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Plants of Central Point Prairies, 26-50

Here is the second installment of my somewhat nerdy attempt to document the the plants of my prairies

26. Narrow-leaved Purple Coneflower. To me, this is the flagship of the dry prairies. It is diagnostic of whether a pasture is native grass or not. If it has purple coneflowers, it is native. Though not heavily grazed, it is sensitive to prolonged overgrazing, so one might say it is diagnostic of native pastures with the potential to be brought back to better range condition. I have thousands in my native prairies and probably have thousands in the restoration. Plants seem to need to be three or four years old before they bloom. and this year, with good rains, meant that hundreds of plants that had been small, vegetative plants the past few years bloomed in the restoration. The plant is a veritable chemical factory, producing both the chemicals that caused Native Americans to chew the roots for toothaches and that has supplied the health food industry with material for teas to sooth, heal and ramp up the immune systems of their clientele. I just like to chew the roots and provide others the opportunity to try. It’s hard to describe the effect; it doesn’t truly numb the mouth like novocain, but provides a very strong tingling sensation that some (me) find pleasant and others find unpleasant. I have gathered and spread a great deal of Purple Coneflower seed and it has been another big success in the restoration. When I was in college 50 years ago I would dig roots for my roommate at nearby prairies, prompting him to say, “Give me some root, roomie. Gotta have some of that root!” He was an entertaining roommate, much better than the previous roommate who was dealing weed and hashish that he was storing in our dorm room’s refrigerator, and totally trashed our room when an alarm clock went off when he was sleeping one off. Below is a picture I recently used in another post of a hill in a native prairie that had been burned 8-10 weeks earlier.

27-29. Prairie Onion (Allium stellatum), Nodding Onion (Allium cernuum) and Meadow Garlic (Allium canadense), Unlike the textile onion, mentioned in the last installment of this series, these are all summer blooming onions, blooming in July or early August. The only one of the three that I have in my prairies is the prairie onion, but I have added the other two to the restoration as they are documented to be in this area. The meadow garlic can be found in a prairie just a couple miles away that I look at occasionally. I have not gathered seed there as it is owned by a remote landlord, an older gentleman who lives a couple hours away, and I have never contacted him for permission, but my young friend, Levi Waddell, collected seed (actually bulblets) from another nearby site and I have been distributing them in appropriately mesic sites. An interesting thing I have noticed in plant descriptions in various botanical websites is that quite a few species that I see as mesic, avoiding the dry gravel hills and thriving near the base of the hills, are described in the literature as inhabiting dry environments. One of the best things with my restorations being adjacent to native prairies is that I have a model to follow as I try to establish species in appropriate sites. While some species are flexible in their preferred home, many have found their desired landing spot in a fairly specific environment where they are best able to compete. The prairie onions, which are common in my native prairies are almost always found in a band along the bottom half of the hills, where the convex and concave parts of the slope meet, but not in the valleys where they cannot compete with thick brome grass. This picture below is a fair representation of their favored type of site. I have gathered a lot of onion seed on my prairies the past few years, and have a fair amount, perhaps 200, in the restoration. There are thousands in the native prairies.

30. Pincushion, or Ball Cactus (Coryphantha vivipara) I have known that we have cactus in the prairie hills as long as I can remember, seeing them in the spoil bank cuts where the section line trail was cut 130 or so years ago. As far as I knew for most of my life I had assumed that was the only place they were found, perhaps 10 or 20 plants along the trail on the hills. If I was vaguely aware of them in the pasture or hayland, my memory is inexact. Then, in 2017 I accidentally started a fire on the hayland in Section 11 which burned most of those 23 acres, plus parts of the two pastures near it. Now in plain sight, I saw many more little cactus plants, looking scorched and dead. Here is what I saw later that summer.

Not only had I not killed them (I may have killed a few), I had stimulated them to bloom and divide. I am not sure whether the stimulating factor was the nutrients released by the fire or the removal of the grass thatch that cools the soil, but I saw blooming cactus everywhere the burn went over the top of the gravel hills. They are only adapted to a few acres in my prairie, and can be very hard to find when blooms are absent (unless you kneel on them), but I now estimate close to 200 in the three native prairies, and perhaps four or five that I have transplanted into the restoration. I have transplanted more into the restoration, but after an entire growing season in the SDSU greenhouse they were the size of a marble and it may be years before they grow enough to bloom so I can find them. Even when they bloom they seldom pollinate and grow cactus berries full of seed, but I was able to gather some in 2022, perhaps 50 berries full of seed in a gooey jelly, which then became the transplants that I have put out the past two years. I was able to gather a few more this past summer, and perhaps the crew at SDSU will grow some more seedlings for me. I get a kick out of how hard they work, first to attract a pollinator with their gorgeous flowers, and then to attract a seed disperser, probably a rodent, with their berries, shown below.

31. Blanketflower (Gaillardia aristata) Blanketflower is the plant that poleaxed me to teach me the concept of local adaptation. The seed that was used grew wonderfully the year after the restoration was first seeded, and then almost all of it died during a tough stretch the first winter. After looking at the seed tags I found that the seed was sourced in Colorado. What???? Local adaptation is an intuitive concept, that plants with a genetic history in a geographic area are likely to do better than plants that do not have a genetic history in an area. I would have agreed with that statement when I was in high school. However, I guess a person can know things without truly understanding them; without intuitively knowing the ramifications; without fitting that knowledge into the process of making an informed decision. Let’s be blunt: I was naive and totally clueless. When I put the seed order in for the original restoration seeding, I was being aided by Ben Lardy, working for the Conservation District, who has become a partner in this project. Ben came up with a species list that fit the CRP guidelines, perhaps tweaked by communication with the vendor, Milborns Seed, and I approved it. Thus, you could say we share blame, but the real blame was in the guidelines which did not specify a geographic parameter to help Milborns or Ben winnow out inappropriate choices. And I obviously didn’t provide effective oversight. Shit happens. I have spread blanketflower seed which I have gathered several times since then . Not every plant died that first year, and most of those that did had made seed which may still be contributing to the restoration so I probably now have a mixed stand. An interesting question is: when can I assume that blanketflower seed that is produced here is locally adapted? There has very likely been cross pollination between the Colorado plants, the plant that grew from gathered seed, and the blanketflower that grows in the adjoining pasture just a hundred yards away from the location in these pictures. And my carefully considered answer is: “Hell if I know.” Seriously. Obviously, I could now market seed from here as locally adapted as it is thriving after six years. Just as obviously, I could not do that while feeling honest. I have no idea what percentage of the genetics in the plants below are from Colorado and what are from my gathered seed. As one of my goals is the promulgation of locally adapted seed I have a fallback position. The Huggett restoration, on the far upper right corner of this picture, about three quarters of a mile away, has only received blanketflower from gathered seed. It is adjacent to a different small pasture with a lot of blanketflowers. Any blanketflower seed that I sell, or even give away, described as “locally adapted”, will come from there. A final note on this wildflower is that it is very tolerant of grazing, but very intolerant of pasture herbicides. One neighbor’s pasture which is consistently overgrazed is full of them, while another adjacent neighbor, who grazes with much more restraint, never had as many blanketflowers, and may have killed those plants off with an aerial application of herbicide a few years ago

32. Northern Bedstraw (Galium boreale) Northern bedstraw is one of the forbs that I was unaware of until I started planning for this project as it blooms in late June into July when my business kept me working 60-70 hours per week. It has beautiful small white blooms, growing in thick, rhizomatous patches that can be thick patches of delicate flowers. As a plant that puts a lot of energy into clonal growth it can be a bit reticent to put resources into flowers and seed, and where it grows on droughty soils it rarely blooms, and even when it blooms it rarely makes seed, relying on the clonal growth. Where it grows in more mesic areas it is far more likely to reproduce by seed, and occasionally there will be significant seed to gather. To my surprise, a wet spring and early summer failed to produce much seed to gather last year. On the other hand, as a species that doesn’t have to make much seed, I feel that I can be aggressive in harvesting that seed when I get the opportunity. The flip side of that is that I end up harvesting all my seed from what may be very few clones and thus get limited genetic variability. I had bemoaned my poor luck in getting any bedstraw going in the restoration until 2023, when I saw a couple plants. Then with the good rains on last spring and summer I suddenly saw many more in the restoration because they were blooming. Without blooms they are a humble, cryptic little son of a gun. If each of those plants start clonal patches I will be seeing many more bedstraw plants in the future.

33 and 34. Yellow Grooved Flax (Linum sulcatum) and Lewis’s Blue Flax (Linum lewisii). I put both of these together as I have quite a few of the former in my prairies (though few to none in the restoration) and I have yet to see any of the blue flax in my prairies, though I have quite a few in parts of the restoration where they were in the CRP seed mix. My discussion will be about the yellow flax. Several fond memories from my childhood revolve around flax, not the wild kind, but the crop with origins in the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East. We always had a flax field to two, selling the grain to make various products, primarily linseed oil, long before there was the food craze of eating flax seed for its healthy oil profile. We ate flax when I was growing up, snacking on the whole flax seed as we harvested. In high school a flax straw processing plant went in for getting fiber from the straw (linen comes from flax fibers, as well as industrial uses). Flax flowered for 2-3 weeks, fields of blue flowers which opened overnight and dropped their petals by sunset, waiting for the next cohort of flowers to open for the next days pollination. They were beautiful and had a pleasing odor, even to a clueless, adolescent farm boy. My job was always to get up in the truck box to stuff rags in any cracks, as the seed were small and flowed like water. Thus when I first noticed the yellow flowers across the hills and looked closely it was obvious to me they were a flax, closely related to tame flax. At first I was suspicious they were an escape from tame flax which had gone back to yellow flowers after inbreeding, but a little research confirmed their native origin. Yellow flax is an annual, so in years without early summer rain there may not any flax germinating and blooming. Last year however, had the proper rain. We gathered a lot of seed, and could have gathered ten times more had we taken the time. It is a bit like the superblooms of annual flowers in the California deserts for the same reason. When there is rain the prime directive is to grow, bloom, make seed and then die to await another rainy June. Below is a hill where I gathered a fair amount of seed, but there were many acres that looked like this. And two, four, or perhaps even ten years later, if we get late June rains it will look like this again.

And here is a handful of ripe flax from which I might shell out 1000 seeds. I don’t remember how long I was on my hands and knees to get this handful, probably 10-15 minutes, but it is a very satisfying job. There were many handfuls more. Blue flax is not the same as tame flax that was grown as a crop either, but a perennial native forb which is found in this area, though I have never seen them in my prairies. I do, however, have some in a part of the restoration seeded with the CRP mix by the Conservation District.

35 and 36. Purple Prairie Clover (Dalea purpurea) and White Prairie Clover (Dalea candida) While other plants I have been writing about make me excited, I am afraid I find prairie clovers a bit boring, though not for any good reason. They are legumes which grow in droughty soils, the purple in xeric to dry mesic, and the white in xeric to very xeric. That alone should spark my respect. In my native pastures purple prairie clover is fairly common, while the white prairie clover mostly stays to the thinnest soils on the ridges, where it seems to be very competitive. I have gathered quite a bit of seed from the purple, usually blending it into bags of the general mish mash of asters, goldenrods and sunflowers that I gather in September and October. I couldn’t find a picture of the D. candida, but here’s a picture of the purple from the restoration in early July. Much of both clovers in the restoration came from seed purchased from Milborns for the official CRP mix. The plant in the picture below is likely one of them. Seed is very reasonably priced and it establishes very well for a legume, most of which are slow, so I have a lot in the restoration. Since then I have gathered and spread a lot of my native prairie clover seed in all the restorations, but much like the blanketflower (one of which is almost done blooming in the upper right corner of the photo) I have no idea which plants came from my gathered seed and which from purchased seed. Thus, at least for a few years, no seed from the restoration will be sold as a “local selection”, though they have been there long enough now to have proven that they are adapted. Maybe I will revisit that decision in a few years, but for now any seed I sell or give will be from my prairies.

There are two other Daleas which are likely in my restoration in small amounts. I was given some seedling plugs from golden dalea (Dalea aurea) and silky prairie clover (Dalea villosa) by a grad student of Dr Lora Perkins who no longer needed them, and I had the time to plant some of both. Neither is native to any prairies around here, but they are both western species adapted to droughty soils, so I am ok whether they made it or not. I may look for them this coming summer out of curiosity. I do like my legumes.

37. Green Milkweed (Asclepias viridiflora) This is one of my favorite species, one of the five forbs for which I have planted the most seedling plugs, It is fairly common in my prairies, but generally widely spaced, growing almost entirely on the gravelly hills. As cattle don’t eat it, and it is seemingly not very competitive when grass competition is strong, it is more common on the grazed pastures, and less so on the 25 acres which were only hayed until recently. I have only identified a few in the restoration, but I expect to see the fruits of both the transplants and a fair amount of very careful seeding, placing seed individually into the soil in appropriate areas. I believe it is fairly long-lived, and blooms and makes seed when it is damn good and ready. I will probably grow plugs of it for one more year before I move on to other species. It is native to a large part of the United States, and thus is likely genetically diverse, with my drought-resistant plants possibly quite different from green milkweed growing in the eastern part of the country. Thus, this is a species for which I hope to distribute seed to others. One example of that genetic heterogeneity is the different leaf shapes green milkweed exhibits. Most of my green milkweed have wavy oval leaves, but a few have long skinny leaves that fold lengthwise lie a long skinny book that is partially opened. When I first saw the difference I assumed the two types were different species, but was surprised when I found there were two widely disparate leaf types in the same species. Unexpected stuff. Pictures will be provided this summer.

38. Whorled Milkweed (Asclepias verticillata)

Above is a good example of what rain can do. This is a patch of blooming whorled milkweed, perhaps a single aggressive clone. The previous year, after a hot dry June, when I searched for it I found a few spindly vegetative shoots. As a strongly rhizomatous species, whorled milkweed is under no pressure to reproduce. A little food to keep the underground growth healthy is all that is needed. I may have seen only 20 or 30 emerged stems. This year, ten inches of rain in May and June induced hundreds of underground crowns to emerge, bloom and try to make seed. Unfortunately the rain shut off in early August causing many of the pods to abort, yet I still harvested at least 40 pods, perhaps 1000 seeds, and left 100 more pods to fully mature, open and spread a lot of seed to blow around and find a new home. While a species that reproduces clonally is theoretically eternal, whorled milkweed patches seem to come and go over the years. For a species whose seeds blow in the wind to travel the seeds are fairly large. When a seed is able to find a good spot, there is sufficient resources to establish a strong plant. New patches tend to turn up near old patches, so I am not sure if their genesis is clonal or seed. I have found a few in the restoration, and am hopeful of establishing more, and then let them spread on their own. In the native prairies I have about ten patches. Below is one from the restoration with aspirations to become a colony.

39, 40 and 41. Common Milkweed (Asclepias syriaca), Oval Leaf Milkweed (Asclepias ovalifolia) and Showy Milkweed (Asclepias speciosa) Milkweeds are a deal lately because of the obligate relationship with Monarch butterflies. For the first half of my agronomy career they were an enemy, taking yield away from crops, especially soybeans. Then Roundup was developed, and suddenly we knew how to kill milkweed. It is rare now to see a single milkweed in a farmed field. It is not rare to see them in other places; they are very common in road ditches, overgrazed pastures and waste areas. The seeds blow everywhere and must be quite viable. I spread a few in the restoration, but have no idea whether the common milkweed that I now see out there are from the seed that I spread or seed that blew in from other places. As such, they are not a priority for me. The other two milkweed species, on the other hand, are native to my prairies in small numbers, and I would love to increase them in the future. I have planted a few plugs of the oval leaf, so I may have some out there. And a goal for this year is to gather seed of both to have seedling plugs grown. The milkweed below grows in the area of the restoration which had to be treated with thistles, this area twice, giving an example of its tolerance to many broadleaf herbicides. Thus, while I had to kill some of the very few wildflowers which were attempting to establish themselves in the thistles, I didn’t kill all of them. This picture was taken the year after the second herbicide treatment four years ago, showing a little damage. There are now many very healthy milkweed plants in that twenty acre area. A personal aside is that I became very interested in wild foods when I was in high school, mostly inspired by my maternal grandmother, who grew up with wandering Native Americans camping in her yard in the 1890’s, and who learned about wild foods from them. Then , Euell Gibbons published some folksy books on the topic, the first, “Stalking the Wild Asparagus”, in the 1960’s. He only became popular in the early ’70’s when he was featured in a Grape Nuts cereal commercial (“Tastes like wild hickory nuts”). I found out from his book that milkweed was edible, and I eat a couple flower buds or a young pod or two every year. I only found out many years later that they are poisonous in large quantities, though I doubt that would have discouraged my 16 year old self. Young men do not tend to be very careful or discerning. At that age a common, local insult was, “You’re dumber than a shovel!” The truth is painful sometimes.

42, Rose, or Swamp Milkweed (Asclepias incarnata) The genus Asclepias is very successful, perhaps because of its chemical defenses, and comes in all shapes, sizes and habitat preferences. While green and whorled milkweed favor dry, and even droughty sites, and common, oval leaf, and showy milkweed favor mesic sites, swamp milkweed likes its feet wet. There is little need to seed this species. There are enough wild ones on the edges of wetter areas that they will blow in to colonize appropriate areas. Once again, pictures this summer.

43 and 44. Downy Gentian (Gentiana puberulenta) and Bottle Gentian (Gentiana andrewsii) Downy gentian blooms at the other extreme of the season from pasqueflower, often well into October when the landscape is starting to turn brown with nighttime temperatures below freezing. That contrast, much like the contrast in April with the pasques, causes it to be shockingly beautiful. There is so much contrast to the surroundings that it will turn a person’s head when in view. It is almost impossible to get a bad photograph of it.

I have found perhaps 30-40 spread across my prairies, with several established in the restoration so far. The NPI lab of my friend Dr. Lora Perkins started 50-70 plugs from seed that I had supplied in the fall of 2023, but the seed is tiny, and the plants grow slowly, so they are overwintering at SDSU for me to plant in May or June. I assume that they are fairly long lived as they are not consistent bloomers, with individual plants blooming perhaps every other year. However there seems to be hundreds of tiny seeds in each dried up flower, so a small bit of seed gathering can go a long way. Gentians are a species of concern in South Dakota, on the western edge of their range, but around here they are not very rare, as I have found them in several other prairies that I visit, but they are never abundant. Thus I have high hopes for getting a lot more started this year.

Bottle gentian are not found in my prairies, but are found in many near my place, so I hope to get a population started in the restoration. They colonize full mesic soils, as opposed to the dry mesic sites used by downy gentians. I have a few plants that have started along a drainage in the restoration that surprised me greatly as they likely came from some seed gathered by a friend, one of several happy accidents in the restoration.

45. Hairy False Goldaster/Goldenaster (Heterotheca villosa) Hairy goldenaster is yet another of the humble little forbs that inhabit the gravel hills. Unlike the early bloomers, it begins to bloom in late June, and continues to bloom for most of the summer. This means that it is physiologically able to respond to rain to make seed for a much longer time than most wildflowers. It also means that it is very difficult to gather a lot of seed, as while a single plant may have 50-100 flowers, only a few have ripe seedheads on any partricular day. However, like other asters the seeds blow in the wind and colonize distant sites quite well. I have quite a few in the restoration, which are as likely to have blown in from the ones inhabiting the pasture nearby as to be due to seed that I have spread. The first picture is the aster in a variety of grasses, with needle and thread seedheads leaning everywhere. The second picture is the same plant in a wider view showing it with some neighbors which indicate the environment where it is at home: with pincushion cactus, blanketflower and fringed sage.

46. Golden alexander (Zizia aurea) One of the many big successes of the restoration was golden alexander. It was part of the mix that I bought from Milborns, desired as an early bloomer and reasonably priced. It is adapted to mesic sites, a tall prairie species, and thus uncommon in my xeric native prairies, but grew everywhere in the restoration, even in clearly inappropriate spots. That is slowly fixing itself as the years go by, as it has already died along the gravel ridges, though still hanging on in sites such as the one below towards the base of a hill. It has the added benefit of being almost impervious to Milestone herbicide which I use to spot-treat the worst Canada thistle patches. Thus it is insulated from the herbicidal destruction of a thistle patch where most wildflowers are at least slowed down, if not eliminated. I remember one patch was so thick with thistles that I saw nothing else, not even grasses, so I took my chances on a high rate of herbicide. to start over on a 40 by 100 foot area. Once the thistles were cleared by a double rate of Milestone there were several Zizias rising from the ashes like a phoenix, soon to bloom and thrive. In the end, there was actually quite a lot of grass cowering underneath the thistles which filled in, and after a second year some of the other more tolerant wildflowers came back, but I am very fond of golden alexanders now, as they somewhat vindicated my “bigger hammer” strategy. In the long run they will likely be outcompeted in all but the mesic soils, but for now they are a major component of most of the restoration.

47. Heart-leaved golden alexander (Zizia aptera) Very similar, but adapted to somewhat drier conditions, the heart-leaved golden alexander is not found so far in my native prairie, though it wouldn’t be surprising to find one as I see them in other prairies in the neighborhood. I have some, though not a lot, in the restoration, so I am trying to spread more seed to establish a lasting population.

48. Leadplant (Amorpha canescens) This is another of my favorite species for several reasons. It is one of the plants my grandmother taught me about, calling it prairie tea, as her parents would brew tea from it when real tea wasn’t available. It is a legume broadly adapted to all but the most xeric and the very wettest sites, making it very valuable in the prairie. Leadplant is fairly tolerant of grazing, and will survive in any moderately grazed pasture. Though it is a small shrub, unlike most shrubs it loves fire, vigorously re-growing from underground buds even as woody topgrowth may be killed. And, though the flowers aren’t large, they are eye catching up close, with bright yellow-orange stamens sticking out from the violet petals. I have thousands in my prairies, and probably a thousand in the restoration, with more showing up every year. Like many legumes, the seedcoat is hard and may take several years to wear away to let the seed inside germinate. Four years ago I didn’t see any leadplant in the restoration, two years after spreading many pounds that I had gathered the previous two years, and was extremely disappointed. Three years ago I saw the first few. Two years ago I was ecstatic to see perhaps a couple hundred plants spread across a larger area. Then last year they were everywhere, even in some areas that had been double seeded in the original seeding where it seemed there was no room for new plants. Better yet, with several years growth, and perhaps colonization by Rhizobia bacteria to bring in nitrogen, and some of the plants are attaining some size and blooming to set some seed. The picture below is one of those just beginning to bloom.

49 and 50. False Indigo (Amorpha fruiticosa) and Fragrant False Indigo (Amorpha nana) False indigo, A fruiticosa, is a close relative of leadplant that is a more substantial shrub, 4-8′ tall growing along drainages and around bodies of water. They do not mind wet feet for a while, though they are not a true wetland plant. As such, I have not tried to put them in the restoration, which has only a couple acres of appropriate habitat. I didn’t need to. There are many along the edge of a slough in the adjacent native pasture, and seeds were likely deposited by some deer who had browsed upon them, and now I have several along the draw that leads to that slough from the restoration. Amorpha nana, on the other hand, is an upland species, also closely related to leadplant. I have never found them in my native prairies, but I know they are in some nearby prairies, so I have spread a little seed, and will likely do more. So far I have found only one in the restoration, but hope for more. I hope to get some pictures next summer of both of these species to add to this post.

That’s it for now. I will do one more post this winter on the rest of the forbs in the prairies, and one on the grasses.

The 2025 Plan

Every year about this time I write a post on this theme, though my mind may still be working on issues from the last year and not be ready for the next year. I need a prompt, however, to get my mind in gear, so here goes. What am I going to do this year, and how is it different from what I’ve been doing the last few years? Good question to ponder, and I don’t have a ready answer, but I think I’ll just start swimming along and see where the current takes me.

First, I am consumed with what I consider a great opportunity that bridges 2024 and 2025: using the excellent burn spearheaded by Ben Lardy on the 20 acres seeded two years ago as the start of a major enhancement in forb depth and richness on that ground. Already I have spread a large amount of seed there gathered by my other compatriot, Levi Waddell. Levi and helpers gathered a variety of species for me over the late summer, ran it all through a mill, and I ended up with several large bags of seed mixed with leaves and stems, a mishmash divided into upland and mesic bags. It’s impossible to know what all was in there, perhaps 40 or 50 species, so I hope to find surprises and treasures the next 2-3 years as plants grow and develop. I am convinced they have been spread upon as receptive a canvas as one could find, the only downside being the number of Canadian thistles already established. The thistles will create a real race, as I have come to realize that the best way to hold thistles down is to have a very robust forb component; but if the thistle patches are too far ahead and too thick they will diminish or preclude development of that forb component. Which comes first? The chicken or the egg? I already know I will spend many trips in June and July agonizing over which thistle patches are too competitive to leave unaltered, and need to be knocked back by mowing or herbicide. One needs to be bold, however, to seize an opportunity, so I have continued risking my precious seed by spreading bits of this and that whenever conditions allow; including some additional seed from Levi, but mostly seed gathered by Ben and me last summer, as well as some with local provenance that I have purchased from the local seed purveyor, Milborns. How can seed not grow on the seedbed below?

Thus there will eventually (I am not done yet) be over 100 species spread this winter and spring that will cover the still black ground in the hopes that I can turn these 20 acres into a very diverse, thick prairie that will convey boatloads of ecosystem services, with emphasis on the goal of being a seed source for others down the road. Not all of this seed is ready to be spread yet, as some is still encased in pods and husks, stored at my farm and at Ben Lardy’s place, and soon we may get enough snow to block access. I am no longer a robust young man able to fight the snow and brave cold winds to get jobs done. I am, in short, a weenie, who cringes at weather and obstacles that once challenged and invigorated me. So it goes; I am who I am and must work with what is left of me. To the best of my ability I will be a warrior and not squander this chance.

So, what else of the winter? We are trying to get another step down the path of a structure for long term management of the restoration and our other land by crafting an estate plan that includes a vehicle for very long term management, possibly a 501(c)(e) nonprofit, perhaps an LLC that looks like a nonprofit, that can carry this, Linda’s grazing system and other work down the road, hopefully for generations. We definitely hope to have our grandchildren’s grandchildren able to learn from and enjoy our properties. I will give a preliminary iteration of the goals and mission statement in a dedicated post down the road. That post will be an early stab at the phrases that will guide future conservation efforts, and is likely to change and grow as Linda weighs in and others give counsel, but I think any subsequent iterations will have those ideas as a base. We have talked to a couple attorneys already, but would like to find an attorney/accountant combination with expertise and experience in this area. That alone would be a significant accomplishment. We have already identified people who are ready to help as board members and advisors, and as land managers. While it may seem that we are putting the cart before the horse, I feel finding the right people to carry on is more important than the legal structure. Good people can do great things with a flawed structure (though we plan to create an appropriate and efficient structure), but no structure will overcome the wrong people to implement it.

That will bring us to spring, when I hope to get a burn done on the Huggett ground that was seeded four years ago. While that is unlikely to give the golden opportunity for additional seeding that the fall burn provided, as competition from established plants will be greater, and all the seed will be spread in the spring, I think it is worth a try for a couple reasons. First, the majority of the 20 acres I call the Huggett land is very xeric. Below is a look from late May that is representative of perhaps a third of the field. Another third is more xeric and has thinner cover, while the last third is more mesic and usually has a lot of thistles. Thus, while I showed you the “just right” picture, I think it is fair to say that this, and thus at least two thirds of the field will become bare enough after a burn to justify spreading a lot of seed out there. Areas that look like the picture below don’t need a lot of help, but I am willing to burn some resources to try to make them even better. As I have written before, we aspire to greatness. The third of the field that is more barren now will gain a great deal if I have enough xeric adapted seed to spread and the summer is kind. The picture below shows an area that can hopefully be helped a little. On the final third I will put some mesic and wet mesic adapted species, primarily purchased, spray a little Milestone herbicide on the very worst Canada thistles (perhaps two acres will grow nothing else if I don’t use some herbicide to slow the thistles) and hope for the best.

If Ben can get this burned in April we may even get a short stratification period after the seed is spread, allowing a better chance of seed germinating this summer. With a little luck that can all be done, both burning and seeding by April 20 or so.

Another task I need to get back to is to work more on the relationship with the Native Plant Initiative (NPI) at SDSU through Dr. Lora Perkins, who heads the lab and manages a stable of grad students doing various research projects. I need to get together with her soon to see if one of those grad student/research project combinations can occur on our prairies. We started down that path last fall, but have not nailed down anything yet. We need to visit again soon.

Lora and I also have to talk about whether her lab will grow seedling plugs once again to plant in the restorations. We have planted about 2000 plugs over the past three years, and I am not sure whether I want to lock myself into a big job again. However, I recently talked to my friend and partner, Ben Lardy, and he says that he will plan on one day of work for me per week, which will probably cover the additional labor to get the plugs in. What species, you ask? The past three years I have concentrated on five species: groundplum milkvetch (Astragalus crassicarpus), slender milkvetch (A. flexuosus), standing milkvetch (A. adsurgens, prairie turnip (Pediomelum esculentum) and green milkweed (Asclepias viridiflora). All these wilidflowers have the combination of four attributes: First, the seed is hard to gather in large quantities, meaning there is added pressure to get the most out of the small amounts that I get, usually hundreds of seed to work with rather than thousands that I can gather of many species. Second, they must be difficult to purchase. Of the five species, standing and slender milkvetch are unavailable from any vendor, while the other three are sporadically available in small quantities. Third, they provide a known, demonstrable ecosystem service. Groundplums and turnips are what are now being referred to as “first foods”, plants that were important to the Native Americans of the area before settlement. Green milkweed is monarch butterfly candy, the only milkweed in our xeric soils. And all three milkvetches are important as legumes adapted to the xeric prairies, providing the nitrogen for all the other species. Fourth, I think they are all “uber cool”.

Back to this year; do I anticipate any changes? Yes, I hope to pick four or five new species to concentrate on. I have not made those choices yet, but I have been perusing my seedstocks getting ideas. I would like to get bastard toadflax (Comandra umbellata) established on all the xeric soils on the restorations, and I have some seed gathered from them for the first time. Ditto for hoary puccoon (Lithospermum canescens). I would like to establish a lot more early figwort (Scrophularia lanceolata) in the mesic soils, as it has a reputation as a tremendous source of nectar for a variety of pollinators. I want to get textile onions (Allium textile) started on several of the gravel hills. And the NPI lab has perhaps 100 seedlings of downy gentian (Gentiana puberulenta) overwintering for me in a refrigerator. The seedlings were not big enough to put in last summer, so they will likely go out in May. In addition there will likely be a couple more species that I think deserve to be fully represented in the seed bank.

One happy dilemma is that I gathered a more than normal amount of seed of many species, including all of the five species I started to transplant three years ago, so I hope to spend some time spreading, or rather placing them in appropriate environments, rather than relying on the plugs. Below is an example, most of the crop of slender milkvetch from last year. I have gathered this many pods, a couple quarts, a couple times, but never were the pods full of as many seeds. I haven’t come close to shelling out all the seeds from the pods, but so far I have perhaps 2-3 ounces, maybe 10,000 seeds shelled out. In past years, I felt fortunate to get a few hundred. I have about 5000 seeds of the prairie turnip; my previous high was 1500, and usually I harvest 2-400 seeds. This opportunity occurred for 20-30 different species this year. Thus, one of the jobs of the year is to decide what to do with this bounty. We are unlikely to be able to collect as much next year, and the little bit of seed in that bowl is precious.

I have already talked about having plugs grown by the NPI lab, as well as very carefully putting seed out on last fall’s burn and the projected burn this spring. What I am pondering is a third choice, starting to bank some of the seed myself. I talk blithely about the restoration being a living seed bank, but that is a cheap aphorism without complimentary seed storage. At some point actual seed needs to be harvested and stored, whether for a year or a decade. I hope to have a good visit with Lora Perkins very soon to discuss this as well, to see if this is a task they are ready to partner on. I feel rich with all this seed of species that are difficult to buy. It behooves me to be prudent in how I use this bounty.

We’ve moved through next summer, have planted the plugs, sprayed and mowed a few thistles and gathered whatever seed was available. Is there more work for the fall, other than gathering more seed? I hope so. I hope to have a second batch of soil samples taken to measure organic matter and carbon. The first samples were taken five years ago and that seems like a reasonable interval at which to re-measure. I wouldn’t expect a significant change, particularly as it took several years for the vegetation to grow and cover the ground. It is only in the past three years that I would expect any carbon accumulation, but if nothing else it would be a second baseline measurement from which one could make comparisons later. Then, in the fall I hope to get another patch or two burned, with the hope to topdress some additional seed. And, of course, I hope to document it all with ever better photography in this blog.

I am in the 70th year of my life, my 70th birthday coming in October. How could this be? What the hell happened? Part of me is wizened and withered, while part of me remembers well how good it felt to run for the sheer joy of running. Part of me lives in a shadowy area I will enter too soon (the Grim Reaper and I are on a first name basis), but another part of me wonders at the shapes of leaves and the clouds in the sky. I walk outside with my 18 month old granddaughter Lily and feel we are kindred spirits, seeing the world through the same eyes. There is a great “Far Side” cartoon where a young man is strolling down a sidewalk, only to be hit by a runaway truck with “Old Age” emblazoned on the side. He stands up and looks down at his wrinkled hands, as another wrinkled geezer comes up and says, “Got you too, huh?” That’s how I feel sometimes. I was walking along, minding my own business, and “Wham!” youth and vigor was over. However, as the saying goes, “That was then. This is now.” Tomorrow morning when I wake up from the adventures of the night, I can say to myself: “Here’s another day! Wonderful things await! Don’t waste this opportunity! Do something you can be proud of!” That’s my hope for 2025, and my hope for my readers as well. Do something you can be proud of!

It was a Good Year

I’m beginning a potentially long post which might be a little disjointed, as various memories, which are unlikely to all come at once, inform the evaluation of the year. Be warned, my posts are invariably pretty nerdy, as that’s who I am. The overall gist, however, is that a great many wildflowers increased, or were at least much more visible in 2024, as very good rainfall from late April through the first week of August induced many individual plants of most species to bloom and make seed, surprising me with an abundance that may have been veiled by the inherent conservatism of many prairie species. Many summers the refrain is: “Bloom and spend energy making seed? I don’t think so; it feels a bit risky. Maybe next year.” This year the the song became: “I feel good! (think James Brown here) Time to make some seeds!” With that as the intro, here goes.

As an example of the above, one of the most noteworthy surprises for me was how many standing milkvetch (Astragalus adsurgens) I saw. In the restoration I had only seen one two years ago, and hadn’t been able to find it again last year. Standing milkvetch is one of the species I am intent on increasing, one that cannot be bought from any vendors in this region, and thus I was a bit disappointed not to see any in the restoration last year. This year I saw 7-10 in the restoration, all blooming and making seed. Some were likely from transplants the past two years, but small vegetative legumes look pretty similar, and the plants that I saw this year may have already been growing for a couple years, establishing themselves while waiting for the right year to become adults and procreate. This seems likely, as I had thought I knew every A. adsurgens plant in my adjacent native prairies, perhaps 50 in all, and was greatly and pleasantly surprised to see 2-3 times that many plants in those prairies, established in many more locations than I would have dreamed, many small plants only noticed because they were now finally blooming. I gathered a lot of seed from them, a couple gallons, even while leaving a good percentage to enter the seed bank, and have the winter to learn how to shell them out of their little husks, and then can decide how best to use the windfall. Here’s a small transplant from 2023 that was not yet blooming this year, probably 2.5-3″ tall. The continuing theme that comes from this is that there may be much more to see of many species in the future.

Other notable species that showed up in significantly larger numbers this year in the restoration are prairie larkspur (Delphinium carolinianum var. canescens), northern bedstraw (Galium boreale), slender milkvetch (Astragalus flexuosus), prairie dropseed (Sporobolus heterolepis), porcupine grass (Heterostipa spartea), meadow rue (Thalictrum dasycarpum) and prairie onion (Allium stellatum). In the native prairies ithe cavalcade of wildflowers began with a good bloom of pasqueflowers (Anemone patens), continued with both small penstemons (Penstemon albidus and P. gracilis), both puccoons (Lithospermum canescens and L. incisum), and both violets (Viola pedatifida and V. nuttallii), and progressed to acres of onions, hills of alumroot (Heuchera richardsonii), swales armed to the teeth with porcupine grass spears, narrowleaf coneflower (Echinacea angustifolia) scattered across every hill in both the restoration and the native prairies (for the first time I gathered Echinacea heads in the restoration, taking about 500 out of several thousand heads), and in late August and early September all species of asters Symphyotricum sp.), goldenrods (Solidago sp.), sunflowers (Helianthus sp.) and gayfeathers (Liatris sp.) provided a cornucopia of nectar and pollen for the bees.

The rainfall was a deal. After a dry winter, welcome showers occurred in April, too much rain in May, a short dry spell in early June which was followed by almost double the normal rainfall from June 15 till August 10. At that point we were perhaps 8-10″ ahead for the year. Though the faucet turned off then, the natives enjoyed almost unbelievable bounty. They knew what to do with it, too. Dry hillsides in both the native prairies and the restoration looked like prairies in good soil, and the areas of good soil in the restoration looked like Iowa. I hosted a tour put on by the Day County Conservation District and Ducks Unlimited in late August, taking a busload of interested people into the restoration in an area of decent, but below average soils, and it was difficult to communicate with the group with grass seedheads waving over our heads. Many people commented that I had the best restoration they had ever seen, and asked how I did it. While it’s a pretty good restoration, I shrugged and basically replied, “I just kept spreading seed for several years, and then it rained. Boom!” Below is what one of the gravelly hills, a soil too thin and poor to grow crops, looked like in late July.

Because of the large amount of seed to gather, my partner Ben Lardy and I were regularly in a quandary: do we gather specific species, hoping to get amounts that stood on their own for sale or use in a dedicated plot or do we just shovel in whatever we could find all together in big bags, and get the largest possible amount of seed per unit time invested, planning to spread it all on my project. I’m not sure it was wise or proper, but we leaned towards the former, meaning we now have significant (for us) amounts of a large variety of species, many of which we will need to experiment with to process and clean reasonably pure seed. Some of those species include the two penstemons, the two puccoons, the standing milkvetch along with two other milkvetches (Astragalus crassicarpus and A. flexuosus), a sled full of porcupine grass heads, a good sized tub of Echinacea heads, a container of alumroot seedstalks, and a small container of seedheads of Pennsylvania cinquefoil (Potentilla pennsylvanica). Some species need no processing, however, like the needles of needle and thread (Heterostipa comata) and the seeds of tall cinquefoil (Drymocallis arguta) and I have begun the process of getting them spread on the 20 acres which were burned a couple weeks ago.

I have touched upon this topic before, but the question of how much additional seed to put out, past the original seeding, is a big one, both in terms of time and money involved and in terms of how best to accomplish it. It can seem a bit futile to bring out bags of gathered seed, that represent many, many hours of gathering, and then fling them into a very uncertain situation in the matter of an hour or two, hoping a few will grow. The plan this year was similar to what I did last year: to purchase a significant amount of seed gathered by my neighbor, Levi Waddell, and spread them after an area had been burned to remove the year’s growth which would allow most of the seed to contact mineral soil. Last year the area that was burned had all been seeded five years before, and while there was some soil showing, it was obvious that competition would be fierce for any seeds that would germinate. Below are a couple pictures depicting where I spread seed a year ago, the second picture just a close-up on the first.

While there is bare ground in areas almost all of the blackened clumps represent the crowns of plants that may have been 3-4′ tall with extensive root systems. Many of the areas that were burned, and subsequently spread with seed were more dense than this photo. Compare that to a picture from the 20 acres where I have been spreading seed the past week.

This is the 20 acres that were first seeded in the fall of 2022, have had two years to develop, and that was burned about 3 weeks ago. Thus, rather than competing with 4-5 year old plants, any new seedlings that grow will be competing with 1-2 year old plants at perhaps a third the density of the previous pictures. Rather than an exercise in futility, we have what I see as an exceptional opportunity to give all the seed I spread this fall and winter (and next spring, if necessary) enough biotic space to thrive. That is the hope and the dream, and the expectation, anyway. As I was repeatedly walking across the field throwing seed into the air all I could think was that I needed more seed to take advantage of this seedbed. This had the potential to be far more than a supplement to the previous seeding; it was a better situation for seedling establishment than I had two years ago in the original seeding, a gift that I needed to grasp and use. Thus, one of the stories of 2024, and 2025 as well, is the attempt to turn this 20 acres from a disappointing beginning, that I was assuming would never be as diverse and vibrant as the best areas of the 100 acres seeded in 2018, into a powerful addition providing buckets of ecosystem services and seed to supply new restorations. Below is a map I have used before of the restoration, the area where I have been spreading seed is in the upper right, and I am hoping it can become the diverse, productive habitat that Zones 1 and 2 are.

And what of the bounty of the summer we gathered, mentioned earlier? Some will end up here after processing and cleaning, some may go to help other areas and some may be grown into seedling plugs to be planted next summer. Though it is unlikely I will be able to spread seed throughout the winter as I did last year, perhaps there will be some opportunities to enter that portal to enchantment, spreading life back to where it once resided 130 years ago, while enjoying the winter environment. I hope to reprise “The Old Man and the Seed” that I was able to act out last winter. If it takes an extra couple thousand dollars to purchase more seed to go with what I have gathered I will likely do it. How many more years can I do this? Will I have another opportunity this enticing? One never knows, so it is incumbent upon me to make the most of this chance.

So, what about the future? Besides me slogging along the next few years, with Ben’s help, picking at things. I have written earlier about developing a more formal relationship with the Native Plant Initiative (NPI) at South Dakota State University (SDSU). I hosted a group of students from the lab in July, along with their professor, Dr. Lora Perkins for a field day. Lora and I have been discussing a framework for formalizing that connection, including a probable research project on my land starting next year. I have written about that in the past, and significant progress will deserve its own post in the future.

Finally, this year has seen the beginning of a process I will describe in more detail in a subsequent post: What happens when I am gone? Who manages, improves, worries about, buys seed for, controls invasive weeds and documents the happenings on these prairies for others? Linda and I have invited several people with conservation experience to join us as an advisory board to help carry on the work. With the exception of Dr. Perkins they are all about our daughters’ ages (who are 36 and 39, and I think Lora is 50, still 19 years younger than me). Linda and I are very seriously considering forming a nonprofit, geared originally to support continued management on both my project and on Linda’s conservation grazing system (420 acres of native grass north of Milbank). The advisory board could easily segue into a managing board of the nonprofit. If fortune is kind, and funding can be found, it could perhaps look at prairie conservation more expansively in this neck of the woods, but to start we are concerned with building a model to aid our daughters on our land, a model which others in our situation might consider. We hosted two field days/conversations with the group, the most recent about six weeks ago in early October. While our daughters have an interest in our projects they don’t live here, and they have their own very busy lives. When we first visited with them about estate planning and the future of our projects they were a bit overwhelmed, but they are both firmly behind this path to aid them in the future. I will leave further discussion of this topic for a later blog post; this will be a big part of our winter’s work, and there should be much more to report on in the future.

So, once again, a helluva year. Any year I am on the topside of the earth and can be out in the explosion of life that is the prairie is a helluva year. Any year that I can host others at the prairie is a helluva year. Any year that I can learn new things, see new things, meet new people and show love to those I see is a helluva year. While I have my dark days, usually in conjunction with health issues (as we age we find there are an amazing number of things that can go wrong with a body), I always keep the light before me. And the light is not at the end of a train tunnel, indicating an oncoming train, it is a beacon glowing in front of me, leading me forward. That light goes to the future, beckoning me, taking me to the next day, If I am fortunate, it will include sunny days on the prairie to spend with the coneflowers again.

Plants of Central Point Prairies

First off, we have a potential change in title for the prairie complex that we are trying to build. Central Point is the township that I grew up in and where the prairies reside. This is in keeping with the theme that these are in many ways no longer my prairies. We have received a perpetual easement from the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and it is now part of their refuge system. While it is on land that Linda and I own, and that will stay in our family when we are gone, in a tangible sense we have transitioned to caretakers, both for our children and grandchildren, but also all others who gain from its presence.

While I have elaborated upon many of the plants which reside on these prairies, and have typed up a list of species that have been found in the restoration that I have updated, during the course of this year I will try to create something that is more than a dry list. It will discuss each plant’s prevalence in both the native and the restored prairies. I will allow myself digressions into thoughts and memories and hopes for the future. This post will be updated as new species are identified, as populations change, as I get relevant (or very cool) photos, or as something new is learned from observation or from others who know the prairies. I will make no claims for a complete list, as the world is a big place, and even my little corner can hold secrets that it may not divulge. And so I begin with a suite of 25 plants adapted to xeric sites, the gravel hills, and will write more posts on more of the plants as the winter progresses. I begin with the state flower of South Dakota, and the symbol of prairie to many people,

1.Pasqueflower (Anemone patens) Abundant on my native prairies with a population likely in the low thousands, with many on every hill. It is becoming more common on the restoration as more seed overcomes dormancy and more plants attain the size to push out blooms. I saw the first bloom in the restoration two years ago, a couple more last year, and then 20 or so this year, so I hope and expect that many more appear in future years. As it seems they need to establish for a few years before they have the ability or need to make seed, this implies that they are a long lived species. Some of my first prairie memories are of trying to keep up with my older brother Leon in the pasture south of our farm going out to pick the first flowers of spring for our mother. As a plant that makes its growth very early, it can become thick in overgrazed native pastures where competition has been removed or held back. They are a humble little flower with no discernable aroma, but after a long winter they are shockingly beautiful. I have continued to gather seed when available, and am putting a bit out this spring, and will likely continue in the future. Below is the first pasque I saw blooming in the restoration.

2. Thimbleflower (Anemone cylindrica) Common, but scattered in the native prairies; I doubt there are more than a few hundred plants. Last year I saw perhaps 20-30 in the restoration. It can be very frustrating to seed as the cottony hairs which coat the seed create a ball of seed, from which it can be very difficult to separate individual seeds. That same characteristic makes them easy to gather as they remain as a coherent head for a long time after maturity. This was a plant I was hardly aware of until I began the restoration work. Both the Anemones are quite conservative, not appearing anywhere other than native prairies that I can recall.

3. Gray Goldenrod (Solidago nemoralis) Common in native prairies with my estimate in the low thousands. It is the only goldenrod truly adapted to the gravel hills, though other species are hanging in there so far in droughty sites in the restoration. Like all the goldenrods it tends to be an increaser in pastures as it seeds itself in well and cattle are indifferent to grazing it (though some clearly gets chewed). I have a fair catch in the restoration with several hundred growing.

4. Threadleaf, or Needleleaf Sedge (Carex diuruscula) Fairly common on the tops of the gravel hills, along with Sun Sedge (Carex inops). They are both humble little plants, western species which compete wherever the sod forming grasses like blue grama (Bouteluoa gracilis) allow them room. I have gathered a little bit of seed in the past, though none this year, and even tried to transplant a bit of sod which contained them, but as far as I know there are none yet in the restoration. As both species are strongly rhizomatous a little could go a long way when individual plants turn into expansive clones. I think as low plants that grow very early they are advantaged by light grazing, though they may disappear with heavy, repeated grazing.

5. Yellow Sundrops (Oenothera serrulatus) Common in my prairie hills on the most xeric soils, a small species of primrose. So far I have found only one or two in my restoration, which likely found their way on their own. Gathering seed is difficult, as the plant becomes hard to see as it matures, just another small brown bit of foliage. Ben was trying to keep watch on them to get some seed before it shattered, and I will be interested in whether we have some to experiment with. A member of a suite of about 10 humble early blooming forbs found in very xeric sites.

6. False Toadflax (Comandra umbellata) Sticking to the theme, here is another of the early blooming/xeric adapted forbs. False toadflax literally blankets areas of the gravel hills with tiny white blooms, It is very rhizomatous, so areas devoted to a limited number of clones can have a big impact. I have tried to transplant rhizomes before without success, so I worked diligently to gather the seeds this year, of which there are surprisingly few, with large seeds for a small plant, and I hope to either have the Native Plant initiative (NPI) grow some plugs, or just place individual seeds nicely in appropriate spots. With its aggressive ability to clone a few will go a long way. The picture below was to illustrate a different plant, pennsylvania cinquefoil, but includes several toadflax plants enveloping, and perhaps parasitizing it.

7. Hoary Puccoon (Lithospermum canadensis) Also a common early blooming denizen of the gravel hills, though with an expansive footprint, more able to compete in slightly wetter, dry mesic environments, Hoary puccoon is another species that I have not so far gotten established in the restoration, and something of a priority for me. Seeds are not easy to gather, as they mature and drop as successive flowers bloom and develop over a period of several weeks. Thus, though plants are not hard to find, each plant may have only one or two mature seeds which are reputedly hard to germinate. We will see if fortune is kind this winter. It can sometimes be found in ditches and other disturbed areas, so it can’t be considered conservative. Seeds may have to go through a bird gut to be germinable, which would explain its ability to colonize road ditches, but if we can recreate a bird gut with a little sandpaper we may be able to get something to happen. It is likely persistent and able to spread naturally if we do get something going. I also must mention that it has perhaps the most distinctive and appealing odor of any wildflower in the prairie. I no longer can smell much after all the cancer treatments and subsequent surgeries, but this was a bloom I used to wait for after a long winter, more for the aroma than the appearance, and I have fond memories of picking them and carrying a small bouquet around to bask in their fragrance.

8. Fringed puccoon (Lithospermum incisum) Once again, an early blooming resident of the hilltops. I didn’t realize how common they were until this year, when ideal May weather set up a bit of a superbloom just off the ridgetop of every hill. Seed set, which seemed very spotty in other years, was excellent, and Ben and I gathered a lot of plants. Just like it’s sister species above, seeds develop and drop off as the season progresses, but rather than one or two mature seeds hanging on, it seemed more like six or eight per plant. They are occasionally found along fencelines, and in ditches, implying bird dispersal as an effective aid to their spread and germination. Ben and I will try to emulate our avian cousins and see if we can get more going in the restoration. There are several that I have seen there so far, likely the courtesy of sparrows travelling between the prairies and the restoration. This species was not really on our radar until we realized how much seed we could get, and we will take advantage of the opportunity.

9. Nuttall’s Violet (Viola nuttallii) For now, this is the last of the xeric miniatures that go together. The picture is of a clump I am about to dig in the native prairie to transplant into the restoration. Included with the little violets were some bastard toadflax, some Kentucky bluegrass, some needleleaf sedge (Carex diuruscula) and dormant blue grama (Bouteloua gracilis) and perhaps a couple other plants. This violet is more common in my hills than the normally common prairie violet. Like many of the plants in my xeric prairies this is more of a western species adapted to harsh conditions and short rations. The transplant, pictured below, failed, and I have none in my restoration, meaning I will try again next year.

10. Prairie violet (Viola pedatifida) Not all the violets in my prairies are the yellow flowered Nuttalls. There are prairie violets down towards the base of the same hills where the Nuttall’s violets carry the high ground. I have never been able to gather any seed, so I broke down a few years ago and bought some to spread, and now have some growing in the restoration. Ben was able to gather some this year, so we may try growing some plugs to transplant. As violets are the obligate food source for regal frittilary butterfly larvae, a federally listed species I commonly see in my prairies I feel some added responsibility to get more plants of both species going in the restoration. Below is one of the first that I saw in the restoration.

11. Alumroot (Heuchera richardsonii) This is very common in my native prairies, with plants growing all the way from very xeric sites down through dry mesic areas. The seed is teeny tiny, little more than dust, so a little goes a long way. I purchased a little seed to begin, and had quite a few start up, but I think the seed source was to the south, as many died out the first couple winters. Plants will not bloom unless conditions are good, meaning I got to see just how common they are this year as most used the spring rain to push up blooms, and we gathered a fair amount of seed, literally millions in a few ounces. The trick of doing a good job with seeding them is that they will not mix with other seeds well, being so small. They grow in the same environment as several other small seeded forbs, so I may just mix 2-4 of those species together and spread them separately from the main mix. The plant in the picture below is from a native prairie that we had burned several weeks before. I the lower left and the far right are vegetative hoary puccoon plants, Number 7 on this list.

12. Slender Penstemon/Beardtongue (Penstemon gracilis) This is one of those small seeded wildflowers I just mentioned (both about 400,000 seed per ounce), and one that once again I gathered a fair amount of this year. I have many in the restoration, hundreds, in a variety of environments. and it is a wonderful, pale violet burst of color in late May, just after the very first flowers like the pasques. All these early blooming hill flowers are likely very important to native bees and other pollinators. This is one of the 20 or 30 biggest successes of my restoration, and one that I will consider gathering for sale in the future, especially if I am able to use this years bounty of seed to get a large number of new seedlings going. In the picture below, the smaller flowers in the foreground are slender penstemons. To the left is shellleaf penstemon, a species which I don’t have in my prairies, though it is native to the area, and well adapted to droughty soils. To the right is foxglove penstemon, which hitched a ride in with other seed that I bought. It is not native here, but native several hundred miles to the southeast, but seems to be holding its own in dry mesic to mesic sites. I did not give either of these a number only because I have never seen either in native prairies in this part of the state.

13. White Penstemon (Penstemon albidus) These begin blooming earlier than their brethren, the P. gracilis, beginning while the pasqueflowers are still out, and I consider them another of the hardiest forbs, growing on otherwise barren areas. We gathered a good amount of this as well, at least several ounces to perhaps a pound when we complete processing them. While they only occupy the most xeric 5-10 % of the prairies there can be hundreds where they occur. I have several acres of appropriate habitat in the Huggett prairie we will burn next spring where most of the seed will go. There are probably several hundred in the restoration now, and with some luck we will have hundreds more growing next year. My guess from past observations is that the seed of both penstemons is quite viable and seedlings quite competitive, which allows them to establish and re-establish themselves on appropriate sites. I have at least 100-200 in the restoration.

14. Pennsylvania Cinquefoil (Potentilla pennsylvanica) This is yet another small, humble early blooming species of the dry hills, mostly blooming in June. Once again there was a bumper seed crop we harvested, and it will likely go in with the other small seeded species for distribution on the more xeric areas. There are many in the native prairies, far more than I thought there were as they showed themselves by using the spring rains to bloom. I have some in the restoration, but hope for a lot more. Like the white penstemon, I think they are a short lived species that puts out a lot of viable seed, much like an annual, and that we could make very good progress in one year with luck. Below is a very large blooming cinquefoil in the restoration. This was four years ago before there was much competition. Both the cinquefoil and the prairie junegrass (Koeleria macrantha) in back of it are twice the size they normally are in the native prairies.

15. Downy Painted Cup (Castilleja sessiflora) Unlike many other forbs listed above, there are just a few in the native prairies, but the little seed we gathered the first year turned into thousands of plants in the restoration. This is a sister species to the red flowered Indian Paintbrush that is always in the pictures of mountain meadows, white flowered and very showy in its own way. It is a hemi-parasitic species, meaning it can grow independently, but thrives when there is a host plant, like blue grama, to borrow from. I have no idea how I ended up with so many in the restoration, but it is another species which we gathered a lot of seed from this year, and we should have plenty to gather in the future. The seed will likely go into the same bag with the Pennsylvania cinquefoil and the white penstemon for spreading on the most xeric soils. In the picture below, all the feathery looking pale yellow to white flowers are downy painted cup plants in bloom.

16. Groundplum Milkvetch (Astragalus crassicarpus) Groundplums (we grew up calling them buffalo beans) are another early blooming wildflower of the gravel hills, not adapted to the most xeric sites, but along sidehills or on hilltops that have a little soil over the gravel. I probably have several hundred in the native prairies and close to 100 in the restoration, and am aggressively adding more, both seed and transplants. Below is an example of a year old transplant in May, growing after a prescribed burn the fall of 2023. This is one of the first plants (prairie turnips were first) that I learned were edible in the prairies, the young pods looking like grapes and tasting like green beans, or perhaps even a not very sweet snap pea. I have written before about the confusing strategy of having immature pods taste good as it is no help to seed dispersal, but perhaps it’s just the luck of the draw that no prairie animals like the taste. Many members of the Astragalus genus are poisonous and there may be compounds in the pods which communicate that to potential pod robbers. They are not poisonous enough that a few pods will bother me, however, so I look forward to a groundplum snack early next summer.

16. Field Milkvetch (Astragalus agrestis) Like many of the milkvetches this is a western species, though it prefers mesic sites. I have found plants in many areas, but I have what may be a very large and prolific clone in what is likely a wallow area in the native pasture adjoining the restoration. The plants are small, humble little things, and often don’t bloom in those mesic sites, perhaps outcompeted by larger grasses and forbs. In the disturbed area, however, they took over an area of about 100 square feet, and dominate and bloom profusely, as in the picture below. I have gathered a little seed and will start to try to propagate in my restorations, where I have none. It doesn’t really fit with the theme of xeric adapted species, but it is a western species like my other milkvetches so I bent my definition a bit. Judging by the flowers and seedheads it is a very close relative of my next species description.

17. Standing milkvetch (Astragalus adsurgens) Once again a western species, but this one really only lives in very xeric, thin soils. I’m not sure why, but I seem to be on a mission to propagate this species and have the ability to give, trade or sell it to others. As I stated in another recent post, I had assumed I had a personal relationship with every one of the 40 or so found in our native prairies and the single one that I had found in the restoration. Then with the bounteous rain of our summer perhaps 50 or even 100 more showed their blooms, and several more appeared in the restoration. I think it is a long lived species, extremely conservative, and easily grazed out with season long grazing. Cows love it. Thus, if I want to propagate seed I will likely have to be extremely judicious in when and how much grazing I allow. Below is a picture of the first one I saw in the restoration a couple years ago.

18. Slender Milkvetch (Astragalus flexuosus) Yet another western milkvetch, though with a different growth habit than the last two, with long, straggly stems radiating from a central crown, sometimes more than two feet long, making a four foot wide plant. I am confused by the seed dispersal mechanism of several of the milkvetches, wondering if the animal who is supposed to eat the pods of groundplum, standing milkvetch and field milkvetch is missing. Slender milkvetch may have a different strategy, however, as the inch long pods twist open as they dry after maturity shedding the seeds. While there may be a small rodent or a ground-feeding bird which is supposed to find and disperse the seeds, what seems to be happening is they simply use the reach of the multitude of stems reaching out to continue making their way across the prairie a couple feet at a time. I have perhaps a hundred plants that I know of in the native prairies and am approaching that number in the restoration, a success that pleases me greatly. Interestingly, adjacent to the prairie that houses the majority of all the Astragalus species is a xeric, consistently overgrazed pasture that I trespass on to see what grows there. This pasture has a fair amount of humble, grazed down groundplum milkvetch and slender milkvetch plants, showing a fair resilience to the appetites of the cattle, but not a single standing milkvetch. Cows like to eat them all, but the standing milkvetch is, unfortunately, cow candy. These are the sorts of things that I need to learn if the restoration is to be both a seedbank and a pasture. Below are a couple pictures frrom the restoration of young slender milkvetch plants not yet attaining the reach that it may attain after a couple more years of growth.

19. Prairie Larkspur (Delphinium carolinianum var. virescens) While many of the species I have so far described are quite visible and obvious in the prairies, larkspurs are both less common and except for the seedstalks and flowers, which are quite showy, can be a bit cryptic. Though it can grow in the better xeric soils it is no lover of drought. I believe it is a long lived plant as it is very reluctant to bloom and make seed, preferring to wait for the years with June and early July rain. Several times I have waited for the seedstalks to bloom and make seed for my collecting only to have a hot June week induce the larkspur plants to change their minds. Unlike many species which will abort flowers or developing seeds after water stress, but continue to grow vegetatively, larkspur plants will totally disappear, presumably sending nutrients and carbohydrates back down to the crown and roots to wait for another year. The good summer rains this year meant not only that I got to see many more plants blooming in the restoration (perhaps 30 or so where I assumed there were 4 or 5), but allowed me to gather some seed for the first time in several years. I will likely have the students in the Native Plant Initiative (NPI) lab grow them out for seedling plugs to plant next summer. The plant below was the first I saw in the restoration three years ago.

20. Tall, or Prairie Cinquefoil (Drymocallis arguta) This is a fairly common species that seems to handle some grazing, occurring in lightly and even moderately grazed pastures, though eventually it will be grazed out. I have probably several hundred in my prairies, lightly scattered across the sidehills, though avoiding the most xeric sites, and competing into what I consider dry mesic soils. I was able to gather a fair amount of seed the first year I spent working at augmenting the mix that would be seeded by the Conservation District, mostly from a 10 acre prairie owned by my best friend about 30 miles away from the restoration. It was a very good year for gathering, and I was able to accumulate many pounds of seed that year of many different species. No other species germinated, established and made buckets of new seed in the restoration like the cinquefoil. I have many thousands in the restoration, and it is almost a dominant species in some areas. My assumption is that this situation will not last, and that other forbs and grasses will replace some of the cinquefoil, but it was fun to have something growing and blooming by the second year after seeding when I was still filled with angst over the many empty (or perhaps failed?) areas I saw. As it turned out the angst was unnecessary and I have 130-140 species growing throughout the field, but I have a fond place in my heart for the cinquefoil which gave me hope. It is the blooming plant in the lower left of the picture below.

21. Textile Onion (Allium textile) Textile onion is a small, early blooming forb inhabiting the same very xeric areas as white penstemon, Pennsylvania cinquefoil, standing milkvetch and yellow sundrops. I forgot to include it earlier, but it belongs with the “xeric miniatures”. It blooms in May, makes seed by July, and disappears soon after to wait for the next year. It is very common on several very xeric slopes where there is little competition, with hundreds in several small areas, but will not compete anywhere water relations allow a thick grass sod. Though there are thousands in my native prairies I have yet to see one in the restoration. Last year was a good year to collect seed so we will try to get some established next year. Judging by their ubiquity in the most xeric areas in the native prairies I am optimistic that I will see some soon. It’s fair to say that this is one on the priorities for next year. I will try to make the most of the seed I have and perhaps transplant some of the bulbs. Below are pictures of an onion about to bloom, and a picture of three mature textile onion plants (the little pale guys with black seeds poking out in the one along the top of the picture) showing how hard one has to work to find and gather seed.

22. Blanketflower (Gaillardea aristata) Blanketflower is ubiquitous across the tops of every hill in all the native prairies. Blanketflowers are one of the more grazing tolerant forbs, an increaser, only eliminated from prairies by herbicide treatments, Though they are common, they were not familiar to me as they bloom in June when I was always too busy to get to the prairies. They became the original impetus for my obsession with locally adapted seed a few years ago. I had them added to the original purchased seed mix that was seeded by the conservation district, and was heartened by hundreds blooming the next spring, one of the few early successes from that planting. They didn’t look like the blanketflowers that I saw in my native prairies, however, with much larger and showier flowers. I found the old seedtags and realized that the seed had a source in Colorado, and wrote in a blog post that it would be interesting to see their ability to handle -30 temperatures. We got that cold spell the following winter during a dry stretch with no snow, and I lost 90% or more of the plants. I have been gathering and spreading blanketflower seed every year and assume their resurgence is primarily due to my gathered seed. Now my mission is to get a population, perhaps buttressed by a dedicated field plot so that there would be a source of Northern Plains adapted seed for the conservation community. The first picture is of some in bloom, and the second after the petals drop, as the plants fill seeds.

23. Prairie Smoke (Geum triflorum) Prairie smoke is one of everyone’s favorite dry prairie plants, and I feel fortunate that I have probably a couple hundred in the restoration (with more showing up every year) and probably the same amount in my native prairies. As a super early wildflower, almost as early as pasques, it also avoids some grazing (cattle often don’t get out to pasture until late May, and prairie smoke is almost done with its life cycle, remaining as basal leaves to grow and return food to their crowns. It’s native range encompasses all the high country out west, North Dakota and then curves south through the forest/prairie transition country of Minnesota and Wisconsin, making it appear to be a plant of cool climates. This would not bode well for its future in my prairies in a period of warming, as it is not found to the south of me. I will enjoy my success with it, and hope that my position upon the top of the Coteau will keep the habitat appropriate in the future. Below are a couple crowns greening up in early April last year, and below that is a blooming plant in May.

24. Scarlet Gaura (Oenothera suffratescens) Scarlet gaura is a primrose that grows across most of the gravelly hills, with hundreds likely in the native prairies. It’s distribution is a bit patchy and its blooming hard to predict, Couple that with its small stature, and unobtrusive appearance and one has an explanation why I have gathered very little seed and have only found one in the restoration. Once established it seems to compete quite well, and handle some grazing, so I will likely just try again next year. The flower is gorgeous when viewed up close, But I am afraid I will just show a poor picture from a distance.

25. Blueeyed Grass (Sisyrinchium campestre) Another early bloomer, late May to June, there for the bees and early Lepidoptera to get a little food. The picture below shows just a couple blooms, but a plant in a good spot will throw out 20 or more flower heads. Like many rhizomatous species it can be a bit patchy, and one clone may have many crowns. They are not uncommon in my prairies, but I likely have just a few hundred crowns, and perhaps 50-100 in the restoration, most from purchased seed I assume, though I have been able to gather a little seed. Again, like many rhizomatous species, they put less resources into seed, and even if you know where a bunch were blooming there may be very few seed to pick when you return. Thus, this is another species that I may try to dig rhizomes to transplant.

I will close this batch of 25 species (actually 26, as I combined the two xeric sedges) with a picture of the first pasqueflowers of a couple years ago. I already look forward to seeing my old friends again next April This winter I hope to add more pictures of other species, and eventually all of them as I take more pictures. And, I hope to get a couple more installments of plant descriptions up soon, though it may wait until the fall seeding is complete. As a matter of fact, I think I will go out to spread some seed this afternoon.

Fire on the Prairie

One of my big goals for the fall, and really the year as a whole, was to take the opportunity, perhaps the last good opportunity, to improve the two 20 acre patches that have most recently been seeded by spreading a wide variety of species that I want to get established. The Huggett land that was seeded four years ago is filled in with perennial grasses (and Canada thistles) on the 3-4 acres of mesic soil, which will not allow much for new seedlings, though we hope to aid establishment of new plants by conducting a burn there during late April next spring. Most of the Huggett land, however, is xeric soils where it takes a long time to establish a complete ground cover, and I think the window is still open for augmenting with new species and larger populations of existing species. 2024 was a very good year for collecting seed on my xeric soils because of copious rain through almost the entire growing season (it suddenly shut off in early August after a very wet spring and early summer) and we have several species where gathering was only limited by the time we could put into it. The other 20 acre patch I am referring to was seeded two years ago, and has so far been a bit of a disappointment, with almost all the plants we see so far coming from the mix put in with the Day County Conservation District drill, basically the cheap seed of commonly used species, and very little is showing up yet of the gathered seed we spread by hand over the top. More will certainly show up in the future, but after two years there is clearly room for new seedling establishment. Here’s a before and after:

The first picture shows a “before” picture that is pretty representative. There are several thistle plants, the bane of my existence, a couple cool season grass clumps, a few forbs, a lot of annual grass residue and the grayer residue on the lower right is two year old wheat residue. The field had been mowed about July 15 to limit seed production from the thistles and other weeds with the unavoidable corollary that it limits seed production of the native forbs. It also means less of a jungle of combustible materials, making for an orderly and easily managed fire. The above picture is the back-burn, as you can see by the direction of smoke travel, but it was a comparatively sedate burn even when the head burn was lit. There was a four person crew, all with some experience, making for a safe and stress free fire.

And here was the result, a completely burned field. What stands out to me in this picture is the linear rows with residue divided by more barren areas. This goes back to the way it was seeded, into wheat residue. Where the chaff comes out of the back of the combine it was difficult to get seed to establish, especially where tire tracks pushed everything flat. Now, however, those same areas should be open ground for the seed that we spread this fall to have a welcoming home where they can germinate, grow and send their progeny into the future. Right now I am organizing both my seed resources and my labor to get this done before the snow falls, the wind blows and we are shut off from the field. Two years ago after the conservation district originally seeded this, my friend Roger Assmus came up about November 15 and we were able to topdress that year’s gathered seed before the real snow came in December. Last winter, the winter that wasn’t a winter, I returned multiple times in January and February to keep tossing seed around the brown, comparatively warm landscape in a different area that had been burned that November. With no assurance that this winter will allow me to do that again, I am trying to line up a seed throwing party before Thanksgiving with a group of SDSU grad students from the Native Plant Initiative lab to get it all done at once. That demands that I be ready to give them the appropriate seed and directions, so I will be busy this week preparing.

Getting anything “all done at once” is almost an impossibility, to be honest, for several reasons. Gathering, processing, mixing appropriate batches, and storing everything for the perfect day to spread seed is simply beyond my facilities and probably my attention span. Many years of wandering the prairies has taught me exactly where species grow in my prairies, and while there are broad generalizations that can be made as to groupings for mesic, dry mesic or xeric sites they don’t hold true when looked at closely. White penstemon (Penstemon albidus), prairie turnip (Pediomelum esculentum) and slender milkvetch (Astragalus flexuosus) would all be considered xeric adapted species, but their homes in my native prairies hardly overlap. Though it wouldn’t be wrong to toss them all into the same bucket it feels better to be more specific in seeding to get them established in the right sites. The penstemon needs to go on the most xeric ground, the prairie turnip can go on all xeric sites except the most barren where the penstemon will go, and the slender milkvetch is found on sites grading into dry mesic, the only one of the three that will consistently be found where smooth brome (Bromus inermis) is trying to take over. In other words, I feel most comfortable when seeding species individually to match the soils where I find them in the native prairie. It isn’t practical to do that with everything, but rather a goal to which I aspire.

Thus, today, I filled most of my car with the year’s gathered seed, drove up to my partner, Ben Lardy’s place, and laid everything out. I gave him a few species to process and add to seed that he had gathered, he gave me a few species to add to my supplies and my plan for next weekend began to come together. While I can’t expect the opportunity to spread seed through the entire winter again, I’m hoping for some nice weather in early December to finish what we will begin in a few days. I hope to have another post detailing our progress in 2-3 weeks. Until then I need to go back to work, which began a couple days ago.

I couldn’t wait for the big seeding shindig, so I took the opportunity of a beautiful late fall day to go begin spreading seed, specifically needle and thread (Heterostipa comata) seed. The messy wad to the left of my glove is what is left of three gallons of seed after I spread it across the 3-4 acres of xeric soils in the burned field. Seeding needle and thread is a laborious task as their awns are made to catch in the fur of an animal to travel and find a new home. When gathered and thrown into a container they aggregate into a tight wad from which small groups of needles have to be extricated and then thrown into the wind, Three gallons took about two hours to spread, and I have about ten gallons more to go, though much of it will go on the Huggett 20 next spring after it is burned. I also got some other seed spread, and will continue to do that every chance I get, preparing for the possibility my seed tossing party doesn’t happen. Life is messy and we have to roll with it.

What Does Success Look Like?

As happens often in my writings, I will begin with some observations of a bountiful summer, and then down the rabbit hole of my more philosophical musings. First, a little look around.

This is a view of the south side of fairly steep gravel hill. You can barely call what’s under these plants soil. Last year at this time this landscape was mostly brown, the plants hiding after a hot and dry couple months. Not today. The majority of the flowers are whorled milkweed (Asclepias verticillata), which barely came above ground last year and made no blooms. Now, close to 1000 square feet are awash with milkweed blooms. After good fall rains and about 5″ every month since May, it’s a rich and varied environment. Right now there are four species blooming here, but that follows the 15-20 others that came before. Here’s another example:

These are wild onions (Allium stelatum) towards the base of a nearby hill. Last year I may have picked one or two onion seedheads near here, but this year there are perhaps 2-3000 circling this 1 acre hill. The same has been true of prairie turnips (Pediomelum esculentum), alumroot (Heuchera richardsonii), Pennsylvanis cinquefoil (Potentilla pennsylvanica) yellow flax (Linum sulcatum), two different penstemons (Penstemon albidus and P. gracilis) and many others. Many species of wildflowers became giddy with the glory of spring, and love was in the air (literally, with pollen blowing). Thus, it has been, and will continue to be, an epic year for seed gathering. Here’s one last picture of the native pasture where the first two pictures were taken:

There’s a lot going on in there, and many comments could be made about this. This is a slightly better site than the first two, but would still be considered a very xeric soil. You would not plant corn in this soil and expect to harvest ears. Yet it is a lush oasis in a year with rain, which goes to show the possibilities in an established prairie. Many species are elbowing each other for space, waiting for an opportunity., hiding in the shadows. Then a year like this comes along and all hell breaks loose. Over the past five years I thought I had identified where every standing milkvetch (Astragalus adsurgens) resided in my native prairies, perhaps 40-50 plants in total. This year I saw at least that many more, as they felt safe to bloom and set some seed. The rainy year has allowed me to learn a great deal about my prairies.

One of the big question I have is simply: what all is really going on there if you add in birds, small mammals, insects, fungi and all the other life that resides here? Areas in the restoration on similar sites don’t really look like this, but like a pretty Potemkin village thrown together to fool the naive. While I am very pleased with the progress of the restorations, this thought has nagged at me for years. What has Dr. Frankenstein really created here? It’s alive, and it’s some sort of bastardized prairie environment, but is it just a pretty Boris Karloff? What have I really got here? Then, serendipitously, I read a blog post from Chris Helzer, a Nature Conservancy ecologist along the Platte River in Nebraska, where he answers what must be a common question to him. To paraphrase:: “Why do this? A restoration is not a true prairie. It doesn’t have the right plants in all the right places. It doesn’t have all the biotic relationships. It may have only half as much organic matter as the unplowed prairie. Is it worth it?” Chris’ aggressive reply, which I echo is, “Of course it’s worth it! We have taken marginal cropground and are producing a huge bucket of ecosystem services!” But it’s more than that. It is protecting, buffering and enlarging the prairie remnants around which it is placed. Eventually it will be a home for all the grassland species and all the deep relationships which will build over time. That doesn’t happen overnight. A restoration’s greatest value may be what it does for the life in the adjacent native prairies, but patience is needed.

I’ve been dancing around that thought in various blog posts lately, talking about border effects and enlarging populations of native plants to provide a deeper genetic bank to help the plants in the relict prairies. Chris stated the thought succinctly that the largest benefit of the restoration is what it does for the prairie remnants they connect and protect. That really speaks to me. I have four prairie remnant on my home farm, three of high quality which are intertwined with the restorations, about 100 acres. And my farm adjoins about 1000 acres of native grass to the west. Thus, my 200 acres of restorations are aiding and protecting over 1000. That thought really pleases me; I think we have something here. But there’s more.

Above is an area in the restoration with very xeric soils, much like the first picture from the native prairie. Though many of the plant species we have established are the same, it doesn’t look much like it, only improved by the pretty young woman in the picture. Yet, it is accomplishing a great deal and is steadily developing it’s own structure. What will it look like in 50 or 200 years? I would pay good money to see it.

My last point also goes back to Chris’ post, and to the picture above. The restoration is a success if it is accomplishing the goals which led you to do the restoration. I have been talking a lot lately about the goal of creating a living seed bank on my land, but there are other goals. Bailey Howard, the young woman in the picture, is a friend from the Twin Cities who is deeply interested in the world and how to do good in it. I was able to give her one example to consider, and because of our friendship we will likely revisit this and she will try to learn more. Earlier this summer I hosted eight students, mostly master’s candidates from the Native Plant Initiative lab run by my friend, Dr. Lora Perkins at SDSU. Some will likely join me in September to help plant seedling plugs or gather seed and gain experience and knowledge on my land. In two weeks the local Conservation District is coming as part of a tour of different aspects of conservation in Day County. None of these people give a flying you-know-what if this isn’t a perfect replication of what prairie should be around here, but there will be questions and conversations and observations and much will be learned. Education and outreach are stated goals of mine for this project, and I am relishing this success.

Finally, here’s what perhaps a third of the restoration looks like on some of the slightly better soils, aided by our rainy summer. Though it looks great, there are a lot of nits I could pick, and I still hope to add to the diversity here. Still, this is clearly a success and a joy to be in. I have been ill for a stretch, and my therapy today will be to go wander in the restoration. In that way, as well it is a success. Having a place where people can go to find solace is also a stated goal of this project. Every year I refer to my dodgy health and my uncertainty as to how long I can work at this. That’s fine, it’s just life, and I have to be humble enough to give up some things down the road. Yet today I am richly rewarded and feel very successful. And tomorrow we will get up, “strap em back on”, and see what wonders await.

The Living Seed Bank Part 3: Progress on Huggett’s

This week I spent several hours during a couple visits just seeing what was coming in different areas of the restorations, including the Huggett ground, 20 acres a half mile north of the main restoration which was seeded in November, 2020. I have lower expectations and hopes for that land, partially because I have different goals there, and partially because it borders a neighbor on the north who is likely to allow spray drift to affect my planting. As a smaller piece of ground it is inherently more prone to edge effects, and perhaps not the best place to put my efforts. Still, a lot of gathered seed was spread there, and there are significant areas that might contribute to the seed bank project. Here’s a couple views of what the better half of it looks like now.

Of course, as I stated, this is the best half. There are areas that are blanketed in cheatgrass, and other areas in the richer soils which are filled with Canada thistles, both of which can preclude desirable natives from growing. Here is the plan to start to remedy this. First, there will be 25 cow/calf pairs that will go out there very soon, perhaps in a couple days. Even now, after three growing seasons, there is not a full stand of grass here. There are many bunches getting a start, but probably less than 25% of the ground has perennial grass cover. Much of the open space that isn’t covered in thistles has weedy winter annual grasses such as the cheat and foxtail barley. To be blunt, after three growing seasons some of it is still a bit of a mess. The cows will hopefully help hold down the annual grasses and start to provide a bit of additional biology with their manure, allowing more space for the perennials to expand. That is only the beginning, however. By mid-June the cows will be in a neighboring pasture, and I will hopefully get over this to spot-treat some of the worst thistles with herbicide, hopefully less than an acre of the thickest thistle growth. The downside of the herbicide, obviously, is that this is likely to kill some of the few forbs which have been establishing themselves with the prickly thistle neighbors. I will be conservative with herbicide, however, and try to only spray those areas where the thistles are so thick that all other growth has been shut down.

Then, I hope to allow this to grow the rest of the year undisturbed in preparation for a fall burn. We will try to do a fall burn, rather than a spring burn, for two reasons. First, a late fall burn, perhaps in early November, should kill the little winter annual grasses I don’t want. Second, this will prepare the ground for a late fall/early winter seeding with as much damn seed as I can get my hands on, the burn having disrobed the ground so seed hits soil, letting the oncoming winter overcome the dormancy of the seed, and allowing all this locally gathered seed to begin filling in the spaces in 2025. Thus, there are several moving parts that I am not totally in control of, such as the cattle and the fire, but it is reasonable to hope that between all of these activities I can make a significant improvement to the wildflower population here by the end of next year. In total, I have planted about 230 acres to native prairie plants, but I am really concentrating on the 120 acres in my southwest quarter. If I can get this additional 20 acres rocking, that will make 140 acres, all connected to truly native prairies in a 267 acre complex, and all that adjacent to several hundred acres of native pastures owned by a couple neighbors. Those neighboring acres, while not pristine, have at least a smattering of native forbs. This then enlarges the “island” of native plants, providing larger home territories for all prairie life, from sharptail grouse and marbled godwits to native bees and butterflies to native fungi and bacteria.

All this is a grand vision, which is a hell of a lot less grand when I allow my rose-colored lenses (that usually seem to cover my eyes) to refocus on the messy issues blocking this path to prairie nirvana. But what truly is nirvana anyway? Nirvana is ultimate enlightenment, the acceptance of both the tawdry messiness of life and the beauty of our attempts to spread peace and kindness in a chaotic world. It is seeing all of creation hooked together in a beautiful loop of activity. We are all on that path to nirvana whether we recognize it or not, as we just try to survive our busy lives. Who can I connect to in my part of the loop who might see these prairies as a gateway that helps them achieve their own peace, their own progression to nirvana? What will karma allow? Working on that is part of my path in 2024, to make progress in relationships that can use these prairies for their own future. We will return to this thought later, but for now I will leave you with a couple pictures.

The first picture is of a Pennsylvania cinquefoil (Potentilla pennsylvanica) in a native prairie, a humble little plant that is adapted to the gravel hills. I just planted 20 of them in the restoration, with many more to go. The second picture is of a small milkvetch (Astragalus sp.) which I planted as a seedling plug last year. While most of my transplants failed to survive a hot, dry summer, some made it through, and can further the vision of hills covered with wildflowers providing seed for others to do grand projects of their own.

The Living Seed Bank, Part 2: After the Burn

I open this post, not with a picture from the area of the restoration that was burned last fall, and is the present focus of my efforts in the seed bank quest, but a picture from across the trail to the west on a neighboring pasture I don’t own, called the Maloney 80. All those clumps of last year’s grass growth are very instructive. They are all individual crowns of porcupine grass (Heterostipa spartea). I have written about this species several times before, usually in the context of what a pain in the rear it is to seed, because of the seeds (with their spear-like awns) tendency to form almost impenetrable balls from which small groups must be laboriously plucked to fling while seeding. This is not a common component of prairie seed mixes because of the difficulties first in planting, and then in harvesting, cleaning and storing seed. I have seen a couple vendors who sell de-awned seed, but the awn helps in the seed planting itself, twisting and pushing the seed into the ground naturally while wetting and drying, so it is considered helpful to keep the awns. It is obviously an important component of native prairies here, dominating the mesic areas at the base of the hills. The picture below of my glove after seeding some porcupine grass, illustrates the difficulties the awns create:

I have many areas in my own prairies which could have been the backdrop for the opening picture, but only scattered plants in various areas of the restoration. Though seed has been spread several times I doubt there are more than a couple hundred plants scattered in the restoration. While it is not impossible to access from vendors, as always, we can run into issues with source geography, and because it is difficult to farm, it is not a cheap seed to buy. For instance, I see that I could purchase an ounce, 680 seeds, for $12.00, or about 57 seeds for a dollar, and I would have to seed it separately by hand. If I were planting big bluestem or indiangrass from the same vendor I could purchase 1050-1100 seeds for that dollar, with the added benefit that those seeds would mix well with other components of the blend that I was planting. If you were a conservation professional working with a tight budget, and limited time, which would be your choice?

I go back to the opening photo, however. How can I not plant porcupine grass, hopefully a lot of porcupine grass, if I am trying to do a prairie restoration here? To buttress this thought I saw a presentation a year ago which referenced surveys done in tallgrass prairies 150 years ago where porcupine grass, not big bluestem or indiangrass, was listed as a common dominant species. I’m in sympathy with the stance that we can’t re-create an historical prairie, and should instead focus upon achieving the ecosystem service goals we desire. However, even considering some redundancy in ecosystem services provided by the different grass species, porcupine grass seems important to me. Thus, with the open winter we just experienced, I used a significant amount of time carrying wads of entangled porcupine grass seed around the bases of the hills that were burned, plus some adjoining areas, perhaps 50 acres, and flung out many thousands of porcupine grass seeds. I did some rough math, and I may have spread 50000 seeds. In 2-3 years I will find out if I accomplished anything. How many plants would be considered a success? Can I dream of 1000? One species in the list for the seed bank. We will move on to the next example.

Above is a small groundplum milkvetch emerging from its winter doldrums. Diagonally from its lower right side you see what looks like a black pen I lost in the prairie. It is, however, the remains of the black tube that housed a seedling grown by the Native Plant Initiative at SDSU. I then placed the tube in the ground to mark it so that I could return to water and observe the seedling. Over the past two summers I have planted about 1500 seedlings of about 20 species in an attempt to leapfrog over difficulties in establishing plants by topdressing seed. If all goes well I may get another 1000 planted this year. I have centered my activities on about 10 forb species which are more difficult to access than porcupine grass. My favorite seed vendor, Prairie Moon Seeds from southeast Minnesota, has only sold groundplum in packets of 75 seeds for $3.00, or 25 seeds per dollar, the past couple years. I have spread several thousand seeds that I have gathered over the years, and the result has been 50-100 plants, not bad, but not a population sufficient for the seed bank idea. Thus, I have also transplanted about 100-150 plants started in the SDSU greenhouse. Over the past winter I spent a couple hours methodically placing individual seed into bare soil in appropriate areas. I have only a vague idea how many transplants have survived, but I hope that 30-40 did. Add in a couple more years of work with both seed and transplants and I may have several hundred to go with the several hundred living in the adjacent native prairies. With that I would feel I had something. The goal is to get a population that not only is of sufficient size for significant seed gathering, but that has some genetic depth and the ability to maintain itself for a long time going forward. How big that population needs to be is unknowable, but if I had 500 plants spread over a couple hundred acres I would feel I had something important. As each plant will often produce 20 pods with 15-20 seed per pod the restoration might be able to produce many thousands of seeds which could be shared, a pleasant thought.

I will harangue the gentle reader on just one more species to show the range of decisions that the seed bank idea has prompted, heart-leaf golden alexander (Zizea aptera), in the lower right of the photo. This is a species I see in prairies in the area, though I have not noticed one on my own prairies. It is not difficult to buy at a comparatively reasonable price, 200-250 seeds per dollar. Thus, the quandary is how much effort to add it to the seed bank. So far, the population of perhaps 50 plants in the restoration, is entirely from purchased seed. More was spread on the latest planting a year ago, so I may have more soon. It seems reasonable to me to accept some plants from purchased seed in a population from which the majority trace origin to local prairies. I am no purist, and consider those plants a valuable addition both to the prairie itself and to the genetic pool. If the genetics is unsuited to this climate they will disappear and will not contribute to seed collected here. However, if I am promoting this as a repository of locally adapted genetics which can be used in prairie restorations in the area, I would be remiss to include this as an example. Those who want to add it to their seed mixes can purchase it from a vendor. It will be the same genetics as what I would gather, as I purchased mine from such a vendor. I will change my mind if I am able to access a batch of locally sourced gathered seed (which I hope to do) and I will be happy to make efforts to put it on the list of species to increase at that time. Until then my efforts are better used elsewhere.

To sum up, efforts this winter and early spring on the 30-35 acres that were burned have included the following:

1. Spreading 50# of native seed bought from my neighbor, Levi Waddell, who has a business gathering and selling native seed. This was only partially cleaned and then sold with chaff and residue, “in the dirt” as they say in the seed business. Thus, it’s not as impressive as it sounds, but it is still a helluva lot of seed. In addition I spread several pounds of cleaned seed from about 25 species from Milborn Seeds that had a source identified as within 200 miles from here. All this was spread by hand, trying to place seed in adapted sites. Millions of seeds are out there, nicely stratified after late winter snow and spring rain.
2. For a select group of species for which I had less seed, mostly seed that I had gathered, I did a more careful job, placing seed individually into the soil for several wildflowers with seed which is large enough for my beat up old hands to hold and manipulate. Species I did this for include textile onion (Allium textile), oval leafed milkweed (Asclepias ovalifolia), green milkweed (Asclepias ovalifolia), groundplum milkvetch, pasqueflower (Anemone patens),prairie turnip (Pediomelum esculentum) pale spiked lobelia (Lobelia spicata), downy gentian (Gentiana puberulenta) and a couple others I am likely forgetting. Seeds of the last two species are like dust, so were spread over appropriate areas as conservatively and accurately as possible, while the rest were spread or placed as close to individually as I could manage.
3. This week I will go to SDSU to check on progress of the seedlings being grown for me by NPI in the greenhouse. I plan for a significant amount, several hundred, to be planted in the burned acres.
4. Finally, I am already making plans for another 30 acres to burn this fall, to do this all again.

This is the goal, a small tableau set on the little hill in the middle of the restoration. When I blew this image up, the picture showed a minimum of 12, and likely 13 or 14 wildflower species in an area of about ten square feet. Achieving such diversity and density of wildflowers everywhere in the restoration is impossible, if only because of the competitive nature of the grass crowns on more mesic sites. That’s fine, but I aspire toward greatness. The beacon is always in front of me. The concept of the seed bank provides images and a goal I will strive to reach.

The Living Seed Bank

This is a term that I have bandied about the past couple years, one I wrote a bit about in a recent post, “The 2024 Plan”, and I think its time I more rigorously define what I mean by the phrase. To phrase it differently: What the hell is a living seed bank? And why am I trying to create one? I am far from the first person to come up with the idea of a seed bank, including a seed bank for prairie plants. Last year I received some seed from the USDA Germplasm Resources Information Network (GRIN). At the time I had plans to engage in a small research project with my friends at South Dakota State University (SDSU) to compare different sources of several milkvetches (Astragalus sp.) that grow in my native prairies. While I found that, on the one hand, I am unsuited to planning, creating an experimental design and following through on a field research project, I still learned something. The seeds, which came from Kansas, Colorado, Montana and Alberta grew into seedlings very different from those grown from my seed. While they may have been the same species they were not the same plants. Their phenotypes, the visible representation of their genetics, were distinct enough to make me wonder if they really were the same species. This is no revelation; many species get divided into several or many subspecies to reflect distinct populations. It drove home for me, however, that I needed to wrap my head around the concept of local adaptation. And then to take that realization further to realize that there might be a place in the world for multiple, complementary seed banks.

I have written before about my travails in receiving ill adapted seed from purchases I have made that were able to establish populations in the restorations and then disappear over several years as the hard winters or other factors took their toll. The blanketflower (Gaillardia aristata), which turned out to be from Colorado, that I planted had a very different phenotype than my natives; it was larger, bloomed earlier and had a gaudier flower. By the second year of the restoration I had carpets of beautiful blossoms, but by the third and fourth years most had died and there were only scattered survivors, likely complaining to each other about the horrible cold they had just lived through. Surviving plants may have been from purchased seed that had tougher genetics or they may have grown from seed that I gathered from my surrounding relict prairies which had the required genetics. Less dramatically I have had the same experience with alumroot (Heuchera richardsonii) and purple prairie clover (Dalea purpurea) other wildflowers common in my hills for which I planted both purchased and gathered seed.

It gets worse. Of the approximately 100 species of wildflowers that inhabit my rolling hills, I can purchase seed for about half from regional vendors. Very simple math reveals that about 50 species are totally unavailable from any source except gathered seed. When you add the opaque nature of the source of purchased seed it means that most prairie restorations created from that purchased seed are “dumbed down” versions of what a prairie could be. Some organizations, notably The Nature Conservancy (TNC) have tried to go down a different path starting from gathered, local seed, But a lot of “diverse” seedings done by nonprofits and public agencies alike are assemblages of 30 or 40 easily accessible species, picked for a combination of availability, cost and perhaps the showiness of their flowers. What are we missing? In the largest context, what are we missing?

For one thing, we are missing plants that may have obligate partnerships with insects, fungi and other life. If the proper nectar sources aren’t available (think monarchs and milkweed) we will be missing their partners. Suzanne Simard has become famous documenting the commensual relationships between mychorrizal fungi and trees, coining the term “the wood-wide web”, showing that the whole is more than a sum of its parts. One plus one plus one, metaphorically, might equal four. or sometimes eight. Life is obviously a lot more complicated that our poor limited imaginations realize, Another thing we miss is redundancy; perhaps there are several species that do a particular job, who can fill a certain niche. However, if we only planted one of those species, and it fails to establish a population, we will miss out on that particular ecosystem service. If we only have a couple species of legumes planted, and they don’t establish good populations, the entire prairie will be short of nitrogen. If we lose our early blooming flowers the native bees have no food. If we don’t have violets we don’t have food for regal frittilary larvae. Some types of mycorhizzal fungi are likely specific to certain species. You get the idea.

It gets worse. I live in an area with native pastures. Because of hills and rocks and potholes, some areas have a lot of native pasture. There is a ridge between where we live now and the restoration that has perhaps 100-200,000 acres of almost contiguous native grass, but between overgrazing, herbicides and invasive brome competition there is a paucity of native wildflowers. The mostly native pasture that housed our little herd of dairy cows while I was growing up has less than 10% of the wildflower population it had back then. That large block of native grass I referred to is mostly a large block of invasive non-native grasses and a few weedy forbs, some native and some not. It is not prairie, just as the 50 acre pasture that I gathered pasqueflowers and dug breadroots on in my childhood is not really prairie anymore. This means that resupply of prairies from nearby native sources is often unlikely. While few of these species are endangered, or even threatened, they are not easy to get ones hands on when looking for a source to plant in a restoration.

My response is documented in this blog, 230 acres put back to grass, 140 acres of which have 100-175 species planted. I feel there’s more that can come from this little hill farm, however. If a significant barrier to prairie restorations is a source of adapted seed, it could be a repository of possibilities, not just for myself, but for others. If my seed, the genetic answers residing on our farm, are adapted to a 100-150 mile circle, a fairly conservative number, that gives an area of 31,400-80,000 square miles for which it could confidently be used as a seed source. How many acres of restoration can this supply every year? Not that many. However as a supplement to purchased seed, as a source for others to begin new populations, as a touchstone for others engaging in restorations and as an example of particular genotypic answers that evolution has devised to the question of “Who gets to live in the prairie hills in northeast South Dakota?” I think the value can be magnified, it can scale.

That leads to the obvious next question. How can I help it to be magnified, to scale, to enlarge beyond a couple hundred acres? I cannot build it into the GRIN network and database, which is nationwide. However, perhaps I can network with others in this backwater of the world to cooperate in the development of a true seed bank, or seed exchange. Pursuant to the connections that are yet to be established I have already begun work to continue to strengthen and diversify the forb component in my prairies, hoping to progress from it being “neat” that I have twenty or thirty plants of, say, slender milkvetch (Astragalus flexuosus) to having two or three hundred plants that can accomplish two related tasks. First, they can be a robust, self sustaining population which can develop in an evolutionary sense along with the plants in my native prairies. And then it can be a source of seed for other who wish to use it in a restoration or to enhance an existing prairie. That population can also be gathered to be part of a stored seed bank, which can be housed separately from me, and be available for further increase, or use in research. All seed banks need periodic grow out to renew the seed vigor of their collections. My prairies can be that source for what I hope becomes 100 or more species without the need to grow in a dedicated plot. In effect, it can be the seed bank, living and growing in the world to help, supplement and augment a traditional seed bank.

Thus, my choices of where to use my time and resources will be guided not just by the general ecosystem services that a diverse prairie as a whole can contribute, but by the sometimes unknown benefits of all the individual species. Though I may not know the benefits of humble plants like yellow sundrops (Calylophus serrulatus) or bastard toadflax (Comandra umbellata), I will attempt to gather, spread, increase and have them available as a seed source. I choose those two species specifically because I have not yet been able to increase them in my restorations, but I hope to. Because all resources, whether time, financial, energy or even space to plant everything, are by nature finite, I will still target my efforts to those species that are more difficult to get, and less likely to have a source within 150-200 miles from here. While those plants grow I can continue to explore how to take this show on the road.

Beginning Spring Seeding

It is only about 10 days since the seeding documented in the last post, but it is now spring, as evidenced by the iconic harbinger of the coming growing season in the northern prairies, the pasqueflower (Anemone patens).

Other than the pasques (only a few are just peeking out) it doesn’t look very spring-like, but there is some small, humble growth beginning to venture forth from the crowns where the growing points have hidden for the past several months. First, below are a couple crowns of prairie smoke (Geum triflorum), of which I found a great many small crowns sending out leaves. If May is kind there will be hundreds of these blooming in the restoration. If you look near the glasses there is another wildflower, perhaps a penstemon, which is also peeking out, and a little green at the base of some of the grass crowns, probably prairie junegrass (Koeleria macrantha) which grows early.

We have three or four species here: below the right lens of the glasses (left side) is field sage/sand sage (Artemisia campestris), a biennial which made this growth last October, fringed sage ( Artemisia frigida) to its right, and below that what I think are two different penstemons. To the left is probably white beardtongue (Penstemon albidus) and to the right is probably foxglove beardtongue (Penstemon digitalis). What messes with a poor biologist like me is that the basal leaves which grow directly from the crown (which the penstemon leaves are) are often quite different from the leaves that grow out of the stems as they develop. One needs to learn and remember twice as many leaf shapes to identify the plants. And to challenge my abilities even further in this photo are a couple small shoots in the bottom center just below the larger penstemon which will remain unidentified for now.

After that digression we can move on to the title topic, spring seeding. The snow which fell 8-9 days ago is almost all gone, with remnants in the draws. This means that all the seed that I spread 10 days ago were nicely soaked. There is now a 90% chance of gentle rain the next two days, so I decided to use a couple hours on a nice day to toss out a little more seed. I had a gallon or two of false boneset (Brickellia eupatorioides) seedheads that I had kept separate because it is too fluffy to blend well with other seed and just raised handfuls high to let it blow and wander as it would in the wind over the dry mesic area on the south side of the restoration. Then I took out an envelope of stratified textile onion seed I had gotten out of the refrigerator and did my best to plant all 250 seeds individually on the droughty sites where it is able to compete and grow. My clumsy fingers were unable to grasp and plant all the tiny seeds, but perhaps half were pushed gently into the ground while others might fall nearby, and I flung some over the autumn burned areas of gravel, areas very much like the soils in the pictures above.

This wasn’t a grand accomplishment, certainly. Between the wandering photography and the seeding less than two hours was spent, most of that trying to give each onion seed an opportunity to make its special contribution to the greater good. Yet I rarely lament a short stay or a modest addition to the prairie canvas. One never knows the best day, or the critical effort when it is made, just as one never knows what piece of advice or words of kindness will make the most impact on a child, spouse or friend. It is the cumulative effect, the weight, of all the gestures and the mindful attempts that one makes that can carry the day towards our goals. If some of my onions germinate this spring they will be hard to find, but if I do see some this year, or perhaps next, that will be another small piece of colored glass in the mosaic of this prairie and this life, and another reason to rejoice.

When I began this process I certainly didn’t anticipate adding significant amounts of seed five years after it was established. Intuitively it seems it should be fine, taking care of itself down the road by the seed it produces, allowing Mother Nature to heal herself. After reflection and observing restoration practices done by other entities I have a completely different opinion which is informing my present activities. First, this is not a natural environment comparable to prairies in the far past. Those prairies developed, and the characteristics of the different plants were evolutionarily honed by the disturbances of the bison, other native grazers, the pollinator populations of the time, the soil biota which had developed over time and overlaid by the “management” of the native peoples who inhabited the area. As there is no way to replicate that, I cannot replicate the environment which allowed natural regeneration. The best we can do is to make our clumsy attempts at grazing, fire and invasive species control and hope it recreates a facsimile of those shaping factors. Restorations, especially in mesic sites, tend to simplify to a small suite of wildflowers which can compete with the tall warm season grasses such as big bluestem (Andropogon gerardii) and indiangrass (Sorghastrum nutans), or the inexorable spread of smooth brome (Bromus inermis). They become pretty fields of reddish browns or expanses of grey brome stems every fall that provide only part of the ecosystem services we desire. They aren’t even great cattle pasture without diversity.

To make things worse, we are often not even sure which species are best adapted to site, We tend to blend a mix to be used over large areas, and we purchase seed which may have its origin hundreds of miles away. Then, to top it off, restoration sites are often isolated, so there is no additional source of genetic bench strength, whether through seed or pollen transport to keep each species meta-genome diverse and strong. Thus, many of the original species, especially wildflowers, wink out. If I want to provide the ecosystem services that come from a larger suite of plants I need to attempt to provide and nurture those plants.

I’m certainly not alone in these concerns. As I’ve gotten to know more conservation land managers it is a theme of concern. My daughter, Diane works for an engineering firm that does work in restoration, and told me their restoration manager assumes periodic topdressing of wildflower seed is needed to maintain populations. And in my perusal of a myriad of conservation websites I see many examples of continuing introduction of new plants and seed, both to introduce missing species and to buttress populations of existing species. Below is a blurry picture (it was very windy while I took the picture) showing both problem and opportunity inherent in a restoration. It shows the path of the drill six years ago when this was seeded. To the left one can make out faint lines from the drill dropping very small amounts of seed, while the strip through the middle is where the drill operator opened the drill wide open to get the seed to fall out and empty the drill. There is much of this over the restoration. Where the burned grass crowns are thick there is little besides grass, and the seed I just spread is wasted as it will have no biotic space to grow. To each side, however, there are more wildflower crowns and hopes for many more. This area received the seed mix I spread 10 days ago as well as the false boneset seed I spread yesterday. I am eager to see is my efforts have results, and hope to come back to this spot for continued documentation.

There’s so much to learn, and there’s so much to do. It provides a sense of urgency to Linda’s and my attempts to provide a structure for future management of both my restorations and Linda’s grazing system. The idea that we can “protect” land and then get out of the way to let nature take it the rest of the way to its best and most beautiful ends is not workable, at least not in prairie restoration. I have work to do on several fronts. I look forward to an eventful and productive year.