Captured By Lady-slippers: then afterthoughts and aftershocks

This post is mostly about lady-slippers. But it gets tangled up with personal adventure ... and bureaucracy ... such that it provides insights into conservation and science.

It was one of my first assignments. I was so happy to have a proud new job with the Illinois Nature Preserves Commission. Never, never had I imagined being paid a salary to save rare nature! My boss Jerry Paulson was an impressive combination of the worldly wise and the idealist. His boss, our director George Fell, was the grand old man of conservation, founding director of The Nature Conservancy and the crusading Illinois government agency, where I now worked.

Illinois had recently helped revolutionize conservation. Fell, Paulson, and Jack White had just finished the Illinois Natural Areas Inventory. Now, instead of arguing about which areas were worthy, Illinois would "follow the Inventory” and protect ecosystems based on this state's scientifically-selected 610 best surviving natural ecosystems.

Starting now, Illinois - out in front of all the other states and the feds - had a defined biodiversity conservation mission. But the definition was a bit iffy. In line with the penchants of George Fell, it defined “nature” as areas “undisturbed by man.” That definition would come back to haunt us, but for now, it was close enough. We had work to do.

 

These beauties seduced me to disobey my new boss in my new dream job.
Oh, the temptations we don't resist!

One casualty of the Inventory was a disturbed little prairie west of Chicago. Palatine Prairie would now be bulldozed because it did not have enough “undisturbedness.” It failed to be recognized by the Inventory because it contained less than the needed minimum quarter acre of “Grade A” or two acres of" Grade B." But before the flood-retention bulldozers showed up, Paulson directed me to go there, dig up some endangered lady-slipper orchids (Cypripedium candidum), and transplant them to a protected site. This was a bad idea, for many reasons. (See Endnote 1.)

"We should not try to save the Palatine site," Paulson said - because we had more important irons in the fire. He didn't want to disrupt delicate negotiations with the agency that owned the land – and put in jeopardy the saving of a much more important prairie that they also owned. (See Endnote 2, if you want.) 

I drove to Palatine with a shovel and some buckets, parked in a strip mall, sneaked across railroad tracks, climbed into and out of a deep ditch, and sure enough, there was open rolling grassland with bits of fair to good prairie surviving here and there. In a small (less than 1/4 acre) very high quality remnant, prairie lady-slippers were in bloom – big clumps, nearly a foot across, growing side by side with prairie dropseed, smooth phlox, hoary puccoon, and other indicators of “virgin ground.” To dig them up meant digging and lugging gallons of ecosystem that had until today been “undisturbed by man” for all time.

Look close for white flowers. In some high quality prairies, lady-slippers were as common as grass.
But these sites are few, and many are losing species and quality fast. 

Did I really want to do this? I did not. It had required courage for Paulson to hire me, as I had no scientific credentials. I was known as a conservation activist, writer, speaker, and volunteer catalyst of prairie restoration. Paulson wanted those skills and that spirit in the team he was assembling to save those 610 high-quality areas identified by the Inventory. Others on the team had academic botany backgrounds; I had on-the-ground and with-the-people experience.

It pained me to stick a shovel into a piece of Earth so rare and delicate that seemed unethical even to walk on. These diverse blooming prairie plants had been flourishing here for thousands of years. Jeweled grassland had extended to the horizon. Now, in all directions, the animals and plants of ancient nature had been plowed, paved, bulldozed, and abominated in so many ways. This remnant was both holy and alive. I hesitated. It took deep patriotism toward my new job to do this. Then I stabbed the shovel into what had until then been so pure. The violence was the lesser of evils, or so I told myself. Before stabbing into the edge of the second clump, I paused longer. After the third I could do no more. Proud new-employee resolution failed. “I must be crazy,” I said under my breath. “What I’m doing is ugly.”

Okay. I took those three heavy clods of rare orchids and re-planted them as best I could. Then I defied the boss and saved Palatine Prairie from destruction. In the end, everyone was happy, but that’s another story. As for the transplants, I can report that two of those heavy blobs of rare nature have stayed a part of my life all these decades. This is partly their story. (See Endnote 3.)

And in truth, in its early years this adventure was a letdown. I had faced ethical challenges at both ends. When I arrived with my shovel at the much higher quality Somme Prairie, where Jerry had directed me to plant these botanical refugees, I had to agonize over where to dig. The obvious place would be most like where I found them – amid the finest prairie plant associates. But that would mean even more nasty shovel-cuts, degrading yet rarer nature here. It wasn’t going to happen.

To make this enterprise yet more dubious, Jerry had suggested I do it fast. Not only were the bulldozers soon to arrive in Palatine, but Somme would soon be dedicated into the Illinois Nature Preserve System. With that change, legal protections would become so strong that a “disturbance” such as a transplant would require jumping over prohibitively many bureaucratic hurdles. Once dedicated, as the sentiments and the rules then had it, you leave nature alone.  

Okay, I said, the lady-slippers deserve a chance. Okay, they need a fine prairie for a home. This lady-slipper was widespread on the original Chicago prairies. Only three of Somme’s seventy acres were now “Grade A”. The original lady-slippers here were likely elsewhere, on those now-degraded other 67 acres. The only way they could likely return was with our help.  

We had been cutting invasive trees here. Shade from those trees had destroyed much of the prairie that hadn’t earlier been destroyed by the farmer’s plow. Our goal was to nurse all seventy acres back to ecological health. We expected the prairie species to gradually repossess the ground where the invasives had shaded everything out.

So here was the compromise. I dug holes near the very high quality prairie, but not in it. A few feet from “Grade A” was bare soil, where we’d recently clear-cut killer trees and shrubs. Into these holes went the precious lady-slipper turfs. Soil was carefully nursed back in (not compacted) around the wounded edges. I amputated all the blooms – yet another violence. But the dug-up plant is stressed, and supporting flowers is not where it should put its energies. These three can re-bloom in future years. Now their challenge is to restore damaged roots and recover from their wounds – and spread over the years as the nearby prairie recovers. We were idealistic and hopeful – but naïve and ignorant.

Every spring we'd have great hopes – and anxieties – about those clumps. Would they survive in this new habitat? Would they reproduce and start a whole new lady-slipper community as the holy three acres grew to seventy? Two of the clumps actually got bigger for a few years, while the third gradually dwindled from 19 blooms to 2 blooms five years later – to zero blooms and zero leaves forever after. To protect the two, we protected them with wire cages. We watched. Year after year. No babies. Just the two survivors.  

Spoiler alert: four decades later, those two lady-slipper clumps are thriving, but they seem to have produced no seeded offspring, and the very high quality prairie has not crossed the few feet of separation to surround them. They still sit among weeds, shrubs, and other “ecologically inferior” associates. Our somewhat “leave it alone” approach hasn’t worked for them.  

But yikes! A related, half-thought-out experiment, launched on a whim, would provoke a whole new drama.

I can’t find a record of the day I decided to be rash. I remember doing it – and feeling queasy about it. Normally I recorded restoration work in a spiral notebook. This log lists where seeds were gathered and broadcast, where brush was cut, etc. I shared the notebook and all its info and questions with all the volunteer leaders who wanted to review it from time to time. Openness was crucial to our “participatory democracy” culture. By the 1980s, we were becoming seen as a world model of something new. We committed ourselves to be true to science, to the ecosystem, and to each other.

I remember deciding not to record my rash act in the log book, because it would take too long to explain. As Nature Preserve staff, I had the authority to make this decision and do this. But our team followed principles, and I would seem to be violating them. Though we worked collectively on many more degraded sites, sharing seed among them so they could recover their diversity, Somme Prairie was different. We had decided, at that time, not to remove seed from it or bring seed to it. We especially did not plant anything (even seed from other parts of the site) in the Grade A areas. (We did remove seed from the Grade A, but only to restore species to the recovering acres that surrounded it. The very high quality habitat was considered too small to be sustainable without expansion.)

I would have had to explain that this was a special case, that I had been instructed by my Nature Preserve boss to restore the Threatened lady-slippers here, that such a rare and conservative species may thrive only in the highest-quality area, so this was an experiment worth doing. This log book was just hastily scribbled notes. It was easier just to omit all this.  

So, what exactly was this dubious experiment that I didn’t log? I broadcast lady-slipper seeds into Grade A prairie. Shocking? It was to me, actually. And yet ...

Here’s how conflicting thoughts brought me to throw caution and seed to the wind. The best and most sustainable lady-slipper populations seemed to be in very high quality prairie. Until I saw no seedlings from our two big transplants, I’d imagined that the dust-like seeds (in the few capsules that I’d sometimes notice on our two plants) ought to blow around and make more lady-slippers. But conservative species (like this one) may reproduce rarely. They live long and "are in no rush." Experts wonder if they’re adapted to rare (now rare-er) impacts of bison or catastrophically-intense fire or other now-missing forces and conditions. Perhaps the tiny seeds, sheltered by a canopy of taller plants by the time they mature,  mostly disperse only to the few feet of nearby degraded ground. And maybe they happen not to “like” those degraded areas closest to the transplants.

Another consideration. As with other orchids, this one reproduces only when “infected” by (or enters into a partnership with?) some fungus. Perhaps that fungus only thrives in the diverse high-quality system.

Also, many experts were telling us that the Grade A ecosystem was a “closed community.” Every niche was filled. Other plants could not penetrate. A “terminal state” had been reached over the millennia with roots and leaves filling all the available spaces. And yet? What if? Does science not believe in experiment? The Illinois Nature Preserves Commission had directed me to restore the lady-slipper to this prairie. I was official, empowered. Was a whiff of powdery seed not worth a try?

Did I make notes to record the beginnings of this little seeding experiment? I hope I’ll find them some day. Or maybe I thought the likelihood of new orchids was so remote and my memory was so clear, that I didn’t need a note? Either I’d see baby lady-slippers in a couple of years, or not.

In any case, I loved Somme Prairie, and I was as attentive as time allowed to its needs and charms. Somme was where I had fallen in love with prairie nature. Year in and year out I studied and cared for it - not in this case as part of a job, but as a dedicated volunteer in spare time. From respect, I mostly kept my big feet out of the Grade A areas during the growing season. One little footpath passed through one part of it, and I tiptoed down that path when I got a chance. Perhaps in response to our good care, in some years we noticed newly emerging rare species, otherwise unknown nearby. These included two-flowered Cynthia, Junegrass, and prairie lily. In 1987 I found the delicate oval milkweed (Asclepias ovalifolia) surviving there; until then it had long been thought extinct in Illinois.  

Overpopulated deer are a major threat. In early spring, the shooting star leaves to the right have been half eaten. In the dramatic center of this photo, ten lady-slipper sprouts are emerging.
If we didn't cage them, they will likely be eaten too, which can kill the plant.  

Then one day in May 1997 as I walked the little Somme footpath, I was rocked by a lightning-bolt of tiny discovery. It dazed me briefly. What was I seeing!?! And what did it mean!?! Ten tiny baby lady-slippers bloomed in that patch of perfect prairie. Most of the little cuties had one flower and two leaves. This, I remembered, was where I had broadcast those seeds, perhaps a decade earlier. I hadn’t still expected to see them. I was thrilled and horrified. What were the implications? This “unmodified” original prairie was now modified. Forever?

In the twenty years since then, we’ve tried to monitor those plants annually, and mostly succeeded. They are special. So far as we know, they are the first of their kind – prairie lady-slippers, planted and grown to flower. Horticulturists had tried and not succeeded so far. Here, nature did it. 

It’s challenging to do experiments that last for many decades. They’re rarely funded – especially in organismal botany. But we volunteers can do such work in the manner of the old-fashioned unfunded scientists, who just wanted to learn things. Our lady-slipper work is an example of such “citizen science,” imperfect though it is. It’s had to outlast jobs, places of residence, life goals, etc. It suffers from some apparently lost data. But the work suggests some tentative conclusions and testable hypotheses.

They hate living in cages. But they survive that way.
More support is needed for humane deer control. 

Even today, not much seems to be known about the longevity or time needed for reproduction of Cypripedium candidum in the wild. Extrapolating from other orchid species, it is hypothesized that, though an individual plant can produce ten thousand seeds per year, this species may reproduce rarely or sporadically.

In that first year, we found 10 plants, 65 stems, and 27 blossoms. In 1998 seven more plants emerged and then no new plants for two years. As might be suggested by a new population of young plants, most plants steadily grew larger until in 2002 there were 20 plants with 187 stems and 146 blossoms. To compare the dynamics of the population by various measures, see Table 1.  

Note that 2002 seems to have been a poor growing year. In 2003, blooms dropped from 146 to 26. Marlin Bowles, who has studied this species, says that his data suggest that the number of stems and blooms seems to be determined by the weather during the previous year.

Table 1. First Seeding Area

	Total clumps	Total stems	Total blooms	B/av. lg. clump*	Stems + blooms**	New clumps
1997	10	65	27	2.7	92	11
1998	17	101	59	5.3	160	6
1999	17	104	73	6.5	177	0
2000	15	106	60	5.5	166	0
2001	18	181	134	13.0	315	3
2002	20	186	146	12.0	332	3
2003	19	206	26	2.6	232	1
2004	21	169	23	1.9	192	3
2005	16	133	62	5.3	195	0
2006		<	no data	>
2007	18	167	57	5.5	224	2
2008	20	192	44	4.1	236	0
2009	31	256	156	13.9	412	9
2010	52	277	153	11.2	430	26
2011	56	351	233	14.7	584	24
2012		<	no data	>
2013	56	311	62	3.6	373	3
2014	56	334	135		469	0
2015	36	261	147	9.3	408	***
2016	108	518	183	13.0	853	43***
2017	75	379	100	6.0	479	***

* Average number of blooms per clump in the ten clumps with the most blooms – appears to reflect short term weather and burn regime. Peak high numbers seem unchanged from 2001 to 2016.

** The number of stems plus the number of blooms – appears to be a good measure of overall population vigor. Small stems were not counted; a stem had to be at least half as tall as the leafy parts of nearby blooming stems to be counted. Since every bloom also has a stem, this index gives each blooming stem twice the weight of a sterile stem. Overall, this index continues to rise.
*** There are now so many tightly packed plants that our previous system is no longer good enough for us to be sure which were new. For the 2016 number we just subtracted the previous high count from the new high total. We do know that many of these plants were new because they appeared in places well away from where we'd seen them before.  

From 1998 to 2008, the vigor of this population seems to have been remarkably steady. For the first dozen years, the total number of plants had stayed between 15 and 21, with no apparent trend. Many plants have gone through periods where they could not be found (despite careful search of their exact locations) for a whole year – and then emerged again. Other orchids are also said to remain below ground (dormant? or building up resources parasitically or symbiotically?) for a year or more.

Every spring we find them, mark them, cage them, and record their beautiful numbers. 

During 2009 thorough 2011, 59 new plants appeared. These three years were especially good (as were 2001 and 2002) for all measures of population health. The bursts of higher numbers and new plants likely represent responses to the precipitation and burn regimes.

Unlike some orchids, the seeded lady-slippers (and the transplants) seem to be long-lived. All but one of the original seeded plants were in evidence in 2008 or 2009 and thus had lived for at least 11 years. As noted earlier, two of the three transplants have remained vigorous for four decades and were already mature plants when rescued.

The Second Seeding

I was irked not to be able to find the date of the first seeding. All I knew was that it had been far enough back for me to be stunned when I saw those first ten plants. How long had they taken to grow?

We did better on the second seeding. On November 9, 1997, my log book records the broadcasting of four full capsules (“pods”) of lady-slipper seed “in the large SE very high-quality area … in an arc following the wet mesic topo line.”

I waited anxiously for three years and then tiptoed in to check for seedlings or flowering plants. I wanted to cage any babies. Deer had been eating uncaged lady-slippers; so I looked very carefully for even a leaf. (Many uncaged plants we monitored had been eaten – and never re-appeared.)

I found no results from this seeding in 2000, 2001, 2002 and on. But I continued to look, with diminishing hopes. Then, another bitty ecstasy, on May 14, 2007, two three-inch stems appeared 15 meters apart, each with one petite lady-slipper bloom. I caged both, in tiny-baby-cages.

Some clumps have dozens to as many as 47 blooms, despite intense competition from very high quality prairie.
At some point, I suppose, we remove the cages and see what happens? 

So far I’ve found no records from 2008. But by May 2009, one of these plants four taller stems and  four blooms. The other had four stems and two blooms. But we also found 30 additional plants – in a distinct arcing line about two meters wide and about 45 meters long – following the route I had walked, opening and shaking seed capsules, a decade earlier. 

Table 2. Second Seeding Area

	Total plants	Total stems	Total blooms	Stems + blooms**	Av. # of blooms*
2007	2	2	2	4	1.0
2008
2009	32	74	42	116	2.0
2010	45	103	41	144	2.6
2011
2012
2013	31	91	38	129
2014	59	205	88	283	5.8
2015	69	261	138	399	5.9
2016
2017	75***		101***

* Per plant in the ten plants with the most blooms.

** The number of stems plus the number of blooms. This index may be the best single measure of population vigor. Small stems were not counted; to be counted, a stem had to be at least half as tall as nearby blooming stems (not counting the blooms). Since every bloom also has a stem, this weighted count gives each blooming stem twice the weight of each sterile stem.
*** The 2016 and 2017 numbers are preliminary. We have the data, but we have to check and re-check our tabulations. Hope to have a more complete and detailed report ready soon. For you.

There's a lot more to report on. Hope to have more detailed and technical reports ready soon. (See Endnotes 4 and 5.)

Some of What We Learned

1. Grade A areas aren’t so “tight” as sometimes claimed. This conservative lady-slipper fit right in to one of the highest quality surviving eastern tallgrass prairies. High quality areas may have always been more dynamic than we think. Or the areas we now consider Grade A may be lacking some of the highest conservatives.
2. In the case documented here, it took most prairie lady-slippers more than ten years to grow from seed to flower. They seemed to emerge as a full-grown leaf and often a flower in the first year above ground. Unlike most conservative plants, they did not start as tiny plants and get just a bit bigger, year after year. They seemed to live underground, mysteriously, with their fungus, for many years. It then took about five additional years between first little flower and mature clump (sometimes with ten or twenty flowering stems – or dozens to as many as 46 leaves-only stems). 
3. Caging from deer made a “life or death” difference for this species at this site.
4. It may be appropriate to revise or clarify endangered species laws and principles to facilitate restoration. In the absence of clarity, some people are experimenting with various degrees of oversight, under varying principles, and often with less than optimal reporting, often in semi-isolation rather than in much-preferred collaboration, in part because people don’t know what the rules are or think they’re counterproductively restrictive. As a result, some people say “What the hell?! This work should be done. Permits are too hard to get. So I’ll just work under the radar as much as possible.” Other people fail to do good work that they believe would be helpful because it might be ‘controversial.’ Both approaches can impede learning and conservation.
5. How long does this lady-slipper live? Some of the 1979 transplants are still alive in 2023. That means at least 44 years. But they were mature plants when dug up - and presumably first lived below ground with the fungus associate for ten years. So, perhaps, at least 60 years?  

Endnotes

Endnote 1
So many reasons: a) most endangered species are rare for a reason and won't survive in any or most new places they might be moved to, b) most of what was important about that prairie was the hundreds of other plants and animals that survived there, c) the plant was just starting to bloom; that made it easier for me to find them; but it's the worst possible time to "rescue" a plant; the best time in in winter when it's dormant, e) and there are so many other reasons. For example, if you care about conservation, it's usually better to spend your time saving what exists, or planting seeds. I rue writing this part of the story, as kind of setting a bad example. But, that's the story. And it's a good story in the end.

Endnote 2
When I went to see the engineers at the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District, who would be directing the bulldozers, I asked to see the plans. They told me many times and in many ways that it was too late to change anything. With a friendly smile, I kept asking. When they finally complied, I took a quick look and said, "The Prairie's just in this little corner. All you're doing to it piling some spoil there and later bulldozing it back to make a ski hill. The rare prairie area will end up as it was, but with the prairie dead. Why don't you just pile the spoil in this other corner, and save the prairie as a part of the park?" And they said, "Oh. Good idea."

For more about a more recent drama at Palatine Prairie, see http://woodsandprairie.blogspot.com/2015/08/dystopian-prairie.html

The truly much more important prairie they owned was Lockport Prairie, and we saved that too, so chill and rejoice!

Endnote 3
An additional puzzle has emerged from the original transplants. As noted above, they seemed not to reproduce but lived as large solid clumps for three decades. Then, in 2010, one of these plants seemed to have produced additional plants, a few inches away from the original clump. Were they suckered offshoots – or new plants from seed? Is it possible that this dust-like seed only managed to travel 5 to 10 inches from the original plants? There are no other plants for 20 meters or so in any direction. By 2017, no large clumps remained. Now both of these original transplants appear to have broken up into separate smaller “plants” – perhaps better called “clumps.” In the journal Lankesteriana 7(1-2) 2007, Carol Wake writes: Cypripedium candidum … reproduces both by seed and adventitious buds from older roots and rhizomes.” For Wake's article see: http://www.redalyc.org/pdf/443/44339813086.pdf

Endnote 4

We later also transplanted many other lady-slipper clumps from the former Chevy Chase prairie, that actually was being bulldozed. We didn't have to dig them up. We pulled them out of piles of destruction bedlam. In the early years, most of the transplants died from too much browsing by overpopulated deer before we figured out what was going on. Once we did, we started installing cages, and a few plants recovered.

Other seeding experiments: In one promising-looking small, good-quality remnant area (that had not been identified as Grade A), where seed was broadcast once in 1997, no orchids have appeared. In a third Grade A area where seed was broadcast on that same day in 1997 and again in 2008, twenty-one young orchids appeared in 2016.

Acknowledgements

Sampling, caging, and data wrangling by Linda Masters, Robbie Sliwinski, Lisa Culp, Sai Ramakrishna, Eriko Kojima, and Stephen Packard

Excel magic performed on data by Linda Masters

Report by Stephen Packard

Thanks for proofing by Kathleen Garness and Eriko Kojima

First Draft: Feb 26, 2018

Latest Revision: December 3, 2023

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Planning Notes Updated: 2014 to 2018

This post is intended for people who are interested in the details of ecological restoration. It consists of five “cases” – with photos that exhibit problems or opportunities and comments on possible solutions.
The initial "Diagnoses" and "Prescriptions" were written in 2014.
(See http://vestalgrove.blogspot.com/2013/07/planning-notes-for-2014.html.)
In 2018 we comment on what we've actually done and learned since then. 

First, a definition of a word used often below:

conservative – a species that is most common under long-evolved natural conditions – and rarely is found away from them. In fine prairie remnants, the conservatives are among the most common plants. In most “restored” or degraded prairies, they are rare or non-existent. A more detailed note on conservatives is at the end of this post.

Case 1

Diagnosis: Weeds here are under control. Yet few conservative species are established. Most of what’s here are short termers – species likely to mostly give way to others, for better or ill, before long. The early goldenrod, for example will likely be replaced excessively by big bluestem (present now in small numbers) if nothing is done but burn.

2014 Prescription: Broadcast seed of conservative species. Especially important are little bluestem and prairie dropseed – to head off the big bluestem. One place to sow seed of conservative species is the denser early goldenrod areas. These areas are ready. 

2018 Comment: We do some of this, but not enough. We haven't sufficiently remembered this good advice at seed-gathering and seed-mixing time. We need to map opportunity areas more carefully this summer, plant some and hold back some as controls, and monitor the results. We are putting the needed mapping and seeds goals on our 2018 summer and fall priorities calendars.

Case 1A: close-up of a different part of area 1

Patches like the one shown above strike me as receptive to our most-prized conservative seed. There is currently little aggressive tall grass here. The commonest plants shown (early goldenrod, black-eyed Susan, fleabane) are among the quickest to move out of the way for quality species. Sow such classy species as cream false indigo, Leiberg’s panic grass, white and purple prairie clovers, prairie dropseed, alumroot, shooting star, prairie gentian, yellow stargrass, prairie cinquefoil, etc.

However, if you look closely at the photo above, you'll see quite a bit of gray dogwood and grape. Shrubs and vines may be holding this area back, especially if it doesn't get burned frequently. Woody plant shade may be progressively killing off most seedlings in most areas until the next burn - at which time the whole process starts over with more fleabane etc. Perhaps we may want to laboriously cut and herbicide those prairie-killing shrubs. Or perhaps you we to schedule this plot for annual burns until a more competitive herb flora wins out.  

2018 Comment: We've watched this area and are more impressed than ever that "burn-off-and-regrow" shrub dynamics are ruling this area. Is that a good or bad? Certainly shrub dynamics are a component of the savanna dynamic. But are we missing half the species here that once made up that dynamic? Some say the principal shrubs were hazel and oak. Perhaps the grasses and forks that grew with them in this context aren't here now. And if so, is this now just a "retarded" weedy area that's stuck? We should install a transect of permanent plots and monitor plants here over time, to see if this area is changing, and how. Then we'll be better equipped to decide whether some change in protocols might improve it.

Case 1B: close-up area 2

This patch shows quite a bit of young big bluestem, dense patches of mountain mint, young ash trees, and dogwood shrubs. A patch like this may be less prime for conservative seed. Given how little seed we have of the high conservatives, we might want to seed this area sparingly. Perhaps it’s a place to add somewhat aggressive species like rattlesnake master, prairie dock, and compass plant – to increase the diversity of niches that the high conservatives will use to gradually become established from better areas nearby over the decades.

2018 Comment: Yeah, fine, 2014 commentator. But we really don't know the answer unless we monitor with permanent plots. Tom Vanderpoel assures us that prairie clover and shooting star will help break down dense big bluestem areas over time. Yes, we've seen that too. We've also seen areas where the bluestem resists other species for, it seems, decades. We would benefit from more permanent monitoring plots in seeded areas of dense big bluestem, mountain mint, tall goldenrod, and other resistant areas, to see what species might do best there.  

Case 2

Here two high conservatives dominate (purple prairie clover and prairie dropseed).  Early goldenrod (which was dominant here years ago) has retreated to the frequency you might expect in stable, high-quality grassland. Although we see a little rattlesnake master, compass plant, and rough blazing star – the 

overall diversity seems low. It might not work so well to sow the high conservatives of mid-summer here; the competition could be tough to overcome. Perhaps this is a place to sow spring species such as prairie betony, shooting star, and cream false indigo, which might then open up more niches.

On the other hand, this area is currently a great seed source for dropseed and prairie clover, so perhaps there’s no need to do much here in the short term. The best next step could be a variety of little inter-seeding experiments. First, find out which species will compete against these conservatives – before investing a lot of seed in an area, which might be slow to accept it. 

2018 Comment: Ahh, yes. More experiments. Good ideas. So many plants and plots, and so little time.

Case 3

Two big questions here:

First, what do we do with the new planting shown below? It has good wildflower diversity but is weak on grass (and thus, unstable). As we study the vegetation that's emerging from the first seedings here, it’s hard to know whether this plot wants to be more mesic or wet-mesic overall. we’re thinking that we should especially sow dropseed and little bluestem in the drier parts – and switch grass and Dudley’s rush in the wetter parts. (At Somme, Dudley's rush seems especially common in many of the highest quality wet-mesic areas and is an especially "works-well-with-others" plant, that many conservative and endangered species thrive in when their seeds are broadcast.) 

But, second, perhaps the biggest question here is what to do with all those trash trees in the background. This whole area was so dense with buckthorn that essentially no grasses or wildflowers survived. But in the foreground area, a grassy turf survived with only scattered invading trees, and when we cleared them, an on-the-way-to-quality seems to have come back. But under the large numbers of ash, cherry, elm, and box elder trees in the background, the quality is still poor. Strategically, it would take too big a big chunk of our volunteer time to cut and burn them. But there’s now no sensible community to try to restore on the former prairie or savanna land underneath them. So our short-term strategy has been to plant natural species that may keep out the invasives and then wait until we have more time or a better answer. If you look closely, you may be able to see brown leaves on some of the trees to the right. That’s where fire singed some of the branches. Maybe fire will do most of our work for us here, over time, while we invest our resources on other areas where the prescriptions are clearer.

2018 Comment: since 2014 we've cut a few big basswoods and box elders out of that wooded area and spread a bit more "Intermediate" light-level seed. Mostly we've ignored the area except for being happy that the burns have carried through at least some of it. Our impression is that vegetation diversity and conservatism is improving. But we have no monitoring transects here. It continues not to seem like a big priority, for now. 

Case 4 

            The above patch of scarlet oak savanna seemed to be getting increasing diversity and quality – until recently.

            Around the tree on the right, notice wild quinine, butterfly weed, ox-eye sunflower, big bluestem, wild bergamot, rattlesnake master, and others.

            Then woodland sunflower (Helianthus strumosus or perhaps hirsutus) started wiping out much of that diversity. Perhaps this is a temporary stage, and diversity will come back? Or perhaps this sunflower is helpfully erasing species that aren’t so well adapted here, which will then be replaced by better-adapted species, if we broadcast their seed.
       
2018 Comment: In many areas, depauperate patches of woodland sunflower are spreading. It seems worth our time to monitor these areas to get to understand them better – and experiment by inter-seeding likely associates, if we can identify good candidates. (Check out lists of associates. The old Swink and Wilhelm was little help, but the new "The Flora of the Chicago Region" by Wilhelm and Rericha seems to have a lot more to study.)

            

Case 5 

Diagnosis: About half the trees in the center isolated grove shown above are dead. Some died from fire and others from Dutch elm or Emerald ash borer diseases. The few oaks are fine. Because we hadn’t had time to focus on it, we’ve left this dying grove to “nature.”  Of course, “nature” isn’t happening here, and the result is an increasingly unsustainable weedy and brushy mess. It will soon be another buckthorn monstrosity if we let current processes continue.

Possible Prescriptions: 

            We might plant some of our precious mixes of rare grasses and wildflowers around the edge. One mix is designed for the "Intermediate" semi-shade of the edge. A "Woods" mix might compete well in the darker shade of the interior). That could help keep the buckthorn at bay, but it could also be a waste of seed and effort. Throwing rare seed into nasty buckthorn re-sprouts is a recipe for failure. Also, the Intermediate species that would grow there in the short term would not be adapted to the less shady conditions that are coming – as these mostly non-oak trees continue to die from disease and fire. Why waste rare seed that would have more payback elsewhere?

            Perhaps we could broadcast the seed of some of the easier-to-get semi-shade herb species in the shadier, inner, non-buckthorn areas. We'd hope that those species would seal the wound and ward off the brush? Perhaps. Or we could plant natural shrub-copse species in hopes to build another native shrub island that we could experiment with (much appreciated by the significant bird species that nest at Somme). 

            Or we could short-circuit the misery and cut the out-of-place trees this winter. That would seem easiest. We could then just plant the open savanna/prairie mix (as in the foreground here), which would then be easily sustainable with little added effort beyond regular burns. But we’re trying to restore the natural savanna here, and we already have more than enough of the “prairie” component. 

            We could plant hazelnuts and bur oak acorns and protect them from voles, rabbits, deer and fire in the early years. Perhaps some of the box elders and basswoods can for the next 15 or 20 years provide the amount of shade that oak and hazel will someday provide, and the community can transition gradually from non-oak to oak. This challenging area still needs a lot of observation, experimentation, and thought. 

2018 Comment: So here's what we've actually done. Nothing in the denser, interior parts. Discovered many possible components of a good shrub thicket around the edge (hazel, pussy willow, black haw, nanny berry, silky and gray dogwoods, bur and scarlet oak). We've cut back some of the dense buckthorn edge that was overwhelming these areas. We've caged one hazel from the deer. We cut one tall patch of buckthorn and planted plugs of two-year-old wild plum, ninebark, and indigo bush inside a large cage. In one wet edge, we cut the buckthorn and planted wet prairie seeds. But 90% of this mess is like it was in 2014. We progress. We learn. We hope.

Final 2018 Comment: This is how the Somme experiment works: We prioritize as best we can and keep trying to do what seems strategic. It's like that old juggler's trick of keeping a lot of plates spinning, and we run back and give a bit more attention to what seems to need it – except that, when we get some area or aspect right, it just keeps succeeding forever, as the world turns. And we stewards seem to be happier all the time as, more and more, rare bits of ecosystem thrive richly on their own. Year round, we walk through and notice new successes and opportunities. We smile inside and thank our lucky stars for the opportunity to do this wonderful work.

-            -            -            -            -            -            -            -            -            -            -  

... finally as promised ...

a longer note on ecological conservatives

In many ways, the main and most challenging goal of ecosystem restoration is to restore and maintain plentiful conservatives. If such plants and animals are diverse and common, all the others will be intermixed with them, and we will have achieved ecosystem conservation. Monitoring and analyzing the results according to floristic and animal quality is an important part of any conservation project or program.

In the most commonly used Floristic Quality Assessment system, conservativeness is ranked on a scale of 0 to 10, with 10 being the highest. Examples of Chicago-region plants in the 0 range include ragweed, annual fleabane, and common milkweed. Typical alien weeds like dandelion would also be given a zero rating if these ratings weren’t reserved for native species.

Examples in the 9 and 10 range include prairie dropseed, white prairie clover, fringed gentian, prairie gentian, cream false indigo, prairie lily, Leiberg’s panic grass, prairie cinquefoil, prairie sundrops, heart-leaved Alexanders, and the prairie white-fringed orchid. 

Conservative animals may or may not require conservative plants. But the ecosystem is less without them. Examples of conservative butterflies found by Ron Panzer to require conservative vegetation include the regal fritillary, Aphrodite, and the Edwards hairstreak. Birds of conservation concern may live for a time in large pastures of alien grasses. But they’ll live sustainably in large high-quality prairies.

Introductions to conservativeness and the Floristic Quality Index are at
http://www.conservationresearchinstitute.org/assets/illinoisfqa.pdf
and
https://willfreyman.org/assets/pdf/2015_Freyman_Masters_Packard_FQA.pdf
and
https://universalfqa.org

Note to readers: We always appreciate questions and comments. Thanks. 

Seeding the Snow

It surprises people that we sometimes seed the snow.

But it makes the seeds very happy.

The seeds of wild plants don't function best sitting dry in bags all winter.

They are adapted to being cold, and wet.

During periods without snow, to get buried, they are adapted to the freeze thaw-cycle, 

which churns the upper soil and covers up the seeds.

We stewards are busy, and it's important to broadcast seed right. 

We try to broadcast them into the most receptive habitats before the snow falls.

But it's February. Spring is on the way. 

Un-broadcast seeds are eager to get out. 

Our mixes contain hundreds of species.

All different sizes and shapes.

Propagules for flowers of every color.

Grasses, sedges, ferns, lilies, orchids.

Do these seeds look to be scattered awful thin?

Yet this is precious rare stuff. 

And every plant will be wide or tall or compact in different ways when it grows. 

We've tried different densities, and this seems about right. 

Some seeds will be eaten by birds.

But snow is predicted again tonight.

So these will be safer then.

Some species will not be quite right for this habitat.

So they may germinate and die.

Or the seedling may be eaten by a snail.

But many will thrive. We know that, from experience. 

Keep in mind that these rare or uncommon plants

as they mature, will be from six inches to three feet wide

and from a few inches to many feet tall.

Scattered as the seeds are, this space will be full of life.

Here is the before. 

Beautiful, but lonely.

We have cut out the buckthorn.

We have weeded and herbicided the invasives to prepare for this day.

We will cut more pole trees to "let there be more light" next summer.

We will pull noxious weeds for a year or two -

while this patch still needs intensive care.

But now it looks like this.

Formerly pristine snow trampled in concentric circles.

Enigmatic specks de-purify the crystalline whiteness.

Perhaps half the speckles are bits of chaff.

The other half are future life: embryos, swelling with potential. 

Yes, lost nature is returning.

The ecosystem is pleased. 

Afterword - 2023

Volunteer stewards gathered those seeds in 2017 and broadcast them in winter 2018.

The ground under the snow had been mostly bare dirt. The long-ago thriving grasses and wildflowers were then long dead from too much shade.

In fall 2023, after six growing seasons and many burns, this area, Fourth Pond Meadow at Somme Woods, yielded the photo below:

All you see growing in the foreground came from those seeds.

This restored ecosystem is still young. It will be many years before the returning plants and animals have achieved a relatively sustainable, highly-diverse ecosystem maturity.

Some of the easily identifiable vegetation in this photo includes:

Little bluestem - the reddish grass here and there, especially in the lower left.

Prairie dropseed - dense clumps of pale, fine leaves.

Wood reed - tall plumes to the right

Gray goldenrod - all those fluffy seedheads.

Golden Alexanders - leaves still bright green on November 16 when this photo was taken.

Indiangrass - tall plumes in the middle distance.

Invader trees - that whole dark stripe at the top of the photo.

Soils and early surveys show that this area was on the edge between oak savanna and prairie. Nearby trees were oaks, well separated, not that cluttered invasive chaos still visible in the distance. Our goal will be to restore quality vegetation throughout, by thinning, weeding, planting, and fire. 

Perhaps 50 other restored species are now common in the open meadow, including wild quinine, prairie dock, rosinweed, compassplant, and quite a few species of conservation concern including savanna blazing star and bearded wheatgrass.

We use different mixes around the trees. Plants doing well there include wood mint, blue-stemmed goldenrod, woodland puccoon, and forked aster.  

Stewards Rebeccah Hartz and Christos Economou continue the work. Last year they planted "plugs" of three important species that do not restore readily by seed - bastard toadflax, pussytoes, and yellow star grass. We also broadcast more seeds in various ways into areas that still need them. Different species emerge from those later plantings. 

The still-poorly-understood drama of recovery will take at least decades to well play out. So perhaps it's fitting to end this updated post with the photo below, Rebeccah's son Micah, here joining the work for the first time. Bless him, Somme Woods, and the future of the planet.