Tallgrass Prairie Tranquility

“Never be in a hurry; do everything quietly and in a calm spirit. Do not lose your inner peace for anything whatsoever, even if your whole world seems upset.” — Francis de Sales

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It’s mid-August on the prairie. Grasses push skyward, dominating the wildflowers that were so eye-catching in July.  Switchgrass. Indian grass. Big bluestem.

Prairie dropseed has sent up its popcorn-scented grass sprays. When I smell its fragrance on the prairie, I feel nostalgic for movie theaters and baseball games. Some people think it smells like licorice, grapes, or cilantro.

So begins the inexorable slide toward autumn. Amid the greens of the bright prairie plants and late summer blooms…

…a few yellows and rusts stealthily mix in.

The grasses take on a chartreuse hue in certain lights. Against this backdrop, stark silhouettes of summer seedheads stand.

Galls appear, and other oddly-shaped growths on plants difficult to put a name to. This season, I’ve gotten more emails from my prairie students than ever before about prairie plants and their strange diseases, leaf malformations, and unusual wilting or die-offs. I keep The Morton Arboretum’s free Plant Clinic busy with my queries, and discover these issues are likely born out of insect damage, spring’s soaking rains, and summer’s dry spells of heat.

Other plants, like this great angelica, cast off their blooms. Only structure is left behind.

As I walk on the prairie, or work in my garden and backyard prairie patch, I find myself doing some mental doomscrolling. Each morning, I read the newspaper. The pandemic drags on. Bitter battles over school openings. Hand sanitizer recalls. Protests. Politics. Even the post office seems to be in turbulence—and isn’t it supposed to be the most reliable institution of all? Who would have thought, back in March, that the world would still be so full of turmoil?

If I dwell on these things for too long, it tilts me toward despair. It’s then that the natural world brings me back to center. I remind myself to focus on what’s in front of me.

Breathe in. Least skipper butterflies flutter through the tallgrass, the color of autumn leaves.

Over there: a Peck’s skipper nectaring on red clover.

Breathe out. Mellow eastern tiger swallowtails nectar at the zinnias in my backyard…

…jostling for position with the eastern black swallowtails nearby.

Immediately, I feel better. Butterflies are always a sure spirit-lifter.

As are the Odonates. As I wade the prairie creeks and streams in August, I have a ringside seat for dragonflies and damselflies. None I’ve seen this week are rarities. But all of them are wondrous. I love the fragile forktail damselfly’s exclamation marks on his thorax. Can you find them?vSomething to be excited about.

It’s worth stopping for a moment to watch the female ebony jeweling damselfly’s fluttering movements across the stream. (Look out behind you!)

Her mate is waiting, a little further up the shoreline.

Stream bluets fly in tandem; the first part of the mating ritual.

Willoway Brook runs low and clear, limned with damselflies on both sides.

Powdered dancers.

Their brighter-hued cousins, the blue-fronted dancers.

Along this stream, I find the always-spectacular american rubyspot damselfly. He even makes his perch, the invasive reed canary grass, look good.

As I wade through Willoway Brook one afternoon, distracted by the sight of American Rubyspot tenerals—newly-emerged damselflies—all around, I find myself sticky with spiderwebs. The maker seems invisible. Then, I come face to face with a fishing spider.

She’s not happy with my mayhem. I apologize, then continue wading up the stream.

Most of the insects I pass stream-side and on the prairie ignore me, as this grasshopper does.

Unless I trouble them in some way—or get too close–they are busy with their personal lives: eating, mating, eating some more. Politics, personal anxieties, the postal service, protests—the prairie is oblivious to it all.

Instead, it goes about the business of emergence, growth, and reproduction, continuing a cycle that goes back thousands of years. It’s restful.

Many of these prairie insects I see on my hike are familiar, like this common pondhawk. Nothing too exciting.

But what extraordinary wonder there is in the ordinary.

And what comfort there is on the prairie, when it seems chaos is all around!

It’s a good reminder of what I already know, but sometimes forget. This week, I’ll  spend a little less time with the news. More time on the prairie and in my backyard garden.  Now, more than ever, we need the natural world.

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Francis de Sales (1567-1622), whose quote begins this blog post, is the patron saint of the deaf.  He was noted for his patience and gentleness.

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All photos copyright Cindy Crosby from the Schulenberg Prairie, The Morton Arboretum, Lisle, IL, unless designated otherwise (top to bottom): Big bluestem (Andropogon gerardii) (2018); prairie dropseed (Sporobolus heterolepis) (2018); obedient plant (Physostegia virginiana); prairie dock (Silphium lacinatum); the Schulenberg Prairie in mid-August; unknown growth on round-headed bush clover (Lespedeza capitata); great angelica (Angelica atropurpurea); bottlebrush grass (Elymus hystrix);  prairie skyline as viewed from Willoway Brook; Least Skipper butterfly (Ancyloxypha numitor); Peck’s Skipper butterfly (Polites peckius); eastern tiger swallowtail butterfly (Papilio glaucus), author’s backyard, Glen Ellyn, IL; eastern black swallowtail butterfly (Papilio polyxenes), author’s backyard, Glen Ellyn, IL; fragile forktail damselfly (Ishnura posita), Schulenberg Prairie Savanna; ebony jewelwing damselfly female (Calopteryx maculata); ebony jewelwing damselfly male (Calopteryx maculata); stream bluets (Enallagma exsulans); bridge over Willoway Brook; powdered dancer damselfly male (Argia moesta); Blue-Fronted Dancer damselfly male (Argia apicalis); American Rubyspot Damselfly male (Hetaerina americana); fishing spider (Dolomedes sp.); unknown grasshopper (iNat says it is Heperotettix viridis, the Snakeweed Grasshopper, but I am unsure); common pondhawk dragonfly male (Erythemis simplicicollis); American groundnut (Apios americana); trail on the Schulenberg Prairie.

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Join Cindy for an Online Class this Autumn! See http://www.cindycrosby.com for all speaking and class announcements and details.

“Tallgrass Prairie Ecology Online” Begin a new session in September through The Morton Arboretum! Work from home at your own pace (with suggested assignment deadlines) for 60 days to complete the material, and meet other prairie volunteers and stewards on the discussion boards and in the optional Zoom session. Classes are limited to 50. Register here.

“Nature Writing Online” Begins Monday, October 5, through The Morton Arboretum. Want to commit to improving and fine-tuning your writing for six weeks? This is a great opportunity to jump start your blog, your book, or your journal writing while working from home, supplemented with three evenings of live evening Zoom classes on alternate weeks. Watch for registration information coming soon.

Just released! Chasing Dragonflies: A Natural, Cultural, and Personal History. Read a review from Kim Smith here. (And check out her blog, “Nature is My Therapy” — you’ll love it!)

Order now from your favorite indie bookstore such as the Morton Arboretum Store and The Bookstore of Glen Ellyn, or online at bookshop.org, direct from Northwestern University Press (use coupon code NUP2020 for 25% off), or other book venues. Thank you for supporting small presses, bookstores, and writers during this chaotic time.

Want more prairie? Follow Cindy on Facebook, Twitter (@phrelanzer) and Instagram (@phrelanzer). Or enjoy some virtual trips to the prairie through reading Tallgrass Conversations: In Search of the Prairie Spirit and The Tallgrass Prairie: An Introduction. 

A Little Tallgrass Tranquility

“June comes with its own tranquility, predictable as sunrise, reassuring as the coolness of dusk.”– Hal Borland

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Peace, quiet, and tranquility sound appealing right now.  As meteorological summer arrives, the prairie is a good place to find all three. Let’s take a look.

The dragonflies and damselflies are out at Nachusa Grasslands. Common green darners aimlessly work their way across the pond. A few common whitetail dragonflies hunt for prey in the cool, overcast day.

It’s quiet.

I slosh through what was prairie last season; now a new wetland created by beavers. The dammed pond overflows with water, which runs into the grooves on the dirt two-track alongside it.

These small, ephemeral water-filled ruts teem with life. So many tadpoles!

On the edges, immature eastern forktail females flutter weakly, still in the teneral stage.

Their color gradually comes into focus, like a Polaroid picture. Later, they’ll mature from orange and turn powdery blue.

The male eastern forktails are everywhere, looking for females to mate with.

I watch the females lay eggs—oviposit—into a vegetation mat floating in the pond. Eastern forktails are usually the first damselfly I see each year, and–with a few season’s exceptions–the most numerous species of damselfly I see at both my prairie monitoring sites. They are easy to dismiss, because they are so common. When I first began learning dragonfly and damselfly ID, I was confused by their different appearances. How could one species of damselfly be three different colors? And that’s not including their teneral stage. The most common damselflies have incredible complexity.

In the quiet, the stress of the last few days fades. I hear a bird that I don’t know–a gallinule, a friend tells me later. A new one for me!

I watch the dragonflies and listen a bit longer before I turn and go back to my monitoring. The wildflowers hum with activity.

I can still hear well, but my eyes are weaker as I’ve gotten older. As I’m scribbling data on my clipboard, I notice one of the “forktails” is moving differently — floating, instead of fluttering. Another seems a bit off-color for a eastern forktail. But I can’t make out the details, even with my binoculars.

It’s not until I’m home and sorting through blurry photo after blurry photo of my “eastern forktail” damselfly photos, that two crisp photos jump out at me.

Sedge sprite! Nehalennia irene. The first time I’ve seen one. They’ve been found at two sites at Nachusa, but this is the first time I’ve found it— and it’s new for this particular area. Sedge sprites are rare and uncommon in Illinois.  The scientific name almost always tells a good story, and Nehalennia, I discover, is the name of a Rhein River goddess. Appropriate for something so lovely.

This male’s length is from the tip of my baby finger to the knuckle. Its lack of eyespots–little color markers on top of the eyes–sets it apart from other damselflies, notes Robert DuBois, author of Damselflies of Minnesota, Wisconsin & Michigan. So tiny. So beautiful.

And then—oh! Look. Another species. Fragile forktail damselfly. Ishnura posita. I’ve seen it here before, but only once. I thought the color looked wrong for an eastern forktail when I was sloshing through the pond perimeter and logging it on my data sheet as such, and I was right. The pale green exclamation mark on the thorax is the tip-off.

The fragile forktails fly from May to September, so I should see them again here as I walk my route this summer. I had to go back and revise my data submission. Next time, I’ll pay more attention. I’ll wait to log it until I review the photos.

Later, Jeff and I hike and marvel at the smallest wildflowers in bloom. Long-leaved bluets.

Blue toadflax, so minuscule I struggle to get my camera to focus on the flower.

Rushes—so many to try and name—are woven into the wildflowers and grasses. The light casts them into silhouettes.

Small moths lay in the tallgrass like winged ghosts.

A flycatcher—possibly an alder flycatcher but likely a willow flycatcher—talks to me from a scrubby shrub. As I wrote this, I tried to remember the exact call, as this is one of the ID markers between the two.  Cornell’s All About Birds website describes the sound of a willow flycatcher as someone quickly zipping up a jacket. Alder flycatcher is described as free-beer! I wish I had paid more attention so I’d be sure of my identification.

These fleeting moments are easy to miss. I try to remember to listen attentively. What else am I overlooking today?

Pale beardtongue’s bright flowers are difficult to pass by without pausing.

Up close, they are surprisingly hairy.

A contrast to the pea-like blooms in the tapered spikes of violet lupine, the color of summer’s last light on the clouds at dusk.

The startlingly clear purple-blue of the spiderwort always fails description. Such a color!

I soak it all up.

For a while, I forget the outside world.

Thank you, prairie.

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The opening quote is by Hal Borland (1900-1978) from Sundial of the Seasons, a selection of 365  outdoor essays that follow the days of the year. Born in Nebraska, he wrote more than 1,200 essays, many published in the New York Times, often about the passing of the year on his Connecticut farm.

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All photos and video copyright Cindy Crosby and taken at Nachusa Grasslands, Franklin Grove, IL (top to bottom):  Clear Creek Knolls; beaver pond; new pools in the gravel two-track; video of tadpoles in the ephemeral pools and tire track ruts; eastern forktail damselfly (Ischnura verticalis)); eastern forktail  damselfly (Ischnura verticalis); eastern forktail damselfly (Ischnura verticalis); video of pond; unknown bee on common yarrow (Achillea millefolium); great Angelica (Angelica atropurpurea): sedge sprite damselfly (Nehalennia irene); fragile forktail damselfly (Ischnura posita); long-leaved bluets (Houstonia longifolia); blue toadflax (Nuttallanthus canadensis); unknown rushes (correction — Juncus spp.); unknown moth (possibly one of the Scopula genus); possibly a willow flycatcher (Empidonax traillii, they are difficult to tell apart from alder flycatchers except by song); pale beardtongue (Penstemon pallidus); pale beardtongue (Penstemon pallidus); wild lupine (Lupinus perennis); Ohio spiderwort (Tradescantia ohiensis).

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Join Cindy for a class online!

“Tallgrass Prairie Ecology Online” begins June 7. Work from home at your own pace for 60 days to complete the material, and meet other prairie volunteers and stewards on the discussion boards and in the optional ZOOM session. Register here.

“Dragonfly and Damselfly Beginning ID Online” through The Morton Arboretum. July 8 and July 10 –two morning classes online, with a day in between for you to work independently in the field. Register here.

Coming in June! Chasing Dragonflies: A Natural, Cultural, and Personal History. Pre-order now from your favorite indie bookstore such as the Morton Arboretum Store and The Bookstore of Glen Ellyn, or online at bookshop.org and other book venues. Or, order now direct through Northwestern University Press and receive 25% off — use coupon code NUP2020.

Want more prairie while you are sheltering in place? Follow Cindy on Facebook, Twitter (@phrelanzer) and Instagram (@phrelanzer). Or enjoy some virtual trips to the prairie through reading Tallgrass Conversations: In Search of the Prairie Spirit and The Tallgrass Prairie: An Introduction.