Restoring Bottomground Prairie: May 2016 (After Burning in March)

Creek Field, looking west
May 13, 2016

By mid-May the bunches were still small and bare earth was still visible.

Eastern Gamagrass
Native perennial.
In our seed mix.

Among those bunches were Eastern Gamagrass, getting ready to flower. . .

Eastern Gamagrass
Tripsacum dactyloides

Spiderwort (Tradescantia ohiensis)
Creek Field
Native perennial.  In our seed mix.

Spiderwort Blooming
May 17, 2016

and  
Spiderwort, 
one of the loveliest of prairie flowers! 

Sawtooth Sunflowers
 (Helianthus
grosseserratus)
Greening up.  Native perennial.
In our seed mix.

Others were Sawtooth Sunflowers, Gray-headed Coneflowers, and Whole-Leaf Rosinweed.    

Gray-headed Coneflowers
(Ratibida pinnata)
Greening up.
Native perennial.
Volunteer.

Whole-leaf Rosinweed
(Silphium integrifolium)
Native perennial.  In our seed mix.

Rosinweed is a cousin of Compass Plant
and Cup Plant.  

The new leaves of Rosinweed form a light-colored "button" in the center of the plant when it first comes up that helps to identify it from afar.  

A predacious Soldier Beetle pursues a tiny insect inside this new-leaf "button."  
















The bunches soon ran together, as shown in the photo below.  Bee Balm is in the foreground, with Golden Alexanders next, followed by Tall Thistle, then a sedge, and finally unidentified bunches in the background.

One species, however, appeared not as a bunch but as a lone individual.    That was Compass Plant.   

Compass Plant
(Silphium lacinatum)
Native perennial.  Volunteer.

He towered above the others, and for awhile, I visited him every day, like a special friend.

Compass Plant was not in our seed mix.  I am always admiring of species that plant themselves!


The bare ground between bunches began to fill in.  

I was not happy with some of the filler, such as Hedge Parsley, which took advantage of its immense seed stock to sprout anew.  The burn had killed off a winter's growth of Hedge Parsley.   But with so many seeds in the soil, a few scattered patches of Hedge Parsley reappeared.  

The burn on March 17 killed off
a winter's growth of Hedge Parsley.
But this prolific species was able
to recruit quite a few seeds to
germinate after the burn.

Tall Thistle (Circisium altissimum)Basal leaves.
Native biennial.  Volunteer.

I was very happy with some other filler, however:  Tall Thistle!  

This species can make it hard for a human to walk through the field, but it makes it easy on wildlife in search of seeds, nectar, and pollen.   And its late-summer blossoms are gorgeous!

My friend Jeff Hansen, who confirmed for me that these were indeed the basal leaves of Tall Thistle, congratulated me on hosting such a patch.   He made me appreciate this species even more when he said he envied me "this thistle life!"  

Foxglove (Penstemon digitalis)
in the midst of Tall Thistles.

Penstemon digitalis was more
numerous  in the Creek Field
this year than last,
but it seemed shorter in stature.

Foxglove Penstemon bloomed among the growing thistles.  












White Avens sprouted in the Creek Field as well as in the Riparian Buffer, a volunteer in both places.

White Avens (Geum canadense), pictured here in a part of the
Creek Field where Crown Vetch had been removed, is
a native perennial.

Golden Alexanders bloomed gorgeously in both locations, a volunteer in the Riparian Buffer & a planted species in the Creek Field.

A row of Golden Alexanders
volunteer in the Riparian Buffer.  

Indigo Bush (Amorpha fruticosa) 
Native perennial.  In our seed mix.
Also a volunteer?

Indigo Bush was planted in the Creek Field but appeared only in the Riparian Buffer, in 3 times the numbers as last year.  

It seemed to me butterflies were fewer in number this year than last.  I saw almost no Gorgone Checkerspots, for example, on the Golden Alexanders as I have the previous years.  (This may be a result of the strange alternations of warm and cold we had during the late winter & early spring.)  So I was especially delighted when this Red Admiral landed on my pant leg as I drove the buggy on the Loop Path, between the Riparian Buffer and the Creek Field.  

I've been enjoying Red Admirals for years but it wasn't until this one landed that I realized how gorgeous--and how multi-colored--are their underwings!

Last year I enrolled in Sunflower Studies.  This year I'm signing up for Sedge School!

Sedges took advantage of  the wet May to expand their hold on the Creek Field.

Sedges have been welcome volunteers in the Creek Field, claiming ever more territory for native perennials.  I know we have Woodland Sedge (Carex blanda), but we have other species as well.  I don't yet know how to identify them.   

A sedge in the Creek Field

This mystery sedge has a
reproductive structure similar to
Woodland Sedge.  

Sedges!!   Please don't confuse me just for fun. 

I have so much to learn!!!

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!  

Oak Road Neighbors: Late Spring

These neighbors trod the Oak Road in late spring!   Note how thrilled that elderly doe seems to have another baby, how much the crows love the bobcat, and how the possum sniffs the trail where the badger'd been!  

The Oak Road runs through the gallery forest--a strip of woodland that runs along the east side of McDowell Creek --between the creek and the upland prairie.   The clips are from a trail cam on the west side of the road, aimed north.

Great Spangled Musk Thistle!

Here Great Spangled Fritillaries take in the nectar from Musk Thistles, in our Creek Field.   I took the video just before I cut the thistles down.   

There are lots of contradictions in prairie restoration, and killing the thistles butterflies are feeding on is one of them.

We should be doing everything we can to help pollinators survive.

We should be doing everything we can to eliminate Musk Thistle, a non-native Noxious Weed.

There's a contradiction here!

I am not a purist about non-native plants.  If they co-exist harmoniously with our native plants, they may actually contribute to biodiversity.   But if they are aggressively invasive, like Musk Thistle, Crown Vetch, Poison Hemlock, & Old World Bluestems, replacing native plants with monocultures of themselves, then they threaten the health of the whole.   If they reduce biodiversity, I do what I can to remove them.

My hope is that fostering prairie plants will ultimately benefit all the creatures that depend on them, including pollinators.   Butterflies will love it when the native Tall Thistles, present in our Creek Field in great abundance, start to bloom later in the summer.  
But the Musk Thistles are blooming now.   The Tall Thistles aren't.

It feels strange to remove the very plants butterflies at that moment are fluttering around!

Prairie ecologist Chris Helzer felt the same dilemma as he was killing off Musk Thistle from a Platte River prairie--except he was finding the prairie-dependent Regal Fritillary on Musk Thistle, not the more common Great Spangled Fritillary, which I show here.

He made the same choice I did:   Remove the Musk Thistle; create a healthy plant community first.   But as he put it, 

"We ended up killing a lot of thistles out from under butterflies."

A contradiction like that sticks in your mind, provoking thought, planting a seed, perhaps allowing a blossom to open where beautiful, fluttery wisdom we don't yet have can ultimately land!

Restoring Bottomland Prairie, May-June 2016: Tumblemustard, Poison Hemlock, Vetch in Perpetuity

Tall Tumblemustard
(Sisymbrium altissimum)
Annual or biennial volunteer
Native to the western Great Plains

 Here's an invader I wasn't prepared for:   Tall Tumblemustard, identified with help from Mark Mayfield & the Invasive Plant Network.  It is native to the western part of the Great Plains.   

Mark recommended removing it immediately.  He also asked to add it to the KSU Herbarium's permanent collection, as it is new to our area.

Another name for this plant is Jim Hill Mustard.  James Hill was a railroad magnate, and I suppose his railroads zipped across the prairies like the tumbleweeds.   

However,  there must be more to the story.

We have a wonderful set of volumes from the early 1970s, H. W. Rickett's Wildflowers of the Mountains and Great Plains.   I love Rickett because he tries hard to communicate with the lay person & doesn't hesitate to express his subjective views.  

He calls the tumblemustards a genus of  "ugly weeds."  

Maybe Jim Hill was ugly and showed up where he wasn't wanted!

I take the word of experts that tumblemustards are invasive & don't belong in the Flint Hills--but ugly?   No way.  Check out that sweet flower!  

Tall Tumblemustard Flower

I uprooted Mr. Tumble from the Creek Field.

But he has achieved a kind of immortality in the KSU  Herbarium.


There is so much killing involved in restoration!  

I've been battling invasives all spring.

Poison Hemlock (Conium maculatum), a native of Eurasia, will do anything to set seed.    You can cut down the stalk & it will go ahead & flower.  You can burn the stump with herbicide, & atop the browning, withering stem, white flowers will soon appear.   

I almost missed these Poison Hemlocks next
to the walnut trees, reaching for the sky.

Socrates supposedly committed suicide by drinking a decoction of the seeds of  Poison Hemlock.

A Lady Beetle & a Soldier Beetle enjoy the flowers.
Poison Hemlock, a non-native biennial or occasional perennial,
 is an aggressive volunteer.

All parts of the plant are toxic to humans & livestock.

However, obviously some insects find it sweet!

This will not be the year when we can declare the bottomland Crown-Vetch-free.   I have eliminated the giant patches, including some small ones in both the Creek Field & the Road Buffer, but the Creek Buffer continues to have numerous scattered eruptions.   These small areas of regrowth are hard to deal with.   The earth is no longer amenable to digging, and the ground is hard to reach anyway, through all the vegetation.  The would-be Crown Vetch colonizers are just individual plants all tangled up with the native plants.   They are impossible to spray without putting the neighbors at risk.   

Here Crown Vetch (Coronilla varia) 
blooms amid the White Snakeroot
next to an American Plum

So for the moment, Crown Vetch & I are retreating to our own lines.  

We will engage again when the native plants go dormant in the fall.

For now there are no more visible stands of Musk Thistle, Tumblemustard, or Poison Hemlock....& cowardly Crown Vetch is hiding behind shields of native plants.  

Boy, oh, boy, am I glad to take a temporary break from war!  

It's time to celebrate the prairie plants that are making up the peace!

Restoring Bottomland Prairie, May-June 2016: Controlling Musk Thistle

Musk Thistle (Carduus nutans) was deliberately imported
from southern Europe for floral gardens.  It is now
officially a Noxious Weed.  

Ron & I both think Musk Thistle looks like extraterrestrials!

They can deliver a very earthly hurt to the restorationist, however.

After being stabbed & scratched & generally savaged while filling 10 garbage bags with these aggressive invaders, I am determined not to overlook the rosettes next year.   

Musk Thistle in the Creek Field
Non-native biennial or
winter annual.
Aggressive volunteer!

The flat rosettes can be controlled with a simple squirt of herbicide, no bloodshed involved.   

I didn't take the stitch in time;
now I'm paying with the nine!        

The only advantage on my side is that Musk Thistle can't hide.  It's got to rise up tall with its gorgeous magenta bloom.   

I was able to pull up many thistles by the
roots.  Recent rains had made the
ground that soft!  

Therefore, I can catch it before it sets seed.

But who knows how many Musk Thistle seeds are already lurking in the seed bank, just waiting for next year? 

I can only hope there is an equivalent vigilance lurking in my soul!  

Wildflower Walk, June 4, 2016: Flooded Out!

This is what happened to our driveway's right lane during the rains last week!

We have to postpone the Juneteenth Wildflower Walk, originally scheduled for today.  

We're very sad, as it's always a joy to share the beauties of the prairie.

But we don't want to share the dangers, too!

And maybe later in the summer the mosquitoes & ticks won't be so bad.