Prairie Wanderings: McPherson County wildflower tour
By PAUL G. JANTZEN
Contributing writer
We followed a "very country" road down across a creek and up to our meeting place for the McPherson County Wildflower Tour. With Herbert and Pat Bartel, from 40 to 50 of us met in Susan Reimer's prairie adjacent to the south edge of the Maxwell Wildlife Refuge in the headwaters of Gypsum Creek. We are in the southeast corner of Kansas' Smoky Hills region.
The rusty-brown Dakota Sandstone cropping out in several places here settled out of the most recent sea that invaded the Midwest during the Cretaceous Period. The Cretaceous lasted from about 138 million yeas ago until 63 million years ago when the Rocky Mountains were lifted up and the dinosaurs became extinct.
Our guide today is Brad Guhr, director of prairie restoration of the Dyck Arboretum of the Plains at Hesston. Brad explained that the Arboretum initiated the Prairie Window Project with the purpose of documenting and conserving prairie remnants within a 60-mile radius of Hesston. Their purpose is to preserve our natural heritage, our wild plant and animal habitats, and the gene pools of local wild populations. The remnants also will provide seeds for the 18-acre prairie reconstruction area adjacent to the Arboretum.
After detailed plant inventories, the remnants were rated according to quality and Susan's prairie received the highest rating.
Of the 95 plant species in a preliminary survey of this prairie, I saw about 20 blooming today, June 27. A month ago, 28 were flowering, most of them different than the ones we see blooming this evening. Here are some comments about these 20 species.
Western Yarrow with its white flowers and spicy aroma withstands the heat and dryness of summer. It was long used to treat various ailments, but has an alkaloid poison.
Lead plant with bluish-violet flowers is eagerly eaten by cattle. Native Americans used the plant for tea, smoking, and treatment of neuralgia and rheumatism.
Field pussytoes bears whitish flowers. A gum extracted from its stems has been used as chewing gum.
The greenish-white flower of narrowleaf milkweed displays a horn. The Lakota used the root to stimulate their children' appetite.
Noted for its resistance to drought and the striking rose-to-purple color of its flowers is the purple poppymallow. Its root is edible and Indians used it to treat various ailments.
The showy partridgepea has bright yellow blossoms. Its leaves are somewhat sensitive to touch, folding together when distributed. Its seeds are eaten by quail.
Both white and purple prairieclovers are sought by cattle and were used by American Indians who chewed their roots, made tea with their leaves, and steeped their leaves to treat wounds.
Scribner's dichanthelium is a short perennial grass common in the open prairie, especially in spaces between taller grasses. It remains green all winter and provides grazing from late fall into early spring.
The narrow-leaf purple coneflower (or black Sampson) is a member of the Sunflower Family. Its ray florets are light pink to pale purple. Its disk florets are brownish-purple. Its root extract reduces pain by numbing wounds, sore throats, or toothaches. It is one of the most used medicinal plants in the prairie.
Daisy fleabane, also in the Sunflower Family, has white rays and yellow disk florets. It was thought by early Europeans to repel fleas.
Field snakecotton, as its name implies, has white flowers. Though without petals, the flowers are densely woolly.
Indian Blanket is another of the Sunflower tribe. Rays are yellow in the outer tip and reddish-purple toward the base. Disk florets are brownish-purple.
The non-native, common St. John's-wort, has five yellow petals, each with black dots on its margins. Blooms often appear around St. John's Day in Europe. The dots represent drops of St. John's blood. The leaves and flowers contain a poison that, when eaten, makes the lightly pigmented areas of the consumer overly sensitive to light causing irritation and slow-healing sores. The plant also has been used medicinally.
Round-head bush clover (or roundhead lespedeza) is a legume with whitish flowers. Comanche Indians made tea with its leaves.
Catclaw mimosa (or catclaw sensitivebriar) bears many prickles and soft balls of pink flowers. Its leaflets respond to disturbance such as touch or wind by folding inward.
Woolly plantain (or woolly Indianwheat) has whitish flowers crowded on a tall narrow stalk.
Fringe-leaf ruellia easily survives droughts. Its flowers are trumpet-shaped and lavender to pale blue. They fall off easily when handled.
American germander has pinkish flowers which attract bees that pollinate the plant while taking nectar for making honey.
Hoary (or woolly) vervain flowers are arranged densely on a spike. They are blue to purple or even white. The plant is common in overgrazed pastures and other open, rocky areas.
We see a few yucca plants, now past their flowering state. Owen Meier observed that yucca are absent from the nearby bison range but do well outside the refuge. Others have reported that bison uproot yucca plants and eat the roots. Game biologists have noticed that yucca florets are eaten by female deer about to fawn or have just fawned.
On the way home with Herb and Pat Bartel, we discuss how many people today grow up thinking that the natural world is an irrelevant relic of the past — that business is all that matters. But here were about 50 people willing to spend two hours trudging through the prairie, enjoying and learning more about our natural heritage. Progressive farmers continue to apply principles of prairie ecology to their farming and livestock operations.
