A little more than a week ago, I took a walk through one of the restored wetlands here in the Platte River Prairies, enjoying the abundance of wildflowers and other life. Here are a few photos from that walk. You can click on any of the photos to see a sharper version of it.
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Prairie gentian (Eustoma grandflorum) was blooming in pockets of the wetland. It’s always one of the more striking flowers in wetlands and wet prairies, but it is an annual, so its abundance changes drastically from year to year.
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A paper wasp was feeding on nectar from swamp milkweed. I’ll share some more images and a story about this wasp in an upcoming post.
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Winged lythrum (Lythrum alatum) is a native wildflower that is closely related to purple loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria) – an invasive plant. Both are great plants for pollinators, but only one can take over the plant community in a wetland…
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Plains coreopsis (Coreopsis tinctoria) is an abundant annual wildflower in many wetlands in central Nebraska.
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This snail’s shell looked like polished wood as it moved across a piece of driftwood, washed up along the bank of a side channel of the stream.
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A tachynid fly on a coreopsis flower.
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Swamp milkweed is having a great year in our prairies. While it’s a perennial plant, we don’t always see it blooming in abundance. It’s always nice when it does.
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The Prairie Ecologist 
Love your photography Chris!
Sent from my iPhone
I’m waiting for your post about the wasp to tell you a story an ecologist might find interesting.
James
Chris – do you see Swamp Milkweed doing anything in mesic conditions in your prairies? I put some seed down in December 2011 but the 2 dry summers since probably didn’t give it a chance. I’m hoping I might see some when we get a summer with average rain.
Mike, it usually needs fairly wet soil, in my experience. Wet-mesic, maybe.
Gardener’s often succeed with Swamp Milkweed (Asclepias incarnata) in dappled shade that is mesic. I have seen it growing happily on rather dry banks five or more feet above a pond. I think it can handle less water when competition from other species typical of the habitat has been eliminated.
James
Beautiful pictures.
Something about that fly says “not tachinid” to me. I’ll get back to you if I can find out more…
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