NEBRASKAland Magazine is dedicated to outstanding photography and informative writing with an engaging mix of articles and photos highlighting Nebraska’s outdoor activities, parklands, wildlife, history and people.
Issue link: http://mag.outdoornebraska.gov/i/963498
32 NEBRASKAland • APRIL 2018 A s a botanist, I often wander about in prairies, pondering their presettlement flora. The writings of Nebraska's early botanists sometimes relieve my curiosity, providing insight into the abundance and habitats of our prairie grasses and wildflowers before intense cropping, fenced herds of cattle and herbicides. Case in point, digging deep into Roscoe Pound and Frederic Clements' 1897 The Phytogeography of Nebraska, I recently found fine prose regarding one of my favorite spring wildflowers – windflower (Anemone caroliniana). "[Windflowers] are to be found regularly and in great abundance over the sides of and summits of sandy hills, and particularly subsand hills or sandstone hills. ... [Here it] occurs in conspicuous patches, not infrequently several meters in extent. … These patches are carpet-like in nature, and when variegated with the diversely colored flowers which run from white to deep purple through several shades of blue give a most striking character to the floral covering. Frequently it is to be found as well in low meadows, in which the whole plant is greatly reduced in size, and the patches are much diminished or are often represented by a few straggling individuals." Windflower Natural History Legend has it that windflower was named because its flowers open with the coming of the spring breezes. It is also called prairie anemone and Carolina anemone. The latter name is misleading, as the species ranges well beyond the Carolinas, extending westward into central Nebraska. In the mesic eastern United States it occupies open, rocky woods and barrens, while in the drier Great Plains it occupies prairies. As Pound and Clements state, the delicate perennial grows as scattered individuals or in colonies. At the stem's base, just below ground, are fingernail-sized tubers, storage organs. From these spread rhizomes, which grow new tubers at their ends. The year after their formation, the tubers sprout leaves or leaves and flowering stems. Windflower leaves, small, three-lobed and toothed, are nestled about an inch above the ground; only keen eyes can detect non- flowering plants among the prairie flora. Among the first wildflowers to emerge from winter slumber, windflower sends forth white, blue or pinkish- purple blooms as early as mid-April. The lone, inch-wide flowers have 14 to 20 oblong sepals radiating from a central, yellow disc and are balanced on slender peduncles that rise several inches above the ground. In the buttercup family (Ranunculaceae), to which windflower belongs, the sepals, which form the outer whorl of flowers and are typically green and somewhat leaf-like, are petal-like in form and color, and true petals are lacking. The flowers last but a week or two before withering and forming seed heads. As the seeds mature, the flower stalks, similar to those of dandelions, elongate and the heads fluff out, exposing the feathery-haired seeds to dispersing winds. Windflower at Gjerloff Prairie Bill Whitney, director of the Prairie Plains Resource Institute based in Aurora, first encountered windflower on a April afternoon in the early 1980s while botanizing a Platte River hay meadow. That day, he gazed upon prolific windflower blooms on a level, sandy loam river terrace. Over the years at other local prairies, the lean and sun- worn Whitney has observed only scattered windflowers that never bloom. "The variability in windflower abundance and Windfl ower a delicate prairie wildfl ower By Gerry Steinauer, Botanist, Nebraska Game and Parks Commission The blue form of windflower. Windflowers close at night and open with the warmth of the morning sun. PHOTO BY GERRY STEINAUER