The hot, muggy dog days in early August are the time to visit prairies. The heyday is at its peak and these relics of our diverse botanical past can be breathtaking.
One of my favorite Ohio prairies is the Chaparral State Nature Preserve in Adams County. It is west of the county seat of West Union.
I took a trip there on a suitably hot day, August 5th. Tolerating the heat and humidity was a small price to pay for the spectacular flower show. The prairie was a riot of colors and I wasn’t the only admirer. The word got around about this botanical hotspot and many visitors came by that day.
Perhaps most noticeable were the towering purple tips of the spiky flame star (Liatris spicata). The club-like inflorescences can reach up several meters and are irresistible for monarch butterflies. Many of these wandering insects worked on the prairie, and the shining star was their drug of choice. The exhibition enriched a number of white flowered forms.
Giant flowering stems of prairied dock (Silphium terebinthinaceum) loomed over their smaller botanical brothers. These giant sunflowers can grow up to two meters high and the lemon-yellow flowers are the main pollinator magnets. Numerous American goldfinches cavorted and waited longingly for the seeds to ripen. As soon as they are ripe, the “wild canaries” swarm around them and quickly devour the harvest.
In places an odd parsley, rattlesnake master (Eryngium yuccifolium) dominated. Its spherical clusters of small white flowers attracted countless insects: tiny native bees, wasps with many stripes, and countless interesting beetles. Hairstreak butterflies – the warblers of the Lepidoptera world – love rattlesnake master flowers. I saw strands of coral and red ribbon hair getting nectar fixation.
Less conspicuous, but perhaps of greater interest to botanists, were two Ohio rarities: blue heart (Buchnera americana) and pink ragwort (Polygala incarnata). The former can be overshadowed by larger plants, but its gorgeous bluish-purple flowers are the rivals of all of its vegetative comrades. Bluehearts is a hemiparasite – it bores its roots into those of the surrounding plants and taps some of its food from these hosts.
It takes a keen eye to see pink milkweed. A whopper can grow up to six inches tall. Growing in the driest, sun-scorched wasteland, the tiny flowers of the milkweed would be measured in millimeters. True to the name, the Lilliputian flowers are a pleasant shade of coral pink.
The enormous botanical diversity leads to an extraordinary diversity of animals, and chaparral was teeming with insects that tended the flowers. As always and an important part of the food web, insectivores have thinned out the herd. Crab spiders and ambush beetles mingled with the flowers, ready to pounce on unfortunate pollinators. For all the flattering flower poetry, a flower is a potential death trap – a flashy land full of booby traps and landmines.
The king of the predatory insects were giant “cannibal fly” predator flies. These jumbos, the peregrine falcons of the fly world, kill the largest bumblebees and wasps and have even been ingested with hummingbirds.
The Ohio Department of Natural Resources’ Division of Natural Areas and Preserves acquired Chaparral Prairie about three decades ago. Then the prairie was wrapped in red cedar and other woods. Open prairie has been reduced to tiny fragments. Years of thoughtful management and a lot of hard work have worked wonders.
Mark your calendar for a visit to the Chaparral Prairie next summer. Although the circular trail is less than a mile, it sometimes takes hours to wander around all of the interesting residents, both flowers and fauna.
Naturalist Jim McCormac writes a column for The Dispatch on the first, third, and fifth Sundays of the month. He also writes about nature on www.jimmccormac.blogspot.com.
