A WISCONSIN PRAIRIE RESTORATION, HALF A CENTURY LATER

PRAIRIE DOCK FLOWERS...

...LEAF

TURKEY-FOOT FLOWER HEAD

MONARDA FLOWERS

RATTLESNAKE MASTER

PRAIRIE GRASSES AND WILDFLOWERS

DOTTED LEATRIS FLOWERS

ROUGH-EAVED SUNFLOWER

PRAIRIE CONEFLOWER

PURPLE CONEFLOWER...

...DITTO

COMPAS PLANT FLOWERS

COMPAS PLANT LEAF

Wednesday,  8:00 AM.  60 degrees F, wind WNW, calm with occasional moderate gusts.  The sky is mostly clear with a few clouds.  The humidity is 75%, the barometer is up, at 30.19".  The weather is beautiful and it looks like it will stay that way for a few days.
   While in Milwaukee for our niece's wedding, I took the opportunity to visit the site of my Master's Degree project (MS University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee 1968), the restoration of a prairie in Whitnall Park.  At the time, I was a young Assistant Director at the Boerner Botanical Gardens.  It was a good project, which resulted in a prairie restoration which looks quite good after almost a half a century. The thesis investigated the adaptability of various native seed sources to the site and other factors too detailed to go into here.  The important thing at this juncture is that the prairie, located in what is now the Wehr Nature Center, has been a public teaching and outdoor recreational resource for these many years and it appears that, with continued routine maintenance, it will exist for generations to come.
It was very satisfying to walk through grasses higher than I could reach, and to look up at the big yellow flowers of compass plants (so-called because at mid-day the leaves orient themselves to point north and south), Sylphium laciniata, that the great environmentalist Aldo Leopold once feared would be exterminated.
   A prairie is an area dominated by grasses and other herbaceous plants (forbs) that is  absent of trees and shrubs.  The French word for meadow, prairie, specifically refers ecologically to associations of plants native to North America, and is roughly divided into three types of prairies; short, mid and tall-grass prairies, the gradations dependent upon the amount of rainfall each receives (the short grasses occur in what is geographically called the Great Plains, in the rain-shadow of the Rocky Mountains).      Prairies generally occupied the central part of the continent  at the time of white settlement, roughly bounded on the east by the Mississippi River and the eastern deciduous forest, and south through much of Texas and New Mexico west to the deserts, and bounded on the west by the Rocky Mountains and on the north by the Canadian mixed deciduous and coniferous forests.
   Since prairie soils, particularly tall-grass soils, are the most agriculturally productive in the world, most of those prairies now are corn fields, and the shorter-grass prairies are now pastures and range land,  their floristic diversity greatly degraded. Because of their economic and botanical importance, the study and restoration of prairies has become a significant branch of ecology.
   There are roughly similar grass-dominated regions throughout the world, such as the Eurasian steppes, the South American pampas and the African plains.  Such areas normally support large grazing animals and the predators dependent upon them.  In most cases the vegetational regime is maintained by fire, both naturally occurring and caused by humans; this is certainly true of the North American prairies, and a primary method of prairie preservation is periodic burning, about every three to five years, which discourages the woody species.  In an artificial prairie such as the Whitnall Park prairie, some cutting down of invading trees and shrubs may also be necessary.  The restoration and maintenance of prairies has become a major aspect of wild land and wildlife preservation in the United States, and I consider myself fortunate to have been able to contribute to that effort over the years.
   The major grasses occurring in the Whitnall prairie are big bluestem, Andropogon gerardi, little bluestem, Andropogon scoparius, Indian grass, Sorghastrum nutans, and switch grass, Panicum virgatum.  I planted dozens of forbs (think of them as native wildflowers).  A cursory look at the prairie on last Sunday indicates to me that most of what was planted nearly a half-century ago is there and is thriving, and it looks pretty much like a native prairie, although the diversity of plant and animal species certainly is not be as complete.
   It would be interesting to do an actual, rigorous study of the prairie and publish a paper regarding the prairie restoration and maintenance methods and the results, but I am afraid I will never have the opportunity to do so and that this cursory description will have to suffice.