Cliff Snyder, aka The Big Blue Gopher, passed away on April 22nd.  He was a long time member of the Second Saturday volunteer crew, a founding member of the Tuesday volunteer crew, a tireless killer of Scotch Broom, switching to a brush cutter when he became unable to get up from a kneeling position.  And a stalwart member of the small group of oak release volunteers on Glacial Heritage.  In addition to those activities, he was a long time volunteer steward at Mima Mounds, helping to restore it and talking to countless visitors over the years.  We will miss him dearly.

Cliff Snyder, who always loves a good story, used to tell people the mounds were made by prehistoric Blue Gophers. I jokingly suggested we make him dress up like one for PAD. Marion Jarisch took me seriously and made him the suit and he wore it every PAD for years. Photo by Margaret Allen

There will be a remembrance by fellow volunteers and other people involved in South Sound prairie restoration following Prairie Appreciation Day on May 14th.

There will be a special event at Thurston County’s Glacial Heritage Preserve to celebrate the lives and contributions to prairie restoration of three dedicated people.  Please join us.

Location:  Parking area.  Time 3:30 PM

Welcome to Prairie Appreciation Days on iNaturalist!, Post and Images by Deborah Naslund

You can follow Deb Naslund in iNaturalist under the user name deborah_naslund.  She will be curating the Prairie Appreciation Days project.”

Welcome to Prairie Appreciation Days on iNaturalist!

We invite you to join the Prairie Appreciation Days community on iNaturalist as we document the biodiversity and phenology of the South Sound prairies and oak woodlands. We want to track which flowers are blooming, what insects are visiting them, when birds are arriving, and capture the wild variety of organisms that are inhabiting our prairies and oak woodlands.

Luzula_comosa, Pacific woodrush, Glacial Heritage Preserve, photo by Deb Naslund

Our focus is on South Puget Sound prairies, primarily Glacial Heritage Preserve, but also includes Mima Mounds Natural Area Preserve, Scatter Creek Wildlife Area, West Rocky Prairie Wildlife Area, and all the other scattered remnants of the once widespread prairie/oak woodland plant communities of the southern Puget Trough region. Our geographic range is Thurston and Pierce Counties in Washington State.

Lomatium utriculatum, Spring Gold from Glacial Heritage Preserve, photo by Deb Naslund

We intend to track observations over the course of the next several years to watch for changes in species composition and life stage timing. While our primary interest is in native species, we are also interested in distribution, abundance and status of invasive species, especially any new invasive that may be gaining a foothold in our prairies and oak woodlands.

Your observations will help us generate a running record of the progress of the wildflower bloom on the prairie. Keep an eye out for “What’s Blooming on the Prairie” in the PAD Blog.

Dodecatheon_hendersonii, Shooting Star, Glacial heritage Preserve, photo by Deb Naslund

Check it out! Click here to see what we have so far: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/prairie-appreciation-days

What’s next? We need your participation to make this work! Here’s how:

1. Download the iNaturalist app from iTunes, Google Play or wherever you get your apps. Register to use iNaturalist and join the “Prairie Appreciation Days” project! Do this from home or wherever you find your solid internet access. Connections on the prairies are spotty at best.
2. Capture a digital photo of the plants, insects, birds, and other organisms you encounter on the South Sound prairies and oak woodlands. Be sure to enable the location feature in your digital camera or make a note of your location on a map.
3. Upload your photo or video to iNaturalist, along with the location and date of your observation. If Connections are spotty on the prairies; you may have to wait until you are back within Wi-Fi range. But, no problem, just upload your photos once you are back home. You can upload observations from either your smart phone or computer.
4. Be sure to add your observations to the “Prairie Appreciation Days” project. Share your observations, ideas, and discoveries with other South Sound prairie fans in the comments and discussion. We may share your observations, comments, and even your photos here on the Prairie Appreciation Day website!

For more information on iNaturalist, visit their webpage at iNaturalist.org.

For help with iNaturalist, see: https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/help

Carex inops, long-stolon sedge, Glacial Heritage Preserve, photo by Deb Naslund

Let’s Celebrate Washington’s Native Flora and South Sound Prairies, Post by Deborah Naslund, photos as attributed.

In addition to her volunteer activities on our South Sound prairies, Deb Naslund is currently Chair of the South Sound Chapter of the Washington Native Plant Society.  You can reach her at chair@southsoundchapterwnps.org.

Let’s Celebrate Washington’s Native Flora and South Sound Prairies

April is National Native Plant Appreciation Month! And the Washington Native Plant Society is hosting a month-long celebration of Washington’s native flora. The theme this year is Native Pollinators need Native Plants. There are 28 webinars scheduled, hosted by chapters from across the state, along with a number of native plant walks and native plant sales. All WNPS Native Plant Appreciation Month events are free and open to the public.

Of special interest to South Sound prairies are several talks by our renowned scientists who have devoted their research to this unique ecosystem.

Coming up on Monday, April 12^th is a webinar presented by Lauren “Ivy” Clark, “Bee-crossed Paintbrushes”. Ivy will take us through a look at the complex connections between our native prairie paintbrush plants (Castilleja spp.) and the various pollinators that interact with them either as pollinators or as predators. This talk will feature her Masters research on Castilleja species and how the pollinators move among them on two South Sound Prairie sites. This webinar is sponsored by the South Sound Chapter of WNPS. Follow this link to register: https://www.wnps.org/ss-events/calendar/978.

Bee on Harsh Paintbrush, Photo by Ivy Clark

On April 22, Sarah Hamman will present “Restoration from the Ground Up: Incorporating Soils Knowledge into Native Plant Restoration Efforts”. Sarah will discuss ways that soils knowledge can be used to improve the success of restoration of native plant communities, including South Sound Prairies, in Washington. Find more information and registration details here: https://www.wnps.org/calendar/982

Taylor’s Checkerspot Release area on Glacial Heritage Natural Area, Photo by Sarah Hamman.

If talk of oak galls has triggered your curiosity, you may want to catch “The Wonderful World of Galls”, with Christine Heycke, sponsored by the Olympia Peninsula Chapter of WNPS. Find out more and register for this webinar here: https://www.wnps.org/op-events/calendar/975

Two fabulous webinars have already happened.

On April 6^th, Dr. Susan Waters presented Plants, Pollinators, Native Prairies, and Conservation. Susan described her fascinating research using plant-pollinator networks to examine the effects of restoration on pollinating insect communities and the interactions that feed back to affect rare plant and insect species. The focus of her work is the Cascadia prairie ecosystems.

On April 1^st, Dr. Lalita Calabria presented The Biodiversity and Conservation of Puget Sound Prairie Bryophytes and Lichens. This presentation described the biodiversity and conservation status of Puget Sound prairie bryophyte and lichen communities including potential impacts from prescribed burning practices on rare lichens. Dr. Calabria also highlighted the spatial and temporal variability of N2-fixing moss-cyanobacteria associations in Puget Sound prairies.

But not to worry, both webinars were recorded and you can find them here: https://www.wnps.org/wnps-annual-events/virtual-events

Don’t miss another of these fabulous talks. Sign up for as many of the webinars as you would like to watch! You can find the full schedule of activities at https://www.wnps.org/wnps-annual-events/npam.

Special Note:  Check out the home page for our plans for Prairie Appreciation Month: April 15th-May 15th.

Scot’s Broom Legacy Prairies, Post by Adam Martin, images as attributed.

Adam was part of the transition team that joined Ecostudies in 2020 after working on the South Sound Prairies since 2011. His work involves collaborative planning and implementation of restoration activities and developing research and monitoring projects to support the restoration and conservation of rare and federally-listed species in prairie and oak habitats in both South and North Puget Sound. He is currently in his candidacy in the Master of Environmental Studies program at The Evergreen State College. He is focusing on topics in conservation biogeography. His thesis work involves assessing the risks to native plant communities on small islands in the San Juan Islands.

Scot’s Broom Legacy Prairies

Illustration of Scot’s broom (Cytisus scoparius) from Köhler’s Medicinal Plants (1887)

Genesta [Scot’s broom] hath that name of bytterness for it is full of bytter to mannes taste. And is a shrub that growyth in a place that is forsaken, stony and untylthed. Presence thereof is witnesse that the ground is bareyne and drye that it groweth in. And hath many braunches knotty and hard. Grene in winter and yelowe floures in somer thyche (the which) wrapped with hevy (heavy) smell and bitter sauer (savour). And ben, netheles, moost of vertue.’ – A description of Scot’s broom (Cytisis scoparius) in the 1618 London Pharmacopoeia, quoted in A Modern Herbal by Margaret Grieve

Like the remaining meadow habitats in the British isles and Ireland, the first European settlers to the South Sound region likely considered the remaining upland prairie habitats we have today, at places like West Rocky, Mima Mounds, and Glacial Heritage as forsaken, stony and barren ground not fit for tilling. While such a dismal designation ended up being a blessing in disguise for the myriad of prairie species that remain, prairie species continue to be at risk from invasive and non-native species that are also well adapted to the same ‘ bareyne and drye’ habitats.

Remnant native prairie at Glacial Heritage that escaped invasion from Scot’s broom.

Most of our common prairie weeds, such as Scot’s broom (Cytisus scoparius), sheep sorrel (Rumex acetosella), ox-eye daisy (Leucanthemum vulgare), Colonial bent-grass (Agrostis capillaris) Yorkshire fog (Holcus lanatus), sweet vernal grass (Anthoxanthum odoratum), early hair-grass (Aira praecox) and shepard’s cress (Teesdalia nudicaulis) are native to the endangered grassland and meadow habitats of Britian and Ireland. Since our prairies and climate are so like the meadow habitats in the British Isles and Ireland, these weed species had a readily suitable environment to establish in. For example, shepard’s cress is considered Near Threatened in England where it grows in dry grasslands dominated by sheep’s fescue (Festuca ovina), a bunchgrass very similar in form and life history to our Roemer’s fescue (Festuca roemeri).

A degraded South Sound prairie or an intact English meadow? In the UK and Ireland, the suite of our South Sound Prairie weeds comprise a community of threatened meadow species. See more at widlifetrusts.org. Image source wildlifetrust.org.

The re-creation of European meadow ecosystems in a different part of the globe represents a very fascinating biogeographic story, and presents us with interesting conundrums like what to do when ‘our’ weeds are another’s rare ecosystem (a fact not lost on the late Arthur Kruckeberg). But, more importantly, the addition of so many European meadow species has caused the loss of much our own unique biodiversity, and re-establishing native prairie is the cornerstone of so much of the work we do on the prairies.

If there is one prairie weed species to rule them all, it would be Scot’s broom, which for decades spread across the South Sound prairies, changing our open grasslands to a thick shrubland.

Me standing in a dense thicket of Scot’s broom at Mazama Meadows while doing one of the first botanical surveys of the site.

Since the 1990’s, many of us have spent many days of sweat and tears cutting, spraying, mowing, pulling, and burning Scot’s broom. There is no greater testament to the tenacity of dedicated restoration than at Glacial Heritage Preserve. At Glacial Heritage folks have spent years of effort to liberate much of the prairie from the thumb of Scot’s broom’s shadow.

The dramatic change of the prairie habitat at Glacial Heritage Preserve between 1990 and 2017. The dark gray splotches in the 1990 photo are Scot’s broom patches, which are completely absent by 2018.

However, Scot’s broom doesn’t just change prairies by creating shrubland, it also alters the soil by fixing nitrogen and adding woody material into the soil environment. These potential changes to the soil can cause another conundrum – what do we do if Scot’s broom changes prairies even after we remove it? These ‘legacy’ soils could either be maladaptive for our native prairie species, or the other associated European weeds that co-evolved with Scot’s broom in European meadows may be better competitors. For example, species like sheep sorrel, hairy cat’s ear, ox-eye daisy, Yorkshire fog, and sweet vernal grass all readily grow under even the oldest growth Scot’s broom. If these species were able to produce extensive seedbanks under Scot’s broom while outcompeting other native species, they could be equally tenacious and persistent even once we remove Scot’s broom and seed in native prairie species.

Exploring these questions was the basis for a research question I’ve explored for several years. Using the above 1990 map, I set up a natural experiment to see if plant communities that formed under scot’s broom remained different from uninvaded communities even after many years since Scot’s broom removal. What I found was disheartening. Scot’s broom legacy areas were completely stubborn and resistant to our restoration actions, even in prairie locations where we have extensively sown and plugged native prairie species and actively controlled Scot’s broom and other weeds with mowing, fire, and herbicide. Other prairie weeds were little impacted by the presence of Scot’s broom, as we’d expect if they co-evolved in similar habitats in Europe. This was even the case for several cosmopolitan native prairie species that are also native to Europe such as yarrow (Achillea millefolium), self heal (Prunella vulgare) and bluebells (Campanula rotundifolia). In contrast, our regionally endemic prairie species such as white-topped aster (Sericocarpus rigidus) failed to persist or become re-established in legacy soils. For example, western buttercup (Ranunculus occidentalis) growing in legacy soils flower less often, produce fewer fruits, and are shorter in stature than buttercup growing in native prairie. These little studies highlight the big reality that restoration is hard, and being proactive in controlling weeds can be vitally important, because sometimes the consequences are irreversible or nearly so. While we may now have wonderful examples of meadowscapes that would make the characters from a Jane Austen novel blush, we may have lost a unique expression of what makes the South Sound landscape so unique. For a longer presentation on this topic see this talk given at the 2020 Scotch broom symposium.

A sea of hairy cat’s ear, one of the dominant species in prairies that have a legacy of Scot’s broom invasion.

Spring at Violet Prairie Seed Farm, Post and Photos by Ruth Mares

Ruth (they/them) joined the Center for Natural Lands Management’s Nursery Program in 2018 as a farm crew member. Originally from rural Maine, Ruth moved to Olympia, WA in 2011 to pursue a degree in Ecology from The Evergreen State College. They initially fell in love with the temperate rainforests and dramatic coastal shores, but it was seeing the prairies of Thurston County in full wildflower bloom that inspired them to pursue conservation work in the South Puget Sound region

Spring at Violet Prairie Seed Farm

Somehow, it has been an entire year since the world first became entangled with COVID- 19. This major event has caused many shifts globally, trickling all the way down to the prairies of Western Washington, and to the Violet Prairie Native Plant Nursery. Taking precautions early, beginning in March of 2020, we have become accustomed to the shift to distanced work (which again, is nothing new to us!)

Clouds break to let some sun down onto Violet Prairie seed farm as Andy Hopwood walks to the barn. Photo by Ruth Mares.

A slow and steady slog through the winter finally brought us to the first hints of Spring, with some early bloomers teasing us as early as mid February.

Collinsia parviflora blooming, Photo by Ruth Mares.

Winter was not through with us though, and the heavy snowfall in the Puget Sound region left us with severe damage to our drying sheds. Although this will shift some of our energy from the fields to reconstruction this Spring, our steadfast staff and seasonal crew are determined to get new sheds up and press on with our mission. It is amazing what this small team has been able to withstand and accomplish, and though the winter gave us some beautiful glamour shots of frosty mornings, we are ready to wave goodbye to the colder months.

Frozen Collomia grandiflora, Photo by Ruth Mares.

Frosty Upper Violet Prairie, Photo by Ruth Mares.

 With the vernal equinox having just passed, we are feeling the full excitement of Spring! We’ve almost finished the sowing of our annuals, namely Microsteris gracilis, Collomia grandiflora, and Plectritis congesta. We’ll expect to see these freshly seeded beds begin to emerge in the coming weeks, and we are already seeing the adorable new growth and cotyledons of most of our lupines!

Lupinus oreganus var. kinkaidii cotyledons, Photo by Anika Goldner.

Though the weather is warming up, the fields have still been a bit too moist to drive the tractors on – we want to avoid compaction in our tractor wells! – but we have been able to sneak in a bit of tilling here and there in preparation for our Spring planting. We hope to get our plugs in the ground within the next couple of weeks, and if the rains cooperate with us we’ll be in great shape. We have a fair amount of fresh irrigation repair to get to as well – another thing to add to the long list of Spring to-dos! Luckily, we completed our raised bed repairs and construction over at Shotwell’s Landing Preserve in October, including a new location for our Allium amplectens bulbs that we suspect were experiencing predation from rodents.

Farm crew members Emily LePlante and Anika Goldner installing hardware cloth at the bottom of a reconstructed raised bed, Photo by Ruth Mares.

2020 brought what seemed like an endless onslaught of hurdles for this team, but it has been amazing to see staff and crew persist, with a seemingly unshakable commitment to the cause of conservation and tending to these wonderful plants. We enter this new year ready for whatever may come – be it the continuation of this pandemic, wildfires or heavy snow – knowing that we not only have the support of each other as a solid nursery team, but the unconditional love of our canine companion, Finn Hopwood!

Finn supervising the installation of experimental use of burlap sacks as temporary weed suppression in some of our tarped beds. Photo by Ruth Mares.

We are excited for the season to come, and welcome folks to visit the farm through tours that are being arranged for Prairie Appreciation Month!

Please visit our website, http://cnlm.org/native-seed-nursery/ to see updated lists of our current seed availability, and read a bit more about the nursery’s role in the restoration of prairies in Western Washington.