Ratibida

Walk the Wood

Look for your nearest Illinois Natural Areas Inventory site or Illinois Nature Preserve.[1] Make the call whether or not to trespass if it looks like private property. Plug it in your GPS and hit the road. Near the preserve, your parking spot is preferably near some houses or tucked out of the way so that your …

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Prairie Silhouette

A 4:23PM sunset really sneaks up on you. You’re enjoying the golden brown prairie hues and suddenly it’s nearly pitch black. The middle photo above is a naturalized stormwater detention basin burned this fall. The following prairie plant silhouettes are from Blackberry Trail Forest Preserve in Kendall County, IL. Silphium perfoliatum (cup plant) Sorghastrum nutans …

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Fall Prairie at Jay Woods

One of the brightest prairie flowers blooming right now is New England aster (Symphyotrichum novae-angliae), here with the ellipsoid (egg-shaped) seed heads of grey-headed coneflower (Ratibida pinnata), whose seeds, by the way, smell pleasant enough to rid your hands of snake musk if you ever happen to be looking to remove that particular odor from …

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Knowing America

The following is a quote by botanist Gerould Wilhelm, in the book A Natural History of the Chicago Region by Joel Greenberg. He is recounting an early experience from his time with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, assessing whether different areas were suitable (low-quality enough) to dump dredge materials. We visited thirteen sites that …

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