Author: Robert Narem

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.

Speculations on Natural History

The Ghosts of Evolution

About twenty years ago I read a book called “The Ghosts of Evolution” by Connie Barlow. It discussed evolutionary anachronisms, plant characteristics which no longer make sense because the plant species is missing a partner for which the characteristic evolved. Specifically, the book referenced several trees with large fruits which no longer have an appropriate animal partner to eat the fruits and disperse the seed. The book is based upon an influential paper written in 1982 by Dan Janzen and Paul Martin (of Pleistocene overkill fame) about fruits found in Mesoamerican forests. The evocative title was backed up by an interesting book I would like to read again.

At about the same time as I read the book we were renting a small native grass pasture and stocking it with a few horses. After renting it for several years I noticed several prairie turnips (Pediomelum esculentum) growing in low moist ground by the gate. Seed dispersal for prairie turnips is accomplished by tumbling; when the plants mature they form an abscission layer at ground level, break off, and tumble across the prairie dropping seeds as they go. I am confident these seeds did not get to the gate by tumbling. The nearest turnips were over a quarter of a mile away with two sloughs in between. My money is on the horses, who spent a lot of time near the gate.

I realize that the establishment of those turnips was probably a fluke. Prairie turnips are not normally found in such wet areas. Still, it made quite an impression on me. While I can’t identify anachronistic characteristics in prairie turnips – they tumble around quite well – there are almost inevitably other plants that had fruits made to induce bison or elk or perhaps even the horses that roamed our continent until 10-15,000 years ago, to eat and disperse their seed.

A beautiful, expansive blooming groundplum

One plant I wonder about in this regard is groundplum, or buffalobean milkvetch (Astragalus crassicarpus). Are their seedpods an evolutionary anachronism? The pods do not seem to be consumed by any animal other than me, with year old pods often still around when the plant is developing new fruit. Having me eat them is a waste of the plants energy because I eat them long before seeds are mature while they are still tender and sweet, making me a crappy seed disperser – pun intended. It is confusing that they seem best to eat when seeds are immature; most fruits are tastiest at maturity when seeds are ready to germinate. At maturity buffalobeans are locked away in a tough seed casing. Perhaps the partner they are missing is a rodent; a ground squirrel who caches them and perhaps fails to eat all of them. Buffalobean milkvetch is common, at least in my neighborhood, so I am probably missing something. Still it seems a waste to see the year old pods all dressed up with no place to go.

Seeds from year old pods gathered from 5-6 plants

As I have written before, one impetus for my project was the discovery of Dakota skipper butterflies (Hesperae dacotae) on my nearby prairie. Not only mammals have been and are being lost as reproductive partners. Most of my land qualified for the CRP program as pollinator habitat. The money for pollinator habitat restoration has been driven by worries about honeybees and monarch butterflies. I doubt there would have been much demand for restoring pollinator habitat if the symbols were the Dakota skipper butterfly and native bees. A small irony is that my prairie restoration is partially supported by “colony collapse” disorder of honeybees, a non-native species I would prefer not to have by my restoration to compete with native bees.

To get back on track, I wonder how many native prairie species are missing, or have an insufficient number of pollinators. Pollinator relationships are not necessarily exclusive and many plants can be pollinated by wind-borne pollen, or self-pollinate. Truly efficient pollination however, may require a specific partner species. Could 100 acres of restored prairie indirectly improve the fitness of native prairie species in a larger landscape?

If there were prairie species that had an exclusive pollination relationship with an extinct pollinator we might never know. They are gone. The very existence of the plants we see implies that any partners that are essential still exist. Still, there is obviously a middle ground or the phrase “evolutionary anachronism” would never have been coined. There may be species just hanging on with diminished populations because of a lack of pollinators or seed dispersers. I doubt there is a robust research literature for all the native prairie species whose seeds I gather. Even in an area with a lot of native grasslands such as where I grew up, it is impossible to walk around without feeling the presence of ghosts.

I always circle back to the value of my prairie restoration beyond that of a “vanity project”. What ecosystem services will it provide? As much as I love prairie, I also love farming. My career’s work is helping farmers to raise crops more efficiently while improving their land. Some of the land that is in the restoration, perhaps 40 acres, is productive farm ground and I struggle with whether those acres should have been included in the restoration. I have mentioned the Dakota skipper several times, but I would like to determine what other benefits might accrue past helping one species. Might this project extend habitats for local plant genotypes that I am gathering seed from? Might it help pollinator species that could go on to help native plant species in the larger landscape? And if I add in carbon sequestration and water quality improvement, does this start to add up to something significant? I’m writing this post (and I do actually write every post longhand, at least two written drafts before it is typed) during a February blizzard and I have a bad case of cabin fever. While I am not exactly in an existential crisis, I am questioning all my assumptions. Why am I doing what I am doing? What grassland birds will be able to use my restoration? What insects nearby could use a larger territory to establish a population? Hell, what soil microorganisms in my neighborhood are looking for a new place to stretch their metaphorical legs? What future “ghosts of evolution” can I provide succor to? Blizzard dreams; I may as well dream big.

Speculations on Natural History

When is enough, enough? Part 3

I spent a couple hours yesterday walking around the restoration to spread some grass seed and ponder future management. It’s been a year since the original seeding and the results are coming into better focus. When I evaluated it last fall I felt that bridging in the tank of the drill that did the seeding left 50 acres, or half the field without seed, and only 25-30 acres well seeded (leaving the other 20-25 acres poorly seeded I guess). Further development and perhaps a more objective eye whittles the empty area down to maybe 20-25 acres and raises the better area to 50 acres. Time, and some help from the supplementary seeding that Ben Lardy and I did last fall have provided some encouragement. Still, there is a significant area that doesn’t look good. It is nowhere close to providing any of the ecological services that it has been my goal to provide. How do I make these 25 acres not suck? Therein lies what is becoming an existential dilemma.

To illustrate my concerns I stood on a bare knob and took pictures in all directions. Here is what I saw:

Most of what can be seen are invasive weeds: wormwood sage and marestail; go down the hill and we can add canada thistle, tall waterhemp and a variety of other weed species. Native perennial density varies from one plant per square foot down to one plant per 50 square feet. By any objective measurement this substantial part of the restoration truly does suck. What can be done?

Well, to begin with we have now seeded this area three more times in addition to the first seeding. We pulled a spreader over all of it last November, and then again about the first of May. Since then I (with some help from a couple hard working young women who are helping my wife and I out this summer) have spread supplemental grass and forb seed by hand over most of the area. Every time I think I am done I find myself ready to turn around to buy and gather more seed before I finish the thought. On these gravelly hills I have one more year to augment the seed bank and hopefully add some substance and depth to the restoration. There is still a place at the table, open spots for seedlings to colonize. In the valleys the weeds are thicker and more competitive, but I still hope that there is room there as well for seed spread later this year to have a chance. The fallback position is to start over, and with $500-600 per acre and countless hours of seed gathering invested I am not ready to do that. I also hope to get out there with a sprayer on the ATV to start doing some targeted control, though I know how difficult that will be. One can go crazy trying to control weeds in a situation like this. And finally, I will soon have a neighbor go across this with a mower.

The dream is that I will see a crescendo of seedling establishment building through the entire summer as all the seeds we have spread on the field (perhaps 30-40 seeds/ft2) break dormancy and begin to establish. In the dichotomy of optimists and pessimists I stand firmly holding a glass half full (and am always tempted to say it’s two thirds full). A lifetime of watching the world, however, prompts me to have a Plan C should my optimism be unfounded (Plan B has already been completed), and I am getting close to having plan C decided. In the meantime I will obsessively monitor the seeding and continue to collect seed from my existing prairies. I will end with a couple pictures to illustrate why I am optimistic.

The pictures above show areas that I evaluated as having very poor stands last summer. It is still not a snazzy stand, but along with the weeds are 10-15 species of natives that I seeded, and a reasonable hope that this will look like a full stand next year with the whole panoply of species as crowns expand, rhizomes run and new seedlings emerge. The optimist in me says much of the emptiest area can look like this next year.

I also made some observations on the CRP field I seeded 9 years ago. There’s a real “Rambunctious Garden” thing going on there as the natives I planted try to reach an equilibrium with the weeds and create something new. Then today I took a path where I saw Canada anemone (Anemone canadensis), northern bedstraw (Galium boreale), a spiderwort (Tradescantia sp.) and cudleaf sage (Artemisia ludoviciana), none of which were planted in the field. The anemone, the bedstraw and the sage only had to move 50 feet from nearby prairie, while the spiderwort may have been a “contaminant” in the original seeding. Given enough time and some gentle management and we might see many species move around and find new homes. Who knows what might happen in 50 or 150 years. It is certain that the evolutionary fitness of all the native prairie species has depended upon their abilities to move and establish themselves in new homes, and only our short term focus and short lives limit our ability to envision what can occur.

Native species doing their best to be weeds

And so I cling to my hopes. “Enough” has not yet been reached, and I have not yet given up on my goal of a diverse plant environment which will provide benefits for a long time. We have US Fish and Wildlife easements on adjoining ground and the hope is that we could offer some or all of the restoration field for easement consideration in the future. For some reason this reminded me of a line from Douglas Adams’ classic “A Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy”. An alien being becomes immortal through an accident and becomes so bored that he takes on the quest to personally insult every being in the universe in alphabetical order (if you haven’t read the book, you need to). When a killjoy informs him of the impossibility of the quest, even for an immortal being, he simply fixes the naysayer with a steely glare and says, “A man can dream, can’t he?” Well, I’m not sure where that apocryphal example fits in with my restoration blog, but I feel the urge to reply to the naysayer within my own brain, “A man can dream, can’t he?”

Speculations on Natural History

Fire, Part 3

After the success of my accidental burn in 2017 I was interested in accomplishing a well-planned controlled burn on a 20 acre prairie a half mile north of the restoration site in the spring of 2018. This prairie had been used as a pasture till the 1960’s, hayed intermittently for another decade, and then not used in any way for the past 40 years. It was a poster child for the need to manage prairies to save them, covered by thick stands of Kentucky bluegrass (Poa pratensis) and smooth brome (Bromus inermis). I had gathered some seed on this piece in the fall of 2017 and found native plant diversity and density to be disappointing, except on the droughtiest hilltops. There was no longer a fence to allow grazing and it is a very awkward piece to hay; the only reasonable choice for management seemed to be a lighted match.

I contracted with Ben Lardy, a Pheasants Forever employee who has been working with me throughout the process, to create a burn plan, and to gather and manage a crew to do the burn. With help from Pete Bauman, the range extension specialist for South Dakota State University (and an ex Nature Conservancy employee who had been part of many burns), Ben came up with a good plan that I approved. About May 20 the availability of the crew intersected with a perfect day and sufficient cool season grass growth to create a wonderful burn. Literally every square foot burned right to the ground during the well controlled fire. We would have a chance to see what could be accomplished.

A map of Ben’s burn plan. Black smudges are back burns. (Photo by Ben Lardy)
As it all winds down (Photo by Ben Lardy).
Ten days after the burn

The results can be evaluated over the two primary environments: xeric hills mostly covered by Kentucky bluegrass and mesic valleys with a thick stand of brome and Canadian thistles (Cirsium canadense).

The results on the hills were dramatic. The perfect conditions for the burn caught the Kentucky bluegrass about to head and did some serious damage to it. The native warm season grasses which were there had the whole summer to grow before the cool weather of the fall allowed vigorous bluegrass growth. The blue grama (Bouteloua gracilis), released from bondage, made spectacular growth, pushing out many two inch long seedheads. I’m assuming that some of those seeds fell into openings created by the fire which will allow new seedling establishment. Apart from the new seedlings, the blue grama will undoubtedly expand because of crown and root reserves built with the summer’s carbohydrates.

Off the crest of the hills in the less xeric conditions many bunches of prairie dropseed (Sporobolus heterolepis) used the opportunity to expand. I had hardly noticed dropseed in the past, but thick clumps of four foot tall seedheads and the attendant vegetative growth dotted the hillsides. There was enough seed that I felt free to gather a couple pounds, while still leaving plenty to drop.

A third warm season grass that will see long term benefits is prairie sandreed (Calamovilfa longifolia). I had noticed one large patch on a hillside for many years, obvious as a pale green area in the summer and a rusty colored circle after maturity. After the burn I saw many additional mini-patches expanding all over the hills, as rhizomatous growth turned what might have been individual plants into sizable patches. Seeds waved 5-6 feet in the air.

Ben Lardy with a very tall sandreed seedhead, almost 7′ tall

What was most dramatic, though were the gardens of wildflowers. Not only were there expanses of the usual suspects such as leadplant (Amorpha canescens), black samson (Echinacea angustifolia), dotted gayfeather (Liatris punctata) and stiff sunflower (Helianthus pauciflorus), but also smaller patches of silky aster (Symphyotricum sericeum), heath aster (Symphyotrichum ericoides), scarlet gaura (Gaura coccinea), whorled milkweed (Asclepias verticillata) and hairy goldaster (Heterotheca villosa). The poor pictures I have posted can only hint at what I saw. It was glorious.

A gaggle of gayfeathers

Unfortunately I can’t say saw similar results on the 4-5 acres of mesic soils dominated by brome. Forty years with no harvesting had allowed the brome to eliminate competition. In this area, a broad saddle between two ridges, brome and its unholy partner, Canada thistle, grew back as thick as they had been before the fire. On a ring around the top of the saddle, where the brome grades into the Kentucky bluegrass, clumps of dropseed, big bluestem (Andropogon gerardii) and indiangrass (Sorghastrum nutans) were able to expand, and hopefully continue to expand in 2019. Below is a picture of a large area of leadplant trying to work its way downhill into the brome.

Notably, one mesic forb did make dramatic growth, American licorice (Glychyrrhiza lepidota). There had always been a couple areas near the wet draw that bisects the site, but the short period of release from brome competition engendered racehorse rhizomatous growth. The rhizomes seemed to have grown 15 feet up the hill, though much of that was probably bud release on already existing rhizomes. Last fall when I was collecting seed it was quick work filling a five gallon bucket which turned into a pound of seed after shelling. If the snow had not been so deep this winter it would have been fun to get back there on a nice mid-winter day to fill a pail or two. Below is a view of what is now an acre of licorice.

If things go well this fall, I will have a neighbor, Andrew Butler, build a high tensile electric fence around the prairie and graze it in rotation with a neighboring pasture soon. My wife’s grazing project (She grazes 80-85 cows on a 340 acre block of native grass divided into 8 paddocks) has shown that you can decimate brome with repeated fall grazing, and hopefully Andrew and I can finesse the movement of his cattle to allow warm season grasses to recolonize the brome.

One negative result of the burn was the discovery of several patches of yellow toadflax (Linaria vulgaris) aka butter and eggs. I had never noticed toadflax on this prairie, but it was also released by the removal of cool season grass competition. I did some herbicidal control to keep the patches from spreading, but need to develop a plan for 2019. Toadflax is evil shit, and I may have to consider full chemical warfare to eliminate the patches, though I plan to seek advice before making a decision.

There is a third environment I have not yet mentioned, a linear wetland that bisects the prairie, and the edge of the slough it drains into. Though much of this had standing water when burned, the thick cover (mostly cattails) burned almost to water level. Obviously, a fire doesn’t have the same effect in this wet environment, but a variety of facultative wetland forbs grew along the edges and worked their way into the mass of cattails. I have limited need of wetland seed for my restoration, so I spent only a small amount of time gathering seed there, mostly swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata) and Joe Pye weed (Eutrochium maculatum). However, I do hope to spend more time there this summer, as my knowledge of wetland plants is limited and I would like to learn more.

Joe pye weed hanging out with some friends

Finally, I think it relevant to mention what I didn’t see after the fire. I didn’t see prairie junegrass (Koelaria macrantha) increase; I didn’t see pasqueflower (Anemone patens) increase (though it was interesting to see plants blooming in June after the fire). I didn’t find any groundplum milkvetch (Astragalus crassicarpus), prairie violets (Viola pedatifida) or puccoon (Lithospermum canescens). As might be expected from a late spring fire, I failed to help the cool season natives. This was a very different result from my accidental fire in early April the year before. Some of those cool season natives might be missing; this prairie is not as diverse as the neighboring prairies. But everything has a cost, and a failure to help the cool season natives was the fee I paid to attain the other benefits. This was probably the best that I could expect from a single fire event. Now I look forward to managing the 20 acres with grazing and look forward very eagerly to what will grow in 2019.

Speculations on Natural History

Fire, Part 2: Results

In my last post I discussed my very un-prescribed, un-controlled burn. Now it’s time to discuss the results of the burn on the prairie. As stupid as my accidental arson was, it was also something I had desired to happen. It occurred a month earlier than the idealized version my brain had imagined, but I now had an opportunity to see the results of a large experiment. A gust of wind had given me a gift and I needed to show appreciation for that gift by learning a few things.

First, I can elaborate the results on introduced cool season grasses: no effect. If a prairie manager wants to discomfit cool season grasses and benefit warm season grasses a burn should occur in May. The burn occurred in early April when there was still frost in the ground. Neither the Kentucky bluegrass (Poa pratensis) nor the smooth brome (Bromus inermis) had any appreciable growth. The world was still brown when the fire occurred. I doubt the fire gave significant advantage to native grasses. Even as I write this I can think of one possible exception. Porcupine grass (Heterostipa spartea), which is common on the better soils on this prairie, seemed to produce much more seed than usual. Whether it gained any competitive advantage versus the introduced cool season grasses is uncertain, though I am continuing to evaluate the effect.

The effects on forbs, however, were eye opening. The first example I observed was buffalo bean milkvetch (Astragalus crassicarpus), aka ground plum. Buffalo beans are not uncommon, but many crowns, heretofore hidden in and dominated by grass cover. rocketed out of the ground after the fire. Each plant produced many long stems covered in blooms. Unfortunately, I was not yet fully committed to seed gathering at that time, but thankfully my friend Ben Lardy came out one day to gather several gallons of pods. Had I invested more time and energy there might have been ten gallons more. Cool season forbs, ready to rock and roll in April and May would logically benefit from an early fire. The removal of the thatch (mimicking heavy grazing) also benefited the pasqueflowers (Anemone patens) which were blooming all over the hills by the end of the month.

Here is what happens after a burn. Craziness.

Another plant which seemed to benefit from the fire was leadplant (Amorpha canescens). The hayland hadn’t been hayed for several years and the 3-4 year old growth was getting woody. My assumption was that a fire hot enough to kill the buds on woody growth (which happened) would mean a year of purely vegetative growth from crown buds. To my amazement, new stems practically leapt out of the ground and produced large spikes of flowers, and then seed. I compared those plants to the plants on the one steep hillside which had missed the burn (saved in the nick of time, so to speak, by the Waubay Fire Department). On the undamaged old growth the three foot tall leadplant shrubs had just a few flower spikes each and at best produced 25% of the seed of the first year growth in the burned area. Similar, but less dramatic results occurred with several other forbs.

While I didn’t notice any difference in prairie turnip (Pediomelum esculentum) growth that summer, I saw something that was even more interesting the next year, 2018. While walking around the prairie last summer, a year after the burn, I noticed a great number of young prairie turnips over the hills. The most parsimonius explanation is that the heat of the fire broke the dormancy on seeds produced the past couple years, and that the lack of competition and access to mineral soil on the gravel hills (where even Kentucky bluegrass struggles to live) allowed a high recruitment percentage. Regardless, it was a treat to see so many plants establish.

I saw the same thing occur with the ball cactus (Coryphantha vivipara I think). There have always been a few cactus on the ridges, particularly in the roadcuts for the section line trail, but I had never seen many in the hayland or the pasture on the other side of the trail. I was afraid that the fire might damage those few existing plants. First, the removal of the scanty mulch on the ridges revealed many more cactus than I knew existed, though the fire had obviously killed some. Soon, though, the cactus that survived showed new growth, with each clump calving many new balls. Then, last summer revealed many new plants, single balls developing after probable seedling establishment in 2017.

A couple quickly expanding ball cacti after the fire

In summary, to my very uneducated eye there was no change in the amount or density of the introduced cool season grasses from my early April burn. Burning while frost is still in the ground removes mulch and lets the ground warm up more quickly in the spring, but doesn’t have the added benefit of causing the cool season grasses to “waste” root reserves and deplete their bud bank on early growth that burns off. It did, however, obviously give an advantage to a group of forbs, especially those growing on the more xeric sites, which produced more seed. As I did more research into price and availability of seed I realized that seed gathering needed to be integral to my restoration plan, not just a supplement. I gathered several pounds of leadplant seed and several pounds of black samson (Echinacea angustifolia) heads, along with a smattering of other species that came along for the ride. This also led directly to the decision to burn another prairie in 2018, the subject of the next post.

There is a postscript to the story concerning what I learned after gathering seed in 2018. Nothing is free. Several of the species which had prolific seed production in 2017, the year of the fire, produced much less in 2018. Buffalo bean milkvetch plants which might have produced 40 or 50 pods in 2017 only produced 10 in 2018. Perhaps too much of the stored crown/root reserves were mobilized to make the spectacular growth of 2017. The plants needed a year to build carbohydrate reserves and had nothing left in the bank after spending their reserves like drunken sailors in 2017. Alternating years of high and low fruit production has been noted in many tree fruits, from apples to olives, ever since cultivation began. The concept of carbohydrate partitioning, that a plant must “decide” where and to what use the food it makes should go because that food is a limited resource, means that you can’t have everything; there is always an opportunity cost.

In short, seed production in species which were prolific in 2017 were diminished in 2018, very noticeably in the buffalo bean milkvetch. Will seed production ramp back up this year? We will see. Conversely, some species which avoided the drunken sailor syndrome produced more seed last year, probably after enhanced vegetative growth built up food reserves, notably slender milkvetch (Astragalus flexuosus) and prairie onion (Allium stellatum). These are anecdotal observations, not controlled measurements, obviously, but that is how it appeared to me. And this now sets the stage for my next post describing my 2018 burn.

Speculations on Natural History

Fire Part 1

The regenerative and restorative properties of fire in native landscapes are detailed everywhere in conservation literature. One reads that the lack of fire has negatively impacted almost every landscape, because almost every landscape developed with periodic fires. After a while fire seems almost gentle, or nurturing. Anyone who has fought a fire, even a trash fire that got away, knows that fire is scary shit. Farmers, however, are fairly experienced and comfortable with fire. There is always a garbage pit, a pile of tree branches or some four year old hay bales that need burning. So with that experience informing my thoughts, in early 2017 I began to think about burning 23 acres of native grass hayland.

In early April I was wandering in that prairie trying to imagine how I could make a safe burn happen. There were grazed pastures on three sides which would be pretty easy to manage around, but the north side has a winding boundary with 37 acres of CRP I had planted several years before. The CRP was a tangled mass of tall grass, sweet clover and wormwood sage which would be difficult to manage around. How could I do a safe back burn? How many people would it take to complete a safe burn? How soon could I start preparing?

While I pondered this I knelt down to assess how ready the old foliage was to burn. The ground was still wet from recently melted snow and frost still in the ground. I grabbed a fistful of grass, took out some matches and lit it. The grass flared right up, and then things began to go horribly wrong. What had been a dead still day suddenly blew up a gust that started some surrounding grass on fire. As I calmly was stomping that out another gust and then another started other fires around my feet. It was suddenly beyond my ability to stomp out. Panicking a bit now, I took off my vest to help smother the flames. My vest, made of a witches brew of petrochemical derivatives, was fuel to the fire. Before my hands were encased in molten plastic I dropped the vest to survey the situation.

Though the fire was still only burning an area of 10-20 square feet it was evident that I could not put it out. I began to walk back to my pickup, perhaps 200 feet upwind, to drive to the neighbors while I called the fire in to the local fire department. I reached into my pants pocket for my phone, and realized that the phone was in my vest pocket, merrily burning away in the blackening landscape. Worse yet, when I got to the pickup I found that I had pulled the keys (which I almost never do) and they were also in my vest pocket. That would not have been so bad, but the keys to my Dodge were also plastic. More fuel for the fire. Not good.

A smart phone is an inadequate tool when paired with a stupid operator

As the fire expanded, more quickly now, the breeze became a steady 10 mph from the south, I considered my options. The neighborhood is fairly empty, and the only neighbor I knew would be home lived over two miles northwest of where I was. I began to walk. And as I walked I saw two things. First, the fire was backing steadily towards my pickup, which meant I might no longer have a vehicle when I returned. Second, the fire would soon reach the CRP, and we would see some fireworks.

As I walked north on the section line trail the fire hit the CRP to my left and it exploded. Flames shot 10-12 feet in the air and the burning front accelerated as bits of burning plants blew ahead and ignited new areas. Though I was walking on the dirt trail, I was just a few feet from the CRP and I was intimidated into crossing the fence to the east to put more distance between myself and the fire. Soon the fire jumped the trail and started crawling into the pasture, though I was staying ahead of it.

Both the fire and I had now passed the pasture to where the CRP bordered a neighbor’s 120 acre winter wheat field planted into the previous year’s stubble. Here was the biggest financial risk of the day; if the winter wheat sustained substantial damage we were talking real money. As I looked back it appeared the fire was unable to burn into the wheat, but I didn’t wait to see as I had only walked half a mile, and still had two miles to go.

The CRP field comes to a point on its north end, bordered by the section line trail on its east side and the curving shoreline of Anderson Lake on its northwest side. The only path forward was for the fire to burn into the shrubby growth along the lake. This slowed the fire down while I advanced ahead along the lakeshore far enough to lose sight of the fire. Eventually it would come north to another winter wheat field and I still had a mile and a half to walk. Time was of the essence, but health problems related to cancer treatments twelve years ago have limited my breathing to where I cannot run,. I am, however, walking like a son-of-a-bitch, now halfways to the neighbor’s. Finally, while still a half mile away, I saw a pickup stopped on the township road wondering who the crazy fool was walking across his alfalfa field. The neighbor, Derek Butler, figured it out and drove out to pick me up. Before he could speak I said, “Call the fire department and take me over to my hayland to see if I still have a pickup.

Yellow X is where fire began. Area in red is approximate area of burn. Outlined field top center is winter wheat field. Black outline in lower left is boundary of my land.

It had been a tough day. I had done something careless and stupid, and now I would get to see the results. I was at peace with paying for the fire department to come. I was at peace with paying Derek for any damage done to his winter wheat. I was past the rationalizations we all do when we fuck up to minimize our personal responsibility for the consequences of our actions. I was ready to bow my head and do some serious penance. However, my luck had changed, beginning with running into Derek.

First, Derek’s brother Andrew was on the Waubay Volunteer Fire Department, and Derek gave him a call. It turns out the entire crew was at a training exercise with all their equipment, so within 20 minutes I had the entire crew out on my prairie, hoses blazing.

Second, when Derek crested the hill south of my hayland I saw that my pickup was safe. The fire had burned underneath my pickup, but the grass on the knob where I had parked was short, and the fire was comparatively cool. The pickup smelled like smoke for a few weeks, but no real harm done.

Third, the damage to the winter wheat was so minimal that no recompense was necessary. The fire had burned all or part of two pieces of hayland, the CRP, a 40 acre pasture and the brush along the lake, but not an acre of any neighbor’s land.

Fourth, I provided great entertainment for the Waubay fire crew, the neighbors who came to see the show and the county emergence services manager (who teased me mercilessly), and provided a wonderful training exercise for the fire crew. The crew got to try out some new equipment in the field, ran all around the prairie hills containing borders and had everything wrapped up so quickly they were home in time for supper. The teasing was welcomed by me because by this time I welcomed a little humiliation. In the end the whole day was considered their scheduled training exercise and I was not charged for their work.

Finally to put a coda on the tale, I went into the county Farm Service Agency (FSA) the next week to report the fire. Judy, the employee in charge of CRP, looked over my file and asked only one question: “Did it all burn?” I told her it burned very well. She then told me that I was scheduled for mid-contract vegetation removal that year. With a smile she checked the metaphorical box and I was given credit for efficiency. Rather than have to pay Butlers to hay the CRP that summer and then destroy the bales, I was rewarded for my foolishness.

The saying is that “karma’s a bitch”. Karma is also sometimes a kind and generous companion. While I am afraid there is an overdrawn karma account that will need some serious deposits soon, all one can do in the face of such things is to bow humbly, smile and move on.

Speculations on Natural History

The Neighborhood

A big impetus for the prairie restoration, as I’ve discussed before, was the discovery of the Dakota skipper butterfly (Hesperae dacotae), a federally threatened species, on my adjoining native prairie. I hope to expand potential skipper habitat, as well as provide a buffer between the skipper habitat and farmed acres. This will double the grassland on this part of my farm to 200 acres. What makes this more interesting is the surrounding neighborhood. The reason for the native prairies on my farm is a terminal moraine, the dump of piled up materials left by a glacial advance, just to the west of my land. This strip of land runs north and south for about twenty miles, generally a couple miles wide, and is almost all in native grass. Though my farm is not actually on the moraine, it is in an area of glacial outwash, sand and gravel laid down by the melting glacier. The west half of my farm, and the west half of the restoration field, is in this area of outwash. While some of this is farmed, much is in grass, as shown in the map below.

My farm is in the northeast corner, with the restoration field highlighted

In the nine square miles shown, almost 6000 acres, there is about 3500 acres of grass, 1500 acres of farmground and 1000 acres of water. Most of the grass is native pasture though there are about 800 acres of public land in low diversity prairie restorations. Extend this landscape north and south and you end up with a fair amount of grass. My restoration field is highlighted in the upper right.

A little aside I may elaborate on in a future post: on the west side of the map you can see the east edge of a large lake. When I was growing up the lake was a salt lake (it is the final home of the water in a drainage area with no outlet). In the drought of 1974-1976, and again in 1988 it was almost completely dry, a muddy, foul smelling salt flat. It was surrounded by several thousand acres of salty grassland, much of it owned by the state as a game production area. The grass is all underwater now as the extremely wet years of the 1990’s filled the basin. 3000-5000 acres of shallow salty water which held no fish is now a freshwater lake of 15000-20000 acres up to thirty feet deep and a magnet for fishermen from far and wide. It blows my mind, but for now I will close off this tangent and return to the main topic.

Connectivity is a buzzword of the conservation community of late, the physical connection of habitats which allows the movement of species across landscapes. My neighborhood has excellent, though not perfect connectivity. In looking at Google Earth one day I estimated that because of the moraine there was about a 25 mile stretch of connected grass (with one or two very small gaps) connecting perhaps 25,000 acres of grass in total. I wonder about the significance of this to the long term value of my restoration. To put it another way, is my project more worthwhile because of the surrounding neighborhood? Much of the grass in the area is overgrazed pasture, some has had herbicides applied to rein in the weeds that are the inevitable result of that overgrazing. I would like to assess the neighborhood to ponder its relationship to my restoration, though I obviously can’t trespass over all of it (I’m not above trespassing on some of it to look around).

One indicator is the presence of the Dakota skippers. Individual skippers have a limited range, reputedly reluctant or unable to travel over a half mile. There is obviously a large enough block of grass which has sufficient nectar and larval food sources in the area to sustain a small population. And in my immediate vicinity I know there is a connected block of at least 1000 acres that shows no history of significant herbicide history. If I can go to the border of the pasture and see black samson (Echinacea angustifolia) heads I am confident there are other wildflowers.

There are also both sharptail grouse and prairie chickens in the neighborhood. I regularly kick up sharpies on my prairies and have seen a covey of chickens a couple miles south of my land. Prairie grouse need a landscape of several thousand acres of grass and we have that. I don’t know if there is a lek nearby or if the grouse are part of a population from a much larger area of grass a few miles to the east. It certainly would be fun to find a lek in my immediate area.

Other grassland birds such as bobolinks, upland sandpipers, grasshopper sparrows and marbled godwits are reasonably common in the neighborhood. One of the joys of late spring is listening to the sound of upland sandpiper flights as they establish territories and try to impress potential mates. I am not skilled enough at bird identification to know whether there might be more unusual birds such as a Baird’s sparrow or a Sprague’s pipit, birds of similar habitat mostly found farther north and west. I would like to learn of other biotic indicators to monitor, perhaps entomological ones.

Until a few years ago I considered almost all the grass in my neighborhood as very “safe” from conversion to farming. Any area that made sense as farmground was already farmed. Actually, there is probably more grass now than when I was a kid, and more grass then, than right after the turn of the century. Just as the poor farm fields of the Appalachians have gone back to trees, many small farm fields broke out over 100 years ago were allowed to go back to grass. But a few years ago a 240 acre piece near my farm was bought by the local owner of a sizable gravel business, just to the southwest of my restoration. I assume that no mineable gravel was found, so the owner decided to improve the value of his investment by breaking some of the grass. This was not a fancy bit of prairie; I am pretty sure the 60-80 acres he broke out the first year were farmed at one time. Then the next year another sizable chunk of the farm was worked up right over steeply sloping hills I am confident were native grass. It was appalling. Even the hard core farming neighbors thought it a bit unethical.

Very little crop has come off this land since it was broke, though we have had decent rainfall the past two years. In a drought most of the farm will raise nothing. During heavy rainfall events it will wash like a bastard. At some point in the future the land will likely get planted back to grass after a great deal of erosion and loss of organic matter. The hubris is breathtaking. This instructive little example shows the purpose of US Fish and Wildlife grassland easements. In the past I had considered easements on unfarmable land a waste of taxpayer resources. I was wrong.

While much of the grass in the area is under easement, I hope others consider that path. The neighbors I have talked to invariably think that farming the steep, rocky hills is foolhardy, but many are very uncomfortable with the idea of a perpetual easement. Though I have been willing to place my grass under easement, I understand their concern. Forever is a long time. In an ironic twist I think the perpetual easement program is aided greatly by our inherent short term focus. Wave some money in front of our faces and “perpetual” becomes a less scary term.

There was a point to this digression. If my restoration is effective in providing a helpful addition to the prairie landscape in my neighborhood I am planning to offer it for a perpetual easement, and have an indication that it will be accepted. I have 100 acres of adjoining prairie in the program, and two of the nearest neighbors have another 500. There will be a great deal of satisfaction in expanding the prairie habitat in the neighborhood, and if the government will wave some money in front of my face, I will gladly take the money and run. I can use the exercise.

Looking at pasqueflowers on Easter Sunday

more about connectivity and Dakota Skipper
Speculations on Natural History

When is enough enough? Part 2

In my last post I considered how to evaluate the sufficiency or completeness of my restoration, hoping to inform my decision of whether to add more seed this spring. I am also starting to think ahead to this coming summer. What is the worth of gathering seed to add to what I hope is an existing stand later this year? My assumption is that the areas that were actually seeded last June will begin to fill in this summer, but that we will not yet have a “sod”. There will still be a lot of bare ground which should mostly be spackled with new seedlings, both native perennials and weeds. That would seem to provide a window for some success for further seeding.

And now I go back to the concept of redundancy from the last post. To have surplus seed ameliorates the effects of two different weaknesses of last years’ seeding. First, I know that the drill used in the June seeding failed to deliver much seed to about half the field, and the subsequent spreading of seed that we did in November probably had imperfect coverage. Seed that I spread this coming summer and fall will in some cases fall where there is no native seed. I hope those areas are very small, but I believe they are out there. Add in some bird predation (there has been a persistent flock of horned larks and snow buntings hanging out on the field all winter) and perhaps a little water movement as the snow melts, and I may have more empty areas than I think. This means that, like last fall, I need to create a diverse mix to spread if I wish to create a diverse community on the entire field. I will have to buy some grass seed to blend with all the forbs I hope to gather.

Second, the June seeding was the approved CRP seed mix integrating seed from many sources, sometimes far away from my home in northeast South Dakota. What will be the longevity of western yarrow (Achillea millefolium) from Oregon or blanketflower (Gaillardia aristata) from Colorado? I have already gathered small amounts of blanketflower and yarrow from my prairies and spread them last fall. It seems prudent to gather and spread more to provide plants with the genetic staying power to live through temperatures of 35 below. Last fall I concentrated my efforts on the areas that were bereft of seed; I should probably supplement the well-seeded areas with adapted genetics as well.

An awkward impediment to the success of summer 2019 seeding is the dormancy residing in most native species. Most of what I spread in July and August this year will only break dormancy in 2020. Will there still be a place at the table then? In the best of situations most seeds don’t produce plants, and in this situation a very high percentage of what I spread will become food for some organism, whether bird, insect or microbe. We will return once more to redundancy. Plants produce a great deal of seed to waste, but that is obviously an efficient evolutionary strategy. In a native prairie some seeds must germinate and grow to replace their aging parents, or all plants would reproduce clonally rather than put their energy into seed.

This begs the question of how best to use a limited resource, my time, to improve the restoration? Should I be “wasting” my time gathering seed, most of which has no chance to improve the stand? I have an agronomic consulting business that I still work at. Perhaps my time is best used making money to buy seed and services to help my seeding. Where best should I use my limited reservoir of stamina? But no, the answer is easy, though I am not an impartial judge; I need to be out gathering seed, spreading seed and observing what is happening both in the restoration prairie and my native prairies. Though money is always limited I feel that I have more money than time, and more time than energy. The breathing problems resulting from cancer treatments led to a trachaeostomy and that has led to a susceptibility to pneumonia. I might not be able to continue doing this in future years. Though I have walked the prairies for close to 60 years, I was poleaxed by how much I learned the last two years, gathering seed and preparing for the restoration. How could I give up that fun?

What of the species that I have not been able to gather? Puccoon (Lithospermum canescens), silverleaf scurfpea (Pediomelum argophyllum), ball cactus (Coryphantha vivipara), textile onion (Allium textile) sun sedge (Carex inops) and prairie milkvetch (Astragalus adsurgens) are all reasonably common (Scurfpea is practically ubiquitous), but the seed is difficult to gather and unavailable to buy. Is it worth spending the time to transplant a few balls of cactus, for instance. If it is intimidating to use a small seed spreader on 100 acres, how much more daunting to feel able to affect species composition by transplanting. I haven’t yet decided, but I’m playing the long game here, looking to the future. Once I feel that I have a decent restoration I will probably offer it to the U S Fish and Wildlife Service as a grassland easement. There are already easements on all my prairies and an adjoining neighbor’s pasture. If I’m willing to enter into a perpetual easement I should be able to consider actions which might not have significant impact for many years. It is something to ponder.

Another topic to think about is whether to seed a soil biota. How much soil does it take to allow the native prairie microbiota to get a foothold? And is it necessary? Will the wind and water do the job for me? I freely admit to being in deep water here. Dr. Caley Gasch of North Dakota State University who has worked in mine reclamation, was encouraging when I casually mentioned the idea. When I backtracked by referring to the enormity of the task, she suggested just throwing a few shovelfuls of soil around. Seed some small areas, and if the new environment is to their liking it will hasten their spread across the restoration. Once again, playing the long game. There is a chicken/egg dilemma here, though. Which partner comes first in a symbiotic relationship? Perhaps I need to let the plants establish and let the roots explore a bit before I put too much work into moving soil.

When is enough, enough? Hell if I know. To return to the topic of adding seed; redundancy, by definition, is inefficient, but can provide comfort in covering up or ameliorating the effect of poor planning, poor execution and poor luck. In my work on the restoration this summer my goal, you might say, will be to be inefficient, but to be comforted. For at least another year or two, this project is my mistress.

Postscript

The last two posts (as well as others to come) were written during blizzards last winter, and are a bit dated. Recently I have done some more seeding which I will describe soon in another post.