Great Plains Skink

Great Plains Skink (adult form) from my urban garden in Newton, KS (May 28, 2009)

Increasingly, I find enjoyment in the wildlife attracted to my native plant gardens. One species I’ve especially loved seeing has been the Great Plains Skink (Plestiodon obsoletus). For at least 13 years (since I took the above photo), I have observed this species coming and going from under my garage or deck, around the foundation of my house, and to and from my native plant gardens. The combination of these habitats appears to provide suitable cover, food, and thermoregulation for this ectothermic (cold-blooded) reptile.

Identification

The adult Great Plains Skink averages 7-9 inches in length (as large as 13″) and is the largest, most common, and most widespread (nearly throughout the entire state) of the seven skink species in Kansas.

Great Plains Skink range map from the Kansas Herpetofaunal Atlas

Coloring ranges from tan with dark brown markings to light gray or olive. The following photos show some of the variations in colors and markings for this species from juvenile to adult.

Natural History

In addition to my urban gardens, it is referenced in the book Amphibians, Reptiles, and Turtles in Kansas (Collins, Collins, and Taggart, 2010) that the Great Plains Skink commonly inhabits open, rocky hillsides with low prairie vegetation. Their diet consists of spiders and a variety of insects such as grasshoppers, crickets and beetles.

Breeding occurs in May after which pregnant females dig deep burrows under rocks and lay 5-32 (average of 12) eggs. After a 1-2 month incubation period, hatched young skinks may take several years to reach sexual maturity.

Diversity in the Home Landscape

Landscaping with native plants leads to attraction of a variety of wildlife species. This bigger picture food chain or ecosystem connection between plants and the animals they support has become one of the most interesting and satisfying incentives of incorporating as much native plant diversity into my home landscape as possible. Whether these plant-animal or predator-prey interactions attract butterflies, monarchs or birds that eat them, birds in general, large beetles, fireflies, cicada killers, preying mantids, bats, or skinks, I’m intrigued with observing every single connection and the underlying story it tells.

I’ll leave you with the following observation…from just last night. We added a red fox to the list of species that has visited our urban home landscape. It spent about an hour in a tussle with a flexible plastic downspout tube in one of our gardens. This particular shade garden is where I have most recently seen a skink in recent weeks. Was “skink-in-a-tube” the cause for this entertainment? Will I see the skink again in this area? Whatever the case, I will enjoy continued observations and looking for answers.

Is there still a skink somewhere in this photo?

Flower Form and Function

Who doesn’t love a perfectly round peony or a deep red rose? While humans are mostly concerned with the aesthetic qualities of flowers, that’s only half the story. The shape, size and color of a flower are less about fashion and more about function, changing over millions of years to be recognized and pollinated by certain methods. Understanding a bit about flower form can help you shop smart when you are trying to create pollinator friendly landscaping.

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Flowers are complicated and variable structures. Knowing a bit about them ensures you are planting flowers that actually fit with our native pollinators. Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.

Coevolution

Coevolution is the concept that living things in close proximity to each other affect the characteristics they develop over time. For instance, the length of moth and bee tongues and the length of some tube-shaped flowers in their geographic area are closely related; as one grows or shrinks over thousands of years, so does the other since their positive interactions impact what traits are passed to the next generation. Our prairie plants in the midwest are no different. Liatris, compass plants, sunflowers and grasses all have complex, dependent relationships with native insects and animals. Flowering plants are still changing today, sometimes naturally and other times with a little push by humans.

Keeping Your Form

Flower form often determines its function in the environment. Each different flower shape is related to its pollinator mechanism. As mentioned above, tube flowers are a favorite of hummingbirds and long-tongued insects because their mouth physiology matches the shape. With hundreds of variations in shape and arrangement, you can spend years studying them all! As new horticultural varieties of native plants are introduced into the garden center, it is important to know what the original form and function of the flower was to be sure it is still serving that purpose even after hybridization.

Breeders hope to make more native plants commercially accessible to the public and to create reliable performers in the garden. But sometimes the changes they make (either through seedling selection or via hybridization) can be detrimental to flower form or leaf palatability, which decreases its usefulness in the ecosystem.

There are many patented varieties of Eupatorium dubium that focus on curtailing the height of the plant, which at a gangly six feet is unsuitable for most garden spaces. Anecdotally, we have found that pollinators flock just as much to the dwarf varieties like “Little Joe” as to the wild type, since the flower shape and color has not changed significantly between the types.

Hybridization

In plants, natural hybridization leads to new characteristics and creates genetic diversity. Humans can hybridize plants by transferring pollen from a plant of interest (say, an especially delicious tomato) with another plant of interest (perhaps a tomato with exceptional vigor). The seeds produced from that cross would be a new, genetically unique plant that hopefully has both of the aforementioned traits. This is not new, and has been happening since Gregor Mendel’s time!

Man-made crosses can lead to higher yields or increased drought tolerance, but they also have their downsides. Cultivars (cultivated varieties) can solve many tricky garden problems but sometimes have decreased ecosystem functionality. Try to shop for plants closely resembling their parent plant in the important categories: flower shape, color, and leaf color. Early research suggests that selections with increased drought tolerance, plant height, and other factors aren’t as influential to pollinators as the flower and leaf changes.

‘Julia’ is a hybrid coneflower sporting orange flowers on strong stems. While we all love these colorful Echinacea varieties, and pollinators seem to as well, they are not nearly as long lived as the less vibrant native species. We don’t know yet how the color change affects the foraging behavior of our native insects, so more research is needed. Photo courtesy of Walter’s Gardens.

How to keep it all straight?

You don’t have to be a botany expert to make good choices. When buying some of the commercially available cultivars/varieties/hybrids, simply try to choose ones closest to their wild parent in appearance. If the flowers are doubled, or a wildly different color than is naturally occurring, that should be a red flag. We can all keep educating ourselves about the pros and cons of cultivars while still enjoying manageable and well-planned native gardens. Planting native trees, shrubs and perennials in your landscape increases the genetic diversity and ecosystem function of your neighborhood. It is worth the extra work, and learning along the way will make the native garden experience even more rewarding!