Below are three views of the Swale Pond in Somme Prairie Grove.
Every fall, in areas needing restoration, we broadcast seed mixes. We wait for burns and put the seeds in the burned areas if possible. But we mostly get burns in spring, and we want the seeds to overwinter in the soil in most cases. The seeds work their ways into the soil over the winter and thus don't get destroyed by the next spring's grass fires.
But in the video below, steward Eriko Kojima is broadcasting wet prairie seed in spring. Our wet prairie areas don't burn in most years; they are too wet on the burn days chosen. So we hold back most of that seed mix until spring, when we can take advantage of knowing which areas got a chance to benefit from burns. We generally don't seed areas that haven't been or won't be burned (unless the existing vegetation is sparse).
In this video the chorus frogs and wind provide the sound track. We prefer to broadcast seed on windy days so the seed gets scattered more widely.
Here the steward looks small, the ecosystem looks big, and yet in our small ways we have learned that we can give biodiversity a big boost, working strategically.
In the next video, Eriko has spooked the chorus frogs, so they've paused their singing, but we can see where she's seeding better, close up.
A zephyr ripples the surface of the pond at the end. Sweet.
In this scene we see the habitats where six different seed mixes went. The mixes were:
Pond - in the water (mostly planted in the fall when the ponds are dry)
Sedge meadow - here on the edge of the water
Wet savanna - the narrow band where Eriko is seedingWet-mesic savanna - just up-slope from that - but here comprising most of the right half of this image
Mesic savanna - most of the uplands across the top of this photo
Dry-mesic savanna - the little rise visible just above Eriko's head at the end.
As we broadcast seed, year after year, we may be making mistakes. That's okay. We try to follow best practices, based on our limited experience and research. The seeds of many spring-blooming plants ripen early, May or June; we broadcast them as soon as we can - as many seem to have strategies that require it. For example, some benefit from the work of ants when the seeds are fresh. But there are many spring species that in our naive early years we held for planting until the following spring, and many of them came up fine, despite a practice frowned on today. So, for those species, we put them in both the spring and fall mixes, so they get more diverse opportunities. For the rest, we believe that fall-planting is better than spring planting, but we have not done the experiments needed to know for sure - species by species.
It would be good to do such experiments - especially for species that especially need help. If people have done such experiments carefully, they should share the results in easily accessible ways (which might include comments on post like this?).
Half of the 500+ plant species at Somme Prairie Grove were already growing here when we started, in 1980 - often just a few individuals and in odd corners. Most conservative species survived at Somme in especially small areas - and especially small numbers. So we spread their seeds far and wide, looking for similar habitats or other habitats referenced in the literature - wet or dry - prairie, savanna, or woodland (including the wetland areas of each). And we sought to foster a more robust gene pool by gathering the seeds of those species in many areas, as close by as we could find them.
The other half of the species now at Somme came from seeds we found in other remnant areas nearby. Our unproven methods worked. Most of those original sources are now sadly destroyed to become such developments as parking lots, malls, and the houses that we all live in.
Somme Prairie Grove is now permanently protected by the Forest Preserve District of Cook County and as an Illinois Nature Preserve - and equally importantly, in the hearts and hands of the Somme volunteer stewards.
Some of the seeds Eriko is broadcasting will germinate this spring or summer. Some will germinate next year. Once germinated, most will grow slowly. It may take years before they'll be big enough to flower and start making their own seeds. At that point, in many cases, those species will spread to areas where we wouldn't have thought to plant them. Surprises are the rule. But then, some of these species will continue their evolutions as permanent parts of this restored ecosystem under today's conditions. It may have been different 100 years ago. Thus, a month from now, the Swale Pond will look pretty much like it did last year. But an ecological clock will be ticking. There is a grandeur in the slowness and relentlessness of ecosystem recovery.
