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| Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve—Chase County, Kansas |
Until four years ago, I knew very little about prairies. I imagined them (if I thought of them at all) as open fields, little more than pastures. Since I studied French in high school and college, I knew that the word
prairie meant
meadow, but that word fails to capture the unique beauty or vastness of the North American prairie, which once stretched from northern Canada to the Gulf of Mexico.
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| Sheldon Lake State Park and Environmental Learning Center |
Four years ago I visited Sheldon Lake State Park, a restored wetland prairie northeast of Houston, Texas. Had I not been attending a field trip for Texas Master Naturalist (TMN) training, it is unlikely that I would have ever gone to Sheldon Lake. What I saw, however, opened my eyes to a series of ecosystems that sustain all manner of birds, mammals, butterflies, bees, and other animals. That four-hour experience redefined my view of the natural world that surrounded me.
Texas is divided into ten ecoregions, including the Gulf Coast Prairies and marshes. If you include coastal Louisiana, this section of prairies once covered six million acres, but after almost 200 years of farming, ranching, and urban development, less than one percent of the original coastal prairie exists today. Those precious pockets of undisturbed prairies are called remnants, and I have been fortunate to visit several of them.
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| Jaime González holds a Brunner's stick mantis (Brunneria borealis) |
The Katy Prairie, east of Houston, is one of the largest preserved prairies in Texas (actually a series of prairies), and it was in the Tucker Easement prairie remnant that my fellow TMN trainees and I learned about many of the insects that inhabit a prairie ecosystem, including the Brunner's stick mantis pictured above. One of the unusual details I discovered is the fact that all members of this species are female, reproducing through parthenogenesis or asexual reproduction. Jaime González, who is now Houston Urban Conservation Programs Manager for the Nature Conservancy in Texas, led us on the daylong trip to three sections of the Katy Prairie.
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| Padre Island National Seashore |
Every year I discover new prairies. Last October at the annual meeting of Texas Master Naturalists, I spent half a day at Padre Island National Seashore, exploring dunes, grasslands, and mudflats. Closer to home, I made a few trips to the Lawther–Deer Park Prairie Preserve, a fifty-acre easement surrounded by suburban subdivision housing on three sides and a cemetery on the fourth. Most of my time there was spent collecting seeds. This relatively small prairie is home to more than 300 species of plants and animals.
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| Touring the Deer Park Prairie with Lee College Honors students |
I have also visited the Nash Prairie Preserve, a 400-acre remnant south of Brazos Bend State Park. This tract of land, once part of the KNG Ranch, was protected as a hay field and is now protected by the Nature Conservancy. The Nash provides essential habitat for more than 120 species of birds alone. I have visited the Nash at three different times of year, and each trip reveals different aspects of the landscape, some subtle and others dramatic, like the green snake beautifully draped across wildflowers in the photo below.
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| Snake and wildflowers below the moon and above the Nash |
On one visit to the Nash, I knelt in the grass and was instantly surrounded by dragonflies, one of which landed on my arm and stayed long enough for a photograph. In addition to being delicate and beautiful insects, dragonflies are an indicator species, providing a glimpse into the health of an ecosystem. The more dragonflies there are, the more robust and diverse the environment. That is one reason they are the icon of the Texas Master Naturalist program.
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| Dragonfly at the Nash (photo by Brian Schrock) |
Then, there are butterflies, another insect that is central to the food web of any healthy prairie. I took the photo below at the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve—in Chase County, Kansas—this summer. The butterflies, including a large pearl crescent (Phyciodes tharos) on the right-hand side, are drinking nectar from the blooms of a prairie milkweed (Asclepias sullivantii).
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| butterflies and prairie milkweed, Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve |
My visit to the Tallgrass Prairie lasted four days and included a hike through a bison pasture. I also toured a nineteenth century ranch house and one-room school house (pictured below). Those adventures will be recounted in a separate blog post. Stay tuned.
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| Lower Fox Creek School, Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve |
