Nebraskaland

40 NEBRASKAland • MARCH 2015 through the prairie, displacing his cherished wildflowers and prairie grasses. At the time, techniques to check brome's spread, such as spring prescribed fire, were unknown in the area. When Henry retired in 1979, Lucille bought the farm from him. Grace had grown and left home and, with her horses also gone, Lucille leased the prairie as a hay meadow. In the decades that followed, annual July mowing stressed the summer-growing native prairie plants while further promoting the spring- and fall- growing brome and Kentucky bluegrass, another non-native cool-season grass. When Canada thistle and musk thistle, both noxious weeds, began to spread through the prairie, it was sprayed several times with herbicide and the wildflowers took it hard. In 2010, when Grace and I began managing the prairie, they and the native grasses were hanging on by a thread. Our first task was to stop the annual haying to give the surviving prairie plants the entire summer to grow, replenish depleted roots, and, for some, a chance to flower and set seed. In late April of the following year, with a burn crew composed of friends, we set fire to the prairie. The brome and bluegrass were well into their growth, and defoliation from the prescribed burn set them back. That summer, after a year's rest and a single burn, the prairie murmured with signs of returning life. In June, on a slope near the driveway, a colony of purple prairie coneflower bloomed. Lucille swore she had not seen coneflowers in the prairie for decades. These perennials likely survived the years of haying as small, few-leaved plants, choked by brome and too weak to flower. Long-bracted spiderwort, plains goldenrod and slender beardtoungue were among other wildflowers to show themselves. In late September curing bluestems and side-oats grama again splashed the prairie with their autumn shades of red and yellow. We have now found more than 60 native plant species in our recovering prairie. Expected species, such as poison milkvetch, compass plant, Indian turnip, downy gentian, and rough gayfeather, however, are missing, likely eradicated over the years. We had seen them in other local prairies, road ditches and pioneer cemeteries, evidence they still survived in the area. Their natural recolonization in our prairie seemed improbable since no seed likely remained in the soil and there was slim chance that seed Henry Wagner along with young Grace and her cousin Wayne Wegleitner after a successful fishing trip in the early 1960s. prom gro blu coo Ca thi be th se an h a p g a sto give the surv H W l i h G PHOTO COURTESY OF GRACE KOSTEL Seeded compass plants are now well established in several areas of the prairie. A member of the sunflower family, its flowering heads can reach over six feet in height.

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