By: Mike Saxton – Manager of Ecological Restoration and Land Stewardship at Shaw Nature Reserve – a division of the Missouri Botanical Garden – Gray Summit, MO

There are few acts more hopeful than planting prairie. We put so much effort and thought and love and care into the process and we hope for ecologically significant results. We want our efforts to translate into benefits for biodiversity and for the increased health of the land. And, perhaps a bit selfishly, we want to be proud of our good work, to show off our success, to reap the rewards of so much determination.

Left – frozen snowy ground for seed sowing of 40 acres on January 16th. Right – Restoration team mixing 1,000 pounds of hand collected, bulk milled seed.

Collecting seed, prepping the ground, sowing on a frosty winter morning…and then the hard part – the waiting. The agonizing wait. Once the seed is down, we want to chase off every bird we see feasting in the field. In the spring, we worry about getting enough rain. And sometimes about getting too much rain. Every day we’re out there expectantly watching for seedlings to emerge.

July 16 – Coeropsis tinctoria in all its glory.

Last January we sowed seed across 40 acres – mostly open fields with some open oak woods and some wet swales. This is part of a 120-acre land clearing/prairie & woodland restoration project.

• 244 total species in the mix
• All 40 acres received 1-pass of prairie seed
• ~2 acres received a wet swale mix
• ~8 acres received an open woods mix
• ~30 acres received a 2nd pass of prairie mix
• Roughly 25 pounds of bulk, milled, hand collected seed per acre
• 146 pounds of PLS purchased seed
• No big blue or Indian grass in the mix
• We are not high-mowing at any time during the growing season
• The 40-acres has been swept on foot for invasives by our crew. They report using a total of 1 gallon of herbicide per acre on Japanese stilt grass, Sericea lespedeza, and white sweet clover. More weeds than we’d like in a first year planting, of course. But extremely important to be on them from the beginning.

I walked the ground in the early summer hoping to spot seedlings. I didn’t like how much non-native brome I saw and I was impressed with the abundance of plain’s coreopsis (Coreopsis tinctoria) growing across the site (it was seeded but also was in the seed bank). I found many, many native plants but lots of the usual suspects too: fireweed (Erechtites hieraciifolius), mare’s tail (Erigeron canadensis), ragweed (Ambrosia artemisiifolia) and fox tail (Setaria pumila). We mostly do not worry about these distrubance driven annual Ag weeds.

Left – Bidens aristosa in background (wetter swale) with sprinkling of fox tail in foreground. Right – Partridge pea, mare’s tail and plain’s coreopsis – pretty typical for a first year planting.

Yesterday I walked the planting with a hopeful optimism. Generally, I’m happy with what I saw. I found flowering Liatris pycnostachya (prairie blazing star), Salvia azurea (blue sage), Agalinis tenuifolia (slender false foxglover), Physostegia virginiana (obedient plant), and multiple other species. Vegetatively, I found lots of Silphiums (compass & rosin), Baptisias, and Partheniums (quinine).

The most important piece of context – this ground was once forested, it was then cleared and converted to row-crop agriculture. In 1925, the Missouri Botanical Garden purchased the land, describing parts of it as “wasted farm ground”. It was then mowed for decades to be kept open. Then they planted blue grass and ran cattle on it. When mowing/grazing ceased (ca. 1960) it went through old field succession. Then we cleared the trees and are now asking the land to become a diverse prairie restoration. We need to be patient with the land and to attempt to understand what it wants to be and what it can be.

The Agony

A few patches of what I think is Bromus japonicus (Japenese brome). This area had been old-field succesional closed-canopy cedars and mesophytic hardwoods for decades…so it took us by surprise. There are native seedlings in and around the Brome, but not as many as we’d like.

Not extensive but some patches of a Digitaria that might persist. Mostly thin enough that native plants co-occur.

Large portions of the 40 acres have a spattering of fox tail. Some areas have nearly none while a few small areas have thickets.

The Ecstasy

Eryngium yuccifolium (Rattlesnake master), Monarda fistulosa (bee balm), Baptisia, Aesclepias, Lespedeza capitata (Round headed bush clover), Parthenium (quinine). These plants are growing around the remnants of a stump from the land clearing.

Obedient plant flowering with Baptisia, Salvia, Boltonia, Coreopsis and Aesclepias within 2ft.

Porcupine grass (hand-seeded in clusters across the unit – marked by pin flag), with yarrow, Liatris, and Parthenium.

We will be planting 40-acres of prairie over each of the following two winters. We will take the lessons learned from this first 40 and apply them to our subsequent efforts. This planting isn’t perfect but considering the context, we’re happy with these early results! And the planting will, hopefully, only get better with age and continued care.