A Second Chance for the Fringed Gentian (Gentianopsis crinita)

Doomed by its beauty?

There were none in our area when we started learning to be forest preserve stewards in 1977. Why? Back in 1891, early Chicago region botanists Higley and Raddin considered fringed gentian (Gentianopsis crinita) to be "frequent or common, locally." Herman Pepoon documented populations in the north suburbs in 1927, but he called it “doomed by its beauty,” noting that it was “rapidly vanishing before the onslaughts of the commercial flower gatherer.  Not one today where there were hundreds when the above was first written.”

As we worked to restore nature, we looked for all the missing plants that used to thrive here. We found seed sources nearby, for example along the railroads, which harbored a great many of the rarest plants, and we found most species, but we never found a fringed gentian.

In 1979, we gratefully harvested six gentian seed capsules from Markham Prairie with the approval of Dr. Robert F. Betz, its steward and our mentor. Actually, we asked Dr. Betz to “borrow” that seed.

We spread the seed in what looked like a good area of Miami Woods Prairie. This plant is a biennial. That is, in its first year it grows just a little "rosette" of leaves that lie flat on the ground - and saves energy and nutrients in its roots. Then in its second year, it puts up a flowering stalk and, if all goes well, makes a lot of seed and dies. Only the seeds live over the winter. And thus, at Miami Woods, the miracle occurred, and in 1981 one hundred and fifty seven gentian plants bloomed – a triumph!

Then tragedy – the deer quickly ate more than half of them. (In later years, I think we would have scattered the seeds around more - rather than putting them all in one patch.) But, somehow, the deer didn’t continue on to eat the other half. So we ended up with hundreds of capsules – enough to repay Markham and Dr. Betz and to spread the seed widely in three other prairies: Bunker Hill, Wayside, and Somme Prairie Grove. 

In 1982 we noticed no gentians. Was that early success a fluke? But in 1983 we found them blooming in all four preserves. Small numbers only. But they offered hope.

I began to monitor the gentians annually, when I got a chance. The numbers below describe the beginnings of the gentian’s second chance – in the North Branch preserves.

Early Number of Fringed Gentians

Preserve	1981	1982	1983	1984	1985	1986	1987	1988
Bunker Hill	0	-	3	-	-	0	109	0
Miami	157	-	30	3*	1	6	65	0
Wayside	0	-	4	4*	-	1	3	0
Somme	0	-	7	-	149	54	900	0

      0 = I checked and found no plants.

- = I didn’t have time to check carefully. I was busy.

      * = According to a note, all the plants in 1984 were “small and pathetic.”

In his 1910 wildflower book, Chester Reed wrote that this gentian “because of its exquisite beauty and comparative rarity, is one of the most highly prized of our wildflowers.” Then, after a few lines of poetry, he went on to write, “The Fringed Gentian is rather a fickle plant; we may find it in a certain locality one year and then search in vain for it for the next few years.”  

Ahh, yes. This handsome character is unusual among the conservative prairie flora. It is an annual or biennial, depending on its mood. Most often when we find it, every plant nearby has deep perennial roots or fat tubers that tide plants over in times of drought or deer onslaughts.

Fringed gentian is a gambler. The seed lies in the soil until each smart little embryo somehow senses the time is right. How does it predict the rains? Or does it wait until nearby plants have been weakened by something? Or what is it that triggers the germination of these seeds? Nobody knows. 

In any case, unpredictably, our fringed beauty was now “off and running.” But did we have a problem - as a result of starting with just six capsules? How much genetic breadth was among them? Dr. Betz used to tell us how striking it was that this gentian came and went – often showing up in very different places from year to year. We had a start with one source. We should keep working to find other sources.

Fortunately, we learned from Barbara Turner that years ago some Long Grove folks had “rescued” fringed gentians when Chevy Chase Prairie in nearby Buffalo Grove was being destroyed. It’s worth noting here the significance of those Long Grove folks. When Barbara Turner was a young woman, she took a course at the Morton Arboretum, where she met the great May Theilgaard Watts. Watts – like the visionary landscape architect Jens Jensen – had Danish heritage and brought to America the treasure of Scandinavian nature culture. Throughout her life she worked to nurture it in our new culture. Barbara often quoted Watts. When doing so she showed a reverence in her tone and expression. I would like to include in this post copies of two beautiful letters Watts wrote to Barbara (in the 1950s?). She gave me copies of those letters, but who knows where they are in all my piles of stuff. For now, it will have to suffice that, from memory, I can say that Watts visited the Long Grove woods and its people. She praised and encouraged those folks. That community in support of nature was still thriving in the mid 70s when Chevy Chase Prairie (said to be the finest black-soil surviving in Illinois) was intentionally bulldozed by its owner. Those Long Grove folks rescued many species from bulldozed piles of prairie turf, including gentians, and brought them to prairies they were restoring. Thus it came to pass that the great Barbara Turner (heroine of other stories that need to be told) gave a second source of local fringed gentian seeds to us. So now, the North Branch gentians are a mix of Markham and Chevy Chase genes.    

This gentian was stepped on by some deer or person earlier in the year and is lying half on its side. But it has about 50 thriving flowers and seems well on its way to making about 30,000 seeds. If the deer don't eat it. Every year is a drama.

Over the decades, I stopped finding time to monitor gentians, but I'd check in on them occasionally at Somme Prairie Grove, where I was now steward. Somme's fringed gentians seemed to be entirely absent some years – and just a few in the others. So when Lisa Culp Musgrave started visiting Somme and becoming a fine photographer there, I asked her if she might like me to teach her how to be a steward for one of our most photogenic plants.

She hesitated – and then plunged in. Starting in 2008, she first made six deer-exclusion cages and placed them over six big and beautiful gentians, as I had suggested. (We noticed that the deer had already eaten many that year.) Too excited to stay away for long, Lisa returned soon to check her work.  She found that all six of her caged beauties had been cut down and killed by voles. But she had seen the vole-exclusion cages that I had been using to protect a related species (the prairie gentian, which we had even fewer of), and she started making many vole excluders to protect the smaller (but now even more precious) gentians that were still uncut and blooming hopefully. With the double caging, many happily set seed. That fall, Lisa and I triumphantly broadcast some of the matured embryos in places where the existing flora suggested they might do well. The results are apparent in the graph below:

This graph shows "The Lisa Bump." The population seemed to be just limping along until Lisa Culp Musgrave took over care for this species in 2008.
A dedicated person can make a big difference (and enjoy life at the same time!). 

Actually, truth to tell, Lisa did such a splendidly spectacular job on the gentians that I started feeling weird about it. We had so many other species that were so much rarer and needier. I feared I’d misled her.

When Lisa tells the story, she claims that I gave her a trivial exercise to see if she was any good. That’s not right, although I suppose it is true that I didn’t want to turn over my work on “super high priority” species to someone I hardly knew. But soon she was carving out so much more time than I seemed to have – and was doing so much better a job – that it made more sense for her to do less gentian work and, pretty please, take over principal responsibility for Somme's populations of the federal endangered prairie white-fringed orchid. The great Lisa Culp Musgrave is now famous as an orchid steward; that drama is described at:
http://vestalgrove.blogspot.com/2012/09/leave-nature-alone.html. 

And her gradual moving on from the gentian provided another experiment. Could this formerly "doomed beauty", with its numbers well bulked up, then make it on its own?

Deer have eaten almost all the flowers off this gentian. Sometimes deer eat the whole plant (in which case, it's harder to take a photo of the result). If plants die without setting seed, such plants don't contribute their genes to the future. Some populations, or at least that part of the gene pool, are then lost.
Eriko Kojima caged a few plants last year and this. What would happen if we stopped?  

I have no great confidence that this fickle species will be permanently part of the Somme ecosystem. It may or may not. At this point, our fringed gentians seem to do well some years in two very different situations. After we’ve cut the brush in a semi-wet area, now with very low competition, it can bloom by the hundreds, if some steward takes the trouble to harvest some seeds and broadcast them. But also in some years it does well in certain of our very highest quality areas, where you'd think competition would be the most challenging.

Could it be that, once we get some seeds waiting in the soil, this once common species will thrive in now-rare high-quality wet-ish prairies and open woods?

In most recent years, we haven’t found time to monitor them. Lisa's been busy. I've been busy. But other folks have pitched in from time to time. In 2011, we did monitor, and we found 194. In 2014 it was 845. In 2017: 415 in a dozen widely separated areas. In 2023 we counted 1,266. We step cautiously to avoid trampling the rest of the ecosystem, so that its quality continues to rise as quality species populations diversify and thrive. 

Will this species continue to thrive here? The North Branch populations are only 45 years old - still early in the game ecosystem-wise.

It's been a pleasure for us to be part of this drama, as rare plant and animal species return by the hundreds. Bless them. 

PS: If you’d like to read about these gentians in spectacularly more technical detail, a gentian post that covers additional questions is at Somme’s “less fun blog” – Strategies for Stewards: 

The Return of a Frog

We hope that the Somme Preserves recover as much of their nature as possible - with our assistance. Years ago I ran across old records that suggested that leopard frogs had lived there. We never see them, although they are a species that tend to be visible - as in summer they leave the ponds for meadows (an alternate name is the "meadow frog"). A leopard frog leaping dramatically away as a you walk through a meadow used to be a familiar experience - for those who walk through meadows.

For my first 20 years at Somme, I never saw a one - and feared they were gone. Each year as our ephemeral ponds dry up, we often check the final little puddles on their last days, to see what has concentrated there. About 15 years ago, in one grassy pond in Somme Prairie Grove, I was amazed to see tadpoles much bigger than the chorus frog and spring peeper tadpoles we usually find. They turned out to be leopard frog tads, which we discovered after we scooped up as many as we could and brought them home in a little of the meager remaining water, in a styrofoam cup that was lying around. We then installed them in an aquarium which we filled with water from another nearby pond. (That pond had water but no tadpoles, as it was in the dark buckthorn woods.) Next day the grassy pond that the tads came from was dry, and all the little frog and salamander larvae we didn't manage to rescue were dead, and not smelling good, sadly.

What is this leopard frog doing in the bottom of a plastic bag?
The answer to this and other mysteries will be revealed below. 

As stewards, we consulted with Forest Preserve staff. Typically, it's not good to mess with frogs. Many amphibians are being wiped out by diseases. Transferring them between ponds is a way to spread the deadly diseases. But in this case, with all the ponds being in one forest preserve, and frogs most likely journeying between them, everyone thought it seemed okay to use that water from the nearby pond. The leopard frogs must have somehow been surviving in very small numbers. Later we learned that one wooded pond across Waukegan Road with some grassy habitat held water long enough for leopard frog tadpoles to mature. One female must have crossed the busy street to try out the grassy pond. We raised the tads and let them go in the meadow by the pond they came from - and never saw a trace of them again.

But when we learned to monitor breeding frogs by their calls, we did, rarely, on some years, hear a leopard frog or two calling from that deeper pond in Somme Woods. There aren't many.

Now, the strange experience of yesterday, September 10, 2017.
I was mowing our lawn, two streets south of Somme Woods.
Our yard tends to have longer and shaggier grass that most houses on our block.
About half of the former lawn is now glorious perennial "gardens" of rare plants cultivated from local seed, to grow more seed, for restoration.

As I mowed, a large leopard frog jumped away from the mower.
This was the first (except for those tadpoles) I'd seen, despite spending great amounts of time at Somme for four decades.
In fall, the frogs return to their ponds. When it's finally cold enough for them to hibernate, they go down into the mud at the bottom and dream until spring.
Dundee Road is a busy street.
I popped the little fellow in a bag to give him a walk home.

It's not easy - to be a person - trying to do right by a frog.

Perhaps I should have left it there?

According to the Wikipedia write up:

"The northern leopard frog is a fairly large species, reaching about 11 cm (4.3 in) in snout-to-vent length. They normally inhabit water bodies with abundant aquatic vegetation. In the summer, they often abandon ponds and move to grassy areas … (They) breed in the spring. Up to 6500 eggs are laid in water, and tadpoles complete development within the breeding pond. Northern leopard frogs are preyed upon by many different animals, such as snakes, raccoons, other frogs, and even humans. They do not produce distasteful skin secretions and rely on speed to evade predation. They eat a wide variety of animals, including crickets, flies, worms, and smaller frogs. Using their large mouths, they can even swallow birds and garter snakes. In one case, a bat was recorded as prey of this frog."

Okay, that's weird.

I carried it back to one of the grassy areas that have been improving as habitat over the years at Somme Woods - near the pond where we occasionally hear leopard frogs in spring. I put the bag down and opened it so the little survivor could jump away.

Often, when given their freedom, animals of many kinds are dubious about making their move.
This one sat for minutes, as I waited, more or less patiently, happy about about finally making its acquaintance. 

After a while, it walked a few inches outside the bag, and then, again, sat tight.

When it finally made its jump, it moved so fast the my eye could barely follow.
I had put my camera on "video" - and this shot and the next are stills from that video.

This is how much an iPhone captures of a jumping leopard frog.
Good for you, frog!

And this is the last and happiest photo of all.
The frog is now near its pond and possibly thinking about more tadpoles next spring. 

Somme Woods East - Progress Report

Parts of Somme East are now looking like this:

Cardinal flowers, great blue lobelias and sweet black-eyed Susans
bedazzle an understory that had been largely dead for decades. 

This richness, so far, just covers a few acres, in little patches, here and there. But the change is dramatic, when you compare to nearby areas that are as empty of life as they were for decades.

This area was similar to the one shown above - before restoration started. A few old oaks are present.
Few or no wildflowers - little wildlife. No reproduction of the canopy oaks.
Young trees and shrubs are the invasive and malignant buckthorn. 

Pull back from that first flowery photo, and we get this:

That big tree in the background is a swamp white oak.
The relationship between this oak and the herb layer is key to this ecosystem. 

The swamp white oak (Quercus bicolor), like the cardinal flower and blue lobelia, grows in some of the wettest parts of the woods. In the decades since the natural fires were ended by our culture, this tree has suffered. Its lower limbs were slowly killed by shade of invading pole trees. In a sustainable, natural (fire-maintained) woodland, this oak would have had enough sun to maintain life in many of those lower branches. (Technically speaking, it would have been a "woodland grown" tree - rather than a "forest grown" or "open grown" tree. These days, a woodland grown tree is a rare jewel.)

The amputated limbs aren't just ugly. The flowers in this photo aren't just beautiful. In a sustainable natural system (like what we're trying to restore), this sunny matrix would also support little, reproducing swamp white oaks among the wildflowers. The future of the oaks is tied to the diverse flowers, grasses, and sedges that form the nursery bed of the next generation. In contrast, on bare ground, fast-growing trees like cottonwood or box elder win out. Oaks thrive on challenges. Their thick bark withstands fire. Their large seeds compete in a competitive turf.

Equally important - the diverse plants are interdependent with diverse (now rare) animals.

As you may know, last winter we cut - and next winter we will continue to cut - invading trees out from under the oaks. But that's just the first step. Below, check out a photo of a bit of woods that had its big buckthorns cut in the winter of 2016/17.

What's wrong with this picture?

See all those little green seedlings and re-sprouts? They are nearly all buckthorns and other invasives. This year, they're a few inches tall. Within a few years, they'd be a few feet tall. Our next step is to prepare the ground for planting by herbiciding that pestilence of young invasives.

Below, you can see an area where the invasive sprouts have been herbicided.

With the buckthorn sprouts gone, this area can be planted with diverse seed this fall.

The above photo also shows a meter tape and a quarter-meter hoop. We study the results of various treatments. Here we are "sampling a transect" to follow the progress of the restoration.

If you're not familiar with "sampling a transect" - here's how we do it. We permanently mark a line through the woods. In this case, the line goes from tree, to tree, to easily findable tree. Then we put the sampling hoop beside the tape at the five, ten, fifteen, etc. meter mark. We identify all plant species present and estimate the area covered by each species' leaves. We record both. As you can see, taking the "before" data doesn't take us long.

The line, in this case, starts in an area where the main cutting and herbiciding has already been completed, and then runs through the area shown below:

Here, as in most of Somme Woods, you must fight your way through solid buckthorn. Here no restoration has yet been done. This is a true "before" sample. Here we record a lot of buckthorn.

Our first two "anchor trees" were white oaks. the next tree was a bur oak (above). This mighty giant still has some of its lower limbs - dead but still holding on. For a century, it has not reproduced. When shade builds up, the bur oaks are the first to stop reproducing. Their seedlings require the most light.

We record the circumference of each anchor tree along with the distance and direction from the previous anchor.

Since this is a progress report, two more photos seem needed:

Doll's eyes seeds reaching out of their cage

Since it's September, now at every fall workday we'll have one team gathering seeds and another cutting brush. The seeds above are reaching out of a cage that protected their leaves from hungry and over-abundant deer. Somme volunteers divide up the work. Some cage; some burn; some saw.

Doll's eyes seeds, bagged for action.

Some seeds might wait for decades to make it on their own, around our hundreds of acres. They need you! The hunter gatherer. Please join in, whenever the spirit moves you.