to leave a very generous waterway and allow the farmer renting the crop acres at that time to break up some of the better acres of the CRP. The majority of the CRP will likely be fenced and become a pasture, probably joined with the farmplace to the south where a water source will be easy to develop.

Again, what do I wish for my 55 acre CRP seeding that is not quite a prairie restoration? I hope it provides water quality protection, a pathway for sharptail grouse and upland sandpipers and a nice area for deer to bed. I hope to see warm season prairie grasses turning various shades of bronze and gold in the fall. I hope to provide some habitat for a variety of insects. I hope it will provide grazing and allow rotation with my native pastures, allowing better management of the native grass. And I really hope to enjoy walking through it during the time I have left.

Speculations on Natural History

Introductions

My introduction to prairie began when I was four or five years old and began to tag along with my older brother to bring the dairy cows home for milking. Almost every farm in our neighborhood milked cows and had a small pasture adjacent to the farm for the cows. Ours was bigger than most, a 50 acre mixture of native and tame grass. The native grass wasn’t pristine after 70 years of continuous grazing, but there were a surprising number of native grasses and forbs that were still scattered across the hills.

In April we engaged in the spring ritual of children everywhere, bringing the first flowers of spring home to our mother. For farm kids of the northern plains that meant pasqueflowers (Anemone patens), or Mayflowers as we called them. The first blooms of the spring emerged about April 15-20, the first stalks only two or three inches long. If it had been a cold night they would be brown from frost damage. There was little aroma, and they usually came with ants which were feeding on the pollen or the sap that oozed from the base. Still, my mother would make the obligatory fuss over us, her good boys bringing her flowers.

A group of blooms ready to go into a coffee cup for display

A short digression here: This Easter I had the good fortune to go up to my prairies with my daughter, Diane, and her boyfriend, Ebi. Spring was late with 20″ of snow and a blizzard on April 11-12, but a quick warm spell had melted most of the snow, and I hoped for the best. Here is what I found:

2-3″ blooms wherever one looks

My phone doesn’t have the capacity to show the scope of the bloom, but the reputed “superbloom” in the California desert this spring came to mind (the comparison is a bit inflated, I admit, but it really was a lot of pasqueflowers). This was as many pasqueflowers blooming as I had ever seen on these hills.

Note the snow in the upper left

I was even able to gather several ounces of seed for my restoration. The wispy, feathery plumes attached to the seed make great handles to pull the seeds from the head if you are lucky enough to get out before they blow away in the wind. With some help, I was lucky.

Mature pasqueflower seedheads

I have already spread the seed to add to the seed I gathered and spread last year. And of course we brought a handful of blooms back on Easter to display on the kitchen table. Though humble, they were glorious. If a boquet can be gathered in the future on the restoration that would be a success to cherish.

Returning to my theme, what held more interest as I got older was learning what could be gathered and eaten out on the prairie. Foraging wild foods is a hot topic among foodies these days, but the history didn’t start with Euell Gibbons in the 60’s. I was fortunate to have a rich source of knowledge in my Polish grandmother, Busha. Her parents had homesteaded when she was a toddler, and her family welcomed families of Native Americans to camp and trade. Some of what was traded were foods gathered from the prairie. It’s impossible to know how extensive the interactions were between Busha and the Dakota families, but she came to know how to use many native plants.

The most important target was breadroot scurfpea (Pediomelum esculentum), which we called wild rutabagas. The plant has a tuberous root, a bulb which begins an inch or two below the soil and is about two inches long. In order to harvest the tuber one has to dig a hole about four or five inches deep and broad enough to get a grip around the tuber to yank it out. Of course, at seven or eight years old that meant prying out soil and stones with my fingers. Getting two or three tubers exhausted my patience, and I would shove them in my pocket, peeling one to eat as I walked home.

A beautiful blooming prairie turnip

The flavor was bland, but pleasant; fibrous, with enough starch to give it a satisfying chew. As I got older, my intentions were to cook some tubers, or perhaps even make pemmican, but invariably I would eat the raw tubers before any of my bright ideas came to fruition.

In retrospect, it was probably a good thing that I wasn’t more proficient at digging prairie turnips as their reproduction is a bit slow, and even an eight year old boy could make a dent in a local population. I no longer find prairie turnips on the home pasture, but they are fairly common on the prairies bordering my restoration.

Last summer I found that they were also one of the more frustrating plants from which to gather seed. At maturity they break off at ground level and merrily tumble around, spreading seed as they go. I was probably able to salvage 100 seeds last year, and less this year, by picking up the determined travelers and shelling out the remaining seed. I will be surprised if I ever find any in my restoration.

The last plant I will mention is groundplum milkvetch, which Busha called buffalo beans (Astragalus crassicarpus). Buffalo beans, or groundplums, bloom early, and the fruits are juicy and tasty for a week or two. Though they look like little plums their taste is more like snap peas, if not quite as sweet. They quickly become tough and inedible.

A prolific groundplum

Many species of Astragalus and a closely related genus, Oxytropis, are poisonous. The locoweeds, or crazyweeds, are members of the lineage. Though I knew this fact even as a teenager, it never occurred to me to be careful in eating buffalo beans. Poisons are dosage dependent, and there might be a line one would not wish to cross. Still, plants which presumably disperse their seed with the help of hungry animals are unlikely to have poisonous fruits. In any case, I doubt that I ever ate more than five or six at a time, and remember no ill effects.

What causes one person to crave these experiences while another lacks the desire? While my grandmother imparted the botanical knowledge, it was my older brother who showed me how to dig a prairie turnip and how to find buffalo beans, and I am certain that we ate them together. Yet, though we came from the same place and the same formative experiences, he has only mild interest in prairies and in my restoration project. He encourages me when I tell him about it, but there is no visceral connection. It was also obvious by the time he was twelve that he was no farmer ( though he worked more diligently on the farm than I did) and he now lives in a suburb of Minneapolis.

My younger brother, on the other hand, really wants to get back to the farm sometime to see the project. He too lives in an urban area (Orange County, California), but as a kid he would choose to wander in the pasture with his free time. If we knew the combination of nature and nurture, of experience and education, which developed a deep connection to nature it would be easier to develop a new generation of conservationists. For my part I will continue with my little project and draw in who I can to the wonder I feel as I wander the hills.

Speculations on Natural History

Summer Seed Gathering

Two years ago, when I began planning for this adventure, I decided that I would try to gather some of the seed needed for the project, primarily to get plenty of black samson (Echinacea angustifolia), a major nectar source for Dakota skipper butterflies (Hesperae dacotae), a threatened species that was one of the drivers behind the project. During the late summer of 2017 I began gathering black samson, as well as leadplant (Amorpha canescens), another common favorite of mine. At the same time as I gathered my two main targets several other species would go into the pail, and I accumulated small amounts of several other species. It was enjoyable to be out gathering, and enjoyable to mess with the seed while drying and storing the seed.

My 2017 haul of leadplant seed, about 5-6 gallons

Over the winter I spent a lot of time working with Ben Lardy at the Day County Conservation District planning the official CRP seed mix. As we worked through the frustrating process he asked whether I was interested in using any of the seed he had gathered the past year. I told him that I was, and when he brought me the seed I began to look at seed gathering in a new way.

The seed was in containers of all shapes and sizes. He had a good sized tub of porcupine grass (Heterostipa spartea), a small jar of wood betony (Pedicularis canadensis), a Tupperware container of bottle gentian (Gentiana andrewsii) seedheads, a couple pounds of Canada anemone (Anemone canadensis) in a coffee can and a pound of Canada milkvetch (Astragalus canadensis) in a cloth bag with a drawstring. There was a shoebox containing groundplum milkvetch (Astragalus crassicarpus) pods gathered from the prairie I had accidentally burned. There was a small jar with false gromwell (Onosmodium molle) and another with a few seeds of prairie turnip (Pediomelum esculentum). I am sure I have forgotten several species, but you get the idea. Though Ben is interested in creating a small side business gathering seed, he was also gathering seed as a type of mindfulness, a way to be aware of and immersed in the environment.

While the concept dawned on me when I saw the collection of seed, it blossomed as I studied seed catalogs and websites looking to purchase seed. I ended up buying small amounts of 30-40 species from Prairie Moon Seeds out of Winona, Minnesota to add to the official seed mix and when the box was delivered I was more than a bit deflated. Now, to go along with the large, expensive lot of seed I had purchased to fulfill the CRP requirements (that I wasn’t very happy with) I had a small container of packets that had cost over $1000 that would not appreciably affect the composition of my restoration. I imagined what the field would look like with all of my purchased seed growing and what I visualized was a nice wildflower meadow, but not a prairie. And certainly not a prairie from Day County, South Dakota.

Then I looked at the seed that Ben and I had gathered and the metaphorical light bulb began blazing. I have spent all possible hours since gathering seed from my prairies, along with a couple small prairies owned by friends. The seed gathering has become an avocation independent of the needs of the restoration. It has become the vehicle to allow myself to learn about the landscape. In a sense it has become what a Buddhist might call a walking meditation, silencing my inner dialogue as I wander. Almost magically, a bit of this and a bit of that becomes two or three gallons of seed and a couple of very pleasant hours have gone by. I go home to put the seed in the little dehydrator ovens my wife purchased to dry feed samples and have the pleasure of handling and respecting the fruits of my labor. Each days haul is unimpressive, but in the end the containers of uncleaned seed filled a good sized freezer.

Almost all the seed that was gathered was spread over the restoration last November. Though most of the seed was blended into batches to be broadcast in a pull-type spinner spreader, I have also spent many hours walking around the 100 acres hand-spreading. Usually I did this because I was micro-siting the seed. There is no point in tossing prairie turnip seed in a mesic site, for example, nor prairie cordgrass (Spartina pectinata) on a hill.

A different problem arose with thimbleweed (Anemone cylindrica), prairie smoke (Geum triflorum) and porcupine grass (Heterostipa spartea). There is simply no easy way to mix them with other seeds. It takes the patience of Job to take a wad of thimbleweed or prairie smoke and pick out small groups of seed to fling up for a breeze to distribute. And porcupine grass weaves itself into balls of spiny hell that demand a good pair of leather gloves to painstakingly dismantle the structure and extricate a few seeds at a time. The picture below is of Ben working on a clump (note the spears in his clothing as the porcupine grass fights back valiantly), but most impressive was a large wad that self organized into a wreath that looked like an oversized crown of thorns. While the process of seeding the porcupine grass was not without satisfaction for the job accomplished, a walking meditation it was not!

Ben Lardy doing battle with porcupine grass seed. Victory is not certain.

I used last winter to evaluate what was done, decide upon which components of the local prairies were underrepresented or missing, and to come up with a plan to access those species. Below is a partial list of missing species and species that I have very little of, that I know are in my prairies and that I am hoping to gather this year:

  1. Flodmans thistle, Cirsium flodmanii
  2. Xeric sedges, Carex sp.
  3. Hoary puccoon, Lithospermum canescens
  4. Prairie sundrops, Calylophus serrulatus
  5. Textile onion, Allium textile
  6. Panicgrass, Dicanthelium oligosanthes
  7. Chickweed, Cerastium arvense
  8. Ball cactus, Escobaria vivipara
  9. Silverleaf scurfpea, Pediomelum argophyllum
  10. Green milkweed, Asclepias viridiflora
  11. Prairie ragwort, Packera plattensis
  12. Pennsylvania cinquefoil, Potentilla pennsylvanica
  13. Prairie larkspur, Delphinium virescens
  14. Prairie milkvetch, Astragalus adsurgens

There are good reasons why I was not able to gather significant amounts of these and some other species. They are either 1. Widely scattered, 2. Poor seed producers, 3. Species whose seeds disperse quickly after reaching maturity, 4. Species which senesce and break off or become invisible at seed maturity, or 5. Some combination of the above. For many species there is basically no “Goldilocks” timing to gather seed: you are too early, too late, or both. This means that I am unlikely to gather much of any of these species this year either. Hopefully, though, with greater knowledge of plant locations and phenology, and emphasis upon key species, I can do better. For instance, this year I have successfully gathered a fair bit of textile onion. There is not enough to greatly affect plant composition on even a good sized hill, but one can hope that even a few plants will provide a platform so that there is germplasm available to spread and increase should the conditions allow. Many of these species are specific to a particular site (mostly very thin soils/xeric conditions), and I will be spreading them by hand soon after gathering. It is humbling to gather seed for hours and only end up with a handful, but occasionally one needs to be humbled.

In situations like this I am torn between scattering the seed as widely as possible on appropriate sites and a more targeted seeding in fewer, more concentrated areas. That certainly appears to be how many species are distributed, in patches. My difficulty is a lack of confidence in my ability to pick where to start the patches. Perhaps I am best off getting a few seeds widely scattered and hope for the best. In the end I will probably use both strategies for different species, guided by what I observe in my native prairies.

If all goes well, by the end of this next year I will have around 140-150 species planted, of which about 100 are at least partially gathered from the surrounding prairies. This summer I will try to post a list of species planted, along with a list of species found in the restoration. And more pictures. Had I realized I might start a blog I would have been far more diligent documenting what I saw and did with pictures, but I have done better this summer, and perhaps I can even become a better photographer.

A little update since I wrote this; in addition to the textile onion, I have gathered small amounts of chickweed, ragwort and have started gathering prairie milkvetch. Though I have a few seeds of panicgrass, it is practically impossible to gather, as is puccoon (which is reputed to be difficult to start from seed anyway), I gathered a bit of two xeric-adapted sedges, failed to get any prairie sundrops and have decided that the flodmans thistle can take care of its own damn self and blow into my restoration the same way all the other thistles have. The ball cactus is something I will probably try transplanting next year. That leaves the green milkweed, the cinquefoil and the larkspur to gather small amounts of in August.

I have had some luck gathering three other species whose potential populations I would like to augment. Over the past couple weeks I have gathered every alumroot (Heuchera richardsonii) seedhead I could find: and with some help I have been able to gather a fair bit of blanketflower (Gaillardia aristata) and slender milkvetch (Astragalus flexuosus). I have a good bit of blanketflower already in the restoration, but the phenotype (the visible characteristics of the plants) is quite different than my native blanketflowers, so gathering local germplasm seemed prudent. And I gathered slender milkvetch last year, but missed the ideal week and most pods had opened up and had already dropped much of their seed. This year my timing was better. I have also found several new patches of whorled milkweed (Asclepias verticillata) and hope to gather a fair bit of that.

About 1.5 gallons of slender milkvetch seedpods gathered last week

Then, in mid to late August the main event begins as all the summer blooming prairie species begin to mature seed. Its gonna be fun.

Pando the prairie dog ready for the late summer fun.
Speculations on Natural History

Mindfulness

Perhaps the most gratifying aspect of my prairie restoration journey has been the education I have received. I have learned a great deal about my prairies while gathering seed and while trying to understand the native prairies I am trying to model in my restoration. I clearly have a different relationship with those prairies than I did before. The revelation was just how freaking rudimentary my knowledge has been and still is. Creating the restoration has meant that I have looked much more closely at many plant species I thought I knew well, and learned about many species I had never noticed. That process obviously begins with simple identification, but continues with phenology, site fidelity and the plant and insect associates that each species live with.

An example: I have been aware that a penstemon grew in my prairies for a long time, but had never looked closely enough to identify the species or even notice its abundance. Last spring, now with an eye to creating my restoration model, I noticed a profusion of small white-bloomed penstemons across the tops of many of the most xeric hills. The white penstemon (Penstemon albidus) is one which I had never noticed in popular plant guides and which I have yet to find available from native seed purveyors. Pasqueflowers (Anemone patens) were also blooming on the same sites, but with little else having made significant growth, the 8-12” tall blooms stood out, even from a distance.

Then, two weeks later, I noticed a resurgence of penstemon blooms, but now with a hint of lavender or violet (I am a bit color challenged; not color blind, just color clueless). I soon realized I had a second species, slender penstemon (Penstemon gracilis). Both species grew in the same sites. They were usually in close association on the gravel hills with an entire suite of early blooming forbs: fringed puccoon (Lithospermum incisum), milkwort (Polygala verticillata), bastard toadflax (Comandra umbellata), yellow sundrops (Calylophus serrulata), a chickweed (probably Cerastium arvense) and yellow flax (Linum sulcatum), none of which I had ever looked closely at or identified before. Added to the early blooming species I did know such as ragwort (Packera plattensis), groundplum milkvetch (Astragalus crassicarpus), prairie violet (Viola pedatifida), prairie smoke (Geum triflorum) and pasqueflower, and the hills were a riot of color from April 25-June 15.

An assemblage of very humble, yet beautiful prairie flowers
Scarlet gaura on a hilltop
My cute little two inch tall cactus

Okay, so to call it a “riot” of color might be exaggerating, but to me it was still eye-opening. These were hills I had walked over for 50 years but had never seen before. Over the past 40 years my work has occupied so much of my time during the late spring and early summer that I had spent little time in my prairies. I would always go out to see the pasqueflowers emerge in late April, and by the time I turned around it seemed to be late July. Seeing the variety of blooms in May on these soil-less hills made me giddy. I have done some reading on Buddhist teachings and the concept of mindfulness has resonated with me. In the late 60’s the phrase you would see was, “Be here, now.” In the movie “Wayne’s World” Garth says to Wayne as he moons over an expensive guitar, “Live in the now, man!” Same concept, different contexts. I had been a really crappy Buddhist, not showing sufficient attention to my surroundings. The number of species that I didn’t know on one gravel hilltop, most not taller than a twelve ounce water bottle, gobsmacked me, as the British say. Even the ubiquity of prairie junegrass (Koelaria macrantha), a species that I thought I knew well, was a surprise. Parasitic plants such as bastard toadflax and downy painted cup (Castilleja sessiflora) were not in my purview, though it seems obvious in retrospect that parasitism is a reasonable strategy on a droughty, infertile soil. Another obvious strategy was investing energy in seed rather than roots. An extensive, deep root system really pays off in drought when you have soil for the roots to explore and exploit. When there is really no soil it is reasonable to live fast, die young and leave a lot of seed to grow in the empty spaces on the thin, gravelly soils.

This brings me back to my penstemons. More so than many plants they grow in patches. Often that occurs with rhizomatous growth, plants investing in clonal growth. However when I pulled plants of both penstemon species I found a shallow, fibrous root system, not rhizomes. The common thread, particularly for the white penstemon, was fidelity to extremely droughty soils. Some areas hardly deserve to be called soil, the soil forming processes have modified the gravelly parent material so little. I think that these penstemons turn spring moisture into a lot of viable seed, seed dispersal be damned. Life is fine if seeds drop right next to the parent plants on to the exposed mineral soil of these sites. The parents aren’t very competitive and may not live much longer anyway. This made me hesitant to gather a large percentage of the seed pods as it might affect the survival of the penstemon patch. Perhaps some of the seeds are dispersed by seed eating birds whose gizzards fail to grind all the seeds. This is all obviously speculative, but I think those two penstemons, again, particularly the white, use the strategy of an annual to thrive on a very tough site.

Beauty on a hilltop

Life is ephemeral

Continuity may not mean that I myself continue

But oh, to wave in a cool wind on a spring day

And build a future for another May

Am I talking about the penstemons or creating a metaphor for an old farm boy? A bit of both perhaps.