A Spring Visit to Schulenberg Prairie

With the help of a Woodlands Spring Flowers class at Morton Arboretum (recommended!), some  books, and the Internet, I have embarked on the next step in my Illinois ecology self-study.

First, I went to Schulenberg Prairie at Morton, one of my favorite places ever, to see what I can recognize. They must've had a burn; everything looks completely different. The prairie is a flat, very green carpet of fresh, low leafy plants--nothing like it was in past visits, when I wandered among grasses and forbs taller than me, whooshing and shushing in the wind.


Pick a spot and look down, and you see it is not a carpet, but a series of tufts and clumps and spots of various colors green.

All those tufts look like prairie dropseed to me, but I know very little. Maybe they are another type of grass or sedge. (Now that I know just how very little I know, I want to be able to name everything.) These tufts were everywhere, with endless constellations of young-bright leafy plants filling in the gaps between.

This plant creates these lovely fairy-circle patterns. At  the time I thought this was the same as those tufty prairie-dropseed clumps, but looking at the photos now it seems clear they are different.  Can anyone help me identify them? Comment or email me!

In the spring, seeing all the textures and rhythms of the prairie requires zooming in--just looking at a couple square feet. Look at this lovely grass, wood betony, and compass plant composition.



The rain brought out the luminous, delicate qualities of the spring blooms, such as this shooting star.



I also saw trout lily, golden alexander, toadshade trillium, and more. This caught my eye, but I don't know what it is. Can someone help me identify it?


After an hour communing with the prairie, it was time for the Woodlands class, taught by the knowledgeable and enthusiastic president of the Illinois Native Plant Society, Chris Benda.

And then, last week, I was delighted to be able to put to use the identification skills learned and practiced in class on my lunch hour at work! More on that coming up.

Google search of the day: How do I teach climate change without terrifying my students?

Hoo boy. Some days a work-oriented google search gets to be "close-up images of gecko feet," but other days, like today, it's "How do I teach children about climate change without terrifying them?"

Here are three good articles about it:

http://www.edutopia.org/global-warming-fear; 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/08/20/how-to-teach-about-climate-without-making-your-students-feel-hopeless/

http://ncse.com/blog/2014/01/teaching-climate-science-it-s-elementary-0015288

The general answer is to focus on what can be done to prepare for and mitigate global warming--we know what is going to happen so we can prepare, and we know how to slow down the trend. Even small children can take control of their own live in terms of their and their families' energy use. Older children and young adults can be moved to modify not only their personal choices but their career choices.

A very important point in the Washington Post article--if people feel despair, they do not resort to action, but quite the opposite. People need to feel hope in order to act.

Here are a couple great sites for children (and adults, frankly) that break down the causes, the effects, the consequences, and the options we now have.

https://www3.epa.gov/climatechange/kids/index.html

http://climatekids.nasa.gov

Robin Wall Kimmerer on On Being

Robin Wall Kimmerer is one of my heros, and I was so pleased to hear she was on the On Being podcast. I loved listening to her musings in the show on the animacy of all living things, and soaking in the love and wonder she has for the natural world. Hearing her re-sets me squarely in the understanding that my path is plantward.