Tag Archives: native-plants

Perspectives of the Prairie: Jennifer Rumery and Karen Hemberger

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Hi everyone.  The following blog post is written by 2024 Hubbard Fellow Claire Morrical.  Claire put together a fantastic series of interviews with people working in conservation here in Nebraska and we thought you’d enjoy reading and listening to their stories. 

This project – Perspectives of the Prairie – uses interviews and maps to share the perspectives and stories of people, from ecologists to volunteers, on the prairie. You can check out the full project HERE.

This post also contains audio clips. You can find the text from this blog post with audio transcripts HERE. If you’re reading this post in your email and the audio clips don’t work, click on the title of the post to open it online.

Jennifer and Karen have volunteered at Platte River Prairies for over 10 and 20 years, respectively. After a volunteer day of gathering mountain mint seeds, Jennifer, Karen, and I sat down to discuss the healing and learning they get from the prairie, what makes volunteers unique, and to share stories of young volunteers connecting to the prairie.

Volunteers harvest seed in East Dahms (photo: Chris Helzer)

Interview: November 2nd, 2024

Part 1: Meet Jennifer

It’s an overcast Saturday in November and I’m sitting outside the Platte River Prairie’s main office waiting for volunteers to arrive. In a white pickup truck, there’s a handful of five-gallon buckets, leather gloves, and a couple pairs of gardening clippers. It’s a seed collection day.

Throughout the year, we collect and stockpile native prairie seeds from our sites, to be scattered back on our prairies in the following years.

In the past, we’ve used most of our seed for restorations, returning crop fields to prairie. With no seed bank in restorations, no prairie seeds lying in wait under the soil until conditions are just right to emerge, we start from scratch. As a result, we needed a lot of seed. Seed collecting meant having four five-gallon buckets strapped to you as you tore your way through the prairie, trying to fill a bucket every 5 to 10 minutes.

This year we have no active restorations. During these years, we use seed to help our sites along, bolster the plant community, fill in patches. With less demand for seed, seed collection is a much more social affair. 

It’s one of the last weeks to find much seed as the prairie creeps towards winter dormancy, and our volunteer, Karen Hemberger, has led us to where she recalls seeing our day’s targets, New England Aster and Mountain Mint. We meander through the wildflowers and grasses, chatting as we scan for plants. By the end of two hours, we’ve collected a 5-gallon bucket’s worth of seed between the four of us. But we’ve accomplished our primary objective, spending time in the prairie and spending time together.

Afterwards, I sat down with two of our volunteers, Karen Hemberger and Jennifer Rumery, to talk about their experiences working at Platte River Prairies.

This is Jennifer-

Notes for Context:

  • Mardell Jasnowski: Worked as a land steward at Platte River Prairies and continues to help as a volunteer
Prairie gentian (Eustoma grandiflorum), a wildflower that Jennifer especially likes (photo: Chris Helzer)

Overseeing volunteer days is the responsibility of Hubbard Fellows, including myself (year-long employees getting early career experience at Platte River Prairies). During our first volunteer days, seasoned volunteers like Jennifer and Karen are amazing guides as we get our footing, ready for any task and happy to answer questions along the way.

 Jennifer has been a volunteer with us for about 10 years. Both she and her husband, Grant, help us at PRP.

Notes for Context:

  • Brandon Cobb: One of the 2022 Hubbard Fellows (you can hear from him HERE)

Part 2: Meet Karen

Location: The Derr Sandhills site at Platte River Prairies

Karen Hemberger is another long-time volunteer who’s helped us for over twenty years and is her own force of nature when it comes to seed collecting.

Notes for Context: Karen mentions “keys to the house”. Our main office, the Derr House, is an extremely 70’s brick house that past landowners sold to us in the 2000’s

  • The Crane Trust: A conservation non-profit and preserve to the East of Platte River Prairies
  • Chris Helzer: Director of Science and Stewardship for Nebraska TNC. Chris has spent much of his career at Platte River Prairies
Male blue sage bee (Tetraloniella cressoniana), a specialist of pitcher sage (Salvia azurea). Karen especially likes this wildflower (photo: Chris Helzer)

Through learning and growing and sharing, Karen’s passion for this work is unending. She is fierce in her love for the prairie and tender in her approach to caring for it.

Notes for Context: Karen mentions a plant named sweet clover. Depending on where you are in the United States, sweet clover is either a very invasive species (a non-native plant that outcompetes native plants), or a non-native plant of little concern. In central and western Nebraska, we tend not to worry very much about sweet clover. It is abundant when there are few plants competing with it, but makes way when other species move in.

Karen is referring here to Chris Helzer.

Plants mentioned: Sweet Clover (Melilotus officinalis), Sun Sedge (Carex heliophila)

An ant colony on a large anthill

Part 3: Healing and Learning

Location: The site Caveny at Platte River Prairies

Karen and Jennifer are reflective on what they receive in return for the time that they give. They take something home with them, and for Jennifer, that something carried her through her work as a school psychologist

Sandhill cranes flying off from the river

Every spring, hundreds of thousands of sandhill cranes pause their migration north to eat their fill of invertebrates and corn along the central Platte River (where we are). They store the energy they’ll need to hatch and raise chicks in the coming months. At the migration’s peak, there is a constant trill of cranes calling in the mornings and evenings. When they fly to the river to roost for the night, the line of cranes, wing to wing, can stretch from the eastern to the western horizon. This great migration of sandhill cranes is followed closely by the endangered whooping cranes.

For many, even those who have watched the cranes year after year, seeing them return in the spring can be a deeply impactful experience. Jennifer finds meaning in her own experience with the cranes. For both Karen and Jennifer, time spent in the bluestem and switchgrass and sunflowers has shaped the way they take care of themselves and others.

In addition to healing, spending time in the prairie has helped shape how and what Karen and Jennifer see.  

Plants mentioned: Pussy Toes (Antennaria neglecta), Star grass, Blue-eyed grass, Pale spike lobelia (Lobelia spicata)

Four-point evening primrose (Oenothera rhombipetala) in sand prairie at The Nature Conservancy’s Platte River Prairies (photo: Chris Helzer)

Part 4: The Youngest Volunteers

Location: The site Derr West at Platte River Prairies

Jennifer and Karen share special moments watching young volunteers experience the prairie.

Notes for Context:

Plants mentioned: Milkweed (Asclepius sp.)

Common milkweed seeds (photo: Chris Helzer)

The Value of (Some) Non-Native (GASP) Wildflowers in Our Yard

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This might be an awkward week to laud the value of having a non-native wildflower in my yard. I’m an invited speaker at the Indiana Native Plant Society’s annual conference this coming weekend. It’s probably (?) too late for them to cancel my appearance.

I’m mostly kidding. Today’s post is not intended to diminish the importance of native plants, either in ecological restoration or in suburban landscapes. I’m (obviously, I hope) a huge advocate for including native plants in those situations for many reasons. I’ve written about that before (here) and don’t need to cover that ground again here. However, in that same post, I also explained why Kim and I have a mix of native and non-native (and even some cultivars of native plants) in our yard. If that makes you feel agitated, I beg you to read both that post and this one before you start stomping your feet and plotting my destruction.

Monarch butterfly on a zinnia flower this week.

We moved across town last winter, abandoning garden spaces Kim and I (mostly Kim) had invested 10 years in. Our new place is mostly Kentucky bluegrass with some minimal and mostly not-our-style flower gardens along the edge of the house. While we’re both antsy to start making it ours, Kim very rationally decided that we need to wait a year before jumping into a new landscape plan. That’ll give us (her) time to scope out the sunny and shady spots, learn about what’s already here, and think about what we really want this new yard to look like.

As a result, we (she) planted a small vegetable garden in the same footprint used by the previous owner, but otherwise – with one exception – left the rest of the yard as is. That exception was that she planted a bunch of zinnias around our back deck and in a stretch of space on the west side of the house. I’m grateful for a couple reasons. First, zinnias are beautiful and I like looking at them. Second, and (finally) getting to the point of this post, they attract and feed a lot of insects, including lots of migrants. In particular, this week, they fed a couple butterflies that weren’t really supposed to be here, but showed up anyway.

Our dog, Fitz, posing with some of our zinnias.

We’ve been enjoying a bounty of pollinators and other insects on our zinnias all season. During the last few weeks, though, the activity has been even more appreciated because most of the native plants in nearby prairies and other natural areas have pretty much shut down for the season. There’s very little available pollen and nectar out there right now. In our yard, though, the zinnias are still cruising along.

While most monarchs have scooted south, the few that are still hanging around and/or passing through have really concentrated their activity on our zinnias. They’re joined by migratory painted lady and American lady butterflies, as well as other butterflies, moths, bees, flies, etc. – some migratory, some not.

Last weekend, I spotted a butterfly on our zinnias that I’d seen in books, but never in real life – a gulf fritillary. I took a couple quick photos with my phone and checked the terrific Nebraska Lepidoptera website to see what I could learn.

According to the website, the species hadn’t yet been reported in our county and it was also outside the seasonal window when it had been reported in the state. That’s pretty cool. I emailed Neil Dankert, who runs the site, to let him know what I’d seen. Apparently, a few other people in the state were reporting the butterflies in their yards, too, along with a few other species that are normally found to our south. We’d had some strong southerly winds (blowing out of the south) a day or two before I saw the gulf fritillary, so maybe a bunch of butterflies just got blown north by that weather system.

Gulf fritillary.
Gulf fritillary.

The next morning, I took my camera out behind the house and took the photos shown in this post. I saw at least two different gulf fritillaries, which I know only because one of them had a wing that was a little beat up. Well, I also saw two at once, which was another good clue, I guess. There could easily have been more than two, though – there was so much activity on the flowers, it was hard to keep track. Here are photos of some of the other insect visitors on the zinnias that morning.

American lady butterfly.
Painted lady butterfly.
Pearl crescent butterfly.
Skipper butterfly.
Soybean looper moth?
Yellow-shouldered drone fly.
European honey bee.

I’m excited to start putting in a bunch of native plants next spring, and building those gardens out over the next several years. We’ll be sure to include wildflowers that bloom at different times of year so that we can provide nectaring options consistently through the growing season for both resident and migratory pollinators. It’ll also be fun to watch myriad insects feed on the leaves, burrow into the stems, and otherwise utilize the plant species they are familiar with and adapted to.

At the same time, though, I’m sure we’ll add species like crocus, daffodil, tulip, hyacinth, and others, just because we think they’re pretty. Zinnias, too, will continue to be a staple of our backyard color. We’ll plant a cherry tree for pies and maybe some raspberries and strawberries for eating and canning. In addition, we’ll leave one fairly big swath of mowed bluegrass so we can play frisbee with the dogs and so there’s a place for kids to play soccer or whatever they want. In short, we’ll create a yard that fits us.

Gulf fritillary and monarch butterfly sharing the same flower (momentarily).

I fully support people who want to turn their whole yard into native prairie plantings, or to landscape with only native plants. If that makes them happy, it makes me happy. I’m a little bothered, though, by the more militant among them who try to shame anyone who doesn’t want to go whole hog with them.

There are lots of ways to contribute to the world with your yard. You can be conservative in your water use, for example, both by planting species that require minimal watering and by not watering more than needed. Leaving piles of sticks and leaves around, as well as patches of bare ground, provide helpful habitat for many species. You can also be judicious about spraying chemicals for weed or “pest” control. The overuse of herbicides and pesticides is a huge problem and has big ripple effects outside of someone’s yard.

And, of course, incorporating native plants in your landscaping has innumerable benefits, both directly to insects and other wildlife and indirectly as a way of normalizing those plant species to neighbors and passers-by. Please add native species to your yard if you can!

However, don’t feel bad about throwing in a few daffodils, petunias, or zinnias as well. I sure don’t, and neither – apparently – do the butterflies.