Tag Archives: hubbard fellowship

Hubbard Fellowship Blog – Seed Harvest Musings

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A guest post by Anne Stine, one of our Hubbard Fellows:

I had a pretty good foundation in forest ecology leaving graduate school, but I’ve really developed my forb and grass ID skills since starting work here in Wood River.  Prairie ecology has grown on me.  I was trying to explain it to a forest-loving friend: once you know the local plants, (that is, you see their uniqueness and their ecological and historical roles), you get a better feel for a place.

One of my favorite stewardship tasks is harvesting native seeds.  The best assignments are for hard to find plants that require some knowledge of their life history to locate.  I really enjoy the scavenger hunt and foraging aspects of searching for less widely distributed species.  I also had one of my major botanical victories seed harvesting on the prairie.

Prairie seeds drying in our seed barn. Platte River Prairies, Nebraska. Photo by Eliza Perry, Hubbard Fellow.

Prairie seeds drying in our seed barn. Platte River Prairies, Nebraska. Photo by Eliza Perry, Hubbard Fellow.

I was driving around, looking for Canada milkvetch (Astragalus canadensis), when I spotted a familiar stalk sticking up in the pasture.  I remembered it as a plant that had ridden shotgun in the truck with my field supervisor for a few weeks- clearly someone had harvested it.  I just didn’t know what it was.  Its flowers were now gone, only the long brown stalks and seed heads remained.  The leaves looked like a cross between a strawberry and a prairie rose (Rosa arkansana).  I collected the seeds and took the stalks home to identify. I was excited to discover that the plant in question, tall cinquefoil (Potentilla arguta), is indeed in the rose family!  Ecologists find their thrills where they may…

As a natural history geek, I can’t help but delight in picking up random facts about prairie plants.  For example, rocky mountain bee plant (Cleome serrulata) is a glorious nectar source for pollinators in mid-summer.  Doves eat the seeds in the fall.  Its leaves and seeds were also eaten by some Native Americans, “in spite of its strong smell” (“Grassland plants of South Dakota and the Northern Great Plains”, Johnson & Larson 1999). It takes all kinds, the authors seem to say.  I didn’t find the odor especially displeasing, but evidently even botanists have personal opinions.

Rocky mountain bee plant. Platte River Prairies, Nebraska.

Rocky mountain bee plant. Platte River Prairies, Nebraska.

Foxglove penstemon (Penstemon digitalis) is one plant whose smell I do find distasteful, and its fragrance garnered no mention. This wildflower is not widespread, but neither is it difficult to find.  You smell it before you see it.  Interestingly, it’s the seed heads and red stalks that stink, not the flower.  I left a bucket in the cab of the truck while I harvested other things, and when I came back the cab was filled with flies.  They followed the bucket to the truck bed when I moved it.

Most of the seeds we collect this year will be used in over-seeding projects, intended to increase the diversity of prairies we manage.  Over-seeding is one strategy we can use to boost a site’s forb population without tearing up the prairie and starting over.  Building a native seed bank of local ecotypes is a useful technique to increase your chances of success in prairie restoration.  It’s not bad work either, if you can get it.

Hubbard Fellowship Blog – Why is Prairie Conservation Important?

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A guest post – and a couple questions for you – from Eliza Perry, one of our Hubbard Fellows:

I arrived in Nebraska with romantic preconceptions of prairie, probably influenced by my mild obsession with Laura Ingalls Wilder as a child. Back then, I thought up designs for a covered wagon that would meet the cruelest of weather and environmental conditions—automatically elevating wagon-stilts, for example, to protect us from wildfires caused by lightning strikes—without sacrificing luxury. My wagon featured recliners for the driver and passenger seats, a loft outfitted with giant beanbag chairs for sleeping, and multiple TVs. We would be fully equipped to cross the endless grasslands, with extra storage space for our crates of never-rotting fresh produce and cereal. I won’t even get into the tree houses I devised at this age.

Unsurprisingly, I was taken aback by the real prairie landscape, which was fenced off, bordered by large crop fields regularly showered in pesticides, and seemed to require constant tending – at least when we arrived at the height of thistle season. This disillusionment was valuable because it gave me a skepticism that has since faded, but challenged me to actively reflect on my role in this ecosystem, why I think it is important to protect, and what “protecting” it might really mean.

Prairie landscapes are certainly striking, but much of that landscape has been drastically changed, leaving very little actual prairie in many places.

Prairie landscapes are certainly striking, but many of those landscapes have been drastically changed so that actual prairie can be hard to find.

My interest in the social and ethical facets of conservation make it especially important to me to be able to make a case to any audience for the importance, relevance, urgency, morality, etc. of conservation goals. In college, I studied plenty of abstract moral arguments on the relationship between humans and nature and what obligations we have toward nature, but now I want to hear from people about their personal perspectives on those issues.

Because I’m new to grasslands, I have a different – and certainly still developing – relationship with prairie than those who have loved and/or worked on prairie for a long time. By now, I’ve asked several people why they feel it’s important to conserve prairies, and I’ve gotten answers ranging from a spiritual obligation to “steward the land,” a utilitarian need to conserve biodiversity, to the “intellectual challenge” prairie conservation offers, to name a few. I hope that as I gather new perspectives, I will be better equipped to engage with people on the significance of the work we do here on the Platte.

Eliza (with Nelson Winkel) at Tucker Prairie in north-central Missouri during the summer of 2013.

Eliza (with Nelson Winkel) at Tucker Prairie near Columbia, Missouri during the summer of 2013.

I think I’m asking two questions, though the answers may be the same for some: Why do you think it is important to conserve prairie, and why are you personally working to conserve prairie?

I’d love to hear your responses.

(Note from the Prairie Ecologist…  Please leave your comments for Eliza below.  For more perspective on this topic, you might be interested to read two previous posts, one by me and one by Doug Ladd of The Nature Conservancy in Missouri.)