Reading Pictures

New Paradigm

This prairie was saved and restored because of trees, here looming misty in the distance. It’s now called Middlefork Savanna and celebrated as Chicago Wilderness’ best black-soil grassland with trees. But for a long while it had been ignored by conservation planners — because experts said it didn’t have high-quality prairie or high-quality forest. Later, conservation started to recognize a different paradigm: the savanna, a mix of trees and grassland. Suddenly, this site and its curious vegetation and fauna popped to the top of the list.

Steve Christy of Lake Forest Open Lands Association worked to build support for the preserve, even convincing a group of landowners to let him burn the best part and start the restoration — all while it was still private land. A developer then bought it for houses. Dramas ensued.

But nature triumphed. Lake County Forest Preserves bought up 576 acres beginning in 1989. Then Jim Anderson and others from the Forest Preserves began heroic efforts to disable drainage tiles, restore wetlands and ponds, replant cornfields to prairie, control invasives, and ultimately empower the ecosystem to thrive, as nature.

In the foreground is fine restored prairie. If you know your plants, try counting them. How many species do you find? I’m counting 14.

If you don’t know your plants, see if you can learn some species from these descriptions: Starting from the tallest yellow flowers, there’s compass plant and prairie dock (giant leaves for the dock; deeply divided leaves for the compass). Then gayfeather (or prairie blazing star), the purple spikes. Yellow coneflower has petals that droop into a cone shape (back right). Flat-topped white clusters of Virginia mountain mint pop up here and there. The white spiky flower scattered about is Culver’s root. Also look for black-eyed Susan, bottom right.

Then check out all the green that’s not now flowering. Trees in the background are bur oaks. Knowing that is sort of cheating (you can’t really tell what they are from the picture), but natural trees on the edge of the prairie tend to be the most fire-tolerant of oaks, the burs. The wide-leaved bluish grass at the bottom would be Indian grass. The longer, thinner leaves — big bluestem. Two species of goldenrod (“grass-leaved” and “tall”) are in the foreground, with a wispy plant that looks like an aster. And the handsome bluish-green cactusy looking specimen in the lower middle is heath aster. These last four won’t open their yellow, white, and blue blooms until fall. But the richness of nature will be here every day.

Photo by Mike MacDonald/ChicagoNature.com.
Words by Stephen Packard.
Land protected and restored by Lake County Forest Preserves.
Join the BioBlitz at Middlefork, June 27–28.