Promoting Prairie

 Today, June 4, is National Prairie Day. At least it is in the USA, but hasn't been recognized as such in Canada yet, which is unfortunate since tallgrass prairie is a significant habitat type throughout many provinces. Regular readers will know that I am a huge fan of tallgrass prairie.

The first three photos are representative of some of the 100+ prairies I have explored in the mid-western US, mostly in Missouri.

Diamond Grove Prairie

Golden Prairie

Treaty Line Prairie

These next two are from southwestern Ontario.

Island Prairie, Walpole Is

The following photo is of a small patch that occurs at Rondeau, and features an impressive stand of Butterfly Weed. It could arguably be called part of a Black Oak Savanna. The large Black Oak with its spreading limbs certainly fits the savanna theme.

Prairies are becoming increasingly recognized for their value beyond the species diversity they support. Certainly grassland birds are becoming quite rare, as are some of the multitude of invertebrates inhabiting them. But even more so, old growth grasslands, which means grasslands that have never been plowed, store huge amounts of carbon. An old growth grassland has enormous amounts of herbaceous material below the surface. Some high quality species have root systems that go 6 metres or more below ground.

Some of the rarest plants in Ontario occur in tallgrass prairie, or the closely related oak savanna. This first one, Tall Green Milkweed, only occurs in one location in Ontario.

Eastern Prairie White-fringed Orchid is technically not limited to prairie, but usually has its greatest abundance there. It is a Species At Risk (SAR).

Closely related, but now gone from Canada, is the Yellow-fringed Orchid.

Giant Swallowtails, at one time considered a candidate as a SAR is seen feeding on Ironweed, a species limited to prairies.

Ironweed

An endangered species and therefore a SAR, is Slender Bush Clover.

Rough Blazing-star is a SAR.

Its more common relative, Tall Blazing-star, can be quite dominant in some limited prairies.

Another orchid, Purple Twayblade, is a SAR.

Pink Milkwort, next, is limited to only a couple of prairie sites in Ontario.

Goat's-rue is also a SAR, being limited in Ontario to only a couple of places.

This next photo shows one of the largest populations of a rare prairie species, Colicroot. Unfortunately this prairie patch was completely destroyed to allow for an expanded highway development.

A Cylindrical Blazing-star meadow graces some of the beach dune area of Rondeau. Although technically not a tallgrass prairie in the normal sense, it is a variation of it, and supports mostly tallgrass prairie plant species.

Prairie and savanna can occur in the same area, as is the case for this scene from Ojibway Prairie Provincial Nature Reserve in Windsor, which features a tall candelabra type plant called Culver's root

A little more on the oak savanna side of things is this scene featuring a Black Oak savanna at Rondeau Provincial Park.

Tallgrass Prairie and Black Oak Savanna: two of the most endangered habitats in Ontario. I encourage you to get out to explore and appreciate them!

If you would like to subscribe, or unsubscribe, to Nature Nuggets, send an email to prairietramper@gmail.com

Life in the Campbell Park Pollinator Patch: Part I

 There is a community garden in the park next to our place, where approximately a dozen gardeners have various sized plots to grow garden produce. Marie and I are the local coordinators of this garden, and it has been a useful, and learning, experience.

One of the things that we, along with a couple of co-coordinators involved with this at the beginning of the project back in 2017, thought would be useful was to set aside part of the garden for (mostly) native wildflowers. With our interest in tallgrass prairie, it may be no surprise that many of those wildflowers were typical tallgrass prairie types.

The pollinator patch has looked quite impressive.

 

The Wild Bergamot has overdone itself this year, as the previous image shows. I will likely have to trim it back a bit aggressively before next year, to give some other plants a better chance.

A close relative is Bee-Balm, or Oswego Tea.

Butterfly Milkweed

Wild Columbine

Foxglove Beardtongue

Gray-headed Coneflower

Wild Senna

Purple Coneflower

Purple Coneflower is a tallgrass prairie species, but not native to Ontario. It is widespread in mid-western US prairies, and a crowd-pleaser, hence it is often planted in gardens.

There are more than twenty plant species established at this prairie patch. In addition to the ones shown above, there are others such as Big Bluestem, Indian Grass, Missouri Ironweed, Canada Anemone, Swamp Milkweed, Oxeye, Blue Vervain, Mountain-mint, Culver's-root, New England Aster, Gray-headed Coneflower, Black-eyed Susan, Boneset, Canada Goldenrod, Riddell's Goldenrod and Common Milkweed. There is something flowering from May until September, or even longer, so something for insects for much of the season.

 Pollinators, as most readers will know, are incredibly important in the productivity of many of the garden produce we rely on and enjoy. 

 With so much of the general landscape being affected by outright loss of native habitat as well as the overuse of many pesticides, pollinators have a tough time surviving. With virtually all pollinators also having natural predators to contend with, it makes it extra challenging for them to carry on with their normal activities for survival. Therefore wildflower patches such as there is here and not impacted by pesticides, are very helpful for them, and also for gardeners. We are pleased to not only add some colour to our local garden, but also be amazed at the diversity of insects that show up! It is also encouraging to see various people walking by and pausing to enjoy the plants, butterflies and other insects they see.

In addition to these information signs, we've also put up posters highlighting some of the butterflies that have been seen here, as well as another poster illustrating many of the wildflowers in bloom. We have another poster in preparation, featuring more than 20 different non-butterfly insects commonly found here. 

One of the major problem insects that gardeners have to deal with is the Japanese Beetle. They aren't native, of course, and can be incredibly abundant and damaging especially to some plants, such as raspberries, beans and grapes as well as horticultural plants. In fact they are considered pests on more than 300 species of plants.

If one looks around at garden centres, hardware stores and the like, one will find them providing a great sales pitch for Japanese Beetle traps. In a 20 minute walk around our neighbourhood, we noted 5 traps, all in the front yards. Who knows how many others were in the area that we didn't see.

While these traps are very effective at attracting and collecting these beetles, what said garden centres, etc. don't tell you is that if you place one of these traps in your yard, you will likely end up with more beetles than ever! The attractant in the trap is a scent of flowers that initially attract the beetles, and when a large number of beetles arrive, the pheromone that they give off attracts hundreds of others in short order. Many will come to the trap, but many others will spend time on various garden or horticultural plants, causing the damage that the homeowners were trying to eliminate. Research has shown that vegetation damage is greater in the immediate area of a beetle trap than in areas where homeowners have not put up a trap. Here is a link describing this. 

The bottom line is that Japanese Beetles are here to stay, and putting up traps will only increase their number, and therefore the damage, in your yard or garden. 

There are other problem species in gardens besides Japanese Beetles. For example growers of cabbages and greens, have an ongoing battle with the larvae of the Cabbage White butterfly.

The little caterpillars love feasting on garden greens.

Less problematic, but still non-native, are other beetles. In fact most of the lady bugs, or Lady Bird Beetles we are familiar with, are not native. Here are two of the more common ones in our area.

Seven-spotted Lady Bird Beetle

Asian Multi-colored Lady Bird Beetle

On occasion you may find something like this next creature, roaming about. One wouldn't automatically make the connection, but it is the larval stage of the Asian Multi-colored Lady Bird Beetle.

There is another non-native insect species common in gardens, and this one at least has a very positive influence on our gardens and other things. It is the Western Honey Bee, commonly known as the honey bee that gives us such a sweet, tasty and generally healthy product.

Stay tuned for Part II, which will feature some of the impressive invertebrate creatures I've found and photographed in this pollinator patch!

Please be advised that if you are a subscriber to this blog, the blog site has indicated that sometime after July it will no longer be providing automatic email notices of when this blog is published. I have created a subscriber's list to advise you of new posts. If you would like to be advised of the publication of future posts of Nature Nuggets, let me know via this email: prairietramper@gmail.com.

The blog post appears to still have the email subscription function. The blog feeder has just indicated that it will discontinue after July.

National Prairie Day

 Tomorrow, June 5, is National Prairie Day. At least it is if you reside in the USA. Canada has not included this in any way, which is unfortunate since prairie in Canada is very important in the natural scheme of things. Think of the prairie provinces, for example. But even here in Ontario prairie, and in particular tallgrass prairie, has been an important part of the Ontario landscape. It still is to a much smaller extent, since most of the original tallgrass prairie in the province has been converted to agriculture. There are still a few small pieces left, including parts of Essex Co in the Windsor area (Ojibway Prairie complex), some very small pieces in Chatham-Kent, surviving as remnants along railways, wetlands and the like, and in Lambton where some of the finest tallgrass prairie in the province occurs within the Walpole Island First Nation. Farther east there are remnants in the Dutton area, the Brantford area and the Rice Lake Plains area at the Alderville First Nation. 

Alderville FN prairie

Closely associated with tallgrass prairie is oak savanna, occurring in various places such as Rondeau Provincial Park and Turkey Point Provincial Park. Some may note that I don't include Pinery Provincial Park in the oak savanna mix. Although what is there now is quite like oak savanna, it is largely artificially created and maintained, a result of major changes to the original Pine-Oak forest that were there up until about the mid 1800s when large scale logging took place. If you want to read more about that history check out a blog post I did in 2019.

One of the prairie plants I always looked forward to seeing at Rondeau was this one, Indian Paintbrush (Castilleja coccinea), also called Scarlet Painted Cup. For years I used to see a small patch of it near the intersection of Bennett Avenue and Harrison Trail. However gradually the site became more and more shaded, and I haven't seen it there for more than two decades. But this spring, a fellow birder saw a clump of it at the edge of a wet dune towards the southeast part of the park. I was elated to see it!

Even at a bit of distance, the brilliant orange colour stood out.

Most of the orange is not on the flower part per se. The actual flower is this smaller tubular feature shown in this next photo. While this is only a single clump of about 5 stems, it was heartening to see.

Just to give an idea of what it can look like on a high quality prairie, note this next photo. This is Diamond Grove Prairie, in southwestern Missouri. The site had been burned and there was lots of fresh greenery appearing, which caused the brilliant orange of Scarlet Painted Cup to stand out across the acres and acres of this impressive prairie. I took this in May of 2008 while I was on a two week exploration trip of Missouri's fabulous prairies.

The Missouri Prairie Foundation is certainly a leader when it comes to identifying, protecting and educating about tallgrass prairie, and is responsible for establishing National Prairie Day.

I have spent several weeks over several years in the past, exploring the Missouri prairies. I have been to well over 100 different tallgrass prairie sites in the USA, about half of which were in Missouri. Fortunately having been an active participant in several North American Prairie Conferences has enabled me to see some of the best examples in the US. Here are just a few. The first one is Coyne Prairie, showing the Scarlet Paintbrush mixed in with Wood Betony.

This next one is Golden Prairie, a National Natural Landmark where you can stand in certain spots and not see anything but prairie for 360 degrees.

Sky Prairie, shown next, is smaller but has a wonderful diversity of colour.

Ontario's prairies are just as important in their own way. They are at the edge of the broader tallgrass prairie range, so have a slightly different mix of flora and fauna. This first one is in the Windsor area, and while about 15 years ago it supported undoubtedly the largest population of a species at risk called Colic-root, those white flowered plants, it is now even more at risk as it no longer exists. Unfortunately it was sacrificed to make way for the new highway system as one enters the city via 401.

Fortunately some of the best parts of the Ojibway Prairie Complex remain, although parts of it are in serious need of further management such as prescribed burns. This next photo shows part of the Ojibway Prairie Prov Nature Reserve featuring an impressive stand of Dense Blazing-star, designated as a Threatened species at risk.

Dense-Blazing-star is also well represented at some of the finest parts of tallgrass prairie at Walpole Island.

Earlier in the season the same site had a showing of orange flowers, but not the Scarlet Painted Cup. It is Butterfly Milkweed.

At Rondeau, at a recently burned site, the Butterfly Milkweed can be impressive as well.

At the end of the season, this next photo show what the Black Oak savanna at Rondeau can look like, where tallgrass prairie grasses dominate.

Of course tallgrass prairie is important for more than just vegetation. There are more than a few bird species that do best on the open prairie. Some are fairly common, such as Savannah Sparrow.

Less common is Eastern Meadowlark.

Even less common, and a species at risk is Bobolink, with the distinctively coloured male, shown first...

....and the more subtly coloured female.

An Endangered species is Northern Bobwhite, which is almost certainly gone from Ontario although there are occasional reports of birds away from their former tallgrass prairie range. They are probably the result of wildlife releases. This next photo was taken in Missouri.

Another Endangered species, and also likely gone from Ontario, is Henslow's Sparrow. I digiscoped this at a prairie restoration site about 20 years ago.

Not in any specific 'at-risk' category is Dickcissel, a species which over the last couple of decades has begun to breed in Ontario somewhat regularly in very small numbers and has periodically shown some surges in those numbers from time to time.

Tallgrass prairies are certainly wonderful and fascinating parts of the Ontario, Canadian and North American landscape. Unfortunately they are too easily converted to other uses, so need a strong appeal to people to ensure they survive in a healthy condition.