May 2023 • Nebraskaland 47
cattle, though deer, pronghorn, and sheep think it's pretty
tasty. Unless it's grazed all the way to the ground, though,
the plant still tends to send up a fl owering spike. Even more
impressively, after a long bout of heavy grazing ends, dotted
gayfeather often responds by shooting up extra fl owering
stems the following year. Sometimes, those post-grazing
plants are humongous. I've counted more than 50 fl ower
spikes on a single plant in a prairie that looked like a pool
Dotted gayfeather in drought-stricken restored prairie at the Nature Conservancy's Platte River Prairies.
