Tom's Blog

Nice restored savanna at UW-Madison Lakeshore Path

2012-01-25T13:52:00.000-08:00

UW-Madison has a spectacular shoreline along Lake Mendota. Including Picnic Point (seen in the background in this photo), there is over 4 miles of lake frontage. Yesterday the weather cooperated and Kathie and I walked from Picnic Point to the Memorial Union. Among other things, we walked past Willow Creek Woods, which has recently been converted into a nice restored oak savanna. Some of the largest bur oaks in the area are present just a stone's throw from the lake. (According to the Lakeshore Preserve web site, there are 23 large oaks in Willow Creek Woods.) For many years, this savanna had been hidden behind a dense undergrowth of invasive shrubs, which blissfully are all gone. Although this is the wrong time of year to see herbaceous plants, we did see some strands of savanna grasses. Also, there were lots of small blue flags scattered around, places where (we assume) plugs had been planted last fall.

This savanna has another feature, a large Native American burial mound. The campus is studded with such mounds, from Eagle Heights to Observatory Hill. These mounds, often in the shape of animals, were built by Middle to Late Woodland peoples, and date from 0 to 1200 A.D. Although these peoples are long-gone, their heritage lives on in these effigy mounds. (Azitlan, near Lake Mills, was built by Late Woodland people as was the great city of Cahokia, in Illinois.) Archeological work has shown that the Willow Creek site was once an ancient workshop or village. There has been quite a bit of research on the mounds of Madison, going back to Charles E. Brown's work in the early 20th century. A nice summary can be found in a publication of the Wisconsin Historical Society, which can be found at this link.

These mounds are topped by a few of the largest oaks.

As Kathie and I neared the Union, we were entertained by someone speeding across the lake with a skate sail. There was too much snow for skates, so he was using skis.

In the Union we enjoyed some hot tea and coffee from Peet's, a long-time Berkeley company that seems to have found its way to Madison.

Finally, we took the campus bus back to where we had started our walk. Since it was class change time, the bus was jammed, so we became strap-hangers. Nice afternoon.

Lake States Fire Webinar 1-19-2012

2012-01-20T13:44:00.000-08:00

The Lake States Fire Science Consortium is an entity available to anyone in our area doing prescribed burns. Supported by grants, it is adminstered by Ohio State University but the committee includes people from all the "lake states". Here is their mission statement: "...to accelerate the awareness, understanding, and adoption of wildland fire science information by federal, tribal, state, local, and private stakeholders across the Lake States from Minnesota to New York, and the adjacent Canadian provinces of Ontario and Manitoba." Anyone interested in joining and receiving their monthly newsletter and other announcements should access this link.

One of the activities is a series of "webinars" dealing with various aspects of wildland fire. These are held on the third Thursday of the month at 9:30 AM Central time. All the webinars are archived, so if you miss a "live" presentation you can still "attend" the event. (Check the web site)

The webinar topic yesterday was Use of Prescribed Fire to Regenerate and Restore Red Pine Ecosystems. The presenters were Minnesota folks in the northern part of that state, where red pine is an important ecosystem. Although this is out of our direct interest here in southern Wisconsin, I still found the webinar interesting because of the general principles presented.

A principal goal of prescribed burning in these northern red pine ecosystems was the control of hazel (Corylus americana), a shrub that is a dominant member of the understory there. Hazel can shade out and greatly inhibit red pine reproduction. Since hazel is an important member of the understory in our oak savannas, we often discuss whether we should be controlling it. Although it is not out of hand here, apparently it is a real menace in northern Minnesota.

In the red pine ecosystem, prescribed fire is the best way of controlling hazel. Not with spring (dormant season) burns, however, but with mid-summer burns. In fact, dormant season burns not only do not reduce hazel, but actually increase its density. This is because spring burns only top-kill hazel, followed which it resprouts vigorously. In contrast, mid-summer burns actually kill the shrub, although the best results are obtained by burning annually. Even biennial burns are not as effective, and burns at less frequent intervals are virtually useless.

Since we rarely do summer burns in southern Wisconsin, I was interested to learn how these burns are done. The strip headfire technique is used exclusively. However, since the burns are being carried out in the heat of the summer, there is a great possibility of killing the red pine itself. Because of this, summer burns must be carried out exclusively as backburns. To keep any head fire from developing, the strips are kept very close together, as the photo below shows.
Summer burns are thus quite time consuming. Smoke management is more of an issue than it is in the spring and there is lots more mop-up.

The photo below shows a burn in a similar area carried out in the spring (dormant season). The strips are lots wider, and the whole burn can be carried out lots quicker.
All of our savanna and woodland burns are also carried out as strip headfires.

I found this webinar quite interesting and useful, even though it was in a different type of ecosystem.

The schedule for the next few webinars is shown on the photo at the top of this page.

Variable precipitation data; southern Wisconsin

2012-01-16T10:09:00.000-08:00

The lack of snow this winter got me thinking about how variable our precipitation is in southern Wisconsin. I obtained from the State Climatology office data for our area that permitted me to study this variability in some detail.

The data I used came from weather stations nearby. For the years 1995 through 2001 the data were from Blue Mounds, and (after that station was closed) from Mazomanie from 2002 to 2011. These are both close enough to Pleasant Valley Conservancy to be reasonably useful, although some of those heavy summer rains are often spotty. (This year we had one 1.5 inch rain whereas neighbors less than a mile away had less than an inch.)

The data were provided as an Excel file with monthly averages. Note that the snow is converted into liquid water equivalents. Thus, I have a table with data for each month of the year for the years 1995 through 2011. Even this is too much data to present on this blog, so I have reduced it further. (Daily data are also available but these are much too detailed to handle easily.)

I'd be happy to send the big Excel file to anyone who is interested. For this post, I am using the month-by-month annual averages, and the maximums and minimums for each month.

As the graph shows, there is marked year to year variability. The 17-year average of 35 inches rarely happens, and the range is from a low of 24 inches (in 2005) to a high of 44 inches (in 1998). The years 2001 through 2005 constitute a dry period, and the years 2006-2010 a wet period.

However, if you look at the monthly data, you find that some years there may be a single month with a very high or very low total. For instance, even though everyone remembers the huge rainstorms of June of 2008, this was not the extreme high, which was May 2004, even though the rest of 2004 was fairly dry.

The table below gives average data for each month, with both the maximum and minimum for that month, and the year that extreme occurred.

If you look at how the annual precipitation is spread out monthly, Wisconsin can be divided into three separate periods. The period of lowest precipitation is winter, Dec/Jan/Feb/and part of Mar, with about 18% of the total. The months of Apr through Aug constitute the bulk of the precipitation, 61%, and Sep Oct and Nov about 21%. When you consider this breakdown in relation to temperature, it turns out that the months with the highest temperatures are also the months with the most precipitation. This, of course, is our growing season. However, other parts of the United States are quite different. Most of California get almost no rain during the hot summer, but lots during the winter, when temperatures are lowest, which explains why California agriculture is based primarily on irrigation.

Although these monthly figures are useful, it should be remembered that there have been months when the data have been much different. Take a look at the max and min values below.

Month	17-year average	Maximum	Year	Minimum	Year
Jan	1.22 inches	2.7	(1996)	0.23	(2004)
Feb	1.483	2.58	(2008)	0.01	(1995)
Mar	2.041	5.54	(1998)	0.34	(2001)
Apr	3.96	7.05	(2006)	1.49	(2003)
May	4.43	11.5	(2004)	1.36	(2007)
Jun	5.26	9.8	(2010)	1	(1995)
Jul	3.79	6.71	(2010)	1.19	(2001)
Aug	4.15	14.9	(2007)	1.36	(2008)
Sep	2.88	6.7	(2001)	0.9	(2004)
Oct	2.55	5.47	(1995)	0.82	(2000)
Nov	2.167	8.1	(2003)	0.22	(2007)
Dec	1.55	3.28	(2007)	0.28	(1998)
Annual	35.483	44.35	(1998)	24.35	(2005)

As the table show, although June of 2010 was very wet, in 1995 June was very dry. In fact, there have been summer periods as long as 4 weeks when it did not rain at all.

In a discussion of Indian grass and little bluestem in an earlier pos t, I discussed our observations that the former grass is favored by wet summers and the latter by dry summers. During that dry period centered on 2005, the large Indian grass stand in the prairie remnant called Unit 4 was virtually replaced by little bluestem. In the wet period that we have had since 2007 the reverse is the case, and Indian grass is now dominant, as it is on major parts of the south-facing slope.

These precipitation data obviously have phenological implications.

Little bluestem in Massachusetts coastal areas

2012-01-15T12:18:00.000-08:00

On a recent trip to Massachusetts I discovered that little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium) is quite common in their coastal areas. This was one of the most frequent roadside plants I saw (and I even saw a piece of roadside where it had been burned).

Coastal Massachusetts is quite sandy. In addition, there are lots of retired cranberry bogs where little bluestem has become well established. The photo above is a typical example.

These retired cranberry bogs are interesting, in that little bluestem seems to become established without any effort on the part of restorationists. Part of the standard agricultural practice here is to put down a layer of sand on top of the cranberries every three or four years. The crop grows up through the sand and sends out upright stems that flower and make fruits. By the time the production bogs are retired, there has been quite a bit of sand buildup. When the retired cranberry production bog is drained, plants are just allowed to recolonize. In the photo above the bog on the left had been retired quite a few years earlier.

In this area little bluestem grows in typical cespitose fashion, as the photo here shows. I knew from the USDA Plant Database that little bluestem could be found in almost all the 48 states, but I was not aware that it did so well on the east coast. In fact, restoration work in areas of coastal Massachusetts, such as Cape Cod, little bluestem is one of the species used in reseeding, then followed by prescribed burns. They don't seem to call these grassy areas "prairies".

The federal publication "Roadside Use of Native Plants" provides a species list for each state, and little bluestem is listed in every state except California, Oregon, Washington, and Nevada. Very few other species have such wide capabilities.

Of course, little bluestem can only compete well in relatively dry areas. In favorable soil with plentiful moisture, it gets out competed by other grasses or forbs.

Just Posted: 2012 Summer internship opportunities in ecological restoration!

2012-01-12T14:34:00.000-08:00

Pleasant Valley Conservancy has just posted job openings for two (2) internships in ecological restoration for the summer of 2012. Excellent opportunity to work with experienced crews doing prairie and oak savanna restoration. Internship also involves some work at Black Earth Rettenmund Prairie.

Both of these sites are State Natural Areas with high species diversity.

Access this link for details

Cleaning out the bird houses

2012-01-12T10:48:00.001-08:00

Kathie and I took advantage of yesterday's fantastic weather to finish cleaning out our birdhouses, getting ready for the 2012 crop.

Kathie had cleaned out her bluebird houses on a good-weather day in late December. Yesterday was an even better day, and we cleaned out the two kestrel houses and the wood duck house. Cleaning involves removing all last year's wood chips and bird debris, and putting in some fresh wood chips.

It takes two people to handle the kestrel houses. They are on very tall poles that are articulated so that the houses can be brought down to the ground. The shadows in the photo below show us in action. When Kathie finishes cleaning, I have to reach up to the end of the pole and pull it down, thus raising the house again. (It takes a tall person.)

We have two kestrel houses, but only one is being used. We have had fledglings in the one house every year since we first installed them in 2008. We have seen kestrels around the second house but so far no success with nesting.

The wood duck house is much closer to the ground, but near the boardwalk that permits access to the wetland. This house has been up for two season's now, but instead of a wood duck we have been getting a hooded merganser. Birders tell us that the merganser is a lot rarer than a wood duck, so we should be happy.

When we opened the wood duck house this year we found one whole unhatched egg, plus the remains of at least one additional egg which may have represented a fledged merganser.

Winter grasses in the oak savanna

2012-01-03T14:13:00.000-08:00

This snow-free winter has made the grasses on our savannas very attractive. I've been waiting for a nice sunny day so I could take some pix, and today was the day. Cold, but clear and sharp. I fired up my Nikon D70 and wandered the savanna. I needed one ungloved hand to work the camera, so I moved quickly.

The best views at Pleasant Valley Conservancy are of the ridge-top savannas (Units 8, 10, and 11A). The photo here is typical, and this site can certainly be called a tallgrass savanna. The understory is mostly Indian grass (Sorghastrum nutans), with patches here and there of little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium).

Those interested in savanna restoration should know that it has taken about 10 years to get to the state you see here. The work has been dominated by tree removal and brush control, especially buckthorn, but these savannas have been burned annually for the past 7 or 8 years, generally in the spring, although we burn in the fall when we intend to plant. And the site you see here (Unit 10, looking east from the west end of the unit), has been planted at least three times. We used a dry-mesic seed mix on the more open (prairie-like) parts and a savanna mix on the areas with less open canopy. Both mixes had Indian grass but only the dry-mesic mix had little bluestem.

Most of the trees visible are bur oaks, although there are occasional white oaks and shagbark hickories. Initially there were quite a few black oaks crowding the open-grown bur oaks, and most of them were removed during the initial restoration (lots of large burn piles in those days!).

Some people don't like to see this much grass, thinking that it crowds out the forbs. However, I think this is misguided. Why?

A savanna is not a flower garden.
From early May until late August, this savanna is dominated by forbs, and the species diversity is quite high. It is only in early September when the prairie grasses start to take over.
Savannas must be burned, preferably annually, and warm-season grasses, such as seen here, make the best fuel. It's a lot easier to burn a grass-dominated savanna than an oak-leaf-dominated one.

Not all savannas have this much grass. It depends mainly on the canopy cover, since these warm-season grasses are only able to compete where sunlight is plentiful. My web site has some details on how we measure canopy cover, which is about 30% for the savanna shown here. Other nearby savannas, with canopy cover around 50%, have lots less warm-season grasses.

Little bluestem is more of a bunch grass than Indian grass. However, it is a very stable, long-lived grass which does extremely well in dry sites. Once established, it is hard to get rid of (who would want to?). The photo to the left shows a typical clump.

Another consideration is that there is lots of year-to-year variability with these grasses, depending mainly upon rainfall. We have found that in wet years Indian grass tends to dominate whereas in dry years little bluestem takes over. We watched this succession take place in Unit 4, the nearby prairie remnant. When we first restored this prairie in 1998 (mainly by burning) Indian grass flourished. However, during the dry years of the mid 2000s, most of the Indian grass disappeared and the site was dominated by little bluestem. But since 2008 we have been in a wet cycle again and Indian grass is back in force. With global warming in the offing, who knows what changes might occur?

Christmas bird count

2012-01-02T11:05:00.000-08:00

Yesterday Kathie, Susan, and I did the annual Audubon Christmas bird count at Pleasant Valley Conservancy. This is the 112th annual Christmas bird count run by the National Audubon Society, which this year ran from December 14, 2011 through January 5, 2012. The count in our area was held on January 1 (New Year's Day).

This is about the 10th year that the count has been held at Pleasant Valley Conservancy. Every year the weather is different. One year the roads were sheets of ice, another year there was a foot of snow. This year there was no snow at all and we could drive up to the top of our service road with no difficulty. However, there was a heavy wind (around 25 mph from WNW), so we did the whole count from our car. It really worked well. I drove and Kathie and Susan counted the birds. We were able to creep along with the windows open, the heater on, and the engine close to idle. After climbing to the top, we started at the East Basin and drove slowly all the way to the west end of the ridge along the service road. Then we took the side road to the Rocky Overlook. Finally, we drove slowly along the whole length of Pleasant Valley Road. We spent about 2 hours counting birds.

Because of the strong wind, most of the birds were hunkered down, so our count was pretty low. However, we did see a bald eagle, a red-headed woodpecker, two hairy woodpeckers, a tufted titmouse, a nuthatch, some chickadees, a large "vee" of Canada geese, and 11 turkeys, plus the usual collection of crows and junkos.

The bird count is organized by "circles", each centered on a city. There are 15 circles in Wisconsin, and anyone can participate. See this link for details.

New Year's Day event canceled!

2011-12-31T08:00:00.000-08:00

The New Year's Day ski/snowshoeing event is canceled due to the lack of snow!

The last three winters we have had lots of early December snow which stayed and stayed, making a New Year's ski/snowshoe event possible. One tends to forget that southern Wisconsin is not really in the "snow belt". Bits of light snow here and there. Lots of very cold days in January and February. Perhaps some huge wet snows in the spring. (The night my daughter Emily was born, Apr. 9, 1973, we had almost two feet of heavy wet snow. The whole city closed down.) But snow that provides for predictable cross-country skiing/snowshoeing is rare. That's why they hold the Birkebeiner race in Hayward.

I delved through my hard disk and found lots of snowless winter photos for Pleasant Valley Conservancy, such as the one shown here (taken January 3, 2007). In those years, we got used to doing most of our brush cutting in the winter.

Progress on oak woods clearing

2011-12-28T13:31:00.000-08:00

The snowless December has been fantastic for work in the woods, and Amanda has been making nice progress. The photo shows an area that has just been opened up. The faint red color is not some Photoshop finagling; it is due to the red dye used with the Garlon 4. Dozens of stems, large and small, were cut with a brush cutter, and treated with herbicide. All the cut branches were turned into a brush pile (just out of view to the left).

This work is in an area at the northeast corner of the north woods. That was one of the few areas in the woods that had been logged. The red rectangle in the 1937 air photo below shows the area where we are now working. This area had been logged previous to 1937 and was starting to brush in again. The trees in this area today are all less than 80 years old and are mostly junk. There is even a small aspen clone here. (For guidance, the large white patch below the red rectangle was an ag field and is now Toby's Prairie. The ridge top and the south-facing slope are savanna or prairie.)

In order to provide more detail of the 1937 air photo, I have posted it at a larger size than usual. Click on it to bring it up to size.

We have a lot of work to do in this area, which is around 10-15 acres.

Ice and snow

2011-12-23T07:52:00.000-08:00

This is a photo Amanda took Wednesday when she was getting ready to start work. Quite a bit different weather from what we had in Madison (where there was just a light snow).

This is a view of the south-facing slope (Unit 6), looking up toward the Rocky Overlook. I love to see the tallgrass prairie weighted down with ice crystals!

Amanda is also reporting seeing eagles every day: "I did get to see 3 eagles today! One soared over me as I was getting out of my car this morning and then looped back and forth over the valley. The other two were in a pair and soared over the cabin before landing on the other side of the valley."

We rarely see eagles in warmer weather, but since we are about ten miles from the Wisconsin River, it is probably not surprising that we are seeing them now.

Every year is different. Last year at this time we had almost a foot of snow!

Update of oak woodlands web pages

2011-12-22T14:49:00.000-08:00

The oak woodlands at Pleasant Valley Conservancy are getting more attention in our restoration work, so it seemed a good idea to update the web pages. I have added some new air photos prepared by GIS, and restructured the rest of the pages. Also added is a fairly extensive treatment of the roadside flora of County F. This roadcut has been an important source of seeds for our restoration work. Thanks to a 2011 Landowner Incentive Program (LIP) grant, we are able to do a lot more work on this fine oak woodlands.
I am not too happy about the resolution of the above photo. It looks great in GIS, but the demands of the web don't permit use of the original (almost 4 MB in size). However, I think it shows well the contrast between the north-facing slope, where tree density is very high and the canopy is over 90% closed, and the south-facing savanna, where the canopy is only 20-50% closed. Double clicking on this photo will make it larger.

Note the blue dotted line through the middle of the woods. This is a woods trail that we maintain and is open to anyone. As part of the LIP grant, our crew went through with brush cutters and herbicide and cleaned out the blow-downs and other annoying brush. It is strictly a walking trail, so don't expect a wide patch. We have actually had this trail for almost 30 years, but only recently have we had time to maintain it. Keep it in mind for next spring, especially in May, when the trilliums and large yellow lady slippers are in bloom.

I have also restructured the material in the web pages on the woods burns. It's still not detailed, but does give an overview of what we are doing. We have now had several successful fall burns and are initiating a two-year cycle for these burns. Whether we'll be able to keep to that schedule will depend a lot on the fall weather.
Although most of the County F road cut has been in good shape for years, we never were able to finish the last 500 feet until recently (photo above). This was a major November effort (thanks in part to the LIP grant). Amanda has now been clearing all the invasive shrubs in the woods above the road cut, and if we are blessed with reasonable weather, we may have this whole northeast corner cleared before spring.

Good time to burn brush piles

2011-12-19T13:33:00.000-08:00

We had a nice light snow Friday night, making this an ideal time to burn a brush pile. We have been building one major pile since mid-summer and we generally burn it with the first snow.

We have been building and burning this same pile along Pleasant Valley Road for the past five years. During summer, it mainly gets weeds such as sweet clover, wild parsnip, and hedge parsley, armloads that are too big to get rid of any other way. Garlic mustard would also be included if we had any to get rid of. These are flowering plants which might produce viable seed if allowed to lie on the ground. Therefore, we carefully throw them on the pile so that the seeds cannot spread. Alternatively, we bag them and throw the bags on the pile.

In the fall, we have plenty of woody vegetation to throw on the same pile, and this provides good fuel for the burn.

We build this pile right next to the town road, since that makes it easy for us to get rid of all the "bad" stuff, throwing from the back of the truck or utility vehicle. By Christmastime this pile is fairly large, and has lots of flammable material.

Since this pile is right next to the Valley Prairie and just across the road from the Pocket Prairie, we need to wait for snow before we burn the pile, since both of these prairies have lots of flammable material. If we had a spot fire with each of them, a whole prairie might go up in flames.

We don't need much snow, just enough to cover the ground.

Yesterday, Amanda and Diane spent most of the day burning and tending this pile. (Kathie and I mainly kibitzed.)

There is a real technique to burning a brush pile. The important thing is to turn all the biomass into a small pile of ashes. The pile should be lighted from the bottom with drip torch fuel (3:1 ratio of diesel to gasoline). A Chapin stainless steel sprayer works well, since the fire can be brought into the center of the pile as well as horizontally. (Don't ever use gasoline alone! Highly dangerous!)

The main work in burning a brush pile is consolidating the brush, logs, and other plant material into the center. The goal is to end up with a small area of ashes alone. There is always a lot of wood that has rolled away from the burning pile. A pitchfork works well here, since pieces of burning wood can be lifted up and tossed back in the center. If a pitchfork is not available, a long-handled shovel can be used.

Because of the snow, there is no danger that the fire will spread out of the burn zone, so once the pile has been well consolidated, one can leave it smoldering. However, it is a good idea to check the pile before leaving for the day.

One of the interesting phenomena with such a pile is that late next spring there may often be a zone of seedlings surrounding the area of the pile. These represent viable seeds that were just outside the hot zone and hence did not get killed by the fire. A glyphosate spray takes care of these seedlings.

Indian summer burns

2011-12-16T14:47:00.000-08:00

I am in the process of preparing an extended spreadsheet which includes all of the prescribed burns we have done since we first started in 1997. For each year I have a separate column for spring and fall. Most prairie people only burn in the spring, but there are some real advantages in doing woodland and savanna burns in the fall, and we have been doing these since our early days of restoration. (Our first woodland burn was on Hallowe'en in 1999.)

I have tried to keep careful notes of all our burns, and to a great extent I have been successful. Notes include maps of the proposed burn unit, a detailed narrative of each burn, a map of the results, and photos. In most cases, I have returned a day or two after the burn and walked the whole burn unit again, making notes and taking more photos.

The window for doing fall burns is narrower than that for spring burns, although fall is often more favorable. This is because woodlands are usually on the north-facing slopes, and snow hangs on longer in the spring. In fact, once the snow does melt, the spring flora comes up quickly. Burns at that time will set everything back.

The ideal weather for a fall burn is that delightful period called Indian summer. This is the warm spell that succeeds one or two hard freezes. The freezes help bring the oak leaves down, and the warm spell brings on a favorable temperature and low humidity. For instance, on the savanna burn we did 6 November 2004, the temperature at 2 PM was 75-78 F and the R.H. was 18-20%. There were no clouds and the air was clear and sunny. Ideal conditions for a burn! And we didn't need a permit!

Native Americans burned every autumn, waiting for that spell of warm weather when the fire would carry well.

IPAW meeting at Milwaukee

2011-12-16T09:50:00.000-08:00

This week IPAW (Invasive Plants Association of Wisconsin) held a nice symposium as part of the North Central Weed Science Society and the Midwest Invasive Plant Network. Three days of weeds, brush, invasive plants, herbicide physiology, corn, soybeans, and others.

To see the program, follow this link.

I gave a 30 minute paper entitled Buckthorn Ecology and Eradication, which summarized my work on buckthorn that has appeared in a number of Tom's Blog posts over the past several years. I plan to post the Power Point for this talk on my web site, once I get the file reformatted properly.

Mowing next spring's fire breaks

2011-12-09T09:02:00.000-08:00

Although skiers may be unhappy, this has been a great December for restorationists, and we have been able to do a lot of tasks now instead of in the spring. Yesterday, Kathie mowed the fire breaks at Black Earth Rettenmund Prairie.

The burn at this prairie is fairly complicated, so we like to get it done early. Getting the fire breaks mowed the previous season makes a lot of sense.

We have three burn units at Rettenmund Prairie, north, south, and saddle. Because the south unit still has a significant brush problem (a legacy of years of neglect), we burn it every year. The north unit and saddle are burned in alternate years. Last year we did not burn the saddle, and burned both the north and south units. Because these two are separated by the saddle, we did two separate burns. This year the north is being given a rest, so that the south and saddle can be burned together.

Thus, this coming year we will only have a single burn. This simplifies the fire break situation, since we need to only have a single break.

We use our small Kubota tractor to mow the breaks. This little gem is ideal for prairie fire breaks, as the photo shows.

Dealing with a large blow-down

2011-12-09T08:31:00.000-08:00

Last summer we lost a large bur oak on our south-facing slope. See last July's post for details.

Unfortunately, as the July photo above shows, this tree fell in a dangerous spot, and presented a considerable hazard for next spring's burn of the south slope. We could not leave it lying. We waited until the prairie had senesced and the tree had time to "age" before dealing with it. Yesterday, Integrated Restorations came in with chain saws and cleaned up the site.

Even though the big tree was down, it was a major job to cut because it was not completely on the ground. As last summer's photo shows, the branches were still high in the air. The wood of a bur oak is dense and hence very heavy. Cutting such a tree down is not a trivial task. Obviously, we left it for the professionals.
As the photo above shows, there was lots of wood here, and the site was up the hill from the town road (Pleasant Valley Road). The crew cut up all the small stuff and made a brush pile. The big wood was cut into pieces, rolled down the hill, and taken to the cabin, where Craig split it with an axe. We now have enough fire wood for the rest of the winter.

The brush pile was placed in a location where its flames would not damage any nearby trees. (Dry brush piles burn especially hot and create high flames.) This brush pile will almost certainly burn up when we burn the south-slope prairie this spring.

The photo here also shows down the hill the still-black Crane Prairie which we burned a few weeks ago.

Black Earth Rettenmund Prairie web site updated

2011-12-06T16:15:00.000-08:00

In addition to Pleasant Valley Conservancy, Kathie and I (together with Willis Brown) are the stewards of Black Earth Rettenmund Prairie, a Prairie Enthusiasts (TPE) site. This small but high-quality prairie is quite well known and folks come from all over to see it. The wood lily bloom each year in the middle of June is famous, but the prairie is fine anytime of the year.

The web site of this prairie is hosted on the pages of the Empire-Sauk Chapter of TPE, which I also manage. Web sites tend to get moldy after a while and need help. Today I spent quite a while updating the BE site. Among other things, I added a new map which brings things up to date. (The Gateway Prairie, one of our better successes, is shown for the first time.)

Although a lot of the changes were cosmetic, the whole site was restructured to make it easier to follow. Also, I updated all the stewardship material, since there had been quite a few changes. If you haven't accessed this web site in a while, you might find it interesting to read again now.

One stewardship job we are making great progress is sumac control. We have hopes that with consistent attention over the next two or three years we will have it eradicated. In mid October, I used GPS to locate all the remaining sumac clones (the red leaves in the fall make the plants easy to spot). Using GIS, I generated a new map showing the locations of the 16 sumac clones I found. Rex, who we hired for this job, basal barked every stem of every clone.

We undoubtedly missed some stems, but we'll be back next year (and the year after, etc.) to get them.

Web site being updated

2011-12-02T11:31:00.000-08:00

My web site (PleasantValleyConservancy.org) is apparently widely read, and I continue to get comments from across Wisconsin and the Midwest. However, any web site gets "stale" after a while, and needs updating. Now that our field work is tapering off, I have had some time to work on it.

The Home page in particular had become a bit of a mess. I kept adding new things more or less willy nilly, and it was confusing to know where to go. So I completely redesigned the page. I kept enough introductory material so that new comers would be able to get oriented but I also added a box near the top that announces which web pages have been updated. And of course, Tom's Blog (which you are now reading) provides up-to-the-minute information.

The Menu bar on the left side of the page has also been modified. And two new pages have been added, one on Awards and Recognitions, the other on the East Basin. The latter complements the three blog posts that were published in November (Turning woods into prairie, parts 1, 2, and 3).

None of this is any big deal, but some people might like to know what is happening.

Getting seed mixes ready

2011-11-29T08:06:00.000-08:00

We have almost 200 species of seeds collected, and now is the time to construct seed mixes. Most of these won't be used until spring (after the burns), but some will be used now, so all the mixes need to be made. This is mainly Kathie's responsibility, and my job is to figure out how many acres of each seed mix we will be planting. I use GIS for this, which is convenient but not essential.

Our possible seed mixes are: dry prairie (DP), dry-mesic (DM), open savanna (OS), woodland, wet-mesic (WM), and wetland, but this year we need only DM, OS, WM, and woodland. The assignment of each species to one of these categories is based mainly on the data of Curtis, as collated and summarized by Rich Henderson in a very useful Technical Bulletin of the DNR. (Now out of print, but available on-line at UW-Madison Digital Collections.)

Some species fit in more than one category. For instance, stiff and showy goldenrod are in DP, DM, and OS, New Jersey tea is in DM and OS, and New England aster is in DM, OS, and WM. So when the mixes are made, we have to take that into consideration.

The first thing to do is determine how many acres of each habitat type will be planted. Then a ratio between the various categories is calculated. This year, the numbers are: DM, 2; OS, 1; WM, 0.5, woods, 1.

A large bag is labeled for each category. Starting with A (Amorpha canescens) and going through Z (Zizia aureus), the available seed for each species is split and distributed into each bag. For instance, since lead plant is being used only in DM and OS, twice as much lead plant seed is put in the DM bag than in the OS bag. The actual distribution does not need to be very precise, and is done by handfuls.

It takes three people to do the mixes, one with the master list, two doing the distributions.

The DM and OS seed mixes will be used mainly for areas where we have removed invasives such as sumac, sunflower, and pale Indian plantain, although we are also replanting (supplementing) several prairie and savanna areas. The WM mix will be used for the Barn Prairie and Crane Prairie, with a small amount in the wetter part of the Pocket Prairie.

The woodland mix will be used in the road cut along County F, where some areas have been newly cleared. This mix will also be used in an area of the north woods where a lot of honeysuckles were removed.

Reseeding areas where invasives have been removed makes a lot of sense. If the invasives have been in the site for any period of time, they have shaded out many of the desirable species. Removing the invasives from an area creates a hole where other undesirable species can get established. Such undesirables include annuals such as foxtail grass, giant ragweed, and fleabane, which may flourish. The newly planted seeds may take several years to develop into substantial plants, but eventually they should take over, and the annuals will subside.

Because the number of species available differs from year to year, we prepare a new master list each year. The seed list for 2011, an Excel file, has 196 species. I would be happy to send a copy of this list to anyone who wants one. Send me an email.

Turning woods into prairie: part three

2011-11-19T12:30:00.000-08:00

This is the final installment of my post on the work we did transforming the 5-acre East Basin site from woods to prairie. The first part gave the background and described the major work of logging to clear the site. The second part including the other preliminaries leading up to planting the prairie in Nov 2009 and the control of weeds.

The present post presents results of prairie growth in the second growing season (2011) and gives a summary of costs of the whole project.

In contrast to the hard work involved in previous years, the summer of 2011 was easy, involving observations of growth of the prairie, and minor seed collecting (for planting in other areas).

The season started off with a very successful prescribed burn. Normally we would have not burned this prairie until after the third growing season, but we were operating under NRCS rules and they requested a spring burn in 2011. Since we had mowed the prairie twice the previous season, we had doubts about whether there would be enough fuel to carry a fire, but it turned out that about half of the site burned fairly well. This burn was carried out by Kathie and I with our regular crew (Amanda, Marci, and Susan).
In 2011 we followed prairie development carefully. Although there were plenty of weeds and rampant annuals the second year, the predominant species were native prairie plants. By mid-summer, the general aspect was of a lush, 2nd year prairie (see photo below). This was the first time that we could begin to think that perhaps the whole restoration process might be worth the time and money.

Although most planted prairies are relatively low in diversity during their first few years, in the East Basin we had a number of “good” plants showing flowers or flower buds. By late summer the situation was even better. In fact, a few species did well enough that they served as sources for seed collection:June grass, prairie brome, pasture thistle, woodland and Virginia wild rye, Gaura, and black- and brown-eyed Susans. The 2011 list (50 species) is given in the table at the bottom of this post.

The principal invasive plant was sweet clover, but this was primarily localized to the upper part of the southeast corner. It was hand-pulled by our regular crew and by the summer interns. The interns also cruised the whole site and pulled other weeds.

Reasonably careful records were kept of the work involved in restoration of the East Basin. The two main activities were 1) logging and other activities involved in removing the woody vegetation, and 2) seed collecting to provide the seed mix used in planting. Other activities such as weeding, mowing, and prescribed burning were only about 15% of the total work.

Total work was somewhat over 3000 hours, or about 600 hours per acre. Actual cost would depend upon the hourly rate, which would vary depending on location and availability of personnel. Assuming $20 per hour, for instance, the total cost would be $60,000 or $12,000 per acre. This is at the high end of costs for prairie restoration, but would be reasonable for oak savanna restoration.

Latin name	Common name
Achillea millefolium	Yarrow
Agastache nepetoides	Yellow giant hyssop
Agastache scrophulariaefolia	Purple giant hyssop
Arnoglossum atriplicifolia	Pale Indian plantain
Aster laevis	Smooth blue aster
Aster lateriflorus	Calico aster
Aster novae-angliae	New England aster
Aster oolentangiensis	Sky-blue aster
Aster pilosus	Hairy aster
Aster sagittifolius	Arrow-leaved aster
Aster lanceolatus	Marsh aster
Bromus kalmii	Prairie brome
Cirsium discolor	Pasture thistle
Desmodium paniculatum	Panciled tick-trefoil
Dodecatheon meadia	Shooting star
Elymus canadensis	Canada wild rye
Elymus hystrix	Bottlebrush grass
Elymus riparius	Woodland wild rye
Elymus virginicus	Virginia wild rye
Erigeron philadelphicus	Marsh fleabane
Erigeron strigosus	Daisy fleabane
Eupatorium altissimum	Tall boneset
Eupatorium perfoliatum	Boneset
Gaura biennis	Biennial gaura
Gentianella quinquefolia	Stiff gentian
Helenium autumnale	Sneezeweed
Helianthus decapetalus	Pale sunflower
Heliopsis helianthoides	Ox-eye sunflower
Hypericum punctatum	Dotted St. Johns wort
Koeleria macrantha	June grass
Lobelia siphilitica	Great blue lobelia
Monarda fistulosa	Wild bergamot
Oenothera biennis	Common evening-primrose
Panicum virgatum	Switch grass
Penstemon digitalis	Penstemon
Phytolacca americana	Pokeweed
Polygonum punctatum	Smartweed
Ratibida pinnata	Yellow coneflower
Rudbeckia hirta	Black-eyed Susan
Rudbeckia triloba	Brown-eyed Susan
Silphium integrifolium	Rosinweed
Solidago canadensis	Common goldenrod
Solidago missouriensis	Missouri goldenrod
Solidago nemoralis	Gray goldenrod
Solidago rigida	Stiff goldenrod
Solidago speciosa	Showy goldenrod
Sorghastrum nutans	Indian grass
Tradescantia ohiensis	Common spiderwort
Verbena hastata	Blue vervain
Verbena stricta	Hoary vervain

Late fall burn

2011-11-17T18:39:00.000-08:00

We had planned to do a late fall burn but conditions had not been favorable until today. We needed a couple of hard freezes to set back all this year's vegetation and then a warm sunny day with relatively low humidity. We got the hard freezes, the sun, and the low humidity, but not the warmth, but it appeared that if we didn't burn now, we would lose our chance.

Our principal goal was a good burn of the Sandhill Crane Wet Prairie, and this we got. This prairie had a very lush stand of Indian grass this year, and this species carries a fire quite well. However, we had a strong wind out of the west, and because the Crane Prairie runs NW/SE, the wind was blowing across the narrow part of the prairie, making the burn a bit tricky. The map below shows the Crane Prairie outlined in orange, and the wind direction. (Double click to enlarge the map for more detail.)
One drip torch backburned down from Pleasant Valley Road and the second drip torch created a big series of short head fires from the west fire break. We did not want to light a single fire line along the west fire break because this would create a huge fire. As can be seen in the map above and the photo below, upwind of the Crane Prairie was our whole south-facing slope, with about 20 acres of very flammable prairie grass. We certainly did not want to burn this!

In order to keep the fire relatively small, we lighted in strips. This worked, although it was time consuming. (It took us almost three hours to burn this 3-acre prairie!) We had a crew of seven.

Doing a burn in such cold weather is tricky. The temperature during the night had fallen to the mid 20s and when we arrived at 9 AM the temperature was still only 30 F. Since we needed a lot of water, we reactivated our water pump which had been drained in September. Since well water has a temperature of about 50 F, we did not have to worry about our backpack water cans freezing up. We started to light about noon, at which time the temperature had increased to 37 F and the relative humidity was in the upper 40s. An hour later the temperature was still the same but the R.H. had dropped into the 30s. By the time we finished at 3 PM the sun was starting down and the R.H. was on its way back up. Fortunately, we were able to get our burn finished during this narrow window.

Another problem we had was that there were several buildings at the downwind end of the Crane Prairie, and we had to protect them. Therefore, the first thing we did was to burn around these buildings. Even with extreme caution, we still almost came to grief, as a shingle on the roof of the historic corn crib got hit by a burning ember. Fortunately, it could easily be put out.

One of our reasons for wanting to burn the Crane Prairie this fall was that there had been a large infestation of pale Indian plantain, the clonal and highly invasive composite that we are trying to eradicate. This species appears early in the spring, producing large rosettes, which will be very visible in the bare prairie and easily herbicided. If we had not burned, the plantain would have been hiding under all the prairie debris and would have been lots more difficult to spray.

Turning woods into prairie: part two

2011-11-14T13:03:00.000-08:00

This is a continuation of my story about how we turned a very degraded 5 acre hilly woods into prairie.

Refer to my previous post for part one.

In the spring of 2008 we girdled the 100 or so aspen. (The oaks and other hardwoods had been removed in the winter of 2007-2008.)

Although the site was not too bad in the summer of 2008, by the summer of 2009 the weeds were running rampant. Although most of the weeds were annuals, there were also plenty of perennials. Normally, for a degraded site like this we would call in the ag co-op to spray the whole site with glyphosate. However, our site was much too hilly and full of aspens for a truck-mounted boom sprayer. Therefore, a contractor was hired to spray on foot the whole site using a 300-foot hose operated from the back of a pick-up truck. The operator took three days to spray the whole 5-acre site.
The photo below shows what the site looked ten days after herbicide treatment. Another treatment was done in some areas of regrowth in August. By fall, most of the vegetation had dried up and blown away, so that the site was mostly bare.

In September 2009 the now-dead aspens were cut and stacked for burning. In October 2009 the contractor and our own crew spent several days burning the aspen and brush piles, and hand-clearing the site of remaining large logs.

In early November we did a prescribed burn on all parts of the site which had sufficient fuel to carry a fire.

Once we had the site cleared, and the preliminary work was done, we started to get ready for prairie planting. Because of the size of the site, we had archived seeds collected in 2008 and these were pooled with the 2009 collections. Kathie put together an extensive seed list of over 100 species. Because we were operating under NRCS rules with uncertified seed, the planting rate was 50 seeds per square foot, a high rate.

The planting itself was done by a group of volunteers on November 14, 2009.
During the first growing season (2010), we monitored the site to see what came up. In early June the following species were seen: lupine (flowering), spiked lobelia, pasteur thistle, spiderwort, venus-looking glass, fleabane, alum root, June grass (flowering), black-eyed Susan, and Canada milk vetch. Later in the summer, quite a few more species were seen, including several other grasses.

It is routine in prairie planting to mow at least once, and preferable several times, during the first growing season. Mowing prevents quite a few undesirable species (including numerous annuals) from flowering and setting seed. Also, mowing keeps the site open so that the tiny prairie plants, which are spending most of their first year establishing root systems, can get light. Again, because of the hills, we could not call in a local farmer or co-op to mow. Kathie mowed most of the site with a brush hog on the back of our Kubota tractor. (This was a potentially dangerous job which Kathie handled brilliantly!)

Amanda mowed by hand with a Stihl brush cutter those areas that were too difficult to get with the tractor.

Next post I will cover the very successful 2nd growing season and give an idea of costs.

Turning woods into prairie: part one

2011-11-11T11:28:00.000-08:00

Most prairies planted de novo are derived from cropland or old fields. Planting into such habitats is reasonably straightforward and moderately inexpensive.

We have planted four prairies into such habitats, and our experience has been briefly described at this site. However, many natural areas contain sites that were once prairie, and because of fire suppression have turned into woods. This is often the fate of open areas in our part of the Midwest.

At Pleasant Valley Conservancy we have two prairies that were planted into wooded sites. One of these, the Sandhill Crane Wet Prairie, was small and was only moderately wooded.

The other site, which we call the East Basin, is a different story. This 5 acre site was out of view at the far eastern end of the Conservancy and was easy to ignore. However, it was so ugly that we decided we had to tackle it. I'm not sure that we would have started this restoration if we had known what we were getting in for, but once we got started, we had to keep going. Although we were able to obtain modest grants from the Landowner Incentive Program and the Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program, most of the restoration work was funded by our private Savanna Oak Foundation, Inc., with help at critical stages from volunteers.

We have now reached the end of the second growing season of this new prairie and I have prepared a detailed summary of what we did and how we did it. Perhaps more importantly, we have detailed records so I am able to provide concrete data on the restoration work (hours and dollar costs). The present blog post is Part One of a summary of what is a 40 page PDF document that I will eventually put on the web site.

At the time of the 1937 air photo, the East Basin was completely open, with essentially no trees or other woody vegetation. Because it faces south and southwest, it seemed reasonable that it might have been a prairie remnant, even though the slope is not nearly as steep as our main south-facing hill.

A pre-restoration walk-through of the East Basin

After we had finally decided to restore the East Basin, on October 1, 2007 I did a “walk-through” of the whole site. This proved to be a difficult undertaking, as the site was very brushy. The honeysuckles were huge, and it was hard to get through them. Because of the heavy shade, the understory was very sparse. Herbaceous plants included an occasional Eupatorium rugosum, sweet cicely, Hackelia, and Aster lateriflorus. There was a large aspen clone, later estimated to be more than 100 trees. There were also some small hackberries, and small and medium-sized black (or possibly Hill's) oaks. However, most of the large trees were elm, box elder, black walnut, and black cherry.

An air photo analysis by GIS showed that the East Basin had remained mostly open through the early 1960s. By 1968 hedge rows could be seen starting and by 1976, the E side was fully wooded. By 1990 the whole site was wooded and remained so until the site was cleared in 2008.

The soils of the East Basin are quite different from those in the rest of the Conservancy. The pH values are the lowest we have, between 5 and 6, are low in calcium, and quite sandy, with some areas being iron-rich.

The initial clearing began in December 2007 and extended through the whole month of January 2008. This was a fairly large snow year so most of the stumps were cut tall and had to be recut in the summer. The members of the logging crew were experienced restoration ecologists and were careful to avoid any damage to the site. To prevent resprouting, all trunks were treated with herbicide (triclopyr). Two or three of the crew operated chainsaws and two or three others dragged the brush and small logs to burn piles. Most of the cut trees were removed for fire wood, although a significant amount of trees of saw-log quality were transported to sawmills. Also, a neighbor moved in a small saw mill and turned the largest black walnuts into lumber.

The photo above is a view from the top of the East Basin, showing an early stage of tree clearing. The cut stump in the foreground, with green color, has been treated with herbicide (Garlon 3A) to prevent resprouting.

A lot of downed wood was generated and getting rid of it can be expensive. A barter arrangement was made with a Mount Horeb dealer in split firewood. He winched the down logs to the top of the hill. The logs were then cut to firewood length and allowed to age until summer, when they were split before further aging. Truckloads of firewood were removed in the late fall of 2008. Some cherry logs of saw-log size were donated to a neighbor who paid to have them winched to the town road where a sawmill operator could reach them.

The first spring after clearing the East Basin was an interesting experience. We had decided to wait to see what came up spontaneously before we started serious restoration work. The first thing that appeared was shooting star (Dodecatheon meadii), in several large areas. This fine prairie species is capable of remaining alive without flowering for many years beneath fairly heavy shade, and then when sunlight is brought in it immediately flowers. Data from the East Basin indicate that shooting star can remain alive but suppressed for at least 40 years.

In addition to good plants, there were many “bad” plants, including scattered brambles, honeysuckles, a few small buckthorns, and two patches of garlic mustard (the only place we have found it here).

Past experience had shown that once an area had been opened up and sunlight was available, exotic invaders thrive. Therefore, in the summer of 2008 we decided to eradicate them while they were still small. For this purpose, we sprayed all of the undesirable resprouts or small plants with Garlon 3A. Our regular crew did this job, moving systematically across the East Basin and spraying every plant seen. In addition to the shrubs mentioned, the crew also sprayed any Canada goldenrod, Canada thistle, or mullein, all invasive and very undesirable plants.

In my next post I will describe the steps we took to turn this orphan into a prairie, including cost data.

Mowing for fall burns

2011-11-04T07:45:00.001-07:00

In the next week or so we hope to burn the wet prairies (Crane, Valley, and Barn) that are situated along the south side of Pleasant Valley Road . These prairies are separated from the wetland by a mowed trail which serves as a fire break. However, this year the Indian grass in these prairies is very tall and lush, which causes concern, since we don't want spot fires carrying over into the marsh. The photo above shows how close the tall prairie is to the wetland.

One technique for reducing spot-fire hazard is to mow a wide strip in the prairie next to the regular fire break. The photo above shows Kathie using our Kubota to do this. She did two wide strips and then came back and used the mower to blow all the loose grass farther into the prairie. Finally, I drove our Kawasaki Mule over the mowed area to tamp down some of the unmowed fragments.

The plan involves first burning a wide black line (fire break) along the prairie edge and then backburning down the hill from the road. We need a sunny, relatively low-humidity day for this, which we hopefully will get sometime before Thanksgiving. Once the fire break has been burned in, the burn itself should not take very long.

In an earlier post I raved about how handy the Kubota with underneath deck mower is for this sort of mowing. With care, it can even be used on relatively steep terrain. It is lots easier (and faster) to use than the sort of walk-behind mower that is often used for this sort of work.

Nice time to see prairie dropseed

2011-10-30T10:55:00.000-07:00

Prairie dropseed (Sporobolus heterolepis) is one of the prime conservative prairie grasses and is a good indicator of a high-quality site. It has a C value (coefficient of conservatism) of 10 (the max!). The best sites are dry to dry-mesic prairie remnants. Now is a good time to survey such prairie remnants for this species, as its fall color and growth form are characteristic.

At Pleasant Valley Conservancy we had several remnants where prairie dropseed was present. The best was Unit 1 (Kathie's Prairie), which has dozens of colonies. Unit 4 (Tom's Prairie) had two colonies and nearby in Unit 10 there was a single clump growing out of the dolomite. Finally, there were some small colonies growing out of the dolomite on the Rocky Overlook (Unit 6).

After our first burn of Unit 1, in 1997, the dropseed flourished and set lots of seed. We used this to plant other areas. In addition, we set out greenhouse-raised plants in some likely areas. One of these was the sandy slope at the SE corner of the Pocket Prairie. Because of the sand, this area favors dry-site plants. (Lupine does very well here.)

It took quite a few years for dropseed to get well established at this site, but now it is really flourishing.

Several days ago we collected smooth aster seeds here and I was struck by the great color of the dropseed. As the photo shows, the smooth aster is also quite colorful.

Prairie dropseed isn't always this colorful. Yesterday I was helping collect seeds at Hagen Prairie and noticed that the dropseed was more of a plain brown color (although still growing in characteristic clumps).

New high resolution air photos available

2011-10-24T14:28:00.000-07:00

New higher resolution air photos have been available in Wisconsin for a few months but I just got around to accessing them. The whole state of Wisconsin was "flown" in early spring 2010, in so-called "leaf off" conditions, at relatively high resolution. These images are available free, and because they are in GeoTIFF format, you don't need GIS to look at them (although they load into GIS without any effort). These photos were taken by the Wisconsin Regional Orthophotography Consortium (WROC), which is a partnership with state and local governments. (The air photography was done by Ayres Associates and Aero-Metrics.) These photos are completely in the public domain, and can be downloaded free of charge from the WisconsinView.org web site.

These air photos are at higher resolution than those created for agricultural purposes by the National Agriculture Imagery Program (NAIP). Although the NAIP photos, taken "leaf on", have advantages for ecological and restoration purposes, the WROC photos have some advantages since they permit much better view of cultural features (roads, trails, houses, parking lots, etc.).

When I first looked at the photos of Pleasant Valley, I got a real surprise. A rather large "funny black area" was visible covering the south-facing slope and the Crane and Valley Prairies. The interpretation is that our area was "flown" after our 23 March 2010 spring burn, but before our 29 March savanna burn. The black area where the burn took place really stood out. (The blacks of the north-facing woods areas are not caused by a burn, but simply by the dense forest.)Don't be fooled by the low resolution of the photo here. I had to greatly reduce the resolution and size of the photo for use on my web site. The original GeoTIFF photo is of very high resolution and can be viewed equally well by the standard Windows XP photo viewer or by any photo editing program. However, be warned that these are large photos. Each of the two photos is over 500 MB in size!

To access these air photos, go to the WisconsinView.org web site and sign in. If you haven't accessed the site before you have to fill out a form, but there is no charge. Once signed in, go to the Aerial Photography page and then select WROC and Other Air Photos. Select your county and a map will come up overlaid with a grid that divides the county into Quarter Quads (based on the standard U.S.G.S. topographic quads). Once the selected photo is downloaded (it takes a bit of time), unzip it using the standard Windows Zip utility. You can use it either in GIS or with any photo editing software. Because Pleasant Valley Conservancy overlapped a NE and NW quad, I had to download two photos to cover the whole site. However, the two photos merged seamlessly in GIS.

These new high resolution air photos are extremely valuable for restoration purposes. You'll be surprised at the things you will learn!

Buckthorn: late fall reprise

2011-10-21T10:01:00.000-07:00

After a big push, we have finished with sumac for the year, and have turned to buckthorn.

This is a good time of year to attack buckthorn because most of the native vegetation has senesced and turned brown, but buckthorn retains most of its dark green leaves and can be easily detected. Since most of our buckthorn plants are small, they are really hard to spot during most of the growing season.

Those following these posts know that buckthorn is a demon to eradicate. Although we have no large buckthorn plants left, new shoots keep coming up from dormant root masses. These root masses are widespread but remain invisible underground. Only when they send up shoots do you know where they are. Generally, each root mass sends out several shoots.

How many dormant root masses are left after a buckthorn grove has been cut and treated? In some areas at Pleasant Valley Conservancy I have counted dozens. Unfortunately, they all don't come up at once either. In one area where I have been doing intensive work, I am still counting lots even after more than ten years of initial clearing. (And this is an area that has been burned every year.) But we are optimistic that eventually we will exhaust the area. We know already that we are getting ahead of the game.

The procedure is basal bark treatment with Garlon 4 in oil. The basal bark technique is ideal since it can be used any time of the year.

Our crew is using backpack sprayers for this job. But a hand sprayer can also be used, as the photo here shows. I pull back the stem and give the area at the base one brief "spritz". The red dye helps to control where the herbicide is going. If a few leaves get sprayed, that helps, but the important area is the base of the stem.

We have about a two-week window now when even small buckthorn plants will be visible. After that, we'll move on to other things, perhaps prescribed burns!

More on Hill's oak

2011-10-21T07:30:00.000-07:00

In a recent post I mentioned that Hill's oak (Quercus ellipsoidalis) is easy to identify this time of year because of its distinctive fall color. I should be doing an intensive survey for this species now, but unfortunately can't find the time. However, even from casual observations I am finding new specimens that we had previously classified as black oaks. Yesterday I noticed that there were several small trees with typical Hill's oak color at the top of the ravine west of the woods road. Then, as I drove down the woods road I kept on the lookout for further trees. Sure enough. Almost at the bottom of the hill, right next to the Pocket Prairie, was a tree with the distinctive Hill's color. This tree was large enough that it was in our database, classified incorrectly as a black oak. I pushed my way through the tall Indian grass of the Pocket Prairie to this tree and discovered that it was tree # 1513.

Not only was the color distinctive, but the shape was also characteristic of Hill's, including the lower dead branches. Finally, on the ground under the tree were quite a few acorns with the characteristic Hill's structure (ellipsoidal and striped).

The accepted common name for this species now seems to be northern pin oak, but I find Hill's more felicitous and lots easier to say.

There is another pin oak (Quercus palustris) which is not found in Wisconsin or the upper Midwest but lives in a wide band across the middle of the United States.

According to what I have been told by foresters, the word "pin" as part of the common names of these two oaks, comes from the fact that the lower dead branches, sticking straight out, can be thought of as "pins."

The tree in this photo is not too far from the outlet from the ravine, and since there is a large patch of Hill's oaks at the top of the ravine, it seems reasonable that acorns might find there way down to the bottom. I used GIS to determine that tree #1513 is about 800 feet from the Hill's oak grove at the top of the hill.

I picked up this little "gimmick", attributed to the Morton Arboretum, from someone's Facebook page:

Know, know, know your oaks,
this is how they grow:
Red oak (make a V with your arms above your head)
White oak (hold your arms straight out from your shoulders)
Bur oak (make your arms twist in different directions)
Pin Oak (hold your arms down at your sides)
And Hill's untidy below.

Visit from local landowner group

2011-10-17T08:24:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we conducted a tour for the Berry Backyard Club, a group of local landowners from the Town of Berry (Dane County, Wisconsin).

Private landowners play a major role in ecological restoration, and Kathie and I are always happy to offer them tours. In Wisconsin there is vastly more "restorable" land owned privately than owned by government entities.

The Town of Berry is similar in many ways to the Town of Vermont, where Pleasant Valley Conservancy is located. Berry is in the Driftless area and is almost exclusively rural in character.
According to its web site: "The Town of Berry landscape is defined by steep, wooded hillsides and verdant lowlands. In addition to residential and agricultural attractions, the town boasts Dane County's Festge Park and Indian Lake Park, the Town's Kahl Halfway Prairie Park, as well as several parts of the National Ice Age Trail. Nearly 1200 residents currently inhabit the Town of Berry."

Those on the tour had smaller or larger parcels of land which they were restoring or were interested in restoring. Our tour took them through our prairie and savanna remnants and part of our planted prairies. Lots of really good questions! The weather was a bit breezy but sunny and pleasant. In all, a fine Sunday afternoon.

Upland boneset seed collecting

2011-10-13T15:25:00.000-07:00

Upland boneset (Eupatorium sessilifolium) is a relatively uncommon species (Special Concern in Wisconsin) that is found primarily in oak savannas or open oak woodlands. Originally we had only a fairly small population at Pleasant Valley Conservancy, but through our restoration efforts and transplants from greenhouse-raised plants, it has now become more widespread. The original population, which had only 5 stems, is now well over 100, and we also have it in at least five other savanna areas.

Although we have been able to raise plants, the germination rate from seed is surprisingly low (considerably less than 5%). According to a test I had run at the Seed Lab several years ago, most of the seeds were live but dormant (i.e., tetrazolium-positive).

Every year we make an effort to collect a substantial amount of seed, since we have the idea that one of these years the seed viability will be good and we'll get a lot of useful seed.

The photo here is from a small prairie remnant in southern Wisconsin which for some reason has a large population of E. sessilifolium.

Another species, tall boneset (E. altissimum), is more widespread, but these two species are quite easy to tell apart. The leaf structure on E. sessilifolium is quite different and once you see these two species together, you will never have trouble telling which is which. Finally, there is a wetland species, E. perfoliatum, with the stem perforating the leaf. Again, no trouble telling it apart.

Seed collecting: a popular activity

2011-10-10T06:51:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was our major fall seed-collecting day. The weather was outstanding following a week of outstanding weather.

We have been running this event for the past five years. This year we had the biggest turnout ever (19 people at Pleasant Valley Conservancy; 21 at Black Earth Rettenmund Prairie). Some people came for only the morning at PVC, some for only the afternoon at BE, and some came for both. Among others, we had 8 UW-Madison students from the Wildlife Ecology department. They were a great pleasure to have.

Lunch was served at noon.

This is peak time for the seeds of a lot of prairie species and we had a great haul. The table below gives the results:

Latin	Common	Source	Notes
Anemone cylindrica	Prairie thimbleweed	BE	Lots!
Asclepias tuberosa	Butterfly weed	BE
Asclepias verticillata	Whorled milkweed	BE
Asclepias viridiflora	Short green milkweed	BE	Rare
Echinacea pallida	Pale purple coneflower	PVC
Eryngium yuccifolium	Rattlesnake master	PVC/BE	Lots!
Eupatorium perfoliatum	Common boneset	PVC	Wet/Lots
Eupatorium sessilifolium	Upland boneset	BE
Gentiana alba	Cream gentian	PVC	Lots!
Hasteola suaveolens	Sweet Indian plantain	PVC	Wet
Hypericum pyramidatum	Great St. John's wort	PVC
Kuhnia eupatorioides	False boneset	BE	Lots!
Lespedeza capitata	Round-headed bush clover	PVC	Lots!
Liatris aspera	Rough blazing star	BE
Liatris cylindracea	Dwarf blazing star	BE
Lilium philadelphicum andinum	Prairie lily	BE	Rare
Lobelia siphilitica	Great blue lobelia	PVC	Wet
Monarda fistulosa	Wild bergamot	PVC
Pedicularis lanceolata	Lousewort	PVC	Wet/Lots
Polygonatum biflorum	Smooth Solomon's seal	BE
Pycnanthemum virginianum	Common mountain mint	PVC
Ratibida pinnata	Yellow coneflower	PVC/BE	Lots!
Rosa sp.	Rose	BE	Lots!
Schizachyrium scoparium	Little bluestem	BE	Lots!
Silphium integrifolium	Rosinweed	PVC
Silphium laciniatum	Compass plant	BE
Solidago missouriensis	Missouri goldenrod	PVC
Sorghastrum nutans	Indian grass	PVC	Lots!
Verbena hastata	Blue vervain	PVC	Wet/Lots
Vernonia fasciculata	Common ironweed	PVC	Wet/Lots
Veronicastrum virginicum	Culver's root	PVC	Wet

Fall color at its peak

2011-10-07T11:57:00.000-07:00

Yesterday the Conservancy had outstanding color, probably the best I have ever seen; today is equally good.

Oaks are not as colorful as maples, but they are often more variegated, with a single tree providing green, yellow, orange, and red. Hard to believe that the red above is from a white oak, since other whites in this same area are dull brown. The color of an individual tree probably depends a lot on age, position in the forest, and health.

One species of oak that seems to be consistently colorful is Hill's oak (Quercus ellipsoidalis), and we have quite a few smaller trees of this species. In fact, we had misidentified some of these trees when we constructed our tree database (calling them black oaks), but black oaks are never as colorful as the specimen shown in the photo at left.

Hill's oak, also called northern pin oak, is unique to the upper Midwest, and is mainly found on drier sites. According to the information, it occurs primarily on acidic sites, which agrees with our observations, since the pH of the soil near the tree to the left is less than 6. It is a member of the red oak group, which includes oaks with pointed leaves.

The species name (ellipsoidalis) was given because the acorns are ellipsoid in shape, and the common name comes from Chicagoan E.J. Hill, who first described this species in 1899 (Hill, E.J. 1899. A New Biennial-Fruited Oak. Botanical Gazette , Vol. 27, 204-208 plus two unnumbered pages of illustrations).

The other tree species that provides a lot of color is shagbark hickory, Carya ovalis, which forms intensely yellow leaves. This species is fairly common in our more open savannas, and provides great contrast with the oaks.

Black walnuts (Juglans niger), on the other hand, provide no color at all, since they have already lost their leaves. Another species that provides no interesting color is bur oak (Q. macrocarpa), whose leaves get mostly a dull gray-green. This species also loses its leaves early. They are half gone already and will be gone before the end of October.

The unusually warm, dry air is reminiscent of so-called Indian summer, but coming a bit early. According to the National Weather Service, there is an elongated area of relatively high atmospheric pressure over the region, being blocked by a polar trough to the west.

We are very close to a record high temperature. (Two years ago, when we had our landowner's forestry field day about this time, it snowed!)

If this weather had come a month later it would be ideal for the prescribed burns we are planning for early November.

Seeing red: goodbye sumac!

2011-10-05T15:03:00.001-07:00

Those who follow these posts know what we think about sumac. Get rid of it! And now that it has turned red, this is the ideal time.

Yesterday, all five of us spent the whole day on sumac. Our intrepid crew (Amanda, Marci, and Susan) worked on some unfortunately large clones in Units 6 and 7 and Kathie climbed among the little bluestem on the Pleasant Valley Conservancy road cut. I did clones in the sunnier areas of three savannas.

Our technique is simple but effective: basal bark with Garlon 4 in oil. We add a red dye to help keep track of where we have been. Since most of these sumac clones have lots of stems (100-200 is not unusual), the dye is necessary.

Most of our backpack sprayers are Solos, which have proved sturdy and reliable. Experience has taught us that it is essential to have the right spray nozzle to keep from wasting herbicide. The treatment consists of a brief wetting of the lower part of each stem.

We have been working on sumac control for the past three years, as time permits. Although our technique is very effective, you don't eradicate sumac with a single treatment, as these clones have impressive underground networks, and root sucker ferociously. Because we top kill our sumac by burning every year, the clones are hard to find nestled down in the tall grass. But now, as is evident in the photo below, the red sumac plants really stand out. Unfortunately, they are also starting to drop their leaves (the unusually warm weather is probably partly responsible), so there is great urgency to get at them now.

While the crew was working on the tallgrass prairie, Kathie was on another tangent, killing the quite large number of small, scattered plants on the road cut above Pleasant Valley Road. In this dry, rocky environment, sumac plants are fairly short, and clones are rare, but if we are going to eradicate this menace we have to get every plant. Working the road cut involves a lot of hill climbing, since after you climb up to the top of the road cut, we have to climb back down and start over a few yards away.

Sumac is a species that grows best in open, sunny areas, so it is less of a problem in our savannas, and no problem at all in the oak woods. Prairie people from here to Nebraska have been dealing with sumac for 100 years. John Weaver, a noted prairie researcher, wrote a paper about sumac in prairies in 1917.

There is, unfortunately, a lot of misinformation about how to eradicate sumac. The data are clear that the only way to get rid of it is by the use of an herbicide, and Garlon is one of the best. (A researcher at Dow Chemical published a paper on the use of Garlon with sumac over 50 years ago.) However, you don't eradicate a clone in a single pass. You have to come back next year and treat again, to kill the inevitable root suckers, and probably repeat again for a third year. (Kathie and I did some careful experiments on this at Pleasant Valley Conservancy.)

Westport Drumlin prairie dedication

2011-10-01T17:01:00.000-07:00

Today the culmination of a long process of fund raising and negotiation came to an end with the dedication by the Natural Heritage Land Trust of the Westport Drumlin property (see directions below). The Drumlin itself, where the largest amount of remnant prairie is present, has been owned by DNR since the 1980s, but the surrounding land remained in private hands. Last year NHLT was finally able to put together the necessary deal and today the property was finally dedicated. An informative kiosk was installed, describing the geological, cultural, and natural history of the site. (I wrote most of the natural history panel, and provided several of the photos.)

Over 75 attendees participated on a fine sunny fall day.

Westport Drumlin, a high quality dry prairie with numerous attractive native plants, is most noted because it has the largest population in the state of prairie bush clover (Lespedeza leptostachya). This rarity, a true Midwest endemic, is Federally Threatened and State Endangered. It occurs in only four states, Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Illinois (which has only a small population).

Other attractive prairie plants here include downy gentian, cream baptisia, lead plant, silky and sky blue aster, and compass plant. A large population of pasque flower is present, and the site is one of the best places in the Madison area to catch sight of this early bloomer.

In addition to the prairie, there is a small but potentially fine bur oak savanna at the south end of the drumlin.

In addition to the Drumlin, the Koltes remnants are two other prairies here which the Prairie Enthusiasts has been managing for a number of years.

Field trips (8 in all) were conducted to various parts of the site. I split my time between two trips, one led by botanist Ted Cochrane and the other led by prairie restorationist Mark Martin.

Westport Drumlin has been a State Natural Area and available to the public for many years, but until now access has been by way of an unmarked easement across private cultivated land. Now, with public control of the whole site, a parking area has been established and a trail will be marked to the site.

One of the attractions of the Westport Drumlin Prairie is its close proximity to Madison. From the high point it is possible to see not only the State Capitol but also Lake Mendota. It is rare to have such a high-quality prairie so close to Madison. It is also only about a mile from the Waunakee Village limits.

Directions to reach Westport Drumlin:
The Westport Drumlin is off Bong Road in the Town of Westport, Dane County. From Madison go north on Wisconsin 113. Bong Road is the next right after the traffic light at the River Road intersection. Follow Bong Road to the top of the hill where a sign (see above) marks the parking area. The kiosk is a short way to the north from the parking area. Follow the unmarked but visible trail to the Drumlin (about 1/2 mile north). A search for "Westport Drumlin" on Google Maps should result in a "hit".

Good mast year for white and bur oaks

2011-09-30T13:37:00.000-07:00

Acorns are the most important wildlife food in Midwest deciduous forests ("the ecological equivalent of manna from heaven"; McShea and Healy, 2002; see reference below) Mast is a term used to describe the hard fruit of various trees such as beech or oak. Oaks as a group produce lots of acorns only every three or four years, and a high production year is called a good mast year.

Last year was a good mast year at Pleasant Valley Conservancy for oaks of the red oak group (red, black, and Hill's) and this year is a good mast year for oaks of the white oak group (bur, white). (There were essentially no white or bur oak acorns last fall.) Now is the season when acorns are coming down, and near big oaks the ground is covered with acorns. Kathie and I picked up about pound of acorns under a single large white oak within a few minutes.

The oaks have an interesting life cycle. Soon after the acorns fall they start to germinate, sending out roots but no shoots. Root growth continues until cold weather intervenes. It begins again in the spring, at which time shoot growth also commences. This procedure may speed up tree growth in the spring and at the same time prevent the shoot from being damaged by the cold. According to U.S. Forest Service sources, sound acorns have between 50 and 99% viability.
An interesting aspect of masting is that it is a population phenomenon. In general all the oaks in a stand exhibit high or low acorn production the same year. Animals that make considerable use of mast exhibit population fluctuations that track the changes in mast production.

The masting phenomenon is characteristic of trees with large-sized seeds, and is thought by ecologists to have evolved as a means of ensuring sufficient seeds for the reproduction of the tree species. In high mast years, when large numbers of seeds are produced, there are insufficient animal seed eaters to consume them all, thus leading to successful establishment of new tree seedlings. Because there are more low-mast years than high, populations of acorn eaters are controlled by the low mast condition.

In one study, each species of oak had its own good mast years, which were different from those of other species. Over a five year period, there were three poor mast years, one moderate mast year, and one very good mast year. The cycle of masting will vary not only with the species, but with the location and various environmental variables.

High seed production provides an enormous input of food for seed consumers in forests. High-mast years lead to abundance of body fat in mammals, thus aiding in their survival during harsh winter conditions. Because rodents are short-lived creatures, their populations tend to fluctuate with quantities of mast. On the other hand, deer, which are longer lived, benefit from the high mast situation but do not exhibit the sharp population fluctuations that small mammals do.

Despite extensive research on masting in oaks, there is no single explanation for the phenomenon. Weather is an important factor, but how does it influence masting? Possible environmental factors include late spring freezes that might kill oak flowers, variations in the efficiency of pollination, the initial size of the female flower crop, and conditions that might affect flower survival. Larger trees produce more acorns than smaller ones, although not all large oaks are good acorn producers.

Our observations at Pleasant Valley Conservancy seem to show that the oaks of the same group (red or white) all mast together.

McShea, William J. and Healy, William M. 2002. Oaks and acorns as a foundation for ecosystem management. pp. 1-9 In McShea, William J. and Healy, William M (editors). Oak Forest Ecosystems: Ecology and Management for Wildlife. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore.

Using fall color to canvas for invasive shrubs

2011-09-30T06:30:00.000-07:00

This is peak fall color for shrubs and a perfect time to canvas for areas that need to be controlled. Sumac is the main culprit. Once you start looking for sumac color, you realize how extensive this highly invasive shrub is.

Yesterday I spent the morning (in a light rain!) at Black Earth Rettenmund Prairie locating sumac areas that need to be dealt with. Our goal at Rettenmund is to eradicate all sumac, likely a 4- or 5-year job.

Sumac has been a problem at Rettenmund since the Nature Conservancy first started restoring in 1986. Attempts to control it by mowing and burns have been unsuccessful. According to the recent scientific literature, herbicide is the only solution, and my work over the past several years has confirmed this.

Sumac is an impressive clone former, and left unchecked can take over a natural area. One Great Plains prairie I heard of had become almost 50% sumac! Because sumac causes deep shade, the native prairie flora can be completely eradicated.

Herbicide can be used in two different ways. In the spring we foliar-spray with Garlon 3A all resprouts that have come up after the early burns. This is very effective, and with care there is no damage to nearby prairie plants. However, not all sumac shoots come up at the same time, and because they are small, some can be missed. But at the same time one can spray bramble, honeysuckle, and buckthorn resprouts.

The second way we use herbicide with sumac is as a basal bark treatment (Garlon 4 in oil). This can be done any time of the year, and with care there is no peripheral damage. However, we don't really have time during midsummer to deal with sumac since we are busy with sweet clover.

The off-season (late fall through early spring) is an ideal time to basal bark sumac. At this time of year, all the leaves are off, and the native vegetation has senesced, so that the naked stems are easy to get at. However, at this time of year finding clones, especially small ones, is difficult. This is where the fall-color canvas procedure enters the picture.

While canvassing a prairie, I take GPS coordinates of each clone, and make notes of its extent. Yesterday, I located 16 clones at Rettenmund Prairie, mostly greater than 20 feet in diameter. Obviously, we have some work ahead of us.

In addition to locating clones, it is also useful to locate individual plants that are present scattered across the prairie (see photo below). Each of these plants is a potential clone former, and should be treated with herbicide (basal bark) now.

Finally, I should emphasize that you cannot eradicate a sumac clone with a single herbicide treatment, no matter how thorough. The underground rhizome network is not all killed, and root suckering is a major problem. Therefore, one must return to each clone the following growing season. Early in the season one can foliar spray. Later in the season, it is preferable to basal bark.

At Pleasant Valley Conservancy we have found that it is possible to eradicate sumac clones, but you must keep coming back, at least twice, perhaps three times.

Prairie gentians!

2011-09-23T06:50:00.000-07:00

For some years we have been unsuccessful in growing prairie (downy) gentian (Gentiana puberulenta), but suddenly we have six or seven good areas in the Ridge Prairie. This small planted prairie, now in its sixth growing season, has turned into a highly diverse site.

Prairie gentian, with a C value of 9, is fairly uncommon in Wisconsin, although I know of three prairie remnants where it can be found. According to Cochrane and Iltis, "This gorgeous species, so characteristic of prairies, deserves protection." Curtis considered it the most beautiful of all gentians.

It is possible that it has been growing in the Ridge Prairie for some time and was missed, as it is a tiny plant nestled among the tallgrass prairie. It is the latest of the gentians to flower, and does so at a time when the prairie is choked with tall plants. You can't see it from a distance; you have to stumble on it as you are walking through. Marci found the first specimens while collecting seeds. Kathie immediately found three other small patches, and I found a couple more. Fortunately, I had my Nikon with me, with a macro lens.

In the past Kathie had tried unsuccessfully to grow prairie gentian in the greenhouse. Strange then that these Ridge Prairie specimens arose from seeds that we had just "thrown out." We think the quality of the seed must vary considerably from year to year. Presumably 2005, when the Ridge Prairie was planted, must have been a good seed year. The seeds had been hand planted in a small area that Kathie had reserved for special forbs.

Collecting rye grasses in the East Basin

2011-09-21T08:26:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was a great day for seed collecting (until the rain started at 3 PM!). My job was to collect Virginia wild rye (Elymus virginicus), a nice rye grass that is relatively well behaved in a restoration. It is more of a savanna than a prairie grass, although it is sometimes found in prairies. It is relatively short lived, and at Pleasant Valley Conservancy it is now completely absent from several areas where it was once widespread (e.g. the Crane Prairie).

The East Basin is our newest planted prairie, and is now in its second growing season. Virginia wild rye was included in the seed mix for the more mesic parts of the site, and it has done very well. It grows as a bunch grass and this year is sending up dozens of erect flowering stems, each of which produces seeds. Because the stems are erect, it is easy to bring together 3, 4, or more flower stalks and cut the heads off all at once. I was able to fill a bucket in a relatively short time.

In addition to Virginia wild rye, the East Basin has a lot of another rye, Elymus riparius, which we did not plant. We call it woodland rye (it grows in partial shade in our savannas), although it is more commonly called riverbank rye. How did this species get in the East Basin since we did not plant it? Here is my explanation.

Before we restored it, the East Basin had become fairly wooded, although in earlier years it had been a savanna or open woodland. E. riparius had probably been common at that time, but by the time we started restoration the habitat had become quite shady, so this rye grass was suppressed. It would have been growing vegetatively but not flowering, so we would not have noticed it. But once we brought the sunlight back in, it started to flourish again, as the photo below shows.

When seed collecting, how do you tell virginicus from riparius? The seeds themselves are quite different since riparius seeds have lots of short hairs and have quite long awns, whereas virginicus seeds are hairless with short awns. However, when seed collecting you need a simpler way of distinguishing them. As the photos show, the flower heads of virginicus are fairly small and stand quite erect, whereas those of riparius are large and bend over.

Once you have the hang of it, you can move through an area and focus only on your target species. Even if two bunches are side by side, there is no chance of making a mistake. Can you tell which is which in the photo below?

Positive feedback between grass and woody vegetation

2011-09-19T15:02:00.000-07:00

The photo above is of a prairie and savanna remnant developing on a steep south-facing slope with a thin, stony soil. Even without doing any quantitative measurements, it is easy to see that the prairie grasses (primarily little bluestem and Indian grass) are sparse or absent under the shade of the woody plants. At one time, this whole hillside was wooded, and in the first few years after it was cleared the prairie grasses were sparse or nonexistent. Cutting with herbicide treatment and annual controlled burns eliminated most of the woody plants and eventually the grasses recovered. Today they are well established, but only a few years in the absence of burns and they would be struggling again.

Prairie grasses interact with woody vegetation in complex ways, but one of the principal effects is on available light. Prairie grasses require close to full sunlight to develop to their fullest extent and even a little bit of shade will have an effect. Since the principal fuel in this hillside is grass, if the grasses are inhibited woody plants can get started. On the other hand, if burns are skipped for a few years woody plants will start to return, and once they start to shade out the grasses, even more woodies can grow, leading to even less grass, which leads to more woodies. This is a classical positive feedback loop. Since the grasses are the principal fuel, when they are inhibited there is progressively less fuel. Eventually a stage is reached where grasses are gone and only woodies are present.

Research has shown that this positive feedback mechanism operates all over. It has been reported in the Chihuahua desert, Texas range country, Kansas prairie, and African savannas. All of these habitats depend on fire for maintenance.

Seed collecting at full force

2011-09-14T07:12:00.000-07:00

September ushers in seed collecting as a major restoration activity. Suddenly lots of species are ready to collect, and from now until early November each week will bring on several species to collect. Kathie loves seed collecting and has become a real expert. How many people do you know who can identify prairie plant species from single seeds?

Sunday at Black Earth Rettenmund Prairie a group of volunteers collected prairie cinquefoil, purple prairie clover, prairie thimbleweed, big bluestem, lead plant, showy sunflower, Kalm's brome, among others. The photo shows Kathie explaining how to recognize cinquefoil.

Most of us also collected sweet clover, not to save but to bag and dispose of. Although sweet clover eradication was a major activity at Rettenmund Prairie in June and July, there is always the problem of fall regrowth, mostly small flowering plants that are difficult to find but need to be eliminated.

Yesterday at Pleasant Valley Conservancy the weather was stupendous and we had a very enjoyable afternoon seed collecting. Among others we collected Virginia wild rye, woodland rye (Elymus riparius), woodland brome (Bromus latiglumis), prairie cinquefoil, wool grass, dark green bulrush, purple prairie clover, and panicled tick trefoil (Desmodium paniculatum).

Anyone interested in helping collect seeds (or learning how) can join us for our big seed collecting extravaganza on Sunday, October 9, 2011. We will be at Pleasant Valley Conservancy in the morning (9:30 until noon). After a free lunch at the cabin (see photo below), we will move to Black Earth Rettenmund Prairie for the afternoon (1-4 PM). Folks can come for half or all day. This will be the fifth year that we have hosted this event, and it seems to be popular. (Come rain or shine!) For details, send an email to pvc@PleasantValleyConservancy.org, or contact Kathie at 238-5050.

Even though we do not have any major prairie plantings upcoming, we always have need for seeds to plant in bare areas resulting from various restoration activities.

Check the Pleasant Valley Conservancy web site for a list of recommended seed collecting dates.

New Trail Map now available

2011-09-07T11:07:00.000-07:00

We have now created a new trail map that provides a more complete view of Pleasant Valley Conservancy. This map is available in a dispenser at the trail entrance. The map is similar to the Management Map that can be downloaded from our web site, with a few updates. The main advantage of the new trail map is that it can be picked up at the Conservancy entrance and carried along on a hike. If you don't want to keep it, you can return it to the dispenser when you are finished hiking.

It has been printed on high quality paper (not a newsprint version!) and can be useful when studying the flora and fauna.

Lots of people don't seem to need a trail map, and enjoy wandering. However, we have had requests for a map, and I finally found time to put this together.

Another new feature is a bicycle rack at the Conservancy entrance, so that bikers can make a visit. Pleasant Valley Road and the other roads in these hills are favorites for road bikers, and it seemed to me that bikers might like to walk for an hour or two during a day's bike visit. I used to be a road biker in my younger years and know how enjoyable a bike tour can be.

Canada goldenrod control

2011-08-31T07:17:00.000-07:00

Two weeks ago I mentioned a technique we had developed for controlling Canada goldenrod. This invasive native is often a problem in prairie restoration. Since it is clonal, it often forms fairly large patches, and grows so densely that other "good" species can't get a foothold.

As I wrote, most of our Canada goldenrod patches are primarily along the edges of the prairies, and hence are relatively small. The leaf spritz technique we use is ideal under these conditions, since it permits very selective treatment of the goldenrod without affecting adjacent plants that are even fairly close.

We use a 20% mixture of triclopyr (Garlon 4) in bark oil, dispensed with a hand-held spray bottle. A few leaves on the upper part of each stem in the clone are given a brief "spritz". The few leaves spritzed are high enough on the stem so that no stooping is needed.

The photos here show what a plant that was in full flower bud looks like after about 2 weeks. The adjacent untreated plants are completely unaffected.

I admit that this is a relatively slow technique, since one has to deal with each stem individually. However, this has the advantage that nearby good plants are unaffected. Marci and I were able to treat about a dozen reasonably large clones (15-30 stems each) in less than an hour.

As in most invasive plant control, the best time to initiate attack is when the problem is still small. Now is a very good time to do this, since Canada goldenrod is in flower and hence easy to find.

If all the stems in a clone are treated, you get rid of the clone for good. Last year when I first used this technique, I marked some treated clones and found no new growth this year.

White prairie clover seed collecting

2011-08-27T09:23:00.000-07:00

In my July 23, 2011 post I discussed the success we are now having getting purple and white prairie clovers (Dalea purpurea and D. candida) established. White prairie clover is now ready for seed collecting, and last Thursday Kathie and I collected quite a bit of seed in Toby's Prairie. This planted prairie, now in its 13th growing season, has lots of nice prairie clover plants. The good plants were easy to find because when we planted this prairie in November 1998 Kathie set aside several areas as "forbs plots". Here an enriched seed mix with a number of desirable forbs was planted. Since there is a wooden stake in the middle of this forbs plot, the site is easy to find. (Interesting that this wooden stake has survived 13 hot prescribed burns!)

When the seeds are ready, white prairie clover is fairly easy to collect. One simply grabs three or four stems and strips the seeds directly into a bucket. Even though these plants are short and buried among (at this time of year) tall Indian grass, they are easy to find because of the large cluster of stems.

Purple prairie clover can be collected in the same way, although this species has smaller flower and seed heads, so the yield is lots less.

The fruit is a thin-walled pod which contains a single (or rarely two) seeds. Each seed is kidney shaped. The spiral pattern of the pods can be seen in the photo.

Kathie and I spent about an hour collecting this species and then pooled our harvest. We got a lot of seed!

Edge effects in prairies

2011-08-20T08:54:00.001-07:00

Most of the prairies at Pleasant Valley Conservancy are small (less than 5 acres), which means that they have lots of edges. Anyone doing prairie restoration will tell you that edges are bad, since they increase chances for weed invasion, and have significant negative effects on wildlife. However, you play the hand you've been dealt, so at Pleasant Valley Conservancy we are learning how to cope.

This week Marci and I spent part of the day in the Barn and Cabin Prairies killing Canada goldenrod (Solidago canadensis), one of our most persistent (albeit native) invaders. This is the time of year to deal with this species, since it is just starting to flower, making it easy to recognize.

At first glance, it looked like we had a pretty serious infestation, but once we got into it we realized that all the Canada goldenrod was along the edges. Once we pushed past this tall fringe, we got into a much more diverse prairie, with lots of shorter species.

It is not only the weedy invaders that line the edges. Several of our small prairies have fringes of tall prairie species, such as the Silphiums.

It is not difficult to understand the ecology here. For one thing, plants growing along an edge don't have to deal with competition from that side. Also, they get more favorable light, so they can grow taller.

We used the leaf spritz technique on the Canada goldenrod. This is a procedure that worked well in last year's tests so we are expanding its use. Two or three leaves on each goldenrod stem are gently sprayed (just a few drops) with 20% Garlon 4 in bark oil. Within a day or two the sprayed stem starts to twist, and within a week it is turning brown. In two weeks it is completely dead.

In my tests I had found that if all the stems in a clone are spritzed, the complete clone was killed, and the eradication was permanent.

The nice thing about this technique is that it is very quick and easy, and if one is careful there is no damage to "good" plants nearby. This procedure is slower than mowing but lots less disruptive to the prairie, and if done properly eradicates the whole clone (which mowing does not do).

Use of hemiparastic plants to increase species diversity

2011-08-15T07:02:00.000-07:00

In a post two years ago, I showed that lousewort (Pedicularis lanceolata), a hemiparasitic plant, was infecting the sedge Carex trichocarpa and holding it in check. This sedge forms monospecific stands that are so dense that other species are not able to grow. Although it may be better to have the sedge than reed canary grass (another possibility in our wetland), it certainly reduces species diversity, as the upper photo shows.

This year this sedge-lousewort system has advanced and several other wetland species have now become established in areas that formerly had only sedge. The lower photo shows the result. Quite a contrast.

Species now present are cup plant, golden glow (Rudbeckia laciniata), mountain mint, blue vervain, and great blue lobelia.

The role of wood betony (Pedicularis canadensis) in increasing diversity in prairies has been well established, so it is not surprising that lousewort can have the same effect.

These hemiparastic plants have been called "keystone" species, whose very presence contributes to the diversity of life.

In prairie ecology wood betony keeps grasses in check, thus increasing the possibility for establishment of forbs. It now appears that lousewort can play the same role in wetland ecology.

Anatomy and significance of a buckthorn root collar

2011-08-10T09:18:00.000-07:00

My interest in buckthorn growth and survival continues. Eventually this knowledge should lead to better understanding of how to eradicate this exceedingly undesirable plant.

At Pleasant Valley Conservancy I have been following buckthorn growth in one small test area for the past dozen years. The big plants were cut and treated or basal barked (both with Garlon) in 1999-2000. The area has been burned annually ever since.

Buckthorn shoots have continued to arise each year. Where are these shoots coming from? The seed bank had been long exhausted. Were they shoots that had been missed in previous years, or were they new growth from underground stems or roots?

To attempt to get a handle on this problem, last year I very carefully killed every visible buckthorn shoot in this test area. I made sure there were no visible buckthorn plants by returning every few weeks to kill any new shoots that might have arisen. At the end of the growing season in October, I did a final canvas to make sure there were no living buckthorn plants visible.

At the end of July this year I did another survey of this same area. Imagine my surprise to discover 71 small buckthorn plants! Where are they coming from? I dug one of these plants and carefully cleaned all the soil off. The photos below show the result.

Despite the fact that this was a fairly small shoot, it was attached to a surprisingly large root mass. The root itself, and the root collar, was thick and woody. Further, arising from the root collar were thirteen shoots, each of which must have been part of some previous year's growth. Remember, the site has been burned each spring.

My interpretation is that this and the 70 other plants I found, have arisen from dormant root masses, which remained lurking underground waiting for favorable growth conditions.

It looks to me that without some heroic measures, eradication of buckthorn seems pretty unlikely. Areas cleared of buckthorn must be followed up in future years, and new shoots treated with herbicide. This must continue until all the underground dormant root masses are gone.

This situation is not unique to Pleasant Valley Conservancy. I have seen a number of sites in Dane County where large buckthorns were removed a few years ago and not followed up. These sites are now full of buckthorn regrowth. (I'd be happy to send anyone interested a list of these depressing sites.)

Fortunately, not all sites at Pleasant Valley Conservancy have such a large storehouse of dormant root masses. Many of our sites are now in fairly good shape, although almost every such site has to be canvassed in early summer for small buckthorn plants that need to be herbicided.

Ironweed: a wet-mesic species

2011-08-03T12:26:00.000-07:00

Ironweed (Vernonia fasciculata) is now in full bloom in our wet-mesic prairies (Barn Prairie, Valley Prairie). This is a species with an intense and distinctive color. It is apparently common in southern and western Wisconsin, although according to the USDA plant index it is absent from most of eastern United States.

Although we planted it in our two wet-mesic prairies, we have a population that we did not plant living along the narrow band of Black Earth Dolomite about half way up the south-facing slope in Unit 6. (This population was apparently here even before we started restoration work.)

What is a wet-mesic species doing up there on the south slope? I assume that there is ground water seepage in this dolomite layer, making conditions favorable for ironweed. Seems reasonable, since there is also a native population of Culver's root (Veronicastrum virginicum), another wet-mesic species, growing on this same dolomite shelf.

I am fascinated by these micro-habitats. This same dolomite shelf was also home to a substantial population of sweet clover that we have now mostly eradicated.

Woodland thistle: a savanna native

2011-08-01T07:42:00.000-07:00

For some years we have been trying to get woodland thistle (Cirsium altissimum) established in our savannas, and we are finally having some success. This biennial is the tallest native thistle (hence its Latin name), its height often exceeding 8 feet.

From seed the first year it grows as a vigorous rosette. After overwintering, the next year it forms the tall flowering plant, which produces seeds. Occasionally it may not flower the second year, but continue as a rosette for several years before finally flowering. Such plant species are called monocarpic, which means "flowering once". (Hill's thistle can also behave as a monocarpic species.)

We started by throwing seeds out in some of our savanna areas, but never saw any plants. We then turned to greenhouse-grown plants which we transplanted. It grows vigorously in the greenhouse and transplants well. Most of the plants we set out grew as rosettes the first year and then flowered and set seed the next year. However, since they aren't perennial, once they flower they are gone. To get an established population, one needs continuous production of viable seed.

It seems now that we are finally getting this species established, as we are seeing more plants scattered throughout, even in areas where we had not set out transplants.

Although this species is found throughout eastern United States, in Wisconsin it seems to be found only in the southern part of the state (per UW Herbarium records). It has a C value of 6.

Two kinds of Joe Pye weed

2011-07-28T16:32:00.001-07:00

Most people know Joe Pye weed (Eupatorium maculatum) as a wetland plant, but it turns out that it is also found in upland sites. I'm not sure why, and we certainly did not plant it, but we have scattered plants even in some of our drier and shadier oak woodland sites. The usual common name for this species is spotted Joe Pye weed. It is interesting that Cochrane and Iltis do not mention upland sites at all, indicating that it is characteristic of wet prairies, sedge meadows, marshes, and wet thickets.

Where does the name Joe Pye come from? As usual, the origin is lost in antiquity, and one is reluctant to accept any non-authoritative source. According to one book, Joe Pye was an Indian healer from New England who used plants of this genus as medicinals.

In the same upland sites where we have E. maculatum, as well as in all of our savanna sites, we have another Joe Pye weed species, Eupatorium purpureum, whose common name is green-stemmed or purple Joe Pye weed. (Kathie usually calls it woodland Joe Pye.) Cochrane and Iltis indicate that this species is common in southern dry or dry-mesic forests dominated by oaks, as well as in mesic maple and basswood forests. I have seen this species in forested habitats all over southern Wisconsin. However, according to UW Herbarium records, this species is confined almost exclusively to southern or western Wisconsin, whereas spotted Joe Pye is found almost all over the state. (The only county it is missing from is Lafayette County.)

Obviously, it is important to be able to tell these two species apart. Although some people use the color of the infloresence, the variability in color is so great that I would be reluctant to use that character. After extensive perusal of the literature, I have finally found a diagnostic character that seems to hold: the color of the stem node.

As its common name indicates, the stem of spotted Joe Pye is indeed spotted, and it has pigment up and down the stem (see the photo here).

The stem of purple Joe Pye, on the other hand, is green (hence one of its common names), except at the nodes, at which there is a dark purple pigment (see photo at left). This pigment is very characteristic of this species. Thus, all you have to do is look at the stem nodes to tell these two species apart. I've looked at many Joe Pye weed plants and this characteristic seems to be quite consistent and very diagnostic.

Both of these species are in full flower right now, and E. purpureum is one of the commonest flowering plants in our shadier savannas.

Giant false foxglove, a hemiparasite, now starting to bloom

2011-07-28T15:45:00.000-07:00

One of the more fascinating savanna forbs is Giant False Foxglove (Aureolaria grandiflora), a member of the Snapdragon (Scrophulariaceae) family that lives hemiparastically on oak roots. The photo here, taken by Kathie, is of the earliest flower seen this year.

There are quite a few members of the Snapdragon family that grow hemiparastically on other species, including wood betany, lousewort, and Indian paintbrush. These plants are called hemiparasites because even though they suck up nutrients from their host plants, they also have an additional extensive root system that helps support the plant. The parasitic action results when small structures called haustoria grow into the host roots where enlarged bulbous structures are formed.

Although most of the host plants of hemiparasites are grasses or forbs, A. grandiflora is especially interesting because its host is the oak tree. (The species of oak is not critical.)

At Pleasant Valley Conservancy we first spread seed of A. grandiflora about 10 years ago. The technique was to sow seed in a circle around the drip line of an oak tree. This is an area where the oak tree has an extensive root system near the surface. Some of the germinating seeds send down roots and connect with the host plant. It may take several years for development to reach the point of flowering, but once it does, A. grandiflora is able set up a perennial existence. (There is another species, A. pedicularia, that is only an annual.)

We tried to raise A. grandiflora from seed in the greenhouse. The seeds germinated well and started to form tiny plants, but without hosts they stopped growing and eventually died. This plant is interesting from an evolutionary viewpoint.

Once A. grandiflora became established, we were able to collect seeds locally and spread them further. We now have well established colonies in most of the savanna areas at Pleasant Valley Conservancy.

Bur oak longevity, but not forever

2011-07-27T13:43:00.000-07:00

The bur oak (Quercus macrocarpa) is a long-lived tree throughout most of its range, but does not live forever. In 1997 we lost a 200-year old tree, and just last week we lost another oldie. This tree had lost a large upper branch about a year ago, and now, as the photos show, the whole tree has been uprooted. I am assuming that last year's limb loss destabilized the tree so that the large branches on the downhill side pulled the tree over, perhaps when the roots had been weakened.

I don't have the age of this tree yet but the big bur oak we lost in 1997 had 200 rings. After we get the trunk and branches cleaned up (a late fall task), we can hopefully smooth out the base so that the rings can be counted.

This latest loss was a little sad, because this was one of our most photogenic trees. In fact, Kathie's winter photo shown here won an award about 10 years ago. The tree that came down is the one on the right.

These two trees have always been a landmark at Pleasant Valley Conservancy which we have called "the two bur oaks". Now that there is only one, the landmark is gone.

Last week another large bur oak in the neighborhood went down also. This tree was in the pasture on the Schultz farm, about a mile away (see photo below). According to Jim Schultz, this tree uprooted suddenly last Wednesday evening about 9 PM at a time when there was not even a breath of air. Presumably it had also become destabilized in an early wind event, and finally gave up the ghost.

I was saddened to see the Schultz tree go because it was such a characteristic open-grown pasture tree, sitting all alone on its hillside. I have always assumed that Schultz's hillside was characteristic of what many southern Wisconsin pastured savannas looked like when they were heavily grazed. Even though all the understory was gone, the character of the savanna could be observed by the shapes of the big old bur oaks.

New edition: Fire effects: Bur oak

2011-07-27T12:56:00.000-07:00

The fire effects series by the U.S. Forest Service is very useful for those carrying out prescribed burns. An updated edition (2011) of the site on Quercus macrocarpa (bur oak) has just appeared, written by Corey L. Gucker.

I was pleased to have contributed the introductory photo used in this site.

Here is the link:

The bur oak is the most widely distributed of the North American oaks, but its abundance has decreased dramatically since European settlement. Hence, conservation and restoration of bur oak has become a management priority throughout its historic range. Bur oak savannas in the Midwest and Great Plains were considered ideal sites for European settlers. Agricultural and urban development, and fire exclusion, were the principal factors in the loss of bur oaks.

However, because of its adaptability, restoration of bur oak can be readily carried out.

The Fire Effects review provides an excellent overview of the ecology and silviculture of bur oak.

Purple and white prairie clovers

2011-07-23T13:11:00.000-07:00

It has taken us some years but we finally have these two conservative prairie species established at Pleasant Valley Conservancy. Although we had a small population of native Dalea purpurea before we started restoration, it wasn't large enough to serve as a useful seed source. However, there was a tiny remnant along Old Indian Trail (less than a mile away) that had a nice seed source. (Unfortunately, that population is now virtually gone, having been replaced by crown vetch. Grrr!)

We now have nice stands of both species in several of our planted prairies, as well as on the remnant prairie on the south-facing slope in Unit 6.

White prairie clover (Dalea candida) is growing in the same areas as D. purpurea, but in larger patches. This is reasonable, since Cochrane and Iltis state that D. candida is the most widespread of the approx. 160 species of Dalea in the New World.

Both species are sensitive to grazing, reasonable since they are legumes. This probably explains why we originally had D. purpurea only in those parts of our south-facing slope remnant that had been protected from grazing.

The NRCS requires D. purpurea (1-2 ounces per acre) in the seed mix used in Wisconsin when planting a prairie as part of the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP). No explanation given, but I assume it is because of the desirability of having a legume in the mix. (Canada milk vetch, another legume, is also required.)

I suspect that neither of these species will ever "take over" a prairie, whether planted or remnant. At Black Earth Rettenmund Prairie, where both species were present in the original prairie, neither one has ever become dominant, although they are always present in substantial amounts.

Getting rid of alfalfa in planted prairies

2011-07-11T07:59:00.000-07:00

Alfalfa often remains as a residue in prairies that have been planted in former ag fields. It can also invade prairies from adjacent croplands.

For years we have been trying to eradicate scattered alfalfa clumps at Black Earth Rettenmund Prairie. Digging has been unsuccessful, which is not surprising since alfalfa is a persistent perennial. You can never dig up all of the underground root system.

We now have a technique that works. We use 20% Garlon 4 diluted in bark oil and carefully spray the bases of the stems (the "basal spritz"). This is analogous to the basal bark technique used for woody plants. Note that the herbicide is confined only to the bases of the stems, and only a small amount needs to be used.

The photos show dead plants surrounded by unaffected "good" plants.

Not only is the basal spritz technique very effective, but it is a lot quicker than digging.

I haven't checked to see if a lower concentration of Garlon 4 would work.

Note that Garlon 4 is the oil-soluble form of triclopyr.

This technique also works well for other perennial weeds that are not rhizomatous, such as bird's foot trefoil.

Lead plant

2011-07-06T07:36:00.000-07:00

Lead plant (Amorpha canescens) is about at its peak of flowering. This legume is one of the preminent prairie plants and is usually considered desirable in any prairie planting. However, our experience has been that it is generally hard to get established from seed, although it flourishes in remnants. According to the literature, it is quite palatable to livestock and hence disappears under any significant grazing pressure.

At Black Earth Rettenmund Prairie, which has never been grazed, lead plant flourishes, although it is not present uniformly. It seems to be absent from those areas that before restoration were heavily wooded, and has not returned even though these areas have been clear of woods for over 25 years.

At Pleasant Valley Conservancy lead plant was present before restoration began at four remnant sites (Units 1, 4, 11A, and 23), but was absent at sites that had been grazed. However, although we had what we considered good seed sources, we have been unsuccessful in getting it established in any of our planted prairies.

On the other hand, we have been very successful in getting lead plant established from seed at the Gateway Prairie, the small restoration that we initiated near the Rettenmund Prairie entrance in 2005. In a casual survey yesterday, I found over 50 flowering lead plant patches scattered all over this 2.5 acre site. I'm not sure why we have been successful here but not at Pleasant Valley Conservancy, but it is gratifying to know that seeding does sometimes work.

Savanna species diversity

2011-07-04T14:58:00.000-07:00

This is the time of the year when one can get a good idea of the species diversity of a prairie or savanna. Most of the early-blooming species are still around (forming seeds) and the late-blooming species have made substantial vegetative populations. And there are lots of species flowering at present.

We have been keeping notes on the prairie and savanna species diversity since 1998, and since 2002 I have attempted to record every species present in each management unit. The data for the years 2002 through 2008 are extensive, and have been analyzed carefully. Although the analysis is a winter project, the utility becomes evident in the summer.

I made an Excel table that lists every species present in each of the savanna management units. Today (4th of July) I found the time to convert this table into a PDF that could be downloaded by those interested in savanna species diversity.

Download the table

These data can be analyzed in a number of different ways, but what I chose to do here was to sort by C value (Coefficient of Conservatism), since this put the most interesting species at the top of the table.

There are some species missing from this table, including a few new ones discovered since 2008. But even so, there are 238 species in this table.

One value of this table is that because it locates each species by management unit, it shows which species are really common, and which are fairly rare. At least part of the variability between units is due to canopy cover. Some of the units have lots more open canopies than others, which leads to more area where "prairie-like" species can develop.

Comparisons of canopy cover in different units can be found at this link.

As I have noted elsewhere, the species diversity in a savanna is lots higher than in either a prairie or woodland.

Mowing wild parsnip

2011-06-29T14:56:00.000-07:00

We have eradicated wild parsnip (Pastinaca sativa) from Pleasant Valley Conservancy, but unfortunately one of our wet prairies (the Valley Prairie) is adjacent to a substantial parsnip patch of a neighbor. Although he chooses to ignore it, he is quite happy if we mow it. (Its area by GIS is about 2 acres.)

This field is an interesting phenomenon. Some years ago it was solid Canada thistle which we got rid of in one year by mowing. (This must have been pure luck, because we have never been able to get rid of Canada thistle anywhere else by a single mowing.) For a while thereafter the neighbor mowed this field early in the summer, but one wet year he got his tractor stuck and decided to let this field go.

Several years later the parsnips starting coming in. Some years we have been able to control them by spraying with 2,4-D, but this did not seem to work this year (our timing was probably off) so we turned back to mowing.

The bush hog on the back of the Kubota tractor works quite well for this sort of job, and Kathie was able to finish it in less than an hour. However, we'll probably have to mow again later to take care of any stragglers.

Further on purple milkweed

2011-06-25T08:38:00.000-07:00

This post is a follow-up on an earlier one this spring.

Due to the late spring, flowering of our purple milkweed (Asclepias purpurascens) stands was delayed, but they are now at peak performance and easy to see in the field. Therefore, yesterday I made my yearly survey of all the stands at Pleasant Valley Conservancy.

This is a great year for purple milkweeds, and with lush flowering it has been possible to find quite a few new locations. Several are what I call "spontaneous", since they are not from greenhouse transplants (although many of those are doing well also).

A new spontaneous population in Unit 8 is a completely new site, quite remote from all the other sites.

These new spontaneous populations have probably come from seeds that we threw out some earlier year. Purple milkweeds that are not flowering are extremely hard to find. If they arise from planted seed, it may take them several (or many) years to establish a root system substantial enough to support a flowering population.

The photo here is from one of my spontaneous populations that first appeared in 2008 (thus, now in its 4th growing year). The photo shows only part of this outstanding population. You can also see in the background part of a large charred black oak that had died of oak wilt. This was part of a small grove of black oaks that died about the time this new population of milkweeds arose. Possibly, this milkweed patch had been struggling along in the shade of these big oaks, and the increased sunlight after they died gave the milkweeds a boost.

The count of purple milkweeds that I now have permanently marked is 32, although there are probably another dozen or so others from transplants that are doing well but have not been marked. (All spontaneous populations have been permanently marked.)

Another interesting observation is that one of my permanently marked stands (AP-6) had plants this year for the first time since 2006. I have no idea why these plants come and go like that. Obviously, there is a perennial root system which is able to remain alive for years without sending shoots above ground.

With all the great flowering umbels this year, one might expect good seed production, but this will not necessarily be the case. Last year we had over 50 great flower heads and ended up with only a single seed pod. Seed production requires successful pollination, and self pollination probably does not occur. Therefore, a lot depends upon the presence and activity of insect pollinators, mainly solitary bees. If there is a spell of rainy weather at the time when pollination is critical, we may miss it all together.

Butterfly group at Pleasant Valley Conservancy

2011-06-18T17:20:00.000-07:00

Today we enjoyed a rare treat: lots of butterflies identified by experts. The Southern Wisconsin Butterfly Association, together with Madison Audubon Society and the Prairie Enthusiasts, toured Pleasant Valley Conservancy under leadership of butterfly photographer Ann Thering. There were 20 participants, many of whom were extremely knowledgeable. And the weather was also cooperative.

The photo above shows part of the group using the boardwalk to get closer to the wetland, where, among others, there were large numbers of Baltimore Checkerspots.

Here is Ann's list (29 species; the numbers are only approximate):

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail (3)
Black Swallowtail (7)
Giant Swallowtail (3)
Cabbage White (1)
Clouded Sulphur (1)
Orange Sulphur (1)
Bronze Copper (1)
Banded Hairstreak (1)
Eastern Tailed-Blue (1)
‘Summer’ Spring Azure (7)
Great Spangled Fritillary (5+)
Aphrodite Fritillary (1)
Silvery Checkerspot (30+)
Pearl Crescent (20+)
Baltimore Checkerspot (20+)
Question Mark (1)
American Lady (3)
Red-spotted Purple (1)
Hackberry Emperor (3)
Eyed Brown (3)
Little Wood-Satyr (2)
Monarch (4)
Silver-spotted Skipper (6)
Northern Cloudywing (2)
Juvenal’s Duskywing (2)
Least Skipper (35+)
European Skipper (10)
Tawny-edged Skipper (2)
Long Dash (3)

One of the Great Spangled Fritillarys was seen nectaring on a glade mallow flower.

Wood lilies

2011-06-15T11:23:00.000-07:00

Mid June is wood lily (Lilium philadelphicum) time in southern Wisconsin, although there is always considerable uncertainty about peak flowering. The photo here is of a nice plant that Kathie was able to establish originally from seed. It took quite a few years before it first flowered, but has been displaying nice color for the past 4 or 5 years.

Our favorite native site for wood lilies is Black Earth Rettenmund Prairie, and some nice specimens are already showing there. Because of the late spring, the huge display we generally have here has been delayed, but it is now coming on.

Last night we ran our annual field trip to Rettenmund Prairie. There were quite a few open flowers, but even more important there are dozens (hundreds) of plants in bud. With the recent rains, these should be opening soon.

Thus, any time in the next week or so should be fine for a visit to Black Earth Rettenmund Prairie. Just stay on the trail.

Reed canary grass at upland sites

2011-06-12T19:37:00.000-07:00

Reed canary grass (Phalaris arundinacea) is an ecologically invasive grass that causes great problems in wetland sites. It is one of the most widely occurring weeds and is exceedingly difficult to control. It is a prolific seed producer, but also spreads greatly by rhizomatous growth.

Reed canary grass is known primarily as an invader of wetlands, but at Pleasant Valley Conservancy we have found it in numerous upland sites. Surveys made at the time of flowering (when it is easiest to detect) have shown small patches of reed canary grass in most of our savannas, as well as in some of our oak woodlands.

This year, due to the initiative of Amanda and Marci, we instituted an all-out attack on reed canary grass, using clethodim (trade name Intensity), a grass-specific herbicide. Detailed surveys were made looking for the characteristic inflorescences. Note that the reed canary grass inflorescence resembles that of orchard grass, another nonnative invader, but the two grasses can generally be distinguished even at a distance. (We find orchard grass primarily along edges of prairies or lanes, whereas reed canary grass can invade almost anywhere.)

The photo to the left shows a typical small reed canary grass patch. The inflorescence can generally be seen at some distance. These upland patches are generally small, usually just a few leafy tillers and some flower stalks. Once seen, the worker bushwacks through the undergrowth to the site and sprays all the leaves in the patch. Generally a single spraying is enough to eradicate these upland patches (not true for the large clones generally found in wetlands).

A survey made this year in early June found over 100 small patches of reed canary grass in upland sites at Pleasant Valley Conservancy! All of these patches have been treated.

There are several grass-specific herbicides available for this work, including sethoxydim and clethodim. These agents are cyclohexanediones which act by inhibiting lipid biosynthesis in grasses. They have no effect on broad-leaved plants.

Details on the use of these grass-specific herbicides for reed canary grass and other undesirable grasses can be found in a concise paper published by Craig Annen in Plants out of Place, the newsletter of the Invasive Plants Association of Wisconsin.

Spiderwort time

2011-06-10T13:43:00.000-07:00

Spderwort (Tradescantia ohiensis) is one of the prairie/savanna species that seems to do well in a wide variety of habitats. One of my favorite spiderwort habitats is the rocky ballast of the Wisconsin & Southern Railroad, which follows U.S. Route 14 all the way from Middleton to Mazomanie (and beyond). It seems strange to see a beautifully flowering plant rising out of bare dry pebbles.

We had scattered patches of spiderwort along the steep bank of Pleasant Valley Road even before we started restoration, but by throwing seeds around we have managed to greatly increase the amount of this species. When the seeds are ready to collect (around 4th of July) we simply pull them from the stems and throw them uphill and to both sides. After a few years, we have managed to have spiderwort along the whole Pleasant Valley Road bank.

Spiderwort is found in a wide variety of habitats in Wisconsin, although it seems be absent in the far north of the state.

Photographing this species is a little tricky. Although the color of the flowers is an intense blue or purple, it's really hard to catch the color, especially with a digital camera. I was surprised when I looked in my viewfinder to see almost white flowers, even though with the naked eye they were blue. This is a species whose photos really benefit from the ministrations of a Photoshop-like program.

The seeds of spiderwort are held within a pulpy matrix, making them really difficult to dry properly. They dry best under forced warm dry air, but take almost a week for complete curing.

Spiderwort is a nice species to plant, as it is showy, establishes well, but never becomes invasive. We have it growing well in all of our planted prairies as well as the savannas.

One of our best native populations developed in Unit 18 after we cleared it of black walnut. The first year after the walnuts were gone a large population of spiderwort appeared, and has continued ever since. A check of the literature showed that spiderwort is resistant to juglone, the allelopathic chemical produced by black walnut. In fact, most of the monocots are resistant to juglone.

Another characteristic of spiderwort is its tendency to close its flowers as soon as the sun is shining. Thus, the best time to see and photograph this species is on a cloudy day, especially after a good rainfall.

Purple milkweed observations

2011-06-03T13:19:00.000-07:00

The purple milkweed (Asclepias purpurascens), an endangered species in Wisconsin, does well in the savannas at Pleasant Valley Conservancy. It is one of our "signature" species.

I have been following native populations since 1999. Each new population has been given a permanent marker, and is then followed in subsequent years. In addition, Kathie and I have been raising plants from seed and transplanting them into likely locations. Some of these transplants now are also permanently marked. At present there are 27 known populations at PVC, 16 of which were spontaneous and the rest from transplants.

I published a paper on the purple milkweed work in the September 2009 issue of Ecological Restoration, and a PDF can be found on the PVC web site.

This is the time of year when purple milkweeds are first making an appearance. Although not flowering yet, most of my permanent stands are tall enough to find, and are generally in flower bud.

Yesterday I surveyed all my marked populations. Of the 27 populations, all except 7 had stems. It isn't uncommon for a population to skip a year (absent, and then returns the following year), and in two cases I have had a population thrive for a few years and then permanently disappear. Also, some years a stand has lots more shoots than other years.

This year, one of my spontaneous populations (photo above) has 47 stems, all with flower buds, whereas the most it ever had before was 9. The photo to the left shows how dense this stand is. If all these stems flower, this should be a specatacular sight!

It's not clear why purple milkweed is so uncommon, since it is quite easy to raise from seed (see my paper). The most likely conclusion from my work is that pollination is quite variable. Despite having dozens of flowering umbels, seed set is often quite uncommon. Last year, for instance, only a "single" seed pod was formed from the large number of possible flowering stems.

Story of a small buckthorn area

2011-05-27T09:57:00.000-07:00

We've been working for over 10 years to eradicate buckthorn in some of our savanna areas. It is hard now to realize how dense the buckthorn was when we started. Generally, you could not see past the first line of buckthorn plants into the interior of a unit. Knocking the buckthorn back, by basal bark and cut-and-treat, got rid of these large thickets, but due to seed bank and presence of dormant root masses, there was plenty of new growth. How to eradicate permanently?

This is the story of a single area where I am now convinced that I have successfully eradicated buckthorn. The area is Unit 19A, a long, narrow unit on top of the dolomite, where buckthorn had been well established. In the winter of 1998 the buckthorn had been basal barked (Garlon 4), which effectively killed the large stems. In the spring of 1999 no shoots came up next to the treated stems.

However, during the summer small shoots sprang up throughout the unit. They were effectively killed (1999 or 2000) by basal bark treatment, using a sponge-type applicator.

Unfortunately, by this time our attention had been turned to complete clearing of the south-facing slope and the ridge-top savannas, so this area was neglected (overlooked).

By 2006 the buckthorn was back in full force, and I decided to use this as a test area, small enough to deal with, but large enough so that there was plenty of buckthorn.

In early August 2006 the whole buckthorn area was removed using a Stihl brush cutter. All cut stems were removed, and any stems missed with the Stihl were hand cut. Because the density was so high, the cut stems were not treated with herbicide. Rather, the cut plants were allowed to resprout, which they did with a vengeance.

Then in late Sept 2006 these resprouts were foliar sprayed, using fosamine (Krenite; a woody plant herbicide). (One patch was left unsprayed as a control.) At the time of spraying, the buckthorn resprouts were about 6-12 inches tall.

Observations showed that these resprouts were NOT from underground root masses. Rather, each resprout was from the first lateral bud below the cut stem. (See photo to left) Thus, cutting each stem eliminated apical dominance, permitting lateral buds to become activated.

At the time of spraying, the buckthorn stem density was about 75 sprouts were square meter! (See photo below.)

Observations made the following late summer of 2007 showed that the foliar spraying had greatly delayed buckthorn growth but had not eliminated it. Lots of shoots 2-4 feet tall. There was, however, lots of native vegetation becoming established, including zig zag goldenrod, arrow-leaf aster, purple Joe Pye weed, bottle brush grass, and white snakeroot. (The buckthorn control area that had not be sprayed in 2006 was then treated with Garlon 3A (foliar).

At this point, the very dense buckthorn patch had been eliminated, although there were scattered viable buckthorn stems throughout the unit. For the next two years (2008 and 2009), these stems were sprayed with foliar Garlon 3A in early October, at a time when most native vegetation had senesced. Then in mid-summer 2010 all remaining viable buckthorn stems were treated with Garlon 4 basal bark, using the sponge stick technique. Since by this time, viable buckthorn stems were quite scattered, the sponge technique was quite easy to carry out. Observations a few weeks after treatment showed that all treated buckthorn stems had died.

During the three years that the remaining buckthorn plants were being eliminated, the native vegetation was proliferating. Presumably because the buckthorn stem density was low, buckthorn allelopathy was not being exhibited.

Last November, Unit 19A was burned when we burned the north woods. Since no viable buckthorn stems were visible, the burn may not have had any effect on the buckthorn, but it probably greatly stimulated the growth of native vegetation this spring.

Returning to this area now, I was unable to find any living buckthorns, but very lush native vegetation. The whole Unit looks very good.

Because this unit is adjacent to the main trail along the ridge, it is very easy to monitor for buckthorn resurgence. We'll be keeping an eye on it, but I am very encouraged. This may be the first site at Pleasant Valley Conservancy where buckthorn has been definitvely eradicated. Lots of work, but worth it!

Interns starting to work

2011-05-24T16:56:00.000-07:00

Kathie and I have been managing the Prairie Partners summer internship program for Madison Audubon Society for 4-5 years now. This year we have another nice group of college students whose long-term interest is in restoration ecology. The team rotates through five separate sites, and Pleasant Valley Conservancy's day is Tuesday. Amanda serves as their supervisor, and since she was an intern herself 3 years ago, she is well suited to the task.

After a morning of orientation to the Conservancy, the interns started work with a vengeance. The East Basin, our newest reconstructed prairie, is only in its second growing season, and still has lots of undesirables. They covered this whole 5 acre site, digging bull thistle, mullein, and garlic mustard (a small patch), among other things. Despite the bad guys, they found lots of desirable plants, including shooting star, lupine, spiderwort, prairie dock, lots of old-field thistle, and many more good prairie species. The burn we carried out on this "prairie" about 6 weeks ago probably helped get it started for the year.

Welcome, interns!

Pretty things at Black Earth Rettenmund Prairie

2011-05-23T15:32:00.000-07:00

Yesterday Kathie and I spent some time at Black Earth Rettenmund Prairie. Right now all the early blooming species are up, and the views are spectacular. Well worth a visit.

We had great burns at the end of March. Late enough so that the snows were gone and the fine fuel was well cured, but early enough so that all living plants were still dormant. What a difference 6 weeks has made! Despite the cool spring, great early prairie plants.

The photo above (by Kathie) is of a typical area in the south burn unit. In addition to the orange hoary puccoon, there are loads of shooting star in full bloom, plus lots of blue-eyed grass, wood betony, pussy toes, Robin's fleabane, bird's foot violet, and yellow star grass.

The blue-eyed grass at Black Earth Rettenmund is interesting, since it is all white rather than blue. It is not uncommon to have both white and blue blue-eyed grass in the same area, and most people assume these are just variants. But we have searched extensively at Rettenmund and have never found any blue flowers.

Another point about the photo above: ten years ago when Kathie and I started managing this prairie, the area shown in the south unit had been heavily brushed in. Large honeysuckles especially, but also sumac, scattered buckthorn, and lots of other woodies. Most were eliminated by cutting and treating (Garlon), but last fall and early this spring crews made several passes through the whole prairie basal barking all remainng living woody vegetation. It is nice to see how well these areas have responded to careful herbicide use.

Of course, this prairie is just getting started for the growing season. Come back frequently!

Wood betony time

2011-05-18T11:29:00.000-07:00

Wood betony (Pedicularis candensis) is an interesting species that is found in prairies and open wooded thickets throughout Wisconsin. Wood betony grows in hemiparasitic fashion upon the roots of grasses or other herbaceous plants. Because of its parasitic property it is able to exert considerable control on surrounding plants, and has hence been called a "keystone" species. (See Rich Henderson's paper on keystone species in the 18th North American Prairie Conference, available digitally through the U.W. Madison Digital Collections.) According to Henderson, there is a good probability that the presence of a keystone species such as wood betony will markedly enhance the diversity of a prairie or savanna site.

We had a few small native populations of wood betony at Pleasant Valley Conservancy, and have been working to extend these by spreading seeds.

This is the time of year when wood betony is very visible. It grows in patches and its light yellow color makes it easy to spot, even from a distance. Today we found it in a couple of our savanna areas as well as in two planted prairies, the Pocket Prairie and Toby's Prairie. The photos here, taken by Kathie, are from Toby's.

According to Henderson, wood betony particularly parasitizes grasses, and it is probably because of its reduction in prairie grasses that it increases diversity in prairie remnants. (The elimination of grass patches results in the presence of bare areas, where other prairie plants can become established.)

In planted prairies of extended age, large grass-free "holes" may be seen where wood betony has become well established.

If you can find a seed source (it is also available commercially) collect around the end of June. Throw seeds out in areas with heavy populations of grasses. Establishment may take some time, and the population will move around, since once it kills off its grass host it dies back, only to reappear in other grass areas.

The related species P. lanceolata, which is also common in our area, thrives in wet-mesic to wet areas, where we find it attacking clonal sedge species such as Carex trichocarpa.

Special savanna issue of Woodlands and Prairies

2011-05-15T10:11:00.000-07:00

The magazine Woodlands and Prairies, published out of Monona, Iowa, is a very fine, full-color quarterly that focuses on restoration of midwest woodlands and prairies.

The new issue, just out, is a special issue on oak savannas. This particular issue is a follow-up to the Oak Savanna conference that was held in the Toledo, Ohio area in the summer of 2009. A lot of interesting information about the "Oak Openings" area of northwestern Ohio and southeastern Michigan is given. The following issue, due sometime in late summer, is also to be on savannas.

This magazine is highly recommended for midwest restorationists. Get more information at this link.

T

Trillium recurvatum

2011-05-10T06:35:00.000-07:00

Trillium recurvatum, a Special Concern species in Wisconsin, is now flowering in our front-yard perennial garden. (Photo by Kathie) We did not plant it, and have no idea how it got there. We also have some plants, not yet in flower, in the backyard. There is a good population of this species about a mile away from our house in Big Woods, one of the UW-Madison Lakeshore Preserve units, so it may have come from there, but not likely via us.

Interesting how plants, even rare ones, get around!

According to the Wisconsin State Herbarium web site, this plant is mostly confined to the southern tier of counties, and there is no collection for Dane County, where we live. Its main habitat in the state is southern Wisconsin upland forest (per Curtis).

We have never seen this species at Pleasant Valley Conservancy, where we have a big population of large-flowered Trillium (which should be in full bloom next weekend).

Early flowers (is it already May 1?)

2011-05-01T14:40:00.000-07:00

It's not really news that spring is late this year. According to Wisconsin Ag reports, farmers have barely been able to get into their fields, whereas last year at this time, 20% of the fields had been planted.

I've been doing phenology for the past ten years and just reviewed my list. By this date in past years wood anemone, wild columbine, fringed puccoon, Jacob's ladder, and prairie violet would all be in flower. In some years, golden Alexanders would be in flower. Haven't seen any of these yet.

A brief survey today brought out only the following: Bloodroot (been out for a week or so); pussy toes; dooryard violet; early meadow rue; bird's foot violet (photo below); marsh marigold (photo above); and of course early buttercup, which has been up for almost two weeks. (Both photos by Kathie)

Well established plants with flower buds: Golden Alexander; large yellow lady slippers; shooting star; Jacob's ladder.

A brief survey indicates that this is going to be a great year for shooting star at Pleasant Valley Conservancy. Lots of savanna areas with remnant populations, and quite a few areas where we planted seeds 5-10 years ago are now finally producing good plants. This species takes quite a while to get established from seed.

Let's hope May will be better than April. (At least we got all our burns done!)

Burning small prairies: sometimes a challenge

2011-04-29T16:59:00.000-07:00

Sometimes it takes as long to burn a 2 acre prairie as it does a 40 acre one. Today Kathie and I took photos while Rich Henderson and a skilled Prairie Enthusiasts crew did a prescribed burn at Koltes Prairie. Koltes consists of two high quality prairie remnants that were recently purchased by the Natural Heritage Land Trust as part of a major acquisition in the Town of Westport.

The goal today was to burn a 2-acre piece of this prairie that is situated in the midst of a larger remnant. Although fire breaks had been mowed, it was essential to keep the fire line contained by creating black lines all the way around the 2-acre piece. A large pumper unit was available, but most of the control was done with backpack water sprayers. Although the wind was relatively light, and the humidity not too low, it was a challenge to keep the fire lines contained. The crew had to move slowly, and used lots of water to keep the fire line straight and sharp. The whole burn took 1 1/2 hours.

Because this was a relatively late-season burn, early-growing species such as bird's foot violet and shooting star will probably be considerably suppressed. However, late-season prairie species should do well. Among others, this prairie has large amounts of prairie gentian, rattlesnake master, prairie dropseed, lead plant, and white prairie clover. Because of the well planned burn program, it is virtually brush free.

Post-burn spraying of new shoots of invasive plants

2011-04-26T12:17:00.002-07:00

Now that burn season is over, it is time to turn to early control of invasive plants. One of the main advantages of burning a natural area is that it creates a barren landscape where new shoots can be readily seen. Although most of the "bad guys" (sweet clover, wild parsnip, etc.) are not up enough yet to find, some species are already visible. Among these is the strongly clonal Arnoglossum atriplicifolium (pale Indian Plantain, which we are calling PIP), which is already widespread at Pleasant Valley Conservancy. Although we don't have garlic mustard, we do have this annoying invader.

Those who have been following this blog will remember that last summer I discovered that PIP forms extensive rhizome systems and forms root suckers throughout. In our sort of savannas, it is highly invasive. (The fact that this is a clonal species had been published over 25 years ago in an obscure botanical journal, but was not generally known in our area.) Last summer's clones were so large and dense that no other species was able to become established. We spent a lot of time getting rid of this species, but knew that we were not eliminating the underground rhizome system.

We therefore determined that this spring, in an effort to eradicate the rhizome system, we would start spraying new shoots as soon they were visible.

As it turned out, PIP was one of the first species to appear in areas where it was clonal, even before other cool-season forbs (such as shooting star, columbine, golden Alexanders, etc.) Since it grows in large colonies and has characteristic leaves, it has been easy to spot. The photo to the left shows a typical scene. Each shoot has arisen from a root sucker on one of the underground rhizomes. In a circular area about 20 feet in diameter, I estimated that there were around 1000 shoots! Because of the black background remaining from the burn, these shoots stand out well. Even the tiny ones (a few visible in this photo) could be spotted.

Fortunately, last fall we had made careful notes of where this plant was present, and were able to start spraying about a week ago. Amanda spent a couple of extra days on some of the densest stands, Kathie and I both took our turns, and the complete crew will endeavor to finish the job within the next week.

We elected to use a foliar concentration of glyphosate (2%), since this herbicide has no residual activity in soil and will not affect later-growing species.

However, we are planning to return to all sprayed sites in about 2 weeks and respray any newly appearing plants or those missed on the first pass. Any that we don't get in the second pass will be dealt sometime in early summer using the Garlon leaf spritz technique . (This species forms large basal leaves, making the leaf spritz technique especially effective.)

After we had finished our spraying for the day, Kathie dug up a few plants from one of the sandier savannas. In sand, the roots are easy to clean of soil, making it possible to see what these young suckers look like. As the photo shows, these tiny plants have massive root and rhizome systems. Also, at the base of each stem is a cluster of dormant buds (not visible in the photo). Obviously, you can't get rid of a plant like this by pulling it up, since you will never get all the rhizomes. Herbicide is the only way.

2011-04-26T12:17:00.001-07:00

Early plant growth

2011-04-18T07:22:00.000-07:00

The cool spring is delaying plant growth, but a few things are finally appearing. Prairie people generally look first for pasque flowers, which get their name from their association with Easter. For oak savannas, on the other hand, the early buttercup, Ranunculus fascicularis, is first to appear. We generally find this tiny plant first in unburned areas that have been mowed (which keeps down taller growing competitors), but a few days later it will start to appear in burned areas as well. The photo here is by Kathie.

This species has the relatively high C value of 6, and is one of our most reliable early spring flowers. According to Cochrane and Iltis, it is found in southern Wisconsin where its prime habitat is the oak savanna, although it might also be found in dry to dry-mesic prairies.

A number of other plant species are already visible now in the vegetative state, but won't be flowering for some time. These include golden Alexanders, Jacob's ladder, early meadow rue, and zig zag goldenrod. Another early species that we aren't so happy about is pale Indian plantain (Arnoglossum atriplicifolium) which we have given the derogatory name of PIP). If you have been following this blog, you know that last year we were overrun with this native but fiercely clonal and highly aggressive species. We don't want to eradicate it, but we definitely want to knock it back. Since its shoots are easy to recognize (see Kathie's photo above), we will be spraying them (probably with glyphosate) as soon as they get large enough.

Now that burns are over, spray season begins!

Final burns of the spring

2011-04-14T15:20:00.000-07:00

Yesterday and Tuesday (April 13 and 12, 2011) we had great burn weather and were able to finish our planned burns for the spring. Despite the fact that we are having a cold spring, this year we were able to finish our burns earlier than previously. Partly, this was due to favorable burn weather when large crews were available.

The three burn events this spring were March 31 (15 acres), April 5 (44 acres), and April 12-13 (26 acres), for a total of 85 acres. Last spring we burned 76 acres.

These burns were divided almost equally between prairie and savanna/woodland.

In addition, we burned 16 acres of oak woodland (North-facing) in November 2010, which is really part of the same burn season. Thus, in the 2010-2011 season we burned 101 acres, which is virtually all of the Conservancy other than the wetland. (For added glory, Fish & Wildlife Service burned the wetland last April!)

On Tuesday we burned three planted prairies (Valley, Crane, and Ridge), and three oak woodlands (Units 13, 21, and what we call the Triangle). On Wednesday we mainly burned the East Basin, which is a planted prairie that is only in its first growing season. Because a lot of the East Basin had been mowed (standard practice for a planted prairie in its 1st growing season), fuel for carrying a fire was quite patchy. Therefore we spent quite a bit of time doing internal lighting.
The photo above shows the Ridge Prairie in a late stage, when its two fire lines (head and back) are just about to merge, thus completing the burn. The lone cherry tree has survived at least 4 fires such as this, although its long-term fate is probably sealed.

The photo above is a late stage in the Unit 21 burn. Because most of this woodland/savanna is a fairly steep hillside, it burns very well.

Because of these good burns, we are looking forward to substantial advances in our brush control program.

Fire refuges

2011-04-11T07:12:00.000-07:00

Concerns are often raised about the detrimental effects of prescribed fire on animals, especially relatively nonmotile invertebrates. Since (at least some) invertebrates survive prescribed burns, escape or avoidance mechanisms must come into play. During my recent surveys of the results of our two large burns, I frequently observed patches, some tiny, others reasonably large, that had not burned. These unburned areas are generally called refuges ("refugia" in the scientific literature).

The heterogeneity of savanna and prairie landscapes is self evident. I have spent quite a lot of time watching fire spread across the landscape. Although many areas show virtually 100% burn, in other areas, small or large unburned patches occur. These tend to be more common in savannas than prairies, but even prairies show small unburned sites.

The photos here provide a few examples, and illustrate the mechanisms by which fire refuges are created.
The base of a tree is often a fire-avoidance zone. Partly this is because the tree itself creates a reduced-fuel environment. Prairie grasses, the most flammable fuels, require full sunlight, and because of the leaf canopy the base of a tree is fairly shady. Also, fire tends to move in complicated patterns around trees, and some parts remain unburned. The above photo shows the unburned zone around the base of a large white oak.
The above photo shows the effect that a large horizontal log had on fire behavior. This black oak had been cut as part of savanna clearing, and was overlooked when the area was canvassed for fire wood. This log provided a good barrier and fire simply passed around this small site. Neither the grasses nor oak leaves, both good fuels, got burned.
The above photo shows an area that did not burn when we did the big south-slope fire. This is a fairly small area, but there were areas as large as 50 feet in diameter that did not burn. The photo below provides a closer look. Since most invertebrates are small, such a site could provide a reasonable hiding place.

Burns help to find woody vegetation

2011-04-09T06:49:00.000-07:00

Finding patches of problem woody vegetation is important for prairie and savanna restoration. One of the best times to locate problem woodies is right after a burn, when they really stand out against the black background.

The photo above is of a large sumac clone that was present in one of our savanna areas (Unit 11D). This clone was spotted from 50 feet away. (Fortunately, Amanda had basal barked this clone before the area was burned.)

Other shrub species that are easy to find are gray dogwood, hazel, any bramble (the red stems really show), and honeysuckle. Also, oak grubs. Unfortunately, small buckthorn are harder to see.

Sometime in the next few days (before green-up) I plan to do a survey of all our burned areas and mark with the GPS any problem areas. Then the resprouts can be herbicided later in the spring.

Big savanna burn April 5 2011

2011-04-08T10:31:00.000-07:00

After some days of unsettled weather, conditions briefly improved and we were able to conduct a major savanna burn. This burn is a vital part of our savanna restoration program and getting it done is a major spring event. The weather was cold but dry, and we had a stiff breeze from the west northwest, which really helped to push the fire through the woods. The results were not as good as last year, but the coverage in most of the savanna areas was over 80%, and lots reached 90-100%.

The photo to the left shows an early stage of lighting. Both the wind and the steep hill contribute to fire behavior. When I returned to this area the next day, I found that coverage was essentially complete. In this area, where the canopy cover is about 50%, the principle fuel is oak leaves, plus some graminoids in scattered sunny areas. The area to the left is mainly white oak, and the upper area is bur oak. Since the leaves had all winter to deposit, the litter area was fairly continuous, which helps a lot in a burn like this.

Part of our savanna is a basin that surrounds a large planted prairie (the Pocket Prairie). We lighted the prairie first, and its head fire pushed right up into the lower reaches of the savanna, saving us quite a bit of time. (A good black line had already been created at the upper end of the savanna.)

In the photo above, most of the savanna has already been burned. The R.H. was around 35%, and since this was early afternoon, the sun had had time to dry things off.
The photo above shows the ATV trail that goes through the "Saddle" area. The unit on the left had been burned on 31 March as part of the south slope burn. The unit on the right (11A) has just been burned. The coverage is very good.

The photo above shows an area at the top of our ridge, where three burn units come together. The unit on the right in the rear was actually burned last November, as part of our North Woods burn. The other two units have just been burned.

Since savanna burns are complicated and are more demanding than prairie burns, when conditions are favorable we try to do the largest burns we can. Per GIS, we burned 44 acres!

Results from last Thursday's burn

2011-04-03T11:50:00.000-07:00

Yesterday Kathie and I spent a couple of hours surveying the areas on the south slope that burned last Thursday. The coverage was very good, virtually 100% in most areas.

The first two photos are views looking up the slope from Pleasant Valley Road. The top one shows the area before the burn and the lower one is afterward. The little bluestem prairie in this area is lush due to the great rains we had last summer. Note in the after-burn photo that the soil is full of small rocks. Indeed, the Dane County soil map calls this soil "stony." The scattered black tufts are the remains of little bluestem plants that despite the rocks are well established in this area. Little bluestem is called a cespitose grass, which means that it is a clump-former that sends up numerous "tillers" from a well established root system.

The next photo below is a view from the top of the slope (the edge of the fire break is visible in the distance). This is a typical bur oak savanna. In the more open areas the fuel is primarily Indian grass, and under the trees the fuel is oak leaves. There are scattered areas here that did not burn, as shown by the lighter patches. These unburned areas appear to be mainly bluegrass or another nonnative grass.

According to my measurements with ArcGIS, the whole burn on Thursday was 15 acres.

First big burn of the year

2011-04-01T10:15:00.000-07:00

Getting prescribed burns done requires a lot of planning, appropriate weather, and a good crew. Because of the cold March, our burns have been considerably delayed, but yesterday everything came together and we got a lot done.

For burn weather, I mostly follow the NOAA web site, and especially a page called "Forecast Discussion". Beginning on Monday, a surface high pressure system with a very dry air mass was predicted to hover over the area and continue through Thursday. The weather was to be coldddd in the mornings, but to warm up a bit by afternoon. The high Thursday was predicted to be about 50 F, with low humidity and light winds out of the south. Good conditions for a burn, and the DNR gave us the go-ahead. Actually, although the wind was light, it was variable, and shifted from north to south and back again.

Because we were doing several large and complicated burns, we needed a large crew. We had 17 people, 7 from contractors, 3 of our own PVC crew, and 7 volunteers (including Kathie and me). We needed them all!

Thursday morning broke clear and cold, with light winds and a temperature of 22 F. Because of the low temperature, we could not use our shallow well, and had to borrow water from a neighbor. We needed a huge amount of water, and by the end of the day we had gone back twice for refills. Fortunately, I had anticipated the cold and Marci had brought all our water backpack to her basement, and filled them in the morning of the burn. (There is nothing worse than ice crystals in a water backpack.) We met at 9 AM to start getting things ready, and we were finally able to start lighting at 11:15 AM.

We burned the south-facing slope, which is a steep hill of about 20 acres, with little bluestem prairie remnant below and bur oak savanna above. The fuel was primarily prairie grass, but in the upper more shaded savanna, the fuel also had a lot of bur oak leaves. With the light wind, the very steep slope was more critical, and was the dominant factor.

A computer program called BehavePlus 4.0 can be used to model fire behavior. One inputs parameters such as fuel type (in our case, tall grass), fuel moisture in %, wind speed, and slope steepness. The output is either flame height or rate of fire spread. With our input parameters, flame length varied from 6 to 11 feet, depending on the windspeed and the rate of spread was pretty fast.

Obviously, with such high flame lengths, it is desirable to minimize the size of the fire. For the past several years we have been keeping the width of the fire line low by using the "strip headfire" technique. This technique uses four drip torches. After putting in a blackline at the top of the ridge, next to our mowed fire break, the other three drip torches moved in parallel to the contours, the uppermost first, then the second, and then the third at the bottom of the slope (along Pleasant Valley Road). The steep hill encourages the fire to move up, but the fire quickly reaches the black line above and goes out. The drip torch operators are in communication by two-way radio, to ensure that they move across the slope in staggered formation.

The most critical part of this procedure is the creation of the blackened area at the top of the slope. The photos below show Susan and Stephanie working on this process. (Several more people with backpack water cans remain farther behind to keep the fire line under control.) Also, when this crew reaches the far end of the slope, there is a tricky phase when a vertical black line must be created from the top to the bottom of the slope (at Pleasant Valley Road).

The first photo below shows Chris lighting the third strip from the top and the next photo shows the slope in a later stage, when it was mostly black.

The whole burn took about 90 minutes.

After a short lunch break, we moved to Black Earth Rettenmund Prairie for two more burns. In all, a fine day.

Note: if you don't have enough personnel to use the strip headfire technique, you can do the whole burn as a backburn from the top. This works, but takes quite a bit longer. (The last photo above, which was taken just before the lowest drip torch arrives, shows such a backburn in progress.)

Mowing fire breaks with the Kubota

2011-03-30T18:45:00.000-07:00

There are lots of ways of creating fire breaks, but the fastest and best is with a tractor. For the small prairie remnants that we burn here in southern Wisconsin, the breaks don't need to be real wide, and a small Kubota tractor is ideal. I'm not talking about a 50-100 horsepower tractor, but one of the small ones sold for use around small "estates". The one we have is about 18 HP.

We have owned our Kubota for about six years and it has served us very well. Although it has a PTO and 3-point hitch, suitable for use with a small brush mower, for prairie and savanna fire breaks, the under deck mower works well and is very easy to use. No fussing around hooking up the brush hog. Just climb aboard and start mowing. The photo shows Kathie "touching up" a fire break at Black Earth Rettenmund Prairie, one of the prime Prairie Enthusiasts preserves. She had mowed the fire breaks late last fall but since we are burning tomorrow, another pass today made good sense.

The impressive thing about our Kubota is that it is able to handle even small brush.

I know a lot of people mow fire breaks with walk-behind mowers such as the DR or Ferris. These are a lot cheaper, and just as effective, but on the kinds of hills we have to deal with, the operator needs to be young and strong. On the other hand, even an 80-year old in reasonable shape can operate a Kubota.

In addition to fire breaks, we use the Kubota to mow hiking and ATV trails; only two passes (over and back) are needed.

And when you are all finished with your prairie work, you can use it to mow your lawn!

Still time for some late winter brush work

2011-03-27T07:57:00.000-07:00

Winter seems to keep hanging on this year, which is bad for burns but good for brush work. Yesterday a group of Madison Audubon volunteers worked at Arlington Prairie, a small but high quality remnant in the Goose Pond area.

The photo shows Mark cutting a gray dogwood clone and Susan (plus others out of the photo) following along after and treating all the cut stems with Garlon.

The Stihl brush cutter is the ideal way of handling this sort of small brush. In addition to gray dogwood, there was honeysuckle, wild plum, and hawthorne. Most of the brush was small.

This 5 acre prairie remnant, completely surrounded by ag fields, was too rocky to plow and too small to graze, and hence remained intact. It has a lot of fine prairie species, including large populations of prairie dropseed, rough blazing star, silky aster, rattlesnake master, and the colorful downy gentian. Also present is a small population of Prenanthes racemosa, a relatively rare, high C-value plant (C = 9).

The day started cold but warmed up to the low 30s by lunch time. Fortunately, we were on the south side of the ridge and the wind was out of the north.

Oak grubs

2011-03-20T12:40:00.000-07:00

Oak grubs are small trees with multiple stems. They arise from oak seedlings whose tops are killed by fire. Oaks are uniquely adapted to fire and grubs may remain alive for many years without turning into saplings. According to Johnson et al. (Ecology and silviculture of oaks, 2009, CAB International) these small grubs may have large root systems that are many years older than their living stems.

As it turns out, this is a good time of year to spot oak grubs, especially in the savannas where there is a lot of open area. The photo above shows some black oak grubs (Quercus velutina) in Unit 12A. These are interesting because all of the saplings and large trees in this savanna are white oaks, yet all the grubs are black oaks. This species is a fairly weedy tree which thrives well in sandy areas, such as present in this particular unit. Without moving I counted at least a dozen grubs. In an open area like this, where prairie grasses also thrive, there is plenty of fuel for hot fires.

In a lower part of the savanna, near Pleasant Valley Road, I found lots of bur oak grubs (Q. macrocarpa), which are easy to distinguish because of their heavy corky bark. The specimen in the photo is a classic multiple-stemmed grub. Here, near a very large bur oak tree that is a prolific acorn producer, I counted at least a dozen grubs. The bur oak was historically an important savanna species in this part of the country, and was noted for its scattered presence among the prairies. Again, the multiple stems are due to frequent burns. (This area has been burned annually for more than 10 years.)

What would happen if the burns ceased? Since they have extensive root systems, all of these grubs would quickly turn into substantial trees. In a sense, they are just sitting there waiting for a chance to start growing.

Here is another possibility: due to weather conditions or other random events, one of these grubs might miss getting burned. If this happens, it will quickly turn into a small tree. Because of the big root system, it should send up a fire-resistant (because of the corky bark) trunk. In fact, near these bur oak grubs there is a small tree that has escaped fire. This tree is very close to Pleasant Valley Road, where prairie grass is not too well established, probably explaining why it is no longer a grub.

I noticed that there were lots more grubs in the open than in the closed savannas. Since oaks are not very shade tolerant, this makes sense.

Anyone interested in details of the ecology of oaks should check out the text by Johnson, which is an authoritative and very complete up-to-date reference book.

Spring 2011 finally coming

2011-03-15T17:52:00.000-07:00

Today was the first day in months that I have been able to get to the top of the ridge. The last week of sunny (although cold) weather was responsible for a lot of snow melt, and although we still aren't completely snow-free, our south-facing slope and ridge-top savannas are now bare. Both the pickup truck and the Kawasaki Mule started, even though they had been sitting completely idle since early December.

Although our woods road was still mostly ice, and not accessible, the trail up through the White Oak Savanna was open. Once on top, I went to the Far Overlook to check on the beavers. Darn! They were still there.

The photo here is a little distant, but you should be able to see two beaver dams blocking Pleasant Valley Creek. I'm not sure what the long-term effect on the wetland will be, but it's giving the ducks and geese paddling water. Also, there was a cluster of perhaps six sandhill cranes that were creating quite a noise.

The main work today was clearing fire breaks at both ends of the south-facing slope. By now, we have this down to a routine. The photo shows Susan, Marci, and Amanda clearing the break up the east end of the south slope. Two brush cutters and a leaf blower make fairly short work of the job. They go up to the top, and then widen further on the way back down.

Another job using the same equipment is clearing the bases of standing dead snags. This saves a lot of potential problems during mop-up after the burn.

I have always been interested in microclimate effects, and the photo below shows in dramatic fashion the difference between a north- and south-facing slope. The ecologist or forester uses the term "aspect" to refer to the direction a slope is facing. The area on the right (Unit 20) has a north aspect and is fairly closed woods (hickory, basswood, birch, a few maples), whereas the area to the left (Unit 12A) has a south aspect and is white oak savanna. The ravine between these two units is narrower than it seems on the photo, and the steep sides enhance the aspect effect. Not surprisingly, the vegetation on these two slopes is quite different. Also, they burn differently.

Not too early to spray bad green stuff?

2011-03-02T11:53:00.000-08:00

Some of the south- and west-facing woods are essentially snow-free, and are starting to show patches of green. Everything that I have seen has been bad, nonnatives that are probably left over from late fall growth and have been overwintering under the snow. The photos here are from Reese Woods in Shorewood Hills, but could probably be found in lots of other places. The big patch in the photo above is Vinca minor, which is probably only a "minor" problem.

But the photo to the left is motherwort (Leonurus cardiaca), a nonnative that is fairly widespread in southern Wisconsin and worth getting rid of. I've seen this in lots of disturbed places at Pleasant Valley Conservancy, such as road cuts and edges of parking spots. It is a perennial, and hence can only be reliably eradicated with herbicide. We had lots of this in the areas cleared in the East Basin, and spent quite a bit of time before planting spot spraying with glyphosate. Right now it is really easy to spot, because there are few other green things (and those that are present are probably also nonnatives). The ideal time to spray, as there is nothing "good" yet, so that anything green is bad.

However, there is a narrow spray window now, because in a couple of weeks some good species, will start to show up such as early buttercup. Never pass up a chance to spray when the conditions are favorable.

New GIS-based management map now available

2011-02-27T13:57:00.000-08:00

I'm gradually learning the intricacies of ArcGIS, and I have now used the new 2010 Dane County air photo as a basis for creating a new management map of Pleasant Valley Conservancy. This map is available at this link. (Be sure to refresh your browser when you access the link.)

The version provided here is in letter-sized landscape format, which is half-sized of the version I created in GIS. The version I drew was in tabloid format, and I printed versions on 11 X 17 inch paper for lamination. When we get our new kiosk installed this summer, I'll post a large-sized version there.

The 2010 georeferenced air photo is provided free by Wisconsinview.org and is the key to this management map. Although anyone can download this photo, it is unfortunately in MrSID format and hence not viewable in Photoshop or any normal photo program. MrSID (pronounced Mister Sid) is an acronym for multiresolution seamless image database, and is a file format developed by LizardTech for encoding georeferenced raster graphics such as orthophotos. If you don't have ArcGIS, a MrSID viewer can be downloaded free from the U.S. Library of Congress. (The Library of Congress uses the MrSID format for its maps.) Wisconsinview.org is a free web site run through the UW-Madison Space Science and Engineering Department.

We make considerable use of our management map, since it helps us keep track of where we have worked. Even with GPS, it is very useful to be able to use the management units to help us close in on an area we are working on. After a while, these management unit numbers become like old friends.

The advantage of the new version is that it is more accurate than the older one (which was based on an air photo but without the Waypoints and Tracks positions). For instance, the positions of the fire breaks, roads, overlooks, and parking places are based on GPS coordinates.

More on the tree inventory at Pleasant Valley Conservancy

2011-02-19T09:37:00.000-08:00

I finally found time to put together a summary of the tree database we finished a few weeks ago. Thanks again to Heisley and (especially) Amanda for their hard winter work on this. Trudging around in deep snow is not the best way to train for a Marathon.

The ArcMap software has lots of capabilities, and one is its ability to put together quickly and accurately a complete count of all categories of trees. (You could do this in Excel but it would probably take an hour.)

As the table shows, we have over 4000 trees, although some of them are present in only small numbers. The principal species are bur oak, white oak, red oak, and black oak, with lesser numbers of birch, cherry, hickory, Hill's oak, basswood, and black walnut.

I should emphasize that these counts are what is there at present, after more than ten years of restoration. When we started, the percentage of oaks was a lot lower.

Common name	Latin name	Count
Aspen	Populus tremuloides	11
Basswood	Tilia Americana	131
Birch	Betula papyrifera	408
Black Oak	Quercus velutina	545
Black Walnut	Juglans nigra	117
Box Elder	Acer negundo	2
Bur Oak	Quercus macrocarpa	714
Cedar	Juniperus virginiana	12
Cherry	Prunus serotina	240
Elm	Ulmus rubra	7
Hackberry	Celitis occidentalis	62
Hickory; shag bark	Carya ovata	211
Hills Oak	Quercus ellipsoidalis	147
Red Maple	Acer rubrum	5
Red Oak	Quercus rubra	824
Red Pine	Pinus resinosa	1
Sugar Maple	Acer saccharum	2
Unidentified		4
White Oak	Quercus alba	619
White Pine	Pinus strobes	1
Yellow Bud Hickory	Carya cordiformis	4
Total trees		4067

How important is it to eradicate "all" bad guys?

2011-02-17T10:07:00.000-08:00

The days are starting to get longer and there are tiny glimpses of spring in the air. On a south-facing lawn I saw bits of green grass sticking out. This is the time of year when one starts to think about planning for the upcoming season. I just finished the prescribed burn plans for Black Earth Rettenmund Prairie and Pleasant Valley Conservancy State Natural Areas.

One important part of restoration work is planning brush and weed removal. The question often arises: how important is it to get rid of "all" of the invasives? Eradication is expensive; do we really need to eliminate every last sweet clover sprig or buckthorn stem?

If one is thinking of the long term, the answer to this question is "Yes". The reason? Because annual stewardship cannot be assured. All sorts of reasons might arise that would prevent continued restoration on a preserve. Money problems first come to mind, but passing on or moving away of key personnel may be more important. What happens if work is stopped on a site before it is completely cleared of bad stuff? In a few years, bad plants will start to appear, and in a few more years there will be more. At first these "stragglers" may seem acceptable, but this is just what microbiologists call the "lag" phase. Eventually the "log" phase is reached, and the site will suddenly "explode" with invasive plants. With exponential growth, it is the last doubling that turns the site from tolerable to hopeless. One year the site may look more or less OK and the next year it is ruined.

However, if the bad stuff has been completely eradicated, then the site should be able to stand some neglect, with perhaps just an occasional prescribed burn. (But don't count on burns to get rid of the invaders! This won't happen.) Even more important: if all invaders have been eradicated, it becomes a very inexpensive process to remove the few new ones that move in from outside. One or two passes through this blissful preserve may be all that is necessary each year.

Thinking of the budgetary and personnel problems, which is more important? A smaller area completely restored, or a larger area partly restored? The answer to this interesting question may depend to a great extent on the goals.

For instance, if the goal is to provide habitat for grassland birds, then large open areas are critical, but they may not need to be completely weed free. Indeed, some of grassland bird species seem to be reasonably happy with alfalfa fields, as long as they aren't mowed too early.

But if the goal is preservation of rare plant species, then small sites with high botanical quality will be more important.

Dealing with brush piles

2011-02-16T13:47:00.000-08:00

Almost any prairie or savanna restoration project ends up creating lots of brush piles. One or two piles might be left as wildlife habitat, but if you have a lot of piles you must get rid of them by burning.

This is the time of year to burn brush piles. Here is the regulation, copied directly from the Department of Natural Resources web site: "For areas where the ground vegetation is completely snow-covered and will remain so for the duration of the burn, a DNR burning permit is NOT required. You may burn at any time, on any day."

We had four rather large piles that were created late last fall along the fence line in Unit 13, which is a fine open white oak woodland. These piles were created when removing several large dead oaks that were right along the property boundary. We needed to clear out all this dead wood so that when we burned in the spring, there would be no standing dead smokers. Fence lines are always a problem, since they are difficult to clear, and make lousy fire breaks. The photo at the top shows one of these piles that, thanks to Integrated Restoration, was well built. (Note how tight and compact this pile is.)

We also had about a dozen smaller brush piles that were left over from the East Basin restoration. These were easier to deal with.

The safe way to light such a pile is with a good supply of drip torch fuel (2-3 diesel to 1 gasoline). We carry the fuel in a stainless steel sprayer which can be pressurized and has a long brass wand. A little fuel is first dropped inside one edge of the pile and a lighted match tossed in. Since the fuel is mainly diesel, it isn't too flashy, although the person with the match must be quick to pull back. Once the starter is lighted, fuel can be sprayed farther into the pile, driving the fire with it.

With dry snow-free wood, a pile usually starts burning quickly. The pile in the photo to the left, for instance, was lighted about 10 AM and after lunch was mostly burned down.

It is good to get all the piles started in the morning since it takes quite a while in the afternoon to consolidate the remains of each burning pile. It helps to have a pitch fork or heavy shovel to pick up any burning pieces and toss them into the center of the pile. (Leather gloves are essential!) Usually, if all the burning pieces are piled in the center, the following day there should be nothing left except ashes.

I am often asked what effect the fire has on the soil underneath. Is the soil sterilized, and will any plants grow? Actually, there is little harm. Soil is a poor conductor of heat so that only a thin area on top gets very hot. The main problem is the residue of ashes, which keeps seeds from reaching the underlying soil. We use a good leaf blower to scattered the ashes, and then plant the burn scars with a good prairie or savanna seed mix. Within a year or so, there will be no trace of the burn sites.

Big trees at Pleasant Valley Conservancy

2011-02-14T13:14:00.000-08:00

Now that we have finished the tree database, it is possible to start making interesting queries using GIS. The topic today is big trees, those greater than 30 inches in diameter. It is a simple task to write the code for this query: "Diameter" >=30. Then one must go to the Symbology tab and select the "species" category. With a few clicks, it is possible to show each large tree species with its own symbol.

I am sorry this graphic isn't larger and clearer, but the Internet has massive file-size limitations. The TIFF file that was used to create this graphic was 64 MB! However, it should be a little clearer if you double click and get it in its own window.

I did a little labeling to explain the distribution of the trees. The main part of Pleasant Valley Conservancy is an E/W trending ridge, with steep north-facing and south-facing slopes. Because we are in the Northern Hemisphere, south-facing slopes are hot, dry, and prairie-like, and north-facing slopes are cool, moist, and wooded. As the graphic shows, the red oaks are primarily on the north side and the bur oaks are on the south. The black oaks are primarily on top of the ridge, which is dry, but not as dry as the south slope. And the white oaks are primarily in a basin which is lower and surrounds the Pocket Prairie. (There are a few white oaks in other places also.)

It is impressive to think about all these large trees surviving so long. Those over 40 inches in diameter, for instance, are probably over 200 years old!

There are many highly degraded sites in southwestern Wisconsin that have large trees like ours hidden among the invasive trees and shrubs. When we started restoring Pleasant Valley Conservancy, we were hardly aware of how many large trees we had. Once the invasive shrubs and the walnuts, elms, cherry, and weedier black oaks started coming down, we were able to see what our natural area could look like.

If you are interested in studying the distribution of large oaks for a particular property, look at its 1937 air photo, now available on line. As an example, take a look at the 1937 photo for Pleasant Valley Conservancy, at this link.

More on Hill's oak

2011-02-08T12:31:00.000-08:00

In an earlier post I described some of the information we had obtained about Hill's oak (Quercus ellipsoidalis, also called Northern Pin Oak). Now that we have completed the tree database, I have been able to look at the distribution of Hill's oak using GIS.

The photo above shows the distribution of the different size classes of Hill's oak at Pleasant Valley Conservancy.

There seem to be only two areas here where Hill's oak is present, quite far apart. There are more trees in the group at the eastern end (105; just east of Toby's Prairie) but they consist of primarily smaller trees, although there are a few large ones. There are 49 trees in the group at the western end, at the upper part of the north woods hill, most of which are large sized. Since the trees at the eastern end are at a lower elevation and are close to the woods road, it is possible that the larger ones here were logged sometime in the past.

As I pointed out in my earlier post, Hill's oak is found primarily on dry, sandy sites, and it is lots more tolerant of drought than other oaks. This fits with the character of the soil east of Toby's Prairie, which is quite sandy.

Hill's oak is very shade intolerant and is unable to reproduce under its own shade. It is also well adapted to fire.

Here's what they say in Michigan about Hill's oak: "It’s just a rather rare oak and rarely cultivated to any extent. We have found this oak similar to a good black oak-Quercus velutina. It transplants easy, doesn’t have iron deficiency issues like pin oak and the leaves are very glossy and look great throughout summer. Grows well in well-drained upland soils and on clays and can be found on the borders of lakes and low woods. Wood is heavy, hard, and coarse-grained. Source of acorns for ducks with this species. Height to 50-60 ft. with a 70-80 ft. [root] width. Hardiness -30 °F."

Don't be confused about the taxonomy of Hill's oak. There is another pin oak species, Quercus palustris, that is found south of us, and all through the eastern United States. Taxonomist Andrew Hipp, who has done a lot of DNA research on oaks, calls Hill's a Western Great Lakes endemic.

In future posts, I'll be presenting some more of our tree database data.

The tree database has been completed!

2011-02-05T15:44:00.000-08:00

In 2007 we started creating a database of all the trees at Pleasant Valley Conservancy that were larger than 10 inches in diameter. Each tree received a permanent numbered marker and its species and GPS coordinates were measured. We started in the White Oak Savanna (Unit 12A) and then moved systematically across the preserve. First along the south-facing slope, then the ridge-top savannas, and finally the north-facing woods (where most of the trees are). This was primarily a winter job. Heisley started this and when she moved on Amanda continued it. Just last week she finished. Over 4000 trees! The database, a large Excel file, has been brought in to ArcGIS, and is now ready for some major analyses.

I've been using the data as it became available, and last year I used the data to calculate crowncover for the savanna areas. But the full database has lots more uses. I'll show some more results in a later post, but here (photo above) I want to show what the whole database looks like.

Unfortunately, the resolution useful for a web site is fairly low, making the image pretty poor. (Double click on the image to bring it up a bit larger in its own window.) What the photo shows is the location of every tree in the database.

The second image, below, is a little better. What it shows is the location of the large trees; every tree larger than 30 inches in diameter. Each species has its own color, and I hope the resolution is enough so that the names are visible. Also, the number to the right of each species name in the box is the number of specimens of that species present at Pleasant Valley Conservancy. There are 29 white oaks and 28 bur oaks.

I'd be happy to send a high-resolution image to anyone interested. (ArcGIS creates 600 dpi TIFFs.)

Getting ready for the kestrels

2011-02-01T09:58:00.000-08:00

We put up two kestrel nest boxes in 2008 and since then have been successful with the one closest to the cabin. It has been a delight to watch the birds'comings and goings from the porch, especially at lunch time. They have raised young each year, and last year they may have had two broods.

Since kestrels may winter in these parts, or at least start looking for nest sites in February, we try to clean the boxes out early. Sunday, a nice sunny day, Kathie and I did this chore.

The boxes are mounted on long, articulated poles, and to clean them we have to take out a bolt and swing the pole toward the ground. Because of the long pole, it is a little tricky to get a box down.

I held the box while Kathie scraped out the "junk" with a putty knife. It's pretty smelly stuff. We then resupply with fresh wood shavings.

I found the design for these boxes on a web site, but the hinged mounting arrangement came from Mark Martin at Madison Audubon's Goose Pond Sanctuary.

We have ideal kestrel habitat. They are primarily fly catchers, and feed over open, treeless ground. Our boxes are installed next to the wetland, and the kestrels fly generally back and forth between the box and some dead willows along the creek about 500 feet away. They also often fly up toward the south-slope prairie remnant and savanna that can be seen in the top photo.

Quite a treat!

Upcoming seed planting plans

2011-01-28T08:37:00.000-08:00

It's still a long way to April, but it doesn't hurt to think ahead. We've got lots of seeds in the barn, waiting to be planted as soon as our spring burn season is over. Last fall we made a list of areas to be planted, with acreages, so that we would know how to make our seed mixes. The table below was the result.

As can be seen, most of the areas to be planted are small. We are finished planting large fields to prairie. But a number of problem areas remain.

The sunflower areas are those where there were solid clones of Helianthus divaricatus, which had essentially crowded out all other species. These were mostly small, but not so small that one could wait for them to get colonized spontaneously. Although the sunflowers are gone (due to use of herbicide), this species grows so dense that nothing else can compete. Who knows what the seed bank under these is? Depending on where they are, they will be getting either the dry-mesic or oak savanna mix.

Another problem, as those who have read this blog know, has been pale Indian plantain (Arnoglossum atriplicifolia), another native but very aggressive clone-former.

Most of the other areas in the table below are locations where sumac or other brush had been removed, and were fairly bare of "good" plants.

The seed mixes are all made. As soon as the land has cooled after the spring burns we'll be planting.

Unit	Description	Acreage	Type
Valley Prairie	Road cut	0.3	DRY-MESIC
Toby’s N at E end	Sunflower area	0.3	DRY-MESIC
7	E of Hickory Ravine/near Unit 18	0.5	DRY-MESIC
8	Bare area on S side	0.2	DRY-MESIC
10	Pale Indian plantain (PIP) area along woods road	0.2	DRY-MESIC
11A	Another PIP area along saddle road	0.4	DRY-MESIC
11A	Brush cut areas off side road and off woods road	0.5	DRY-MESIC
12B	W end of Toby’s	0.2	DRY-MESIC
12A	Sunflower area along gravel road	0.1	DRY-MESIC
20	By gate and PV road cut	0.1	DRY-MESIC
20	E end of Pocket Prairie	0.1	DRY-MESIC
Total	Dry mesic acres	2.9	DRY-MESIC

Cty F road cut		0.5	OAK SAVANNA
Triangle		0.1	OAK SAVANNA
6/9	Gully above big bur oak	1.0	OAK SAVANNA
5	Below S fire break	0.5	OAK SAVANNA
7	Hickory Ravine	0.3	OAK SAVANNA
10	Sunflower clone	0.1	OAK SAVANNA
11A/D	PIP area along Mid Savanna Trail	1.0	OAK SAVANNA
11D	Sunflower area	1.5	OAK SAVANNA
12A	Big Sunflower clone	1.5	OAK SAVANNA
13A	Sunflower area	0.6	OAK SAVANNA
19D	Sunflower area	0.1	OAK SAVANNA
Total		7.2 acres	OAK SAVANNA

Early air photos now available; useful for planning restorations

2011-01-22T08:17:00.000-08:00

For years I have been using the early air photos taken by the Soil Conservation Service for planning restoration work at Pleasant Valley Conservancy. The first air photos for Dane County were taken in 1937, and show the property as it was at a time when farmers were still using annual fire. This air photo, and its interpretation, are shown on the PVC web site at the following link.

When I was starting out, these photos could only be acquired at considerable expense from the U.S. National Archives, although Robinson Map Library in Science Hall had a complete set for Dane County. Now, miracle of the Internet age, all these early air photos for the whole state of Wisconsin have been scanned by UW Digital Collections and are available for viewing and download through the State Cartographer's Office. Here is the link.

When you open this web site, you get a map of the whole state, and can move to and zoom in on any location. The base map here is a recent air photo, so you can see your land as it is today. You can key in the location you are interested in, or pan and zoom to it. Once you get there, you will see a series of dots, each with its code for the 1937 photo. Select the one you want and a preview screen appears on the left. You then have the option of downloading that photo at one of three resolutions: 150, 300, or 600 dpi. I would recommend using the low-resolution version first to be sure you have the correct image, and then download the 600 dpi version, even though it is a large file and downloading takes some time.

Just for fun, I downloaded the 300 dpi version for the area that includes the Schurch-Thomson site of the Prairie Enthusiasts. I then opened it in Photoshop and cropped to the area of interest, and then reduced the resolution so that it could be downloaded fast for this blog. Even with this low resolution, you can get some useful information. For instance, the site was mostly treeless, although there are areas around the barn (and the old house that has now been demolished) that have trees. This version is shown below.

I strongly recommend that anyone who is doing (or planning) a restoration download the relevant air photos for their property.

Why? See my earlier post on legacy effects!

A nice oak savanna burn

2011-01-13T17:40:00.000-08:00

I spent some time scouring my hard disk to find a summer photo that was taken at the same location as the great savanna burn photo from the last post (now shown on the PVC web site). After a bit of digging (I ended up using Google's Picasa since it had nice tiny thumbnails), I found one that works well. See the composite posted here. The burn photo was taken on March 19 and the summer photo on September 13. Obviously, the trees and prairie suffered no damage.

Restoration of grazed oak savannas

2011-01-11T14:45:00.000-08:00

Many remnant oak savannas are grazed or have been grazed in the past. As I have pointed out elsewhere, if the open-grown oaks are still present, these are prime candidates for restoration. If the savanna has been heavily grazed, there is probably little "good" herbaceous understory (grasses or forbs), and the best thing is to kill off the remaining understory with herbicide and start over, such as one does when planting prairies into ag fields. However, many oak savannas are not heavily grazed, and a less drastic approach may be possible.

Recently I discovered a fascinating article by Christopher Bronny, who was a junior high school teacher in Illinois. ("One-two punch: grazing history and the recovery potential of oak savannas." Restoration and Management Notes Vol. 7, no. 2, Winter 1989, pp. 73-76). Bronny had access to a site in Knox County, Illinois which had been grazed, but had outstanding open-grown bur and white oaks. He was able to fence off 3.7 acres. Surprisingly, a number of "good" savanna species came back quickly, including purple milkweed! Later he found lots of savanna and prairie species coming up. By the second year, he knew this site had strong potential for recovery when Turk's-cap lily, pale spiked lobelia, pale Indian plantain, New Jersey tea, red milkwort, white prairie clover, early buttercup, violet bush clover, yellow star grass, short green milkweed, false Solomon's seal, frostweed, showy tick trefoil, woodland sunflower, Short's aster, early and gray goldenrod, heath aster, little bluestem, Canada milkvetch, and hazelnut all cropped up.

"Obviously the vigorous response of these plants once grazing ceased demonstrates the tolerance to prolonged grazing. But how long they will survive grazing, and how survival is related to grazing intensity remains unclear."

Bronny uses the term "cryptic" to refer to these species, because they weren't visible as long as the cows were on the site, but were obviously ticking along in a repressed site. And of course, there are species that are very sensitive to grazing and would be long gone, such as compass plant and lead plant.

In some ways, a grazed site may be preferable to an abandoned site. Once the cows are gone, brush arrives in a major way, and shades out the understory. But grazed sites generally remain fairly open.

The possibilities for oak savanna restoration are endless.

January brush cutting at Black Earth Rettenmund

2011-01-09T14:53:00.000-08:00

Now that the snow has settled down, it is possible to start brush cutting again. Saturday morning Willis, Kathie, and I made a threesome at the top of the North unit of Black Earth Rettenmund Prairie. Our main target was prairie willow, which threatens to take over the top of the hill. But any small shrubs we could find were fair game. We also cut small patches of gray dogwood and sumac, and the occasional aspen sapling.

The technique is simple. Willis used the Stihl with a sharp blade to cut the willow patches close to the ground and Kathie and I came along behind treating all the cut stems. The paint stick technique was ideal for this, especially since the willow patches were multiple stemmed (often 20 stems or more). We treat with Garlon 4 in oil, which has the added advantage that we could basal bark any stem that Willis missed.

What is this prairie willow (Salix humilis) that is giving us so much trouble? It is native, of course, and grows only a few feet tall. Why should we be worrying about it? Since it is fire-sensitive, and we burn the North unit every other year, it should never get too large. Right? However, in the last few years, despite the burns, it has really spread, and now threatens to take over the knoll. Since this is an area with lots of nice plants (seneca snakeroot, butterfly milkweed, wood lily, etc.), we want to keep it under control.

When Nature Conservancy acquired Black Earth Rettenmund Prairie in 1986, in the area we were working there were some quite large woody areas, including a major aspen clone. Despite the years of restoration work (almost 25 years now), the "memory" of these big shrubs and trees persists, and it is one of the areas where brush control is a perennial battle.

Military Ridge Prairie Heritage 2011 Calendar

2011-01-05T13:52:00.000-08:00

The 2011 Military Ridge Prairie Heritage Calendar is now out, and has some nice photos of southwestern Wisconsin prairies and savannas. This is an attractive calendar that Katie Abbott has been producing for the past few years. The images are all from local photographers in the Military Ridge area.

We are pleased that several of the photos used came from our Pleasant Valley Conservancy crew. Amanda has a nice fall-color view of the south-slope savanna, Susan has an interesting photo of our November 2010 north woods burn, and Kathie has photos on three separate months: a birds-foot violet bloom on "Kathie's Prairie", a winter snow scene of the White Oak Savanna, and a great mid-summer image of Black Earth Rettenmund Prairie.

This calendar can be used as a simple guide to management, since there is a section each month on suggested work projects. Also some phenology data, plus an extensive table of dates for seed-collecting.

This calendar has been funded by the J.F. New Foundation, the Nature Conservancy, the Prairie Enthusiasts, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Thanks, Katie, for a job well done!

Tom's Blog

Nice restored savanna at UW-Madison Lakeshore Path

Lake States Fire Webinar 1-19-2012

Variable precipitation data; southern Wisconsin

Little bluestem in Massachusetts coastal areas

Just Posted: 2012 Summer internship opportunities in ecological restoration!

Cleaning out the bird houses

Winter grasses in the oak savanna

Christmas bird count

New Year's Day event canceled!

Progress on oak woods clearing

Ice and snow

Update of oak woodlands web pages

Good time to burn brush piles

Indian summer burns

IPAW meeting at Milwaukee

Mowing next spring's fire breaks

Dealing with a large blow-down

Black Earth Rettenmund Prairie web site updated

Web site being updated

Getting seed mixes ready

Turning woods into prairie: part three

Late fall burn

Turning woods into prairie: part two

Turning woods into prairie: part one

Mowing for fall burns

Nice time to see prairie dropseed

New high resolution air photos available

Buckthorn: late fall reprise

More on Hill's oak

Know, know, know your oaks,this is how they grow:Red oak (make a V with your arms above your head)White oak (hold your arms straight out from your shoulders)Bur oak (make your arms twist in different directions)Pin Oak (hold your arms down at your sides)And Hill's untidy below.

Visit from local landowner group

Upland boneset seed collecting

Seed collecting: a popular activity

Fall color at its peak

Seeing red: goodbye sumac!

Westport Drumlin prairie dedication

Good mast year for white and bur oaks

Using fall color to canvas for invasive shrubs

Prairie gentians!

Collecting rye grasses in the East Basin

Positive feedback between grass and woody vegetation

Seed collecting at full force

New Trail Map now available

Canada goldenrod control

White prairie clover seed collecting

Edge effects in prairies

Use of hemiparastic plants to increase species diversity

Anatomy and significance of a buckthorn root collar

Ironweed: a wet-mesic species

Woodland thistle: a savanna native

Two kinds of Joe Pye weed

Giant false foxglove, a hemiparasite, now starting to bloom

Bur oak longevity, but not forever

New edition: Fire effects: Bur oak

Purple and white prairie clovers

Getting rid of alfalfa in planted prairies

Lead plant

Savanna species diversity

Mowing wild parsnip

Further on purple milkweed

Butterfly group at Pleasant Valley Conservancy

Wood lilies

Reed canary grass at upland sites

Spiderwort time

Purple milkweed observations

Story of a small buckthorn area

Interns starting to work

Pretty things at Black Earth Rettenmund Prairie

Wood betony time

Special savanna issue of Woodlands and Prairies

Trillium recurvatum

Early flowers (is it already May 1?)

Burning small prairies: sometimes a challenge

Post-burn spraying of new shoots of invasive plants

Early plant growth

Final burns of the spring

Fire refuges

Burns help to find woody vegetation

Big savanna burn April 5 2011

Know, know, know your oaks,
this is how they grow:
Red oak (make a V with your arms above your head)
White oak (hold your arms straight out from your shoulders)
Bur oak (make your arms twist in different directions)
Pin Oak (hold your arms down at your sides)
And Hill's untidy below.