prairie time
When you consider the name of this site, you might assume I knew more about prairies than I really do. But looking at all the tall grasses along the roadsides this year has made me want to learn more about them. On Saturday I joined a tour of some prairies a little northwest of where I live.
Our first stop was a man-made prairie. It once was a 190-acre wheat field and the new owner plowed it up and planted a seed mix to make himself a prairie. The tallest plants you see are varieties of switch grass and are six or seven feet tall. This prairie has not been grazed or mowed, except for a road through it to a new pond near the middle. Although I could count at least a couple dozen kinds of plants, knowledgeable people in our group said that that was just a fraction of the diversity you would expect to see in a natural prairie. This site is in a area where expensive new homes are being built and the owner expects to develop some small sites around the perimeter and build trails through his prairie.
From there we drove a few miles to a large ranch with great expanses of native grasses. You could see a 360 degree horizon with scarcely a man-made object. This could have been what the prairie looked like when the buffalo roamed. The taller plants in the picture are little bluestem. The owners use a method of rotational grazing that keeps the grasses from being chewed down. The grass is also a habitat for bobwhite quail.
I’ve been reading a book called Prairie Time written by a fellow by the name of Matt White who lives in the blackland of East Texas. He writes about his joy at finding a few remnants of natural prairie, but most of the millions of acres that used to be prairie in Texas is gone forever. That is especially true in East Texas where it was plowed.
July 30th, 2007 @ 5:42 pm
That sounds like a day to remember. I would love a tour like that! As far as plants go, I know what I like when I see it, but don’t ask me to memorize most names. I dug up our backyard this summer and finished most of it. Instead of grass to mow, we now have tons of flowers (mostly perennials) and shrubs. I’m slowly but surely learning their names and like you, I’m finding it fun to research and learn more about our area, too.
Prairie Time sounds like an interesting read!
July 30th, 2007 @ 10:15 pm
I think the fact that almost no one remembers what is lost is almost as bad as the loss itself…a second kind of loss perhaps. If people grow up thinking suburbs and strip malls are the normal landscape, or farms and ranches before that, how can they understand the real loss?
As such, I’m very impressed with people who are trying to restore the prairie…and people like you who share it with the rest of us.
July 31st, 2007 @ 5:53 pm
Near the end of the book White, who is a college teacher, recounts a story about one of his students who went out to see a prairie after hearing him talk about it in class. But she was disappointed, she said. “All I could see was grass.”
Unfortunately, that is all most of us can see.
July 31st, 2007 @ 9:10 pm
I live at Lake Palo Pinto. Your deer look like our
deer that we feed everyday. A friend called me from
East Texas today and said I needed to check your site
out. It’s great. We retired from the Dallas area.
Been here full time about 4 yrs. Love it. I know you love your place too.
July 31st, 2007 @ 10:26 pm
If you haven’t aleady, you must visit the Flint Hills of Kansas. We think it is simply beautiful.
August 1st, 2007 @ 6:52 am
I remember reading, or rather listening to, a book several years ago called “If I Live to be 100″. It was basically interviews with Centenarians. One of them mentioned prairie grasses that were 12 feet tall, and that image has really stuck with me!