It has been a challenge to get out this summer—sometimes too hot, sometimes too wet, too often sidelined by home projects where I needed to babysit people installing a new shower and painting. (Happy 100th birthday to my house!) So, I’ve been wondering on a weekly basis if I’d get out, and wandering from weed to weed and seed to seed when I did. Aside: “I Wonder as I Wander” is a folk song with Appalachian origins written by John Jacob Niles in 1933. It has become a Christmas song of sorts—a carol that begins, “I wonder as I wander out under the sky…”. A carol sung by Barbara Streisand, Vanessa Williams, Mary Travers (of Peter, Paul, and Mary), and many more. And when I think of a “carol” I think of a song of joy and praise. So, fitting.

Ever wonder why prairie plants don’t wilt like the flowers in your garden do at home when it hasn’t rained for awhile? I’ve walked through a prairie in the early morning, and my socks got wet up to my knees. And the prairie roots go deep. I wonder how cup plants can keep pools of water where their leaves join the stem, even after several days of no rain. Why doesn’t the water leak out? Do the plants actively pump water into those pools?

You may be wondering how the baby white oaks are doing, and I am happy to report they are surviving, even thriving, in the summer heat and through dry spells and downpours. The trees haven’t grown much, but they are dark green and healthy looking. We’ve had high winds at times this summer, and we’ve lost more trees and tree limbs. Oak decline shows no sign of letting up.

It is yellow almost everywhere you look on the prairies these days: lots of cup plant, compass plant, Susans, and ox eye sunflowers, etc. Why is yellow so common now? The non-yellows really do stand out to me as well, however. Do they stand out to their specific pollinators too?

I wonder if the decline in insect populations is seriously affecting seed production in the preserve. Some days out there it just seems too quiet. My car windshield no longer gets plastered with dead “bugs” like it used to in the 70s. And I frequently wonder why there isn’t as much seed as I expected based on the flowers I’d seen earlier in the season. It’s hard to find statistics on insect decline. There are next to no good studies where most insect species occur. The U.S. and Europe never even had 80% of the world’s insects, much less enough comprehensive studies of their own. But, it’s no secret that habitat loss and insecticides hurt them. And we don’t need the extreme of an “insect apocalypse” to seriously degrade pollination success worldwide. According to Wikipedia, “a 2019 survey of 24 entomologists working on six continents found that on a scale of zero to ten, with ten being the worst, all scientists rated the severity of the insect decline crisis as being between eight and ten.” (Hence, Jeremy “Butterfly numbers fall by 84% in Netherlands over 130 years” Mongabay).

A New Species?

Cassytha is an obligate parasitic vine on stems. It resembles dodder (see below) but has a distinctive fruit that is thought to be an aphrodisiac. This may be a new species for Pleasant Valley, and it certainly is new to me! It has haustoria, just like dodder, for obtaining goodies from their hosts, and is said to be a neat example of convergent evolution. I found these Cassytha vines in unit 13.

Dodder (Cuscuta) is also a parasitic vine with haustoria that penetrate the vascular system of their host. Folk names for dodder are; strangleweed, hellbine, and love vine… Aphrodisiac or? While I’m in the marsh, here are more non-yellow flowers.

Kathie has been religiously counting eggs and young in our bluebird boxes, and she has been helping Brand Smith (Southern Wisconsin Bird Alliance) band kestrels. He oversees over 200 kestrel boxes! We had kestrels nesting in our Crane Prairie box and also at Black Earth Prairie. Check out the Bird Alliance website at swibirds.org. Here is one of the next generation. What a wonder!