The only obedient plant in the prairie has begun flowering.  I have been vexed by this plant for over a month now trying to identify it.  And for the life of me, I don’t know why it took me so long to figure out what it was.  It has a smooth glossy green stem with alternate leaves.  The pinking flowers are on stalks which are numerous on the plant.  However, the flower buds appeared but took quite a long time to actually open.  At first I thought this plant was going to have a white flower from what I could see in the flower bud.  This obedient plant was collected from seed almost 3 years ago from a remnant site located just west of Somonauk in Lasalle county.  This site is quite large but is the only site for obedient plant that I have found so far.

Even though I have done a lot of posts about “first flowers”, it is still exciting when I can post about a new plant that is flowering for the first time in my prairie. Today it is new england aster. A plant that can produce a lot of purple and yellow flowers. This plant looks like it will fill up quite nicely with flowers. I have found new england aster in limited quantites in Lasalle county so far, but I do have a remnant patch which gives me a lot of seed. Aside from that patch, I will find the aster in small patches of 2-5 plants.

As I was standing in my kitchen, a small bird in one of my bur oaks caught my eye.  It was smaller than most birds and was quite actively moving about the tree.  I grabbed my binoculars and saw a house wren in my tree.  I have heard these birds all summer long singing, outside my property near the creek.  The wren was chasing other birds out of the tree as they landed on it.  Gold finches, chipping sparrow, even robins were all chased out of the tree if they landed on it.  I am assuming that the house wren was feeding on some small insects or spiders on the tree and was protecting its food source.

The grasses in my prairie restoration are doing quite well and begining to produce some notable quantities of seed. The Indian grass and Big Bluestem grass have been flowering for about a week now. The Big Bluestem plants are producing quite alot of seed too, and not just in my prairie. I have noticed in many of the other remnant sites that the plants are producing quite a lot of seed. This particular plant is loaded with seeds and stands over 6 feet tall.

Along with these grasses I have found a couple clumps of Little Bluestem growing. This is great because I have found it in only one remnant site in small quantities. I have harvested seed from Side-Oats Grama grass already too. Both the Canada and Virginia wild ryes are about ready to have their seeds collected as well. Also, the Cord grass by the pond produced a lot of seed for its second year. What I thought was a the only clump of Switch grass has been joined by several single plants this year. I am hoping to collect a lot of seed from remnant sites this fall so that I can enrich the current grass populations in my prairie.

Went out to the larger patches of pale coneflower tonight and started to collect from the masses of plants located there. I underestimated my orginal count of collecting about 100 flower heads. Just tonight from one of the patches I collected over 100 flower heads, there are still 2 more patches on this road and each one will yield about the same. The flower heads are ready for harvesting because the seed heads are just breaking apart in my hand when I apply a little force. In the picture you can see an enlargement of the seed both with and without its papery husk which surrounds it. This outer husk need not be removed in order for the seed to germinate.