Tag Archives: wildflower

Photo of the Week – March 11, 2016

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In some ways, this is a great time of year in the Platte River Prairies – we’re gearing up for prescribed fire, and clouds of migratory sandhill cranes provide background music as we prepare our prairies for the coming field season.  At the same time, the beautiful weather over the last couple of weeks has me yearning for wildflowers, and I know it’s going to be a while before we start seeing them.  The daffodils in my yard help a little, as do the little tiny blue flowers on whatever weed it is that grows along the edge of my foundation and sidewalk.  But I miss prairie wildflowers, and we’re at least a month away from the first of those.  Temperatures in the 70’s make it feel like there should be wildflowers blooming, but no matter how long I walk through the brown grass, I still don’t see any.

Stiff sunflower (Helianthus pauciflorus) in The Nature Conservancy's Platte River Prairies back in August 2015.

Stiff sunflower (Helianthus pauciflorus) in The Nature Conservancy’s Platte River Prairies back in August 2015.

So, I found comfort and joy by flipping through photos from last summer and looking at all the bold vibrant colors.  Here’s one of the images that hit me hardest as I scanned through those summer images.  Happy Spring!  (And hurry up, wildflowers!)

Photo of the Week – July 16, 2015

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Scaly blazingstar (Liatris squarrosa) is just starting to bloom in the Platte River Prairies.  It has beautiful and intricate flowers with very long anthers protruding from its tiny blossoms.  At least it usually does…

Blazing star (Liatris squarrosa) The Nature Conservancy's Platte River Prairies, Nebraska.

Scaly blazingstar (Liatris squarrosa). The Nature Conservancy’s Platte River Prairies, Nebraska.

I was photographing some blazingstar flowers earlier this week when I saw one with a grasshopper sitting on it.  It sat still long enough for me to get a few photos of it.

Grasshopper on blazing star (Liatris squarrosa) The Nature Conservancy's Platte River Prairies, Nebraska.

A grasshopper standing innocently(?) on top of scaly blazingstar.

Only when I looked the above photo on my computer screen did I notice the absence of most of the long white anthers I’d seen on other flowers.  Surely, I thought, it’s not a coincidence that the grasshopper is present but the anthers are not…?

Grasshopper on blazing star (Liatris squarrosa) The Nature Conservancy's Platte River Prairies, Nebraska.

The grasshopper eating one of the long anthers.

Sure enough, looking back through my other images, I found one of the grasshopper eating an anther.  Caught red-handed!  (So to speak.)

Just because they are called “grass”hoppers doesn’t mean that’s all they eat.  In fact, many grasshoppers eat pollen and other parts of wildflowers.  Some are fairly specialized, while others are generalists in terms of the plant species they feed on.  Even among the grass-feeding grasshoppers, there is great variety in which grass species and which parts of those grasses each species eats.

For the sake of the scaly blazing star (and our seed harvest efforts this year), I hope at least some of the anthers survive uneaten so the plants can make seed.  As more flowers open, maybe their abundance will be more than the grasshoppers can keep up with.  At least in past years, we’ve usually gotten pretty good seed harvests from blazingstar, so I’m not too worried.

Just interested…