July 4, 2024: Images and Thoughts - waist-deep in the savanna - on a Dewy Morning

I hike out to study plants and animals at the start of high summer. First comes a wood nymph. Tame. In the cool morning air. 

Posing here with purple prairie clover and a compass plant leaf (flowers out of sight). Next, one of those flowers:

For a sense of this place, we need both close-ups and landscapes. So here's the landscape:

I remind myself: try to keep focus on both the parts and the whole. As stewards, we need that.

The plants are soaked, and I'm soaked. This Michigan lily waits for the pollinators. They'll be a while; they need to dry out so they can fly.

Even that famous pollinator magnet, purple prairie clover, is still and silent in the cool dew. That will change soon.

In the photo above, there's "too much" rare purple prairie clover actually. Remnant of a time when we gathered its seed in huge amounts, back when we didn't have the knowledge or dedication to get large numbers of all the other most desirable, most conservative species. This rare clover makes a good seedbed for other conservatives. If you look you can see prairie dock, compass plant, dropseed grass, and Kalm's brome, working their ways in, year after year. 

Speaking of Kalm's brome:

It's an elegant soft grass - and rates a perfect 10 on the "conservativeness" scale. Many such are increasing under the prairie clover: bastard toadflax, violet bush clover, dwarf skullcap, shooting star, prairie violet, Leiberg's panic grass. Year after year.

It's the same with the oaks. Here the farmer who owned this land before the Forest Preserves had cut them down to plant crops. As original savanna struggles to recover, we help young oaks with protection from fire and deer. This year the cicadas recognized the isolated ones as having great potential to grow over the next seventeen years. Many small branches killed by their rough egg-laying. But that's a minor setback. These trees have a mighty future.

Now, the cicada storm is history, and summer begins. The first of the goldenrods to bloom is this one, aptly named "early goldenrod." Not much bigger than the prairie clover, it's part of the conservative diversity here. 

Most plants are very early this year. We used to say that the endangered prairie white-fringed orchid was patriotic, as it reached the height of bloom on the 4th of July. But this year ...

... the flowers are done. Now busy making 2024's seeds. A single plant can make a hundred thousand of them, but each one is so tiny. They need to land in the perfect place and join forces with the right fungus. Most won't make it. In its life, the average plant will have one successful offspring. That's the way it works.  

Speaking of offspring:

As the day dries and warms, the pollinators start their work. The pale flowers are from yesterday, now busy making fruits and seeds; only the newly opened need beauty to attract. 

Increasingly, the loud hum of bees accompanies the colors as the pregnant ecosystem makes baby bees and baby roses. 

Here two native bees and two beetles ply their craft.  

Yet this photo is one of disquiet:

The pollinator is a European, farmed honeybee. Indeed, they're overwhelmingly the commonest bees here because, a quarter of a mile away, six commercial hives exploit this Nature Preserve, despite the fact that many endangered and rare pollinators were supposed to be protected here. Reduced resources threaten their populations. This threat was described in a previous post. Advocates and action are needed. There are far better places to make honey. Many parts of the ecosystem survive in such small numbers that they may be lost. Biodiversity deserves space to recover and reproduce.

The next image secretly features a white flower worth notice.

It's "Quaker lace" or yarrow - one of the common plants of the region - and yet here it seems to fit right into the richest ecosystem. Older books label it as "alien", and some stewards ripped it out. The 2017 Flora of the Chicago Region pointed to evidence that it's native. Indeed the Pilgrims reported it as a familiar plant when they landed at Plymouth Rock. Some people are surprised that certain plant species are native to both Europe and North America, surviving largely unchanged over the eighty million years since our continents drifted apart. We continue to learn.

One more melange, to help celebrate early summer:

I see Quaker lace, hoary puccoon, wild bergamot, prairie dock, leadplant, butterflyweed, early goldenrod, rattlesnake master, Kalm's brome, redtop, big bluestem, spiderwort, and two beetles.  

We are in this community.

It's inspiring for us stewards to dwell partly here ... among increasing richness and health ... and to learn better how to care for our wild neighbors. On this July 4th, we think of both independence and interdependence.

If you'd like to learn more - or to help teach others - this time of year we're harvesting seeds at Somme work sessions. 

Life is good. Indeed, it thanks us. 

References

Wilhelm, Gerald and Laura Rericha, Flora of the Chicago Region, a Floristic and Ecological Synthesis, Indiana Academy of Sciences, 2017

"Walking and Thinking" posts from other seasons

Early May 2024: https://vestalgrove.blogspot.com/2024/05/early-may-2024.html

Winter 2024: https://vestalgrove.blogspot.com/2024/01/a-winter-walk-in-snowy-woods.html

The full growing season of 2023: https://vestalgrove.blogspot.com/2023/04/one-growing-season-in-words-and-images.html

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Eriko Kojima for proofing and edits.