Savanna Legally Saved - Press Release - and Photos

After more than 40 years of often technically demanding work, mostly by volunteers, this blog is proud to present the following news - a Forest Preserve press release, as picked up by the Daily Herald. 

The color photos and captions were added by us.

Somme Prairie Grove receives highest legal protection as Illinois Nature Preserve 

In the Daily Herald - from a release submitted by Cook County Forest Preserves 

June 23, 2021 

The Forest Preserves of Cook County Board of Commissioners approved a resolution this week recognizing Somme Prairie Grove as the 27th dedicated Illinois Nature Preserve managed by the Forest Preserves of Cook County. 

The light was beautiful yesterday, after the rain ...
... as if to celebrate this press release by Forest Preserve board and staff.
So, all these photos were taken yesterday. 

Somme Prairie Grove near Northbrook offers 85 acres of high-quality mesic savanna and dry mesic woodland. The site supports many conservative native plant species, savanna and shrub land breeding birds. Visitors can explore the site while traversing a network of narrow, unpaved footpaths that meander through the preserve. 

Narrow, unpaved footpaths?
Yes, indeed. Here, on the left, is what they look like. 
Easy to follow - 3.2 miles of them.
See trail guide and map.

Somme Prairie Grove has benefitted from a vibrant stewardship community – led by the North Branch Restoration Project – since 1980 and represents one of the oldest and most comprehensive savanna and woodland restorations in the Midwest. The recovery of Somme Prairie Grove is credited to the longstanding participation of the cohort of dedicated and talented community volunteers. 

What's this dead patch?
Herbicide killed this buckthorn, re-sprouting after last spring's controlled burn. 
We hoped burning alone would gradually kill them.
But buckthorn re-sprouts are still thick in some areas, after 40 years of fire. 
This one (and many like it, thanks to hard-working steward Eriko Kojima) will now be gone for good.

Another kind of steward work.
Here we've scythed woodland sunflower, a species that takes advantage of brush clearance to become so dense, at times, that it kills most of the other vegetation. 

And a close-up of that same area, showing some of what was uncovered.
That big, lobe-y leaf is bloodroot. 
Also visible are surviving asters, snakeroots, and geraniums.
The restoration of an ecosystem is complicated.
When needed, stewards facilitate diversity recovery. 
We find that sometimes a bit of temporary, non-lethal control of this over-exuberant sunflower gives the other species time to make the rich and competitive community that will force the sunflower to "play well with others." 
Stewardship is an ongoing adventure. You're invited, of course. 

Dedication of a site as an Illinois Nature Preserve by the Illinois Nature Preserves Commission provides the highest level of protection for the land in Illinois and is granted to natural areas of exceptional ecological quality. The Forest Preserves manages 27 nature preserves – the most of any entity in Illinois except for the state itself – as well as five Land and Water Reserves. The addition of Somme Prairie Grove brings the forest Preserves’ total Illinois Nature Preserve protected lands to approximately 10,405 acres. 

So are you wondering how this savanna got to be so rich in flowers and grasses?
None of the plants in the above photo were in this part of the preserve (or in most of it) when we started in 1980. Indeed, most were not in this preserve at all.
We found their seeds in nearby "remnants" - along railroad tracks or the edges of mowed trails, where there was enough light for them to survive.
During the last four decades, most of these seed sources were lost - to development, herbicide, or the deadly increasing shade and competition of invasive species.
This was a rescue, reconstruction, and restoration of an ecosystem.
As for the colors above, the orange is butterfly weed, white is wild quinine, big leaves are prairie dock, yellow is black-eyed Susan, and the dense clumps of fine grass are prairie dropseed. These are five of the 490 native (mostly rare) plant species now known from this preserve.  

Since 2011, the Forest Preserve has dedicated five new Nature Preserves, additional acreage at one Nature Preserve, and three new Land and Water Reserves – meaning 18 percent of the Forest Preserves’ dedicated Nature Preserves and 23 percent of Nature Preserve acreage hves been done in the last 10 years. The Forest Preserve’s Next Century Conservation Plan seeks to dedicate and register 20,000 acres with the Illinois Nature Preserves Commission.

Here ends the press release from the Cook County Forest Preserves

For details of the dedication from the Forest Preserves' proposal to the Illinois Nature Preserves Commission, click here.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Eriko Kojima for proofing and edits. 

Woodland Winter Bonfire Work - and unexpected pleasures

Somme Woods has 20 or 30 people who team up a couple of weekends a month to enjoy healthful teamwork. But on some winter days, the roads may be only semi-passable, and most people stay home.

But those days can be all the more intense and magical for people who can make it. This day, Katie Kucera, steward of First Pond zone in Somme Woods started the fire early.

She brought dry wood from home. Later, she would get green wood, wet wood, snowy wood all to burn just fine - once there's a hot fire going. But that little bit of dry wood at the beginning makes all the difference.

The key tree, above, is the skinny pale-barked tree with a festive blue-and-white ribbon around it, if you look close.  

The invasive buckthorn was cut from this section years ago. But semi-invasive pole trees keep it too dark for the recovery of the original white and bur oaks. The main goal this day was to decrease excess shade and, in so doing, favor such oaks. This area was originally oak savanna and woodland with mostly bur and white oaks. If you were to walk through the preserve a mile west (crossing one street, a ditched river, and a set of railroad tracks), you'd be in Somme Prairie. For thousands of years, hot fires came from the west and kept this area a park-like stand of widely spread oaks, with tall grass to fuel the fires underneath.

But one hundred years of fire suppression let faster-growing, more-shade-producing red oaks and basswoods out-compete the slower-growing burs. What's wrong with that? The open-grown, thin-canopied bur oak is the species that most favors the hundreds of species of plants and thousands of species of animals that we conservationists are hoping to save here. Some populations are now so low they are "on the edge" of loss. The once-declining, now-recovering animals are mostly small: butterflies and beetles - but also fox and flying squirrels, weasels, coyotes, woodcocks, red-headed woodpeckers, and many others. We indeed see these animals and many rare plant species increasing, year after year, as the restoration advances.

The photo above shows about half of today's crew taking a break. We joke. We discuss. We're a learning community, but deeply enjoy, the learning, the fun, and the work, all three. 

Rebeccah Hartz cut this chunk of log from near the top of a downed tree. Looks like some woodpecker found tasty beetle grubs in there. She also rescued a short-tailed shrew from near the fire. It crawled around her coat for a while. That's our report, on a snowy and fulfilling day.

For workday schedules and other tidbits, check out the Somme Woods Facebook page.

FIVE (Count them!) FIVE BONUS PHOTOS

On Feb 13, an even colder and snowier day, 19 people showed up to help Steph Place clear big pole trees from a beautiful swamp-white-oak swale, which has small, shrinking patches of forked aster, cardinal flower, diverse sedges, and such treasures - which this next summer will now explode as a result of today's "Let there be light!"

This scene shows break time. Delicious treats. Happy conversation. And heat from the "bonfire"? But is this pile a bonfire? Indeed - the green, fat logs burn slowly. But the heat is more than we need. No one stands very close for very long. (And, except from some smoldering coals, it will all be burned up by the next day.)

The above photo from Somme Prairie, three weeks earlier, makes it easier to see what the cut-down trees look like (without the deep snow obscuring them). We typically cut big invasive trees down with chain saws the day before - for quiet and safety on the workday. 

Then we load the bigger pieces into easily-sliding plastic sleds for "the Planet's most elegant use of petroleum for transportation." 

Here Christos and John toss such a log on the burning pile. More "people power" than fossil fuel energizes these workdays. (An exercise blessing, especially during Covid.)

Back at Somme Woods, some unknown person created a sculpture. We do not know its esoteric meaning. Our authorization as stewards does not include making art. Thus, soon it will burn. Yet, fun seems good too!

Decadeslong effort revives Ancient Oak Woodland

After 34 years of data gathering, three of us have finally published a study of the restoration of Vestal Grove.

Life Sciences editor Diana Yates of the U. of I. News beautifully summarized and illustrated it at: 

https://news.illinois.edu/view/6367/973552802

The paper itself is at: 

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0241061

Thanks to lead author Karen Glennemeier for her masterful perseverance over many years, pulling together the elements of a scientifically sound paper. Thanks to the Illinois Natural History Survey's Greg Spyreas for crucial contributions during the last year and for recommending the open source journal PLOS ONE to publish it. 

Photo shows violet wood sorrel, wild strawberry, woodland sunflower, wild bergamot, nodding wild onion, and cow parsnip - just waiting to be counted for the Vestal Grove study. 

Fall on the savanna.

We’re not New England. No one rides by in buses to check out the pastel colors of the leaves.

But, in person, to someone with a feel for it, our natural ecosystems are:

Rich, beautiful, subtle, meaningful, deep.

 

We walk slowly, notice patterns that develop, and hypothesize about what’s causing them. (In some cases, we take actual data to prove or disprove.) 

 

It’s fun to watch – like a novel or a movie – but one where the plot develops over years. Like watching the course of a human life or a social movement. In this case, life is good. 

This is a patch of "shrub prairie" - one component of the savanna. 

Here the shrub in the foreground is hazel (the plant that makes hazelnuts), and most of the rest are bur or Hill's oaks, both species that often burn off in fire and become shrubs.

This photo reminds us how central regular fires are.

The one leafy tree and many leafy shrubs are all Hill's oaks (also called scarlet oak).

The bare young tree with heavy branches (on the left) is the bur oak.

Bur oak runs the tallgrass savanna. It's the first tree to drop its leaves, perhaps as a fuel weapon against the other trees. Heavy bark protects it. Fires of grass and oak leaves burn off its woody competition. In time, all the Hill's will be shrubs, and the bur will be a mighty tree. 

The hazel too is quick to burn off.

In this photo you see last year's naked dead stems, much taller than this year's leafy ones.

If it now doesn't burn here for a year or two, those three-foot live stems will be six feet, or nine.

Then they'll produce lots of delicious nuts.

But the hazel's bank account is in its roots. It expects to burn. Without burns, trees would shade it out; its home is the frequently burned savanna and open oak woodland. 

In October and November, the waning of life pulls on our heart strings. 

Beautiful, partly painful, a kind of death, and a feature of our temperate climate. 

Big dry leaves here are prairie dock. Peachy are the leaves of rigid goldenrod. Red-wine-colored are the leaves of azure aster. Pale yellow for the moment is northern dropseed grass. Tawny is little bluestem. Most of these colors will drain out as winter sets in - unless all turns deep black from fire.

Kinds of diversity.

There is diversity within species: 

For example, some of these dropseed clumps are still green, some yellow, some already winter tan. 

And there is diversity between species: 

The early goldenrod leaves, despite this being the first goldenrod to bloom, are now still green (upper left), photosynthesizing full blast and taking advantage of their preferred cooler weather. The purple here is gray dogwood. Notice at least two small Hill's oaks as well. The dogwood and Hill's will outcompete the herbs in years between fire ... then get knocked back into dynamic equilibrium. 

If this site were burned every year, sometimes in the summer even, might the woodies go and the ecosystem gradually become all herbs - a prairie?

Above is another competition.

The tall grass here is cordgrass. The tall woodies are Hill's oaks. 

But the little green/yellow bur oak in the foreground will likely be the actual tree here in time. 

And the fine leaves of dropseed grass likely will replace the cord grass, which spread here from a nearby wetland while the slow-growing dropseed was getting bigger with every burn in this dry-ish spot. 

We'll watch. 

Stripes and patterns form.

The stripes in the middle distance follow contours. 

Species win out where the hydrology, soils, and fire regime are just right for them.

Here the front stripe is willow aster -

a brocade of subtle colors where a month ago all was green.

The black stripe behind it is woodland sunflower. 

Why do some species just turn black?

Behind that is a stripe of mostly white oaks, not native here, planted here long ago on former prairie.

In some areas, the fires have been knocking off the white oaks, killing them dead.

They're not like Hill's. 

In the space between these two stands of planted white oaks, we see original open prairie in the distance.

This savanna stood on the edge of the prairie. 

The seventy-acre Somme Prairie immediately to the west is being rapidly and profoundly restored. 

In the future, healthy tallgrass savanna and prairie will connect here, a rare thing ...

... also potentially important for some species that use both habitats.

Once such species, the rusty-patch bumblebee, has been found here. 

Here we see bur oaks, the true, original, natural tree here, a little further up the slope.

The oldest of these burs have heavy, spreading lower limbs, indicating that they grew as young trees in the open. Some are old enough to have been walked beneath by Potowatami, bison, bears, and the first Euro-American explorers. When natural fires stopped, subsequent young trees grew thin, straight, and tall. Removing the buckthorn was good, and now we also remove too dense pole trees, often of species native to the region but not to this ecosystem, or even too-close-together bur oaks, that today's weaker fires can't thin. We plan and study. No bur oaks reproduce in shade this dark. This former savanna may need to have fewer, shorter, wider-spreading trees to be all it can be, for biodiversity and a thriving future. 

At the other end of the shade continuum is this larger patch of "shrub prairie." 

Here, hundreds of bur and Hill's oaks and hazels burn back to square one with every fire.

Finally, a last photo of today, October 22, 2020.

More of a characteristic savanna,

scattered trees amid warm-season grasses.

In coming months, rich Fall color will turn to the sere of Winter ...

as we and other animals and plants prepare for

 another growing season of richness and drama.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Christos Economou and Eriko Kojima for many helpful edits. 

Thanks to Cook County Forest Preserves staff for excellent burns in recent years. They make the difference. 

Hunter-Gatherers compete with The Corporate Machine.

Huge machines (and the corporations that own them) are clearing the last trees and brush from one of the finest and most important prairies in the region. 

See video. As you watch, be impressed that for years we did this work with hand-saws and muscle:

But to plant all this newly bare ground ... with the rare seeds it needs for recovery ... we have to do that by hand. There's no other way. 

Who can get the most done fastest? In this unusual contest both sides support each other. Let's be clear, the machines and the people both are working for the good of the prairie. Minds and bodies, powered by tofu and/or hamburgers, are joining forces with petroleum power.

For more than 40 years, we volunteers have been chipping away at brush and planting seed. The 70-acre Somme Prairie had less than two acres of high quality prairie, but that was some of the finest in the region. Prairie rightfully needed to be restored to the whole 70 acres - which indeed had been all prairie, for thousands of years, until invasive brush started eating away at it. Three years ago, half of this Illinois Nature Preserve and Cook County Forest Preserve was still tall or short brush. 

But with good leadership from President Preckwinkle, the Forest Preserves found resources to hire private contractors to get rid of all that prairie-killing shade, fast. These are the same folks that clear brush to build a factory or a shopping center, so they know how to "Get 'er done!" 

Now, forty acres are free of shade and waiting for seed. Unfortunately, if there isn't enough prairie seed, then nasty weeds get too much of a head start. 

Blazing star seeds

Over the decades, volunteer seed gatherers have been able to harvest enough for the couple of acres a year that the volunteers have cleared. But now somehow, from somewhere, Somme Prairie has needed a vastly larger community of Hunter-Gatherers.

More people chip in. Stewards of nearby sites (see "Where does this seed come from?" - below) are devoting some of their time to gathering and giving some of their local seed to Somme Prairie. Friends of Illinois Nature Preserves are rose to the challenge and sponsored twice-weekly seed gathering, mostly at nearby Somme Prairie Grove, where there's a lot. 

When you gather seeds, you're in the ecosystem, as a partner. 

When the time comes to broadcast all those seeds, it's a celebration of rare new life.

Anyone with normally functioning hands, feet, and mind can learn to do it every summer and fall. Might you find it fun - to be a modern hunter-gatherer - to learn to recognize purple prairie clover, or dropseed grass, or sky-blue aster, or bottle gentian? Different species will be coming ripe each week in September and October. 

Check out event dates at: 

Somme Woods Community

or

Somme Community Facebook

Endnote: Where does this seed come from?

The Illinois Nature Preserves Commission and the Forest Preserves of Cook County have established "seed provenance" guidelines for this preserve. Seed from plants that someone bought on line or got from a neighbor is not what's appropriate here. The conservation goal of this nature preserve is to maintain the genetics of plants that have been evolving with each other and the rest of the biota here for thousands of years. Somme Prairie Nature Preserve has accepted seeds from approved spontaneous populations within 15 miles of the North Branch Prairies. To restore the robustness of the genetics of the former unfragmented prairies here, these prairies share seed with each other and with other sites within that limit. 

Hunter-Gatherers and Our Gossip

By Emma Leavens

We work, and we interact. As we harvest rare seeds for restoration, there is often a casual exchange of stories about plants, that is also part of our restoration work. 

There are descriptive stories about peculiar pollination, the why and how of seed structures, and what those seeds require in order to start new life. There’s no shortage of fascinating backstories, evolutionarily speaking. Some of my favorite stories, though, are the ones that make characters of the plants. They help me get to know how species behave as members of a community.

 

Their "parachutes" loft these savanna blazing star (Threatened species) seeds far and wide.
But will they land on top of a building or in a parking lot?
We toss some of them in good habitats on days of light wind. It seems to help. 

Around Somme, in the short time I have been helping collect and disperse seed, I have already heard a good deal:

·      This stubborn species showed up in several places this year! 

·      How did this one get over here? 

·      Look at what established itself there, of all places! What is it telling us that we don’t yet know how to listen to? 

·      Oh, and this plant produces a ton of seeds but just try to find them!

·      This species seems to only reproduce under particular conditions. 

·      We have no idea how this plant got here - we’re just glad it sticks around. 

·      I’ve noticed this other species seems to prefer this micro-habitat over that one. Have you noticed that too?

If you have some practice with science, you might recognize these little stories as anecdotal evidence. If you’ve spent time among friends, you’ll likely recognize that this is also a type of gossip. Ecology gossip. Plant gossip. The very best kind. And like lesser gossip, you may get a slightly different sense of things depending where you go and who you ask. You get hints at what is going on that you won’t find in ecology textbooks. 

Seeds and seed-gatherers come in great variety.

Accomplishments, surprises, and satisfaction - as we recover the sources of our roots.

Hopefully, in time, these happenings will be researched with rigor. The anecdotes will get confirmed or clarified, and added to the books. In the meantime, they are still valuable for the emerging practice of ecological restoration. They give clues as to how we can support those species, what factors we maybe overlooked or got right when we distributed seeds in previous years, and what we might do next to help those species recover healthy populations in their communities.

A sign of the times: hunter-gatherers with Covid masks.
Will we decide at some point that in the open air, this far apart, we don't need them? 

Last year, the Somme crew collected seeds of more than 300 species of plants. Then we redistributed them in our prairies, savannas, woodlands, and wetlands. Each of those species has some fascinating behavior worth talking about plus plenty to tell us about the community. The more people who help to observe, collect, and repeat, the more stories we get to learn and share in order to ensure that those species endure. 

If you’re interested in helping out, please email us at sommepreserve@gmail.com or sign up at sommepreserve.org. We currently have opportunities to collect seed and share stories at least twice a week. 

Photos by Lisa Musgrave

Learning nature by its seeds

by Christos Economou

There's a scene in Akira Kurosawa's masterpiece Seven Samurai that has captivated me for years.    As a bit of background for those that haven't seen it (it's a great movie, watch it!), the story is about a group of downtrodden farmers hiring samurai to defend their village from grain-stealing bandits.  But they don't know what they're in for, and a lot of time passes with no success.  We finally see a farmer in the scene I'm thinking of worriedly rush to a patch of grass growing in the foreground.  "It has ripened!" he exclaims, to which one of his companions responds, "Well, it's been ten days already!" and another asserts dismissively: "This is an early kind, not like ours!"                

Botanizing in Tokugawa Japan…

There's a lot to unpack from these 30 seconds.  But what strikes me is the way in which these farmers experience the world.  Their rhythms are cyclical, human.  No clocks or calendars; these destitute, illiterate peasants know the time of year by when the barley is ripe.  Their knowledge of plants is so deep that they discern (or at least can pretend to discern) varieties that ripen within weeks of each other. 

Even at risk of romanticizing a bit, I contrast this with my own experience.  Many years of schooling have left me ill-informed about when corn is ready for harvest, or when the rough blazing star is about to bloom.  Slight differences in morphology confuse me when trying to identify the few plants I've learned.  All of which distresses me, because I've always felt there was something eminently worthwhile in that sort of deep familiarity with the processes of the natural world. 

Recently, on a beautiful, sunny, warbler-filled morning at Harms Woods, I saw with hope that this familiarity is very much alive today, and that there are people happy to teach it to anyone willing to learn.  Hunting garlic mustard there with some of the North Branch's bipedal treasures, Jane and John Balaban and Eriko Kojima, I saw something that took me back to that scene with Kurosawa's farmers.  And there where yours truly was placidly enjoying the sunlight filtering through the leaves above, the rest of the party was focused on what was underfoot.  Suddenly, they stopped.  Eriko knelt, and gingerly rolled the inconspicuous seed-head of a miniscule plant between her fingertips.  "Hepatica's not quite ready yet," she informed us coolly.

Hepatica acutiloba in flower.  Photo credit to Eriko.  Unlikely I could catch something so small…

"The what?  How did you see that!?  How do you know?"  I thought to myself.  And then: "How long until I'm able to tell when the hepatica is ready?"

I just can't wait until I am.  The joy of seeds, and all that those little specks of life signify for the future, is simply thrilling.  But beyond that, the degree of care – I hope she wouldn't mind me calling it love – for living things that I saw Eriko embody in that moment cut deep.  She's put her all into understanding and cultivating the wondrous nature that was here long before we were, and that, through her and all the North Branchers' efforts, will be here long after we are gone. 

 

The rare golden sedge (Carex aurea) and blue-eyed grass (Sisyrinchium albidum), encountered recently at Watersmeet Preserve.  "Not quite ready yet," as Eriko might say.

We need this nature, both in practical ways that we are only just beginning to comprehend, and for more important, if less tangible reasons.  But if nature is to thrive into the future, it needs our help just as we need it.  One imagines the farmers feel this reciprocity, even if only in a shallow, transactional way.  Eriko most certainly does, in a broader and more inspiring way.  I want to be like her.

She later told me, "Just cutting the bad stuff down doesn’t heal the ecosystem.  It's a part.  But monitoring, collecting, spreading seeds, that's when restoration starts.  That's what got me in deep, hooked."  Yes. If we are to uphold our side of the bargain with nature, we need to be intimately with it.  Learning where the plants are, what they do, what they look like, and when their seeds are ready to pick are all part of the process.  To grow with nature, we need to get out and collect seeds as often as we can.

From a recent, COVID-conscious seed collection workday at Watersmeet.

We humans may be at a weird point in our history, but nature is still plodding along its familiar course.  Summer is here, and with it the first fruits of spring.  All along the North Branch, there are ripening seeds waiting to start life somewhere new, and calling out to us to help them achieve it.  Many of us are learning how to help them do it.  I hope you will too.

Many thanks to Eriko and Stephen for their editing, the Balabans for their generosity with time, and all the other teachers on the North Branch.

Small, Dull, Roundish Things? (nothing could be farther from the truth!)

What I think is cool about seeds is the unbelievable diversity. Many people think of seeds as small, dull, roundish things. Nothing could be farther from the truth! 

Looking at them close up reveals how much they differ in size, texture, color ... and the strategies they have for spreading themselves around ... and suggests mysteries.

Eared False Foxglove (Tomanthera auriculata) - Endangered

Shooting Star (Dodecatheon meadia)

Cream gentian (Gentiana flavida)

Hoary Puccoon (Lithospermum canescens)

Eileen Sutter, a leader of the Wednesday Seeds Team of the North Branch Restoration Project, wrote: 

"Every year I get excited about once again growing my seed collecting eyes. I love seeds!"

Photos by Lisa Musgrave

To volunteer to help with seeds, contact:

https://sommepreserve.org

or

https://northbranchrestoration.org

A Personal Relationship With Wild and Wooly Seeds

by Eriko Kojima

This is a good time for us to reflect on seeds. Every year we have a record harvest. How? Not a mystery. We focus on it – with strong will and intention.

More and more people are becoming seed-harvest leaders. We offer opportunities twice a week throughout the harvest season. Experienced leaders and new volunteers go together into the woods and prairies. We pick a lot of seed - passionately - so many kinds of beautiful seed. Week by week, the need and importance of this work become clear. After a while we learn the sorts of places where we can find seeds of all kinds. We scout for good locations and make sure that everyone's time is used effectively. We are all instruments of this work. 

 

As bloodroot pods fill out, a clock is ticking. 

In recent years, we have especially been trying to get as much prairie seed as possible, given the huge needs at Somme Prairie Nature Preserve. I remember a student from Whitney Young, who came with his father, and they both came to love the prairie through its seeds. It’s important to us, as it is to them, that the volunteers be as effective and gain as big a sense of accomplishment as possible. 

 

People fall in love with seeds. Why not? They're the future - and magic.
Above: fringed gentian capsules and seeds.

Joe Walsh brings students from Northwestern … in so many cases first-time seed gatherers. And they work so hard – picking huge amounts of seed – much more in many cases than even experienced seed pickers – because this was newly inspiring to them. The students often walked long distances across the prairie, tirelessly, a lot farther than most of the older people would walk. They’d harvest the bounty of the far reaches.

I remember when site steward Laurel Ross would take charge of the brush cutters and ask me, “Would you lead a seed team?” I would accept with humility and determination. I try to inspire hearts as well as I can, so that the day's seed crew would be as motivated and productive as possible.

 

During the growing season, we tread lightly, but we have to gather early species as they ripen. 

Over the years many of us have come to be effective leaders of picking both woodland and prairie seed. We prospect, study where the seeds are – and which are ripening at what times. 

We dream that more and more people will grow in commitment and dedication, but we know that people are coming from so many different perspectives. All of us think differently, have different excitements and dedications and focuses. We offer people the training, in little and big things, and many people are increasingly teachers and learners. We grow as people, conservationists, leaders, and members of the community. That’s the way forward. 

A few more seed photos, in case they might tempt you to join in:

Doll's eyes. We want more! We get few - but more and more each year, as we restore.

There's a seed inside each wild plum. We eat the plums to get at them. Nice work if you can get it.

Bellwort seeds have "ant candy" attached, so the ants will drag them. But we can carry them farther.

By fall, we'll have massive amounts. We'll broadcast right away - and revel in their memories all winter.
Then as spring warms up, the next magic starts.