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.

Somme Prairie Grove tour: Early August

Color and motion.  In mid-summer the ecosystem explodes with flowers and pollinators. 

Back in July, the vegetation was rich, but compact. Before we look at August photos, let's look at two from mid July:

July 10: the flowers and grasses were mostly knee-high.
In bloom here: butterflyweed, leadplant, wild quinine, and black-eyed Susan.

July 28: the gayfeather (spiked blazing star) with rattlesnake master, Culver's root,
and sweet black-eyed Susan - all twice as tall as the flowers on July 10. But the explosion is just starting. 

The points discussed below:

Point 1. On August 6, in some low-diversity areas, the big bluestem grass is well over the head of co-steward Eriko Kojima. The few blazing stars, Culver's roots, and rattlesnake masters are well down underneath the grass. 

Point 1 

A month ago, the prairie grasses were up to our waists. Today in some places, they’ll be well over our heads. The main tall grasses in this section are big bluestem (turkey foot top) and switchgrass (delicate, wide-spreading heads). With restoration, this area will become more diverse (and the grasses shorter). 

Point 2 

As indicated by the red ribbon, the Illinois Natural History Survey and Forest Preserve District staff are studying Somme Prairie Grove as a model for the Next Century Conservation Plan. This sample point has too many pole trees. We thin trees to reduce shade where it's too thick. Trees are good, but during too many years with too little fire, they got too dense. This area too will become more diverse and compact, in time. 

Point 3 

Seeds are forming on some of early-season bloomers. Notice in this area, seeds from New Jersey tea, white false indigo, and golden Alexanders. 

White false indigo seed pods ripening and starry campion in bloom.

We’ll soon gather, prep, and broadcast such seeds to spread them to needy areas.

Point 4 

This is a good place to look at the major habitats at SPG: thickets (here), prairie-like openings, woodlands, savanna, wetlands

This thicket is becoming more “natural” through a lot of work. Is that "gardening" or ecological restoration? 

A thicket of wild plum and nannyberry. Young bur oaks are getting started on its edge.
In the foreground, in bloom, are Culver's root, showy tick-trefoil, big bluestem, wild quinine, and sweet black-eyed Susan.

Think about this area: 2,000 years ago. Many birds nested in the thickets. The bison and wolves were in the prairies. Deer, elk, and mountain lions were mostly in the woods and savannas. The bison prefer the prairie because they eat mostly grass. The deer in the summer eat mostly leaves and wildflowers; in the winter they eat mostly the live bark of twigs (browse). The elk ate all of those.

Point 5 

Parts of Somme have been utterly degraded, ecologically. This area was clear-cut and plowed. All the trees are young. But many species survived in nearby remnants (like the woods edges we've just passed though and the too-wet-to-plow swale just north of us). So when the Forest Preserve District bought the land, the species of these remnant areas started to spread. Later the stewards brought in seed of the species that hadn't survived here.

The larger trees in this savanna were mostly bur oaks. Today the trees in this disturbed area are mostly scarlet oaks. That's because the scarlets are dispersed over distances by blue jays. (Heavy bur oak acorns aren’t. Squirrels disperse these bigger ones. But squirrels don't venture far out into the prairies or pastures. Thus, bur oak doesn't get restored by squirrels until other trees are established - to serve as highways for the squirrels.) But bur oaks are needed here. They are the heart of the savanna. They have the thick bark that withstands enough fire to maintain this kind of savanna. We already see the thinner barked scarlet and white oaks being burned down. So we help out the recovery of the few bur oak saplings that we do find (see below), and we help the squirrels move acorns.

The bur oak “recruits” you see here were protected from the deer in cages until they were tall enough to escape (both mouths and antlers).

More basswood here should be cut, but we didn’t want to lose too much shade too early.

Distinctive plants here: starry campion, Kalm’s brome, pale Indian plantain.

Note the cage that helped this bur oak get tall enough to be above deer browse height.
 The controlled burn this spring was hot enough to kill its finer branches.
But, despite natural setbacks, this tree is vigorously becoming part of the structure of the savanna.
Don't be impatient, just give it one hundred years or so.

Here, notice many caged bur oaks - and many more un-caged, burned-back scarlet and bur oaks down in the grass. Re-sprouting, burned-off oaks are a natural part of the savanna. 

This is one of the areas where Forest Preserve staff ecologists have been collecting scientific data.
To the left is Deborah Antlitz and to the right is Monica Mueller.

The data will help set standards for more ambitious restoration initiatives. 

Point 6. Summit: Coyote Knob – a gravelly reminder of the glacier. This gravel hill was deposited here by the melting glacier - about 12,000 years ago.

In the cages are now-rare prairie gentians (which need protection from deer and voles if they are to make enough seed to recover their numbers).

In bloom here also is: Solidago (or Aster) ptarmacoides. It it an aster or a goldenrod? Scientific knowledge of the ecosystem is so rudimentary that we hadn’t even known which genus to put this plant into.

“Slender wheat grass” and "bearded wheat grass" (very tall and thin grasses) both of which are along the trail) have recently been re-classified twice. A few years ago they were a wheat (Agropyron). When they were made an Illinois Endangered species, they were re-classified as a rye (Elymus). Anyone hungry for rye bread? Then the new Flora of the Chicago Region announced them with a third genus (Roegneria).

We humans know the moon’s geography better than the floor of Earth's ocean. Similarly, our knowledge of space and particle physics has increased vastly more rapidly than our knowledge of the ecosystem. Space has military implications. The ecosystem doesn’t get that kind of attention – though it’s so much more crucial to our lives, futures, and peace. Just a thought.

From Coyote Knob, turn around, retrace your steps, and continue straight when the main trail turns left. Here we enter the stretch of trail shown by a dashed line on the map, and we’ll walk a trail maintained only by feet. Experience the savanna wilderness.

Point 7. The Party Spot: this little area has a great history. When we first started restoring this site, it was littered with old car seats, milk crates, vehicle tracks, and beer bottles and cans. It was a teen party spot. All around it were dense invasive trees and brush. After we cleaned up  and thinned the brush, it was a pretty opening, and we began to notice many rare plants surviving here. It was on the edge of an old fence line, and the "partying" kept the brush at bay to some degree (by trampling and cutting wood for camp fires). That actually helped preserve some species - like shooting star, violet wood sorrel, poverty oaks, and a Treatened species called small sundrops. It seems likely that it was open enough to be picked as a party spot because the topsoil had eroded away.  Thus, it had both challenges and surviving ecological riches. We scattered seed, and it is now one of the botanically richest areas - in part perhaps because the brush never killed off the turf and its soil biota.  

Party Spot when we first saw it, in the 1970s

Party Spot these days in July, covered with purple prairie clover, mountain mint, wild quinine, prairie dock, and many prairie grasses. 

Party spot in late August. Obedient plant, big bluestem, and more. 

Point 8. Cross the Central Swale again. Notice three more-or-less distinct bands of vegetation:

In the middle of the swale (wet prairie): cord grass, sedges, swamp milkweed, Indian hemp, blue vervain. Next band (wet-mesic prairie): saw-tooth sunflower, Culver’s root, big bluestem, switchgrass.

Next band (mesic prairie): little bluestem grass, dropseed grass, leadplant, prairie clovers, bush clovers.

A beautiful but strange (and temporary?) woods. See below. 

Point 9. The woods along the western edge are all artificial in that the trees consist entirely of weedy invaders along with inappropriate species planted long ago by Forest Preserve staff - before restoration and conservation were well understood. Some of the planted trees were birch, pine, black locust and other non-savanna species, which we removed decades ago. But many of the planted trees were white oaks. White oaks are "natural" and make "ecological sense" on the east side of the moraine here. But this area was originally the openest part of the prairie and savanna border - with the only trees being bur and scarlet oaks. When restoration started here, cutting down all these big old white oaks seemed like a lot of work - and a low priority, compared to other needs. So we've restored this area with the understory grasses and wildflowers of woodland – for now. 

Highlights in bloom now (all planted by us): woodland sunflower, Joe-Pye weed, starry campion, bottlebrush grass, wide-leaved panic grass, awned woodgrass.

Point 10. Prairie swale. There is remnant prairie here, but the wetland is artificial - its wetness resulting from the railroad making a dam here.

One of our many mistakes and disappointments, as stewards, is that the original prairie here was neglected. We thought a conservative approach was best. We should mostly leave it alone, we thought. That turned out to be a mistake. Over forty years, while we weren't paying as much attention as we should, it lost much of its quality to shade of the slowly growing white oaks and brush. The oaks, brush, and artificial wetland discouraged fire. The prairie remnant here needed more care; without it, its richness declined substantially. Now it’s getting some of the help it deserved.

Point 11. Southwest Meadow.

Very beautiful – at this time of year – at this stage of its restoration. This open meadow was solid buckthorn and ash with understory of bare ground. It was formerly prairie. The oak savanna started up hill, where the morainal slope begins, according the the 1839 Public Land Survey. Huge old spreading bur oaks are there now. We had some group workdays here, but most of the brush was cut in the summer of 2008 by Rett Donnelley who was looking for a new job in the mornings and expending his excess energies on buckthorn in the afternoons. This meadow owes thanks to Rett and even more to the people who gathered the seed of the grassland plants now here. 

Point 11. Grasses among the flowers: cord grass, switchgrass, and Canada wild rye. 
Wildflowers here include ironweed, sweet black-eyed Susan, gayfeather, and rattlesnake master.

The grasses are the foundation of a grassland ecosystem. Every quality bit of prairie or savanna is thick with them. The wildflowers catch your eye first. But the elegance of the grasses sneak up on you. In this photo you can just make out a cord grass head (to the right of the two dead tree trunks); a long leaf of cord grass arcs away from it to the right. Canada wild rye is the shaggy green head arcing under the cord grass leaf (and seeming to come out of a purple ironweed head). The many arcing grass leaves are symphonic in grace and complexity.

Switch grass is even more obscure here, yet covering most of the photo; it's the little reddish brown dots everywhere. If you can expand this photo, you can get a look at the structure of switchgrass head against the dark trees in the upper left - just above another purple iron weed.

Point 11. A wrecked elm (left) and basswood (right) are last remainders of the invading trees here. 

We saved some of the elms and basswoods. But over time, they're not making it. Why did we save them? In part because cutting them would have been too much work for too little reward. We had more important work to do. Also, dead elms make great woodpecker habitat, and elms mostly die before too long from Dutch elm disease. The basswood was huge, with five or six substantial trunks. All of them were gradually blown down except the skinny pathetic pole on the right. The bushy mess on the left is trying to recover; the top two thirds of a big trunk was snapped off by wind. Pole trees are often blown down when the supporting other pole trees are cut away.

This area was originally prairie that stretched from here to the horizon. The savanna started fifty or a hundred yards to the east, where the morainal slope starts to rise. An argument could be made to restore savanna here. A little patch of restored prairie wouldn't amount to much here, as there is no prairie adjacent, and the savanna would be more sustainable for its animals (and for many ecological processes including the evolution of plants to adapt to changing conditions) if it were bigger.

On the other hand, an argument could be made to restore prairie - if the Somme Prairie to the west could be expanded this far. That however would be a long time from now, if ever.

The dense patch of willow aster in the foreground of the above photo is a reminder of our indecision here. We planted little seed, as we didn't know whether to restore as "prairie" or "savanna" - and we didn't want to waste precious seed. Interestingly, the willow aster - a quality plant - is taking over from the weedy tall goldenrod that was dense here for the first few years after cutting the brush. The quality plants that are gradually taking over in this area help us decide what else to plant now.  

Point 12. A big old limb, bigger than many whole trees, stretches west from the edge of Vestal Grove.
It once stretched over pasture, but perhaps not the prairie that preceded the farm.
The much larger original prairie fires would likely have burned it off. 

Point 12. Stepping into Vestal Grove

Old bur oaks, some with huge limbs reaching out to the west. Probably not a feature of the pre-European times, but a feature of pasture, after the fires stopped. (Are those limbs 200 years old, or 100, or what. (Please don’t saw one off to count the rings, but when those trees die, I hope somebody counts the rings.)

This is one of the world’s first restored bur oak groves. Probably was originally savanna rather than the woodland it’s been restored to. But the original savanna survives on its edges.

People think of woods as having a spring flora. Most people don’t know that woodlands once had a rich flora all season long. There are distinct floral seasons, all rich with wildflowers, grasses, and sedges:

Early spring (toothwort, spring beauty, trout lily, false mermaid), late spring (trilliums, bellwort, rue anemone, starry false Solomon’s seal, wood betony, sedges), early summer (wild hyacinth, golden Alexanders, Solomon’s seal, wild columbine, doll’s eyes, sedges), late summer (tick-tre-foils, woodland sunflower, Joe Pye weed, starry campion), early fall (zigzag goldenrod, elm-leaved goldenrod, Short’s aster) and late fall (elegant seeds and colorful leaves).

Starry campion (white) and wild bergamot (purple or lavender or something)

Of course, there are whole different seasonal lists for the savanna and prairie, and whole different lists for each of those shade categories according to wet, wet-mesic, etc. There are currently 486 native species known from this site. A study of the diversity and conservativeness of the herb flora of Vestal Grove shows that it has been increasing in quality since 1985 and is still increasing today. 

The wildflowers, butterflies, and birds of Vestal Grove are getting more diverse, year by year.
And the prairie, savanna, woodland, and wetland increasingly blend seamlessly into each other. 

Point 13. In the middle of the woods, a wet woodland swale runs through. Don't think that "wetlands" are something different from prairies and woods. There are wooded wetlands and prairie wetlands.

If you'd like to review the July 9th tour of this same area, you can find it at:
http://woodsandprairie.blogspot.com/2017/07/july-9-2017-restoration-tour-of-somme.html

LIST OF THE PLANTS AT THESE POINTS

This list gives the common names names of plants - only the first time we see each species. 

Plants at Point 1: wild bergamot, mullein foxglove, yellow giant hyssop, riverbank rye, Virginia rye, bottlebrush grass, sweet black-eyed Susan, purple Joe Pye weed, figwort, blue lettuce, white vervain, wild coffee.

Plants as we go north from Point 1:

Starting in the wet-mesic prairie: gayfeather, rattlesnake master, big bluestem grass, narrow-leaved mountain mint, wild qinine, compass plant, Culver’s root, winged loosestrife, rosinweed, switchgrass, nodding wild onion, prairie dock, early goldenrod, grass-leaved goldenrod.

Plants on the first rise (mesic prairie): purple prairie clover, rigid goldenrod, daisy fleabane, dropseed grass, yellow coneflower, common St. John’s wort.

At the edge of the woods: woodland sunflower and ironweed.

As we walk through the woods: starry campion, woodland brome (in seed), cowbane, forked aster, white grass, dotted St.John’s-wort, purple giant hyssop.

Point 2: No new species, but great masses of woodland sunflower and purple Joe Pye weed.

As we exit the woods: smooth tick-trefoil, red-top grass, showy tick-trefoil, heal-all.

Point 3

Focus here on seeds: Note them forming on New Jersey tea, white false indigo, meadow parsnip (Thaspium), and golden Alexanders.

New species in bloom here: Compass plant and leadplant.

Plants in bloom as we walk north: flowering spurge

Point 4: No new species.

Walking west from Point 4: cream gentian and savanna blazing star (both only in bud), milk vetch, round-headed bush clover, wild carrot, pale Indian-plantain, bearded wheat grass.   

Point 5: starry campion, Kalm’s brome, pale Indian plantain.

As we cross Central Swale (a flowing stream after rains): water parsnip, winged loosestrife, wet-prairie obedient plant, cordgrass, mad-dog skullcap, Virginia mountain mint.

On the little rise we call Coyote Knob: stiff white aster (or goldenrod), butterflyweed.

(Here we start skipping points – if there are no new species in bloom.)

Point 8. Again crossing the Central Swale – this time on the west Inner Loop.

Notice three distinct bands of vegetation:

In the center of the swale (wet prairie): cord grass, swamp milkweed, Indian hemp, blue vervain

Next band (wet-mesic prairie): saw-tooth sunflower, Culver’s root, big bluestem, switchgrass

Next band (mesic prairie): little bluestem grass, dropseed grass, leadplant, both purple and white prairie clovers, round-headed bush clover.

Point 9

Here the woodland sunflower, Joe-Pye weed, starry campion, and bottlebrush grass are joined by wide-leaved panic grass, awned woodgrass, and silky rye grass.

Point 10

Obedient plant. Turtlehead. prairie loosestrife, jewelweed.

As we go south from Point 10:  

False sunflower (or “ox-eye”) and wood reed.

Then in a very lightly wooded semi-open area:

Great blue lobelia, white snakeroot, water hemlock, spotted Joe-Pye weed, manna grass. Then ahead, under the white oaks: blue lettuce.

Point 11

Cardinal flower, cut-leaved water horehound, Canada rye grass.

Point 13

Woodland obedient plant, cord grass, water hemlock. 

In the thickets as you emerge from the woods: hedge bindweed, fringed loosestrife, elm-leaved goldenrod.

That’s a lot of plants. Enjoy as many as you can!

Rare People and Orchids: TED Talk Part 2

This post is about motivations (and some fun tidbits).
The photos and bold captions are from "Part 2" of the TED^x talk found
at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RICTPEFbRh8

Why would volunteers brave cold and snow to cut down trees? Some people would much rather sit inside and complain about Chicago's weather. I've heard people say they woke up, looked outside, and asked themselves, "Am I really doing this today?" And yet, once the group assembles and starts to work, it feels so good.

Yet we worried about public perception.  With our best intentions,
we were changing landscapes that people had grown accustomed to. 

It violates the 'common sense' of most people to cut trees down in a forest preserve in any weather. New volunteers with little ecological background have big questions. We patiently teach. Science and monitoring show that hundreds of plant and animal species benefit from the thinning - including many previously declining tree species.

Might our cutting and burning provoke controversy?     

But when a Chicago Sun-Times columnist ran a series of critical articles, many people vigorously questioned what we were doing. For a detailed account of "The Moratorium" check out: http://woodsandprairie.blogspot.com/2016/05/after-miracle.html.

We reached out through  leaflets, media, guided tours, however we could. 

For protecting the ecosystem, to teach is as important as to act. This photo shows a recent tour. For four decades, we volunteers have led hikes, published reports, and inspired newspaper and TV coverage. Teaching in fun, positive, hopeful ways is our ongoing goal.

And the work progressed. 

There's something about team efforts. It's uncommon in most people's lives these days for groups to jointly tackle difficult physical problems. Here, six people have tossed quite a heavy log into the center of a bonfire, so the pile will burn without spreading out and sterilizing more soil than necessary. Some nearby volunteers often give mock-olympic grades to log tosses.

Over time, many volunteers developed special skills. No-holds-barred brush cutter,
Lisa Culp Musgrave on weekdays is a tennis pro and coach. 

Like many of us, Lisa often ends up smoky, muddy, and worn out - as we break for snacks during our weekly, winter, brush-cutting work-outs. We love January and February. (Many Chicagoans don't.) Experiencing in the stark, leafless ecosystem - thinking of what will be able to grow (and hop, and fly, and sing) in future summers - where we've ousted the invasives -  gives us powerful connections to the spinning Earth.

Inspired by Somme, she took up nature photography. First wildflowers …    

Violet wood sorrel grows in high quality prairies, savannas, and open woods. 

In "the dead of winter" we feel the miracle of temperate ecosystems. Under our feet - roots, eggs, and hibernators are dependent on our stewardship - as are birds that will raise their young here but now are on Caribbean islands or in the Amazon. As Lisa burns brush in February, she thinks about dragonflies and orchids she will photograph in April through November. 

... then animals. 

Tiger swallowtail drinks nectar from spotted Joe-Pye-weed - that we'd planted. The thousands (tens of thousands?) of Joe-Pye-weed plants at Somme are all there because we found and broadcast their rare local seed. As for at least some animals: "Plant it, and they will come."

Ruby-throated hummingbird (male) feeding on the nectar (and tasty insects) of Michigan lily. We didn't need to plant the lilies, as they were already there. But none bloomed. They survived as just a few leaves - until each year they were eaten by the deer or shaded out by shrubs (in the absence of fire). Good stewardship (including deer control programs by both the Forest Preserve District and the Village of Northbrook - and regular controlled burns) have resulted in hundreds of lilies naturally blooming every year.

Ruby-throated hummingbird (female) feeding on cardinal flower - another plant that's here (by the hundreds or thousands) only because we'd gone somewhere in fall to find its seeds - and then scattered them here.

She became a master. 

The coyote is an important part of the ecosystem. Without coyotes, excessive numbers of raccoons, opossums, and foxes devastate the ground-nesting birds. Coyotes have improved the balance for many species.

But what inspired her most was learning that she could physically restore needed plants – the base of the ecosystem. She started with the declining fringed gentian. Somme had very few – and those few were typically eaten by white-tailed deer. 

Many rare plants that bloom profusely at Somme are a heritage from Lisa and a long list of others (including Cynthia Gehrie, Jeanne Dunning, Will Freyman, Eriko Kojima, Paul Swanson, and Stephen Packard) who have been stewards for one or more needy species.

Lisa and friends protected the gentians with deer exclusion cages.
Then she broadcast the seed that now matured,
and soon the gentians were widespread. 

Lisa learned how to make and install the cages so that deer and voles moved on to commoner plants. More importantly, she learned the feeling of how profound a difference stewardship can make.

Lisa moved on to Somme’s rarest plant – the federal-endangered
prairie white-fringed orchid. We’d seen a few here and there, for decades,
but a very few, as the deer liked these even more. 

My mistake. It's listed as Threatened rather than Endangered.

Cages helped. But there was a bigger problem.
This small population didn’t attract its specialized pollinators.
Most flowers failed to set seed.    

White-fringed orchids are pollinated only by hawk moths - impressive creatures that some people mistake for hummingbirds.

Lisa hand-pollinated, by toothpick, and taught others to do so. 

This toothpick has two pollen sacks attached. One has been pressed into the flower's sticky "stigma" and the stem on the pollen sack is being stretched. During this process, thousands of pollen grains are "impregnating" thousands of orchid embryos. A single orchid plant can make 100,000 tiny seeds.

Musician and computer wiz Will Freyman also threw himself into the work.
Then he used open-source software to develop  and improve ecosystem-monitoring programs that have since been widely adopted by agencies and businesses.
This is a new field. We contribute what we can. 

A generous collaborator, Will was a pleasure to volunteer with. But we lost him as a volunteer when he became a professional. That was a fine loss. We need excellence in both worlds. 

But for those rare orchids, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service was concerned
because, on most sites, fewer and fewer of them survived.
Illinois, the Prairie State, has the most in the world.
But by 2006, only 109 plants could be found in the state.
The Fish & Wildlife folks recommended Lisa’s can-do approach
to other preserve managers.    

That plunging graph of orchid numbers was a wake-up call. The species was in crisis.

Lisa's efforts did pay off.
By 2013, Somme had 460 white-fringed orchids,
more than four times the state-wide total seven years earlier.
Indeed, Somme would soon come to have more of these orchids than any other site on the planet.
Creative volunteer leadership works.  

The goal of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service is to get species off the Endangered and Threatened lists by restoring their populations and habitats to sustainability. We at Somme have helped by pioneering some techniques and training people from many sites in their use. If rare species and endangered ecosystem types are to live among us, we need to treat them as neighbors. We are learning.

This ends Part 2.
Thanks for joining us on this adventure.
More detailed and technical notes on Part 2 of this TED talk are at:
http://woodsandprairie.blogspot.com/2017/07/ted-talk-part-2-politics-and-science.html

Part 3 will tackle "Bulldozers vs. Sensitive Ecologists."

What's Up in Mid July

We invite you to take a walk virtually (and listen in on our field trip discussions last weekend). Or bring these notes with you as you hike the trail.

To make it easier to find the numbered focal points if you bring this post into the field, the points are forks in the narrow footpaths. 

POINT 1 

The Somme preserves harbor 501 native plant species. These include 17 on the Endangered or Threatened lists (ten present when we started and seven restored from other remnants) and many other uncommon or rare plants and animals. But more important that the individual species, this area and its stewards conserve and restore a rare ecosystem.

Somme Prairie Grove is one of the first places on the planet where an attempt is under way to restore remnants of a nearly vanished natural community – the black-soil bur oak savanna. 

A major challenge at Somme (and so many natural areas) is too many deer.
These beautiful animals are a natural and valuable part of the ecosystem.
But excessive numbers can badly damage the habitat for many other species.

We walk today entirely in the area burned this spring. This is much richer, more flowery, and more attractive to animals than unburned areas. Deer like the nutritious shoots where the fire enriched the soil. At one time, the mountain lions, wolves, and Native Americans knew to hunt there too. Previously, lightning (and, in the last few thousand years, indigenous people) ignited the fires which shaped these species and this type of community for about five million years. Now, things have changed; we have changed them; and we have to learn to be the stewards.

Michigan lily can be found in woods, wetlands, savanna, or prairie. In times of lower deer populations, 

a single stem may have ten or twenty blooms. This year most here had just one - a barometer of deer numbers. 

POINT 2: 

Here we start to see a great diversity of flowers and grasses. Indeed, we’re on the edge of a big patch of the unusual shrub, New Jersey tea, mixed with blooming butterfly-weed, wild quinine, leadplant, rattlesnake master, flowering spurge, and compass plant.

This tea has history. It got the name “revolutionary tea” when adopted by the patriots after they threw the British tea into Boston Harbor.  

 New Jersey tea 

Entomologist Dr. Ron Panzer says that New Jersey tea is a highly valuable nectar plant for many bee and butterfly species. 

Purple prairie clover (short pink-purple). Lead plant (long purple spikes). Rattlesnake master (blue-white balls).
Early goldenrod. (And the deeply cut leaves are compass plant.)

POINT 3

As we walk to the next point, we’ll pass through high quality grassland with an abundance of smooth phlox, prairie dropseed, and little bluestem. Then we enter a shrub patch we call “The Bird Thicket” – which has been a special focus of restoration in recent years. Birds that are regularly seen here during the nesting season include ruby-throated hummingbird, orchard oriole, kingbird, brown thrasher, yellow warbler, and indigo bunting.  

After a week, many of today's flowers will be replaced by maturing seeds.
But by then, other species will be in bloom. 

Bur oaks here were not reproducing, in part because deer ate them down to foot-tall shrubs. Exclusion cages (as above) protected saplings from the deer. But fire remained a challenge (note leafless outer limbs from this spring's fire).
With help, these classic savanna trees gradually surmount deer and fire pressures and become maturing bur oaks.

POINT 4 

On the next section of the trail you'll start to see purple prairie clover (typical of fine prairies) joined by white prairie clover (even more typical of even finer prairies).

White prairie clover may seem like just another color form of its cousin purple.
But the two species are ecologically very different. 

In the early years of the restoration of Somme, we found very little white prairie-clover seed to broadcast, and the little we found didn’t seem to do very well. But in recent years the white seems to be increasing at a rapid pace – perhaps because it competes better as the restoration has continued to improve in quality.

A little further down the trail, look for a large patch of Canada milk vetch. 

POINT 5
Most species in these most open areas are typical prairie species. But note many charred young trunks as you walk south. Bur and scarlet oaks and hazelnut shrubs got cooked in last spring's controlled burn. Notice that they're all putting up new shoots from the base. They've been doing this every couple of years for decades. Sooner or later, some of the bur oaks will become trees that can withstand fire. These species are typical of savanna rather than prairie. Other common species here that suggest savanna rather than prairie include cream gentian, purple milkweed, Maryland snakeroot, carrion-flower, and purple vetch.   

As we walk toward point six, we look out over the ancient floodplain of the West Fork of the North Branch of the Chicago River. From here, long ago, you might have seen explorers or Native Americans paddling by in canoes. Today you see the Metra tracks that run alongside the river.

Butterfly weed with prairie coreopsis, lead plant, rattlesnake master, and black-eyed Susan.

POINT 6
As the trail starts to rise, it becomes more obvious that we're on the edge of the moraine. Savannas were especially common on the moraines, and many plants near this point may be more typical of savannas. These include Seneca snakeroot, grove sandwort, wild licorice, savanna blazing star, and rue anemone. None of these are now in bloom, but you may recognize the diversity east of here if you can identify plants by their leaves. 

Daisy fleabane (first slide in this post), dodder (below), and certain other species indicate opportunities. The fleabane is a "weed"(see http://woodsandprairie.blogspot.com/2014/10/weed-alien-invasive-malignant.html). Dodder seems to thrive where some "aggressive" species "irrationally exuberant" - perhaps because of some disturbance. For many years, we at Somme and others have spread seed where the presence of such species indicates an opening for diversity.

A golden vine is starting to wrap around this stand of mountain mint. It is dodder - a parasitic morning glory.
Dodder may kill over-abundant plants - thereby promoting healthy diversity.

As we walk to the next point, notice starry campion and wide-leaved panic grass in the open area – and then when we enter the woods: long-awned wood grass - an elegant grass with horizontal leaves and spiky seed heads.

Starry Campion

POINT 7 

This oak woodland is "Vestal Grove" - the focus of the book “Miracle Under the Oaks” by New York Times science writer William K. Stevens. All the biggest old trees in the grove (indeed in all of Somme Prairie Grove) are bur oaks. This species has the bark and trunk best adapted to withstand hot fires.

In the woods you're likely to see butterflies - like this pearly eye.
We restore them too, as we restore the plants they depend on. 

Few of the woodland wildflowers are in bloom in early July. Starry campion and Michigan lily kick off the summer flora here. But more and more will bloom as the summer progresses. Thanks for visiting. Come back soon.

A more detailed and technical version of this walk can be found at:
http://woodsandprairie.blogspot.com/2017/07/july-9-2017-restoration-tour-of-somme.html