The Prairie Ecologist

I hope to see many of you at our first Field Day of the 2014 season. On Friday, June 13, we’ll host hikes and presentations all day long at our Platte River Prairies. Come learn about prairie ecology, plant identification, grassland restoration and management, and much more!

Join fellow prairie enthusiasts and biologists for a fun day in the Platte River Prairies on June 13, 2014.

By popular demand, we’re placing a special emphasis on plant identification this year, and will provide opportunities to learn how to identify grasses, wetland plants, and prairie wildflowers. In addition, there will be opportunities to see and discuss invasive plants and their control. Other featured topics include prairie insects, small mammals, birds, and prairie gardening.

The day’s events will officially begin at 9am and end at 4pm, but feel free to come a little early for an 8am bird hike and stay and hike the trails on your own in the evening. You are welcome to come and go as you please during the day, and there will be multiple sessions to choose from all day long. Please bring your own lunch and a bottle of water, but we’ll provide some cold drinks and snacks as well.

Click HERE to see the agenda for the day.

Click HERE to learn more about the Platte River Prairies.

Click HERE for directions to the site.

This Field Day is free of charge, and you don’t need to register ahead of time, but we’d appreciate knowing if you will be coming so we can plan accordingly. Please email or call Mardell Jasnowski if you plan to attend. mjasnowski@tnc.org or 402-694-4191.

Thank you to the Nebraska Environmental Trust and the Nebraska Academy of Sciences for supporting our Field Days through the PIE grant program.

In my last post, I mentioned that I didn’t mind having dandelions in my prairies. Here is a further celebration of this beautiful, tough little plant.

These dandelions were blooming near our shop building earlier this week.

While dandelions (Taraxacum officinale) are kind of weedy, they are not invasive – at least not in our prairies. They essentially fill spaces left when perennial plants are either absent or weakened. Typically, they come and go from the plant community pretty quickly, except in places (like around our shop) where frequent mowing and/or poor soil conditions prevent more competitive plants from establishing.

The dandelion’s status as a non-native plant doesn’t bother me in the least. It is an attractive species and is great for pollinators – especially in the early part of the season when few other plants are blooming in our prairies. Until relatively recent history, dandelions were seen as a useful and attractive garden plant around the world. We’ve made the social decision to call it a weed, but that doesn’t change it’s ecological value. You can read more about the history and uses of dandelions here.

Dandelions and henbit (another pretty and innocuous non-native flower) offer a nice counterpoint to each other, don’t they?

If you can get past the social aesthetic of dandelions as weeds and look at them as just a flower, they’re really very pretty. Kids, who haven’t yet been pressured to label dandelions as a nuisance, can see that beauty – why can’t we?

Dandelion seeds at the Helzer Prairie last week.

The Prairie Ecologist

Essays, photos, and discussion about prairie ecology, restoration, and management

Platte River Prairies Field Day – June 13, 2014

Photo of the Week – May 8, 2014