Category Archives: Prairie Photography

Square Meter of Prairie Project – July 2018

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Quick note – registration is still open for the 2018 Grassland Restoration Network workshop (September 5-6) in Illinois.  Click here for more information and/or to register.  It’ll be worth your time!

The square meter photography project continues!  Throughout this calendar year, I’m trying to document as much beauty and diversity as I can within a single square meter of prairie along Lincoln Creek in Aurora, Nebraska.  Today, I’m sharing some of my favorite images from July.  If you want to look backwards, you can click to on these links to look at selected photos from June, May, and January.

July was a little slower than I’d expected, to be honest (August, however, has been really hopping).  I was surprised how few pollinators showed up to feed on the butterfly milkweed plant in my little plot.  (I’m sure it didn’t have anything to do with the loony guy and his camera looming nearby.  There were lots of insects hanging around on butterfly milkweed plants elsewhere in the prairie…)  Regardless, there was still plenty going on in the plot last month.  Here are some highlights.

One of the few bugs I did see on the butterfly milkweed plant in my plot kept playing hide and seek with me.  This was the only photo I could get on this particular day.

A few days after the above photo, I saw the same kind of bug again, but this one was more tolerant of my lens in its face.

Morning dew drops.

I’m not sure what this beetle is, but I saw it a few times last month.

This tiny spider was hanging out one day.  It looks similar to the lynx spider I was seeing in June, but the eyes are wrong – and it seemed to be making a web.

Purple prairie clover (Dalea purpurea).

A leaf-footed bug (I think?)

I believe this intricately-patterned little beauty is a leaf hopper. Any guidance as to species would be appreciated…

Photo of the Week – August 10, 2018

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Roses are red, violets are blue,

Except that in nature, both vary in hue.

-Chris Helzer

Pardon the terrible poetry, but even outside of horticultural varieties, the flowers of both roses and violets can be many different colors.  Less frequently, even sunflowers can display colors other than their typical yellow.  For example, there is a clone of stiff sunflowers (Helianthus pauciflorus) blooming right now over at Lincoln Creek Prairie, here in Aurora, that includes beautiful red highlights.

These stiff sunflower blossoms have a little extra accent to their typical yellow color.

The red color appears to be genetically linked because there is an entire clone (a patch of stems connected by underground stems called rhizomes) with the same feature.  It reminds me of the way upright yellow coneflower (Ratibida columnifera), another yellow flower, can often include varying amounts of red.  But that red variation is much more common in the coneflower – I almost never see it in sunflowers.  In fact, I’m wondering if the other times I’ve seen it might have been in this same clone, but years ago…

Regardless, I took a few minutes to appreciate (and document) these unique blossoms last week.  The bees feeding on them didn’t seem put off by the unusual color, which means maybe the genetic trait of that red color will be passed on and show up elsewhere.  If I think of it, I might even go harvest some of that seed myself in a month or so…  Here are a few more photos from that same flower patch.

Melissodes agilis on stiff sunflower. You can see that the reddish color is really just on the backside of the flower. The bees didn’t seem to care.

Svastra obliqua (aka, the sunflower bee).  Look at all that yellow pollen on her back leg…  (Thanks to Mike Arduser for confirming the ID of both these bee species.)

What a gorgeous flower…