80AcresOnline

Since it looks like the rain has left us for the summer (hope not, but the long-range predictions aren’t good), I’m posting flower pictures while we have some–and we have some.

An increaser in the west grass, mentioned before, is the Illinois Basketflower, Centaurea americana.  this tallish forb’s buds look a lot like thistles:

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If land managers had ten thousand years to play with the land, prairie restoration would be a lot easier, even if they had to start with an overgrazed, eroded, compacted, heavily-invaded, polluted mess.  But we don’t.   So some basic principles have been laid down–initially during research on northern prairies–that now govern most prairie restoration projects: physical removal of invasive woody plants by fire (cheap) or various mechanical clearing methods (more expensive) ,  grazing management to interrupt succession, physical disturbance of the soil (discing, for instance) to induce germination of dormant seeds.

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