Grasshopper

 Thank you for all of your insightful comments on my last natural play post.  This is a topic that I'll be bringing back time to time, and your input and thoughts will help guide me in the future. 

Today I help lead a field trip to Bigelow and Smith Cemetery State Nature Preserves along with Judy Semroc and Larry Rosche.  They're some of my favorite people to be in the field with, and I had a blast despite the blazing heat- hopefully the other field trips for the Midwest Native Plant Conference had fun trips today as well.

For today's quick post, here is a huge grasshopper munching on the stem of Giant Ragweed at Bigelow Cemetery.  Normally I see these types of grasshoppers when they are young and small, but this one was downright giant.

Tom

Chapparal Prairie State Nature Preserve

The crinkled leaves of prairie dock

Liatris stems

The fruits of a native tree. Do you recognize these?

After Adams Lake Prairie State Nature Preserve, we headed on over to Chaparral Prairie State Nature Preserve. If only we were here in early August! Can you imagine what these fields of prairie dock and Liatris would have looked like back then?

Tom

Adams Lake Prairie State Nature Preserve

Last Friday before the moss workshop, I had the fortune to visit several State Nature Preserves in Adams County. The first stop of the day was Adams Lake Prairie State Nature Preserve, where I found the blackjack oak seen in the oak quiz post. There are some top notch botanists who identified this oak right away- some without ever seeing it in the field.

Little Bluestem and Red Cedar

Adam Lake Prairie is a tiny prairie patch on a hillside in Adams County. Of all my botanical travels to Ohio's hotspots of diversity, I have visited Adams County the least. It is known for its xeric limestone prairies. If you've been following along at Steve Willson's Blue Jay Barrens blog, you are familiar with this type of ecosystem. Some of these barrens also can occur on shale, and that is the case of Adams Lake Prairie. Although small, if you ever find yourself in Adams County, Ohio, not too far from the town of West Union, this little botanical wonder inside Adams Lake State Park is definitely worth a visit.

The shriveled leaves of Prairie Dock.

You nailed blackjack oak, but how about this one?

The hills created by the Allegheny Mound Ant are a common sight in this part of Ohio.

And finally, here's a violet for your perusal. I talked quite a bit about the stemless blue violets over over last weekend with Daniel Boone (yes, a real person for those of you that have never met Dan!), one of the midwest's most enthusiastic and prolific botanists. This past field season, he went on a quest to find all of Ohio's violet species, and in the process, helped us understand more about one of our endangered species, the bog violet, Viola nephrophylla.

The leaf above isn't bog violet, but I'm sure Dan would know it right away. Unfortunately, I'm itching for Tom Cooperrider's book right now, but it's a few miles away on the bookshelf at the office. Can someone pinch hit for me?

Tom


View Ohio State Nature Preserves in a larger map

Ohio's Prairies Featured in the Columbus Dispatch

You may have caught my post on Ohio's remnant cemetery State Nature Preserves in Madison County. Steve Stephens, a travel columnist for the Columbus Dispatch, has a great article, including awesome photographs, in today's edition of the paper:

Fruited plains: Small pieces of once-vast prairie thrive in Ohio

Tom

Bigelow Cemetery, Smith Cemetery, Two of Ohio's Remnant Prairies

Only tiny remnants of Ohio's prairie past, these two cemeteries in Madison County are ablaze with glory right now. If you haven't seen these pioneer cemeteries, they are worth the drive.

Bigelow Cemetery State Nature Preserve






and Smith Cemetery State Nature Preserve






Although I have lived in Central Ohio for six years, I have not yet adequately examined Central Ohio's natural remnant prairies, but I'm going to start now. They are just fantastic places.

Tom

Whetstone Park and Prairie

After visiting the art show at Whetstone park on this super humid day, Megan and I ventured down to the Whetstone prairie, a project organized by a group called Columbus Wild Ones.

Although the plants growing in the prairie are very much past their prime, there are still several interesting things to be seen.

All summer long, I really didn't have a good chance at photographing a Monarch butterfly. Well, one was hanging out, nectaring on some goldenrod, and this guy seemed happy to be photographed.

 

Fall is the time for symphyotrichums. It used to be the time for asters, but botanists have decided to go with a different naming system for the plants formerlly known as asters. At least scientifically. The north american Asters have now become It is still perfectly acceptable to still call this heart-leaved aster for the common name but drop aster and add Symphyotrichum to your botanical dictionary.

 

There were hundreds of goldfinches in the prairie. They were mostly after the seeds of leaf-cup, of which there were hundreds of plants here reaching over ten feet tall. This individual is a female "goldenfinchie" (this is what goldfinches are called by some in Maine.)

 

Finally, a skipper. This butterfly may be a Peck's skipper, Polites peckius. That is the closest species I could come up with using the Kaufman focus guide to butterflies. What a beautiful animal. This insect appears to be nectaring on this Liatris , which was planted here at Whetsone.

 

Ohio Prairie Article by the Akron Beacon Journal

For those of you who regularly visit the "blog", you know that most of my posts detail some animal or plant I have observed in the field. The local media does cover natural history from time to time, and I thought that I could start highlighting various stories about nature that appear in Ohio's newspapers. The Akron Beacon Journal recently published such an article about Ohio's prairie past. It is a good read. The article can be accessed here: High praise for prairies

Ohio had several grassland areas called prairies when the first settlers reached this state. A very few of these areas still exist today. In addition, Ohio also is the home to prairie-like habitats called wet meadows dominated by sedges rather than grasses, which make up prairies. For more about a wet meadow that I have studied, check out The Ohio Department of Natural Resources prairie education website here:Ohio Prairie Interviews. There are several informative interviews that detail the people behind the management of a state nature preserve.

Tom