September greeted us with a plunge into the wetlands of Midewin! Toward the beginning of the month, we participated in a volunteer seed collection day at Schoolhouse Wetland. Here, we primarily collected the abundant Dark Green Bulrush (Scirpus atrovirens) and Spotted Joe-Pye Weed (Eutrochium maculatum). During collection, I scouted the area for more species to collect and I found a floating mat of vegetation in the center of the wetland! It was very interesting to see the movement of the mat as I bounced on it! 

Aside from the Schoolhouse wetland, we also visited another wet location and were greeted with a field of the Cardinal Flower (Lobelia cardinalis)! I initially spotted the population from the road, which surprised all of us as this beautiful critter was right in front of our eyes the whole time! 

Other than the wetlands, we also spent the majority of our time this month at the dolomite sites. On the dolomite pavements, we pulled the annoying Hairy Cupgrass (Eriochloa villosa) at the beginning of the month. It was a very daunting task to pull every individual of the plant, however, it was satisfying to see the immediate results with the annual grass now gone! Aside from weeding Hairy Cupgrass, we also collected seeds from the minuet Poverty Dropseed (Sporobolus vaginiflorus), Rough Dropseed (Sporobolus compositus), and the fruits of the Prairie Prickly Pear (Opuntia macrorhiza). The prickly pears were my personal favorite as the collection bag smelled incredibly sweet with all the fruits in it! 

Lastly, as the month neared its end, we wrapped it up by cleaning the Dark Green Bulrush (Scirpus atrovirens) in the brush machine. It felt satisfying to not only collect the species but also clean it and prepare it to be used in a seed mix.

Overall, September was eventful on the prairie and the month was over quickly! 

One of the things that got me into botany was interest in plants that are overlooked by the majority of people. When I started volunteering at the Cook County Forest Preserves in 2019, one of the volunteers, a young botanist named Derek Ziomber, showed me a violet that looked just like any other violet I had seen. But he pointed out that this was not a common blue violet (Viola sororia) but a marsh blue violet (Viola cucullata). The difference was subtle – the latter has shorter beard hairs with a club-like tip, and there are some differences in sepal shape and overall hairiness. This made me realize that there were probably interesting, unusual plants all around that nobody knew about because nobody took the time to examine them closely. 

Ever since then, I have been an advocate for the overlooked and underappreciated plants. In restoration, people tend to focus seed collection on the most abundant and apparent plants. In the prairie, this would include species like Eryngium yuccifolium, Coreopsis tripteris, Silphium laciniatum, Lespedeza capitata, and Liatris spicata. While these species are all important “workhorse” species that are necessary to provide structure and compete with invasive vegetation, if they are the only thing that is collected and seeded, your restorations will never look like remnants. There are many other species that aren’t as showy or glorious that nonetheless make up an important part of the ecosystem.

Throughout my time at Midewin, I have tried to show some love to the overlooked plants. Something like Monarda fistulosa can easily be purchased from a commercial seed company relatively cheaply, but many of the less common species cannot. My fellow interns and I have collected species like Aristida oligantha, Alisma subcordatum, Ammania robusta, Coleataenia rigidula, Dichanthelium implicatum, Dichanthelium leibergii, Scutellaria lateriflora, Eleocharis erythropoda, Galium obtusum, Juncus torreyi, Juncus articulatus, Ludwigia polycarpa, Lycopus americanus, Muhlenbergia cuspidata, Triosteum perfoliatum, and others. 

We were also asked by our mentors to collect Sporobolus vaginiflorus, an annual cousin of the familiar prairie dropseed which looks nothing alike. I noticed that there was also a very similar species, Sporobolus neglectus, mixed in with it. Although neglectus makes up a significant portion of the population of these annual Spororboli in barren areas, the land managers were unaware that it was here, showing the lack of attention given to such underappreciated plants. These and some of the species I mention above are slated to be put into a recently disturbed area (a scrape) that is ideal habitat for these early succession annuals. If these species are not put in, the site will likely fill in with non-native annual weeds. 

June is over and the heat of July is finally here!

July at Midewin started with placing transect flags at various locations on the prairie that had their fair share of hazards! I was in primarily mesic habitats with the botany technician, Anna, where we faced thickets of sandbar willows (Salix interior), horsetails (Equisetum sp.), and of course the disgusting Phragmites (Phragmites australis).

Following setup, we began the transects and gathered data for the Floristic Quality Index (FQI). During data collection, it reminded me of a live auction where people would shout their bets at a person, but instead it was the latin/common names of the plants being shouted at the tablet holder!

Within the middle of transect season, a few of us CLMs assisted the previous CLM interns, Harsha and Veronica, in brush cutting the awful Autumn Olive (Elaeagnus umbellatum). As a whole, we managed to cut down a great amount of the shrubs and also break a sweat which attracted the sweat bees!

Aside from transects and brush cutting, the latter half of July was spent collecting and scouting for sedges, rushes, and wetland species. While collecting on the prairie, we found ourselves to be dwarfed in comparison to the pillaring beasts that are in the genus Silphium. The largest plants tended to be seven feet tall (or taller) and had golden inflorescences that would sometimes had a critter in the bloom! All four species of rosinweeds were also relatively abundant in most habitats, but only 3 of the 4 species tended to grow with each other. How rude of the plants to not include the fourth species!

The Silphium, in my opinion, are like the trees of the prairie, as they pillar over most prairie vegetation aside from some Big Bluestem (Andropogon gerardi). Additionally, they also act as pillars within the prairie as they are workhorse species within restorations. Truly, they act like pillars with other species to support a small part of the prairie’s foundation.

I hope to one day view these pillaring plants, with their immense leaves, tickle the bellies of Bison within the tallgrass prairie once again just as Aldo Leopold wished. With that, I hope other people can appreciate the absolute behemoths that are within the genus Silphium as much as I do!

Hopefully August will bring more fun on the prairie when the season changes and more plants bloom! See y’all soon!

One of the most enjoyable activities so far at Midewin has been vegetation monitoring. We are collecting data to be used for floristic quality assessment, to monitor the quality and progress of our restorations. Each site that we monitor has several (4-5) 100 meter transects running north-south, each containing 25 points (spaced 4m apart). 1m*1m quadrats are placed at each point a random distance away from the transect (0-10m). At the start, a coin is flipped to determine whether the even random numbers will be east or west. Within the quadrat, every plant species is recorded, beginning with a .25m*.25m corner. After all species in the corner are recorded, all species present in the rest of the quadrat outside of the corner are recorded. Dead biomass (fuel) thickness is recorded at three points along the edge of the quadrat. Also, the species comprising 70%, 20%, and 10% of the dry weight in each quadrat are recorded. 

Conducting vegetation monitoring requires plant identification knowledge beyond what I’d ever employed before in everyday botany. You must not only be able to identify mature plants in flower or in seed (which can be keyed out even if you have never seen the species before), but you must be able to identify every seedling in the understory, which is a daunting task. They will lack the floral parts often necessary to be keyable, and are best identified by someone who has grown the plants from seed, seeing them at every stage of their life. Luckily, I have grown many prairie species from seed at my native plant garden at Northwestern, taking special care to document the species in their seedling phase and putting the pictures in a native plant guide for the future generations of my Prairie Cats Ecological Restoration Club. 

Still, many of the specimens I encountered in the field were completely enigmatic. The wetland plots were difficult, containing many wetland plants I had little to no experience with (all those silly little Lamiaceae). Grasses also presented a challenge — I had only ever paid attention to the floral characteristics of grasses (I have attempted to key numerous grasses from family, but the keys usually rely on floral characters). Foolishly, I had paid essentially no attention grass vegetative characters. However, thanks to Anna, our great botany technician, I was able to quickly learn how to distinguish some of the more common grasses. Also, the previous horticulturist at Midewin, Eric Ulaszek, is somewhat of a graminoid connoisseur and a great field botanist, and he created a vegetative key for the grasses of Midewin.

Every time I did quadrats, I derived a great amount of joy from finding the small, unobtrusive little things that you can expect to find in nearly every quadrat. For something like Poa pratensis (Kentucky bluegrass), finding it is almost a formality (it was in almost every single upland plot). However, they are small and often don’t show their inflorescences at the top, so finding them requires digging through all the small grass-like foliage at the bottom of the plot. I’d keep pulling little tufts of grass and looking for the Poas (also Poa compressa). And then all of a sudden… success! Poa on the Prairie! (This message is brought to you by the Don’t Kill Your Lawn Foundation).