Maples earnin' their keep

Fall is always a bit depressing when you consider that the comfortable weather is now behind you, though nature definitely has a way to make us all feel better about the moment.

Most restoration purists, and I include myself in this too, think red maples are just downright out of place in a prairie and savanna ecosystem. We're probably right too considering they wouldn't have really colonized the uplands without the absence of fire. And while all summer long they just don't have the rugged character of the fire-dependent ecosystems like the oaks and black cherrys do, I thank myself every fall for not excluding them totally.















The color they add to the landscape is just too nice to ignore. On my property, the soil is almost all fine-textured clay-loam with the exception of a few sanding spots. This is just the nature of the neighborhood's end moraines as my neighbors have soil that is almost pure sand and some really nice loam. Though, the heavy soils on my property have really allowed red maples to flourish. Rather than ignore them and try to treat the situation as my neighbors would, I have cultivated my restoration project around the idea that a more mesic and even wet-mesic type of prairie and savanna ecosystem would have occured here. With the clearing and burning that has been implemented in the last few years, I have noticed that the remnant flora is reinforcing my decisions too. Shining aster, new england aster, switch grass, boneset, fringed loosestrife and many wetland type sedges have flourished naturally as the fires have been reintroduced. I guess that some red maples may have survived in this wet-mesic type habitat too if there were wet conditions when the fires swept through this area.

2008's newly discovered plants

While our controlled burns were a bit of a flop this past spring, I did manage to add a few new species to the checklist.

Lactuca Canadensis (wild lettuce) is a plant most often found in savanna type habitats, however my first sighting of this tall plant was in the middle of our mesic prairie. After I was able to identify this plant, I began to recognize it along the sides of some back roads and in a few heavily shaded areas. It is an interesting plant that can achieve incredible heights. I found one across the street that was growing in a dead stand of white ash that was approximately 10 feet tall. The one discovered in the prairie was only about 4 feet tall, and being a biennial that probably means it grows best in semi-shaded areas. See photo.

Another interesting plant was dudley's rush, a dry prairie rush. In fact, I believe it is one of the only non-wetland rushes that are characteristic of dry prairie habitats. Hopefully it will naturally spread with the introduction of fire to that area.

moving forward

This journal has gotten a pretty slow start since it's inception in March. Though, now that summer is winding down I thought that it would be a good time to bring things up to speed.

We got off to a bad start with a weak controlled burn in the mesic prairie this past spring, and as a result, the autumn olive has been nearly impossible to control. As it was already about 3 feet tall before the growing season, the plants that were not hand cut during the summer put on another 2 or 3 feet of vertical growth. Isolated plants were cut with loppers in July and August, and one dense stand in the middle of the prairie was mowed down with the brush hog. However, there are still a few dense stands that I was afraid of mowing with the brush hog due to some recognizable good forbs. Maybe I'll have a chance to hand cut them before dormancy.

If I don't have a chance to hand cut them, maybe I will try brush hogging them directly after next spring's burn before any plants emerge. While this won't eradicate them, it will at least take the height off of them. Planting semi-aggressive prairie grasses like big bluestem in the densly patched areas might be a good idea too, as to give the space good fuel for future fires.

On another note, in the roadside prairie I was able to plant a small patch of grasses and forbs in June after I treated the area with glyphosate and then burned the dead thatch (photo above). This method proved to be quite effective due to the fact that the ground and the weather was warm enough for the prairie plants to germinate immediately. However, we got lucky this year because June proved to be wet enough for the young plants to prosper without the risk of drying out. I think normally it would be a good idea to try this method a few weeks earlier (like the middle of May). As of now, I have indian grass that has gone to seed, big bluestem half a foot tall, butterfly milkweed seedlings, common milkweed about a foot tall, and wild bergamot seedlings.