Nash Prairie

Prairie Song

~ shoreacres ~ 75 Comments

In 2016, the Missouri Prairie Foundation established National Prairie Day: an effort to educate people about the vast grasslands which once stretched across North America, and to encourage commitment to the conservation and restoration of native prairies. This year, a new alliance of organizations dedicated to the voluntary restoration of native grasses on working lands in the U.S. will launch in conjunction with the celebration, held annually on the first Saturday in June.

Of course, learning about prairies is one thing: coming to love them quite another. I walked my first prairie in 2012. Since then, I’ve spent as much time as possible exploring their wonderful variety, from Texas’s coastal prairies to the tallgrass prairies of the midwest. One day — soon, I hope! — restrictions will be lifted, and I’ll be able to revisit some of my favorites. For now, I’ll celebrate the day devoted to their splendors with some photos from past visits, and my favorite prairie song.

Clean Curve of Hill Against Sky ~ The Tallgrass Express
(If the song won’t play and you’re using Chrome, try another browser)
Chase County, Kansas
As we hop on our ponies to climb up the hill
while the morning breeze sleeps and the air is so still,
we see up ahead in the early half-light
That clean curve of hill against sky.
West of the Bazaar, Kansas cattle pens
Then we’re out in the pasture as far as we’ll go,
It rises around us, a giant green bowl,
While the sunrise is filling the day up with light
On that clean curve of hill against sky.
Diamond Grove Prairie ~ Missouri
The pioneers saw it as they crossed the wide plains
til they built up their cities for fortune and fame;
Open range near Wonsevu, Kansas
So there’s few places left now to pleasure the eyes
with that clean curve of hill against sky.
Prescribed burn on the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve ~ Strong City, Kansas
Out here we’re still blessed with true darkness at night,
our skies are a-glimmer with the Milky Way’s light;
if you’re lucky, you might see a star shootin’ by
that clean curve of hill against sky.
Konza Prairie ~ Manhattan, Kansas
But there’s more people and buildings and towers all the time
’cause there’s always a reason to put nature aside.
Just a few places left now to pleasure the eyes
with that clean curve of hill against sky.
Nash Prairie ~ Brazoria County, Texas
Now the hot sun is high and we’re riding on home,
Our horses are spent, with their heads hanging low;
I turn back my head now for one last goodbye
to that clean curve of hill against sky.
Near Alma, Kansas
Sunset ~ Matfield Green, Kansas

 

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Raising a Toast to Transition

~ shoreacres ~ 48 Comments
Trailing winecup (Callirhoe involucrata) on the Nash prairie

Several species of winecup appear across Texas, and their common names reflect their growth habits. This lower-growing variety spreads across our coastal prairies and fields, while the standing winecup (Callirhoe digitata), true to its name, often grows as high as two or three feet in the hill country.

Other slight differences distinguish the species, but what they have in common is their glorious color. Ranging from rose, to magenta, to burgundy and almost-red, they’re a perfect flower for the transition from spring to summer. As compelling as Indian paintbrushes and as lovely as bluebonnets, they’re nature’s way of serving up yet another intoxicating sight.

 

 

Comments always are welcome.

 

What Lindheimer Saw – Gaura

~ shoreacres ~ 35 Comments

Flannery O’Connor’s conviction that “the writer should never be ashamed of staring; there is nothing that does not require his attention,” applies equally well to botanists.

Ferdinand Lindheimer — a German immigrant who arrived in Texas in 1836, equipped with amazing energy and obsessive curiosity — clearly had mastered the art of staring. Laura Deming, a great-great-great-granddaughter, recounts a family legend about the father of Texas botany:

“Once, when He came upon a chief and a war party, he had a staring competition with the chief. Because he won, they allowed him to live.”

Whatever the truth of the story, when it came to the flora of Texas, Lindheimer’s propensity to stare served him well. In 1839-1840, he visited George Engelmann, a friend from Frankfurt who’d settled in St. Louis. After seeing the samples of Texas plants Lindheimer brought with him, Engelmann mentioned his work to Asa Gray, founder of the Gray Herbarium at Harvard University and author of Gray’s Manual of the Botany of the Northern United States. Gray was impressed, and interested.

Over the next years, Lindheimer provided Engleman and Gray with thousands of specimens, and left us a correspondence rich in references to discoveries made as he roamed Texas. Today, nothing delights me quite so much as finding one of the plants that bears his name, like this pretty Gaura (Oenothera lindheimeri), and then finding it mentioned in Lindheimer’s own letters to Englemann.

Lindheimer’s gaura buds ~ Nash Prairie

“What I may find in the Guadalupe Bottom, where we shall be in the course of a week, I wonder… If the Gaura Lindheim grows in the west, you shall have seeds. I did not find it last year between the Brazos and the Colorado. It grew commonly four miles east of Houston.” (written from a camp on the Agua Dulce, 22 January 1845)

 

Lindheimer’s gaura bloom ~ Nash Prairie

“Gaura Lindheimeri seems to appear no farther west than the Brazos, and scarcely west of the San Jacinto-Buffalo Bayou region; otherwise, [Thomas] Drummond surely would have found it.” (from New Braunfels, 5 February 1846)

 

Comments always are welcome.