With the dryer weather we have been having, a nice warm sun and a little wind, made today a great day to do a little burn out in my prairie.  I’m getting really anxious for spring to come and for the first blooms of native plants to start.  I have also already started making a list of seeds I have to collect this year. 

I stopped off at a remnant site west of Somonauk today to check on the grasses growing there. The site has Big and Little Bluestem, as well as Indian grass and Cord grass. All 4 of these species are ready to have their seed collected, but I focused mostly on the little bluestem and Indian grass. The indian grass was practically falling off of the plant and some of it had already blown away in the wind. The large patch of little bluestem is just right to be harvested. I collected a small amount of it while it misted me with rain. I had to stop as much larger drops of rain began to fall and I started to get drenched. Once I got home, I placed what seed I had collected into a cardboard box lined with newspaper to dry my seeds. Once dry I will bag them and store them in my fridge untill spring. Then I will scatter the seeds outside in the prairie.

Down along Marseilles road, the is a large patch of big bluestem that Kestrel and I picked clean today.  She had her little bucket, while I had my 5 gallon bucket.  As we gleened seed by hand from the stems, she would empty her small pail into mine when it would fill up.  Between the 2 of us, this small patch practically filled up my bucket to the top.  I plan on collecting seed from 2 other large remnant patches which could fill up 4 to 5 buckets worth of seed.  I am going to try and stop by these patches after work as often as I can before the wind takes all the seed away.

I took one of the back roads south of Marseilles to an area along the roadside which has quite a lot of compass plant growing. The odd thing is, is that this is the only native plant growing here. Further up the road there are more plants growing with stiff goldenrod and some asters, but not here. As I was collecting, a local farmer stopped by and was curious as to what I was doing. I told him about the plant and my intentions about restoring a prairie in my yard. His interest appeared mild at best, but he smiled and commended me on my efforts and wished me luck as he drove away.

The wind today made it very difficult in trying to collect seed from a plant that uses the wind to disperse its seeds. The liatris aspera remnant along the Illinois river had some seed that was ready to collect, YESTERDAY! I missed the opportunity to collect a lot more seed than I did today. Oh well, there is still more seed that can be collected from this site in addition to the 4 other sites.