Autumn = Seed Collecting

With autumn now in full swing, the leaves have disappeared and the hard frosts have brought just about everything into full dormancy. For the past couple of weeks, I have been focusing on invasive brush and vine removal as well as the more enjoyable task of land stewardship, native seed collection. As we continue to transform areas of invasive overgrowth back into native prairie and savanna habitat, it is important that we annually collect as much native seed for planting in our restoration units. Seed can be collected and stored for several months or even years if needed, but our intentions are always to plant as much as we can collect every year. This is mostly due to the limited amount of local native seed available, but also because these plants take years to develop and reproduce viable seed of their own.

Our main focus this year has been on collecting warm-season prairie grass seed. These species include big bluestem, little bluestem, indian grass and the newly discovered broomsedge bluestem. I wish that we could find a local population of switchgrass, but I have yet to find any plants that I think are natural and not planted. All of these grasses are robust, long-lived and the primary source of fuel for our prescribed burns. Wildflowers offer very little in terms of fuel for carrying a fire, so establishing these grasses first is a top priority in any prairie planting. So far we have collected enough native grass seed to cover approximately an acre of new ground. I don't process or clean any of the grass seed that we collect, so germination viability of the seed is unknown. Due to this, we will plant the seed very generously.