Water: Agent of Change

Leonardo da Vinci once said, “Water is the driving force of all nature.” When you think of prairie, water may not be the first image that leaps to your mind. Yet, water is a critical agent of change in the tallgrass.

At Nachusa Grasslands one morning this spring, I hike into the sedge meadow where some of the first dragonflies will emerge from the stream. Rainfall has prompted new spring blooms and quick growth in the grasses. I walk carefully, looking. You never know what surprises are under your feet. This morning, it’s a bone hidden under wild strawberries.

I pick my way through the crayfish holes that pock the sedge meadow until I reach the water. A little circle of sand marks the spot where water bubbles up to  the surface. Can you find it? Great angelica and marsh marigolds dot the edges.

As I look for that morning’s elusive dragonflies, a flash of light catches my eye over toward the fen. A pond! Where a pond hadn’t been before. The beavers have been busy constructing a dam. A landscape I thought I knew well has become something different. Time to rethink my preconceptions; to learn to see something familiar in a new way.

In the ponds under the utility lines that cross the prairie, there is a blur of dragonfly activity. As I skirt the edges of the water, small frogs splash into the pond just a step or two ahead of me. A Northern pintail quietly paddles to the other side. Northern pintails stop in Illinois for a short time in the spring on their migration north for the summer. I’ve never seen one before. The water must have been an invitation for it to rest for a bit.

Agricultural drain tiles under the ground have made much of the Midwest artificially dry enough for farming. Today, in prairie restorations across Illinois, we are deliberately breaking up some of these old drain tiles and restoring the original hydrology of lands that are prairie and adjacent to prairie. Inviting water to return.

 

As water brings changes to familiar landscapes this season, who knows what surprises are in store for us? I can’t wait to find out.

(All photos by Cindy Crosby at Nachusa Grasslands, Franklin Grove, IL. From top: Pond grasses; bone and wild strawberries (Fragaria virginiana; great angelica (Angelica atropurpurea) and marsh marigolds (Caltha palustris) in the sedge meadow; beaver dam in the fen; northern pintail; pond.)

The Buzz About Shooting Stars

Seeing shooting stars in the suburban Chicago area’s light-polluted night sky is challenging at best. But on the prairie in May, there’s a universe of shooting stars available 24/7, for anyone who takes time to look.

The May prairie is a panoramic, ever-changing Persian carpet of leaf shapes, textures, blooms, and insects. To really pay attention to it, drop to your knees. Quiet your mind. Most blooms and grasses are still low, from a few inches to about a  foot tall. Some of the blooms are hidden under the growing grasses, so you have to pay attention to really see what you’re looking at.

The first thing I find hidden in the grasses is bastard toadflax, whose tiny white flowering stars are in their full glory right now. The seeds were once enjoyed as tasty trail snacks.

Lift your eyes a bit, and little mounds of cream indigo plant with its silvery leaves come into focus, dotted around the prairie. This was a favorite plant of Native Americans, who used the seedpods for baby-pleasing rattles and the mashed up root rubbed into tiny tummies for colic. Early settlers didn’t like it so much. Livestock often died if they ate too much of its toxic foliage.

Eye- popping orange hoary puccoon is also in bloom, as are wild geraniums and the last swirls of wood betony.

But the real show-stoppers are the shooting stars.

Pink. Shading from white-pinks to lavender-pinks. Plus the rosette of leaves, from a birds-eye view, have pleasing streaks of maroon.

In order for shooting stars to reproduce, they must be buzz pollinated. Tomatoes, nightshade, blueberries, potatoes and cranberries require this process for efficient pollination as well. Bumblebees are the main heroes of this performance for which there is no nectar reward. The pollen, deep in the shooting stars’ anthers, is shaken loose when the bumblebee grasps the flower and rapidly moves its thoracic wing muscles. This sets up the vibration.

As the flower vibrates, the pollen is shaken loose. Writer Peter Bernhardt says watching the pollen grains fall from the anthers looks a lot like salt grains falling from a salt shaker. You may also hear this process called sonication.

When you see the big bumblebees, buzzing across the prairie in the mornings,  send them a message of gratitude. Without them, our prairies would be missing one of their most welcome May wildflowers.

Thanks.

(All photos by Cindy Crosby. From top to bottom: Shooting stars (Dodecatheon meadia) Nachusa Grasslands, Franklin Grove, IL; bastard toadflax (Comandra umbellate), NG; cream wild indigo (Baptisia bracteata) The Schulenberg Prairie at The Morton Arboretum, Lisle, IL; wood betony (Pedicularis canadensis) NG; shooting stars, SP; shooting star foilage, NG; shooting stars, NG; shooting stars, NG.)

For more information about sonication or buzz pollination and shooting stars, check out The Rose’s Kiss: A Natural History of Flowers by Peter Bernhardt.

The Language of (Prairie) Flowers

If a friend gave you a bouquet of Jacob’s ladder blooms, would it be a compliment?  Or not? To find out, it’s necessary to consider the Victorian language of flowers and their messages.

I looked at the language of flowers with my wildflower ethnobotany class this week, as we hiked the woodlands and prairie, thinking about way people have viewed blooms throughout history: medicinal, edible, and ceremonial. The idea of attaching meanings to flowers, then sending these messages to your friend or lover by including specific blooms in a bouquet, first began in the early 1800s. Today, floral dictionaries proliferate. The meanings of flowers may vary from guide to guide. The  meanings people attach to each species often tell us something about the blooms themselves.

If you sent your love a bouquet of asters, you asked her for patience. Not surprising that asters were chosen for this sentiment, as they are the last blasts of color at the end of a long prairie growing season.

Give someone a buttercup?  “You’re acting childish!” 

Wild geraniums celebrated your piety.

A lady’s slipper orchid told that special someone– you’re beautiful. Not difficult to see how this bloom got its assigned meaning! Knowing how rare these beauties are — and how long they take to bloom from seed –is to realize that  a wild orchid in a bouquet would be a travesty. Much better to admire them in their secret prairie places.

Blazing star? –Try, try again. The disks or “blooms” along the stem open in sequence, one after the other, from the top down.

To add a wildflower to your bouquet from the mustard family, such as the weedy yellow rocket, was to say, You hurt me! Our conservation group pulls this weedy invasive from the prairie; it’s an unwelcome intruder. We put the hurt on it!

Marsh marigold –Let’s get rich! And wow –look at all that gold! The best possible kind of riches.

Woodland phlox, or wild blue phlox –our souls are one. The sweet fragrance of these blooms is one of the signature smells of spring.

In summer, the pale purple coneflower sends the perfect get-well message– wishing you good health and strength.  Below it is shown blooming with coreopsis (you’re always cheerful!) and butterfly milkweed (hope). Viewing these beautiful flowers together is a good cure for the blues, if nothing else.

Trillium is considered a tribute to modest beauty. Hmmmm. Not sure how someone would receive that. But how beautiful this spring wildflower is, modest or not.

Violets are a compliment about someone’s worthiness. The violet is also Illinois’ state flower. Although — 1908 lawmakers neglected to tell us exactly which of the eight species of violet in Illinois was chosen!

And –oh yes — those Jacob ladder blooms mentioned at the beginning. The language of flowers tells us their presence in a bouquet was to ask the receiver to  let go of your pride.

Guess you’d have to choose the right moment to give that bouquet!

Of course, the best (and only!) way to share the message of flowers today is to leave them blooming on their conservation sites. A spring morning spent discovering “bouquets” in place, or different species  with your friend or loved one, then looking at your photos or a field guide over a cup of coffee, reminds us that the value of these blooms is far more than what we immediately see or any messages we contrive to send through them. Rather, we celebrate not only their beauty but also, their struggle for survival, and their persistence in the face of all the odds. They teach us the vocabulary of careful conservation. They encourage us through their presence to preserve what  is left. Through these flowers, we learn the language of  paying attention.

And perhaps, that’s the best message of all.

(All photos by Cindy Crosby: From top: Jacob’s ladder (Polemonium reptans), Nachusa Grasslands, Franklin Grove, IL; New England asters (Symphyotrichum novae-angliae), Curtis Prairie, University of Wisconsin- Madison Arboretum, Madison, WI; swamp buttercup (Ranunculus septentrionalis), The Morton Arboretum, Lisle, IL; wild geraniums (Geranium maculatum), NG; small white lady’s slipper orchid (Cypripedium candidum), MA; blazing star (Liatris species), NG; yellow rocket (Vulgaris arcuata), MA; marsh marigolds (Caltha palustris), NG; phlox, MA; Schulenberg Prairie summer flowers, MA; white trillium (Trillium flexipes), MA; striped white violet (Viola striata), MA; Jacob’s ladder (Polemonium reptans), NG.)

Links to read more about the Victorian language of flowers include: Random House: www.randomhouse.com/rhpg/features/vanessa_diffenbaugh/flower-dictionary/ and Victorian Bazaar: http://www.victorianbazaar.com/meanings.html. There are many more to explore!

Seeing Prairie

I took a friend of mine, a professor, to see the tallgrass prairie where I volunteer as a steward. He listened as I enthusiastically chattered about the amazing array of plants, the value of diversity, the use of prescribed fire, and the excitement of preserving and restoring native landscape. As I spoke, he was silent. Finally, I quit talking and waited to hear what he thought.

“Weeds, Cindy. It’s nothing but weeds.”

How do you see prairie?

For Native Americans, the prairie was a grocery store, full of good things to eat. Bastard toadflax seeds were a tasty snack, the young shoots of many prairie plants tasted like asparagus. It was also a pharmacy, with plants that were believed to have potential to heal anything that ailed you, from snakebite to colic. The prairie contained roots used as  love charms and fire-starters; leaves to smoke during ceremonies or — if you knew their secrets — plants you could use in concoctions to eliminate your worst enemy.

Early settlers saw the prairie as a place to conquer. The deep, interlocking root system of prairie plants, which evolved to withstand drought, were almost impenetrable to farmers until the invention of the John Deere plow in 1837.

For those who had made the long trek out to Illinois from the woodlands of the east, the Midwestern tallgrass prairie seemed lonely and barren. James Monroe, our fifth president, reported in 1786 on what is now Illinois with these words, “A great part of the territory is miserably poor… .”

Others, like pioneer Eliza Steele, saw the Illinois prairie and were instantly enchanted. They had imagination to see the beauty of the treeless tallgrass that stretched from horizon to horizon.

Developers or farmers might look at a prairie today and see wasted land — land that is a bare canvas, waiting for something useful to be done with it. They see potential. And dollar signs.

Others, like myself, see the prairie through a kaleidoscope lens. It’s a place to preserve for the future through maintaining a vanishing landscape of plants, animals, insects, birds, and amphibians.  It’s a place of perspiration — we invest in it through the sweat equity we build when we pull weeds, cut brush, collect seeds, and set prescribed burns. It’s a place of inspiration: for poetry, art, photography, and music.

Some people argue the prairie has only the value we assign to it; that it has no intrinsic value of its own. I believe there is inherent value in the prairie, no matter what value we assign to it for ourselves.

But unless we take time to really look at prairie, spend time on prairie, and attempt to understand what makes prairie something different and special, we’ll see the tallgrass as my friend the professor did.

Nothing but weeds.

(All photos by Cindy Crosby. Top to bottom: Black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta), Schulenberg Prairie, The Morton Arboretum, Lisle, IL; whitetail deer, SP; white prairie clover (Dalea candida), SP; halloween pennant dragonfly (Celithemis eponina), SP; autumn, Nachusa Grasslands, Franklin Grove, IL; summer, SP; autumn, NG; volunteer, SP; obedient plant (Physostegia virginiana), SP.)