Restoring Bottomland Prairie: April 2016 (After Burning in March)

Wild Violet (Viola nephrophylla) ready to enjoy some
extra space, once that last bit of vetch is removed.
Native perennial.  Volunteer.
Riparian Buffer.  

As detailed in earlier posts, April was taken up with burning the upland prairies and digging up Crown Vetch in the lowlands.  The native species were ready to take over from the vetch, as shown in these photos from the Riparian Buffer, taken just before the last tendril of vetch was removed. 

Canada Goldenrod (Solidago canadensis)
Native perennial.  Volunteer.
Riparian Buffer.  Next to the last
of the Crown Vetch.

Golden Alexander (Zizia aurea) 
Native perennial volunteer.  Trying to
grow in a clump of Crown Vetch,
Riparian Buffer.  

The view from our yard,
showing brown fields to the east.

 April was cold and wet.  The bottomground fields were slow to green up after the burn on March 17.  This view from our front yard in early April (below left), looking east across the road, shows how brown the fields still were.

This opposite view, from the Riparian Buffer in mid-April looking west across
the fields, shows green bunches starting to appear.
Smoke from April burns throughout the Flint Hills still hangs
heavy in the air.  

Chokecherry blooming
Native perennial.  Volunteer.
Riparian Buffer.  

Golden Currant blooming on the
Riparian Buffer.
Planted as bare root.  

Shrubs along the unburned Riparian Buffer bloomed gorgeously.   

Golden Currants and Chokecherries were both in our bare-root plantings when we put the Riparian Buffer in in 1999.   

However, the Chokecherry pictured here is a volunteer on the edge of McDowell Creek.  
  

McDowell Creek almost bank
full along the
Creek Field.  

Puddles in the bottomground on
April 30, 2016.

McDowell Creek was close to flooding.

The rains kept coming.

By the end of April, the fields were greening up but there was standing water in the fields.





Perennials emerged! 

Bee Balm appeared in
gorgeous domed bunches.

Wet bare earth appeared between the perennials in the Creek Field.  However, it was not muddy.  You could walk around on it and hardly leave a track.  

This was in sharp contrast to the Road Field, which was in soybeans and wheat last year.  It is fallow now, awaiting its turn to be seeded back to native.  It was so muddy in April you'd sink up to your ankles in it.

Canada Milkvetch made its appearance
in the Creek Field.

Maximillian Sunflowers popped
up in the field buffer along
the driveway.

Carex blanda, a most
welcome volunteer,  returned in abundance
to the Creek Field.

In April, the regrowth was not
thick enough yet to hide the burrows
of Creek Field mammals.

Golden Alexanders, Zizia aurea,
bloomed in the Creek Field before taller neighbors
could get going.  

Eastern Gamagrass returned  in abundance.  Here a Golden
Alexander tries to grow in the middle of a clump of Eastern Gamagrass, while another bunch grass grows behind it.

Canada Milkvetch grows in the Riparian Buffer.  

Canada Milkvetch (Astragalus canadensis) was planted in the Creek Field.   Then it went ahead and planted itself in the Riparian Buffer as well.  This individual is more advanced than the one pictured in the Creek Field--perhaps because the Riparian Buffer was not burned when the Creek Field was burned.  

Creek Field, looking west toward  the
house at the end of April.

The burn appeared to have cleared away a winter's growth of Hedge Parsley, but by the same token, Johnny-Jump-up's (Viola bicolor), which had volunteered abundantly in the Creek Field ever since 2013, did not appear after the burn, either.  

By the end of April, the Creek Field was greening up in low clumps and bunches, no taller than shin-high, with lots of bare earth in-between.  

It is now July.  I realize that this photo of the modest bunches at the end of April  gives no hint of the vast growing power coiled up belowground and in the plants' DNA, waiting to explode!