Some Prairie Garden Favorites

Posted on September 2, 2015 by Brad Guhr

Late summer to early fall is the best time to establish perennial wildflowers, grasses, and shrubs. With cooler, wetter fall and spring seasons to begin to establish deep, long-lived root systems, plantings at this time of the year have the greatest chance of survival. Our Dyck Arboretum members understand this reality well and are strong attendees at our September plant sale.

Asters typically bloom during the peak of the fall monarch butterfly migration.

With a couple decades of experience seeing native plants in their natural habitat and helping folks establish these plants in their home and school landscapes, I have come to most commonly recommend some favorite species. Criteria for choosing these 27 species include the following:

Eye candy – attractive flowering in spring, summer or fall with species representing a variety of colors and heights;

Bio-diversity – ability to attract insects with tasty foliage, sweet nectar, and/or cover (insects attract many other forms of wildlife too);

Durability – all new transplants require TLC in the first year, but once established in favored conditions, these species are Kansas-hearty;

Good behavior – all happy plants create offspring with their seeds, but if given the space needed for their natural growth form, these selections are not vegetative-spreading bullies;

Full sun, average soil – thriving in at least six hours of sunlight and with soils possessing moderate amounts of silt, clay and moisture.

SPRING

Amsonia hubrechtii – narrow leaf blue star, 18-24”
Baptisia australis var. minor – blue false indigo, 15-24”
Callirhoe involucrata – purple poppy mallow, 6″
Ceanothus americanus – New Jersey tea, 24-36”
Oenothera macrocarpa – MO evening primrose, 8-10”
Penstemon digitalis – smooth penstemon ‘Dark Towers’, 30”
Tradescantia ohiensis – Ohio spiderwort, 30-36”
Verbena canadensis – rose verbena, 8-18”
Zizia aurea – golden alexanders, 24-36”

Blue false indigo with golden alexanders in the background.

Missouri evening primrose.

SUMMER

Amorpha canescens – leadplant, 24-36”
Asclepias tuberosa – butterfly milkweed, 20-24”
Dalea purpurea – purple prairie clover, 15-18”
Echinacea angustifolia – black sampson Echinacea, 18”
Liatris aspera – tall gayfeather, 24-36”
Monarda fistulosa – beebalm, 36-48”
Rudbeckia missouriensis – MO black-eyed susan, 12-18”

Butterfly milkweed and Echinacea flowering in a wildly-planted arrangement.

FALL

Allium stellatum – prairie onion, 10-20”
Asclepias incarnata – marsh milkweed, 36-48”
Aster oblongifolius – aromatic aster ‘October skies’, 18”
Salvia azurea – blue sage, 36-48”
Solidago nemoralis – gray goldenrod, 12-36”
Vernonia lettermanii – ironweed ‘Iron Butterflies’, 30-36”

Aromatic aster ‘October Skies’.

GRASSES

Bouteloua gracilis – golden blue grama ‘Blonde Ambition’ (warm season), 12-24”
Koeleria pyramidata – June grass (cool season), 12-18”
Panicum virgatum – switchgrass ‘Cheyenne Skies’ (warm season), 24-36”
Schizachyrium scoparium – little bluestem (warm season), 12-24”
Sporobolus heterolepis – prairie dropseed (warm season), 12”

Little bluestem with seed.

Your prairie garden planting strategy could go in a couple of different directions: 1) a high diversity, wild prairie look with a few plants of each of these species, or 2) a more focused horticultural look with say only a half a dozen of these species planted in higher frequency and purposeful clumps or patterns. As an ecologist, I historically leaned toward the former. But I also appreciate that our human landscaping sensibilities crave order, and thus find myself more each year leaning toward the latter when advising plantings.

There are many other fascinating features of these plants, including wildlife species specificity, cool pollination mechanisms, herbal/medicinal values, attractive textures/seed heads, and interesting cultural and natural history connections. Whatever your planting strategy you implement with your next garden, just know that selecting from these species will provide you a great start to a lifetime of rewarding and educational native gardening experiences.

Ohio spiderwort, New Jersey tea, rose verbena, and marsh milkweed.

Ragweed: An Annual Affliction

Posted on August 26, 2015 by Brad Guhr

Achoo!

A couple of weeks ago, my son and I started to experience the annoyance of head, nasal, and throat responses to extra pollen in the air. I did some investigating of roadsides and sure enough, the ragweed was just starting to bloom and reported pollen counts were spiking. Kansans have really enjoyed relatively cooler temperatures and ample rainfall this summer. Our landscapes have been green and our gardens have been productive. With the good comes the bad…mosquitoes and ticks have been abundant and we should expect a monster ragweed season through the rest of August and September.

Plants with annual life cycles (as opposed to perennials or biennials) are the most productive airborne pollen sources this time of the year. Annuals complete their whole life cycle of germination, rapid growth, profuse flowering (the culprit in this story), voluminous seed production, and death in one growing season. Three of the the worst annual plant offenders for airborne pollen production this time of the year include common ragweed, giant ragweed, and sumpweed.

Wind-pollinated common ragweed (Ambrosia artemisiifolia).

Wind-pollinated giant ragweed (Ambrosia trifida).

Wind-pollinated annual sumpweed (Iva annua).

While ragweed season is the worst for me, I do often notice airborne pollen spikes of flowering elms and maples in early spring, cedars and wheat crops late spring, and sometimes even warm season prairie grasses in mid summer.

All flowering plants produce pollen, but wind-pollinated plants produce smaller, lighter pollen that use wind to migrate from male to female flowers…and unfortunately our nasal passages. Wind-pollinated flowers do not need to invest energy in expensive color (and nectar) to attract insects to move pollen, so their flowering often goes undetected by the human eye. A common misconception is that colorful, perennial flowering plants, including goldenrods and sunflowers blooming this time of the year, are causing us to sneeze. However, their flowers have heavier pollen, which are not carried in the wind, and which require an insect with a hairy body/legs to migrate to other flowers. Flowers with colorful petals are not our allergy nemesis.

Insect-pollinated Missouri goldenrod (Solidago missouriensis) does not cause allergies.

Insect-pollinated compass plant (Silphium laciniatum) and wind-pollinated giant ragweed.

Annuals including ragweed require disturbed, open soil to thrive. Although their pollen affects me, I am glad for the ecological role that annuals play in quickly establishing disturbed soil and minimizing erosion until long-lived perennials can establish and take their place. Most of our soil at Dyck Arboretum is tied up and covered with perennial native plants, and I actually had a hard time finding examples of annuals to photograph.

I’ll finish on one more positive note. Grains including corn, wheat, rice, oats, rye, barley, and others are all wind-pollinated plants too. I guess we should be thankful for the wonderful world of plants and what their sometimes annoying pollination mechanisms have to offer.

So, grab the tissues, nasal sprays, antihistamines and suffer through.

Winfield (and the PWCS) On My Mind

Posted on August 12, 2015 by Brad Guhr

When summer vacation ends and back-to-school plans kick in, my thoughts affectionately turn to “Winfield.” For so many, this one word moniker for the Walnut Valley Festival (WVF) in Winfield, KS is synonymous with great music on stages and in campgrounds around the clock. For my family the WVF, which occurs annually in middle to late September, has been a cherished time for reunions with friends and family, camping, great food, an easy-going time of retreat, renewal, and making memories that last a lifetime. Anticipating its 44th year, Winfield is adored by ~15,000 people annually that flock to the Cowley County Fairgrounds. Some come early for “Land Rush” to stake their coveted claim along the shady banks of the Walnut River and invest weeks of vacation, and others come for a day of stage acts, workshops and to enjoy one of the international championship competitions featuring flat pick/finger style guitar, mandolin, banjo, hammer/mountain dulcimer, auto harp, and fiddle.

My connection to Winfield began in 1998 when a grad school graduation gift of festival passes from my uncle/aunt Royce and Marge started a running 17-year love affair with this experience. Listening to music with my dad, visits to my uncle’s Buzzard’s Roost Camp, witnessing epic wee-hour jams in the Pecan Grove, the flood-displaced year at Winfield Lake, planning meals, and hanging out with friends, have all profoundly shaped my Winfield memories. My boys have attended nearly every year of their lives and their experiences have included everything from long toddler naps under my chair at the finger style championships, ukulele workshops, kid jams around the campfire, running down the levee, racing the ever-present train, playing catch on the Stage Two hill, and more. They hold the Winfield experience up there with Christmas and 4th of July.

This time of the year also brings great anticipation for a new season of the Dyck Arboretum Prairie Window Concert Series (PWCS). Coordination of the PWCS fell into my lap in 2011 and in spite of my lack of experience with concert promotion, the Winfield experience has made coordination of the PWCS a labor of love. Winfield has had a profound effect on the artists I invite to the PWCS as it did for my predecessor, Miner Seymour and his brainchild, the Old Settlers Inn in Moundridge. Memorable performances over the years at Winfield from Mike Cross, Tim O’Brien and Darrell Scott, The Wilders, The Greencards, The Steel Wheels, Tommy Emmanuel, Hot Club of Cowtown, The Infamous Stringdusters, The Waybacks, and many more have certainly shaped my musical preferences towards Americana and roots music featuring masterful instrumentals and tight harmonies. Half of the featured artists in the coming 2015-16 PWCS season have strong ties to Winfield.

When the monarchs fill the air, and the Maximilian sunflowers blaze with yellow, it is time for my family to migrate south to Winfield. Whether I see you there or at the PWCS (our surrogate Winfield), I know we’ll be enjoying great music together and making memories.

In Awe of Insects

Posted on July 8, 2015 by Brad Guhr

“If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.”
― Edward O. Wilson

Take a moment during your next foray outdoors and observe the level of insect diversity around you. Hint, searching out vegetation and as much plant species diversity as possible will make your exploration more interesting. You can either passively observe or more aggressively make collections with an insect sweep net and it never hurts to have a copy of the color book Insects in Kansas handy. General observations are interesting enough, but counting and recording the species observed (no formal identification necessary) only increases the level of education and interest.

We do this at the Dyck Arboretum with kids and adults all the time. The findings in our diverse prairie garden on one side of the sidewalk always produce much more insect diversity and inspire greater awe and fascination than the mowed fescue lawn side.

This is no surprise, really, when you consider how much more habitat, cover, protection, and food the prairie garden holds. Concepts including ecosystems, food webs, trophic levels, herbivores, carnivores, etc. are easily discussed with this simple exercise.

Conversations often migrate towards how important insects are to humans, our survival, and quality of life. Insects pollinate our crops including many fruits, nuts, and vegetables, they provide us with honey, beeswax, cotton, silk, and tobacco, they perform valuable services as scavengers, they serve as food for many birds and animals, they help keep harmful plants and animals in check, and they have been useful in medicine and scientific research.

People in 80% of the world’s nations enjoy insects as food, and this number will continue to grow as world human population growth continues to outpace food production (take a look at this recent Food and Agriculture Organization United Nations Report to understand how common entomophagy is in the non-western world). Sure, one can find annoying, harmful, and even dangerous examples of insects too, but for humans the benefits far outweigh the detriments.

Deep fried insects in Thai Quisine (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Insekten.jpg)

There are fascinating stories to tell about symbiotic relationships between plants and insects, insects as pollinators, brood caretakers, and navigators, and even gruesome ones about insects as scavengers, parasites, and vicious predators. You probably know about the important relationship between milkweed and the monarch butterfly, but did you know that grasshoppers consume more biomass on the prairie than either cattle or bison? Or how about the perilous story of how the male preying mantis becomes food for the female both during and after copulation? There’s a father’s day story you won’t soon forget.

There are about 900,000 identified species of insects in the world which makes up approximately 80% of the total wildlife species. Entomologists estimate that they have only been able to identify approximately 3% of the world’s species which push total species estimates to 30 million.

Take a few moments to study the following chart of common insect orders to better understand what is out there, have some fun exploring, and as I once heard a great elementary teacher tell her students, “turn your ‘eeewwwws’ into ‘ooohhhhs’!”

Hopefully you’ll gain a greater appreciation for the fascinating world of insects. Your life may even depend on it.

The Power of Many

Posted on June 10, 2015 by Brad Guhr

“Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.” ~ Helen Keller

Consider the power of one vs. the power of many. The power of one may at first seem insignificant. However, with persistence, consensus-building, and sometimes even a little luck, that power can grow to many and build to a formidable presence.

A few examples of this in nature…

From one seed, a typical annual sunflower head produces hundreds and sometimes over 1,000 seeds depending on the species variety. A few plants in an area with open soil can quickly turn into an area dominated by this species over the next couple of years.

One Canada goose only has so much energy to give while covering miles during migration to fight wind currents and arrive at its intended destination. But by flocking into a V formation in flight, each individual rotates through the more energy-intensive front position in a cyclical fashion, shares overall flight fatigue, and greatly boosts the efficiency and range of the whole.

Eurasian_Cranes_migrating_to_Meyghan_Salt_Lake

Photo by Hamid Hajihusseini – http://www.panoramio.com/photo/43585282

One by one, individual plants of hundreds of species of wildflowers and grasses took advantage of a favorable climate on the Great Plains after the last ice age 10,000 years ago. They extended their roots to a depth of 10 feet or more, produced flowers and distributed seeds, and filled new spaces as long-lived perennials. Prairie plant roots partially died and regenerated year after year after year, and in the process pumped loads of atmospheric carbon into a deep soil horizon, and created a long-lasting friable matrix that today helps produce food for the rest of the world.

While pondering these examples on a walk this morning, I tried to swat individual mosquitoes, only to be overwhelmed by the presence of a blood-thirsty mosquito CLOUD. I was reminded of the “success of many” concept in the book Gnats of Knotty Pine from my favorite children’s author, Bill Peet.

Last week, we finished our ninth annual Earth Partnership for Schools (EPS) summer institute. We were joined by 21 educators for this intense 40-hour workshop to learn how to engage K-12 children in the preparation, creation, maintenance, study and enjoyment of schoolyard prairie gardens. These individuals came with energy, passion, a willingness to learn, and 287 years of experience and expertise. (side note: this group fittingly helped a volunteer weed a large bed in about five minutes and conducted a big planting in about 30 minutes that would have taken our grounds manager all day!)

As during previous EPS summer institutes, spending a week with these people was a blast – exhausting, yet energizing, and ever so powerful for all involved on so many levels. They will return to school in the fall with detailed action plans, an expanded toolbox of curriculum activities, and a new appreciation for the success of project-based, hands-on environmental education.

I’m sure you will agree that every individual teacher has the power on his or her own to impact the lives of so many young people. Together, this 2015 cohort has increased the number of EPS educators in Kansas to 194 teachers from 64 schools. These individuals, as a collective group, have reached over 21,000 students in the last eight years and that number will continue to grow.

I’ll leave you with one final question. Between the bison and the grasshopper (pre-European settlement era when the bison were still common), which organism as a whole consumed more prairie biomass in a given year? I think you know where this is going…

A New Must-Have Plant Identification Book for Kansas

Posted on May 6, 2015 by Brad Guhr

Oenothera macrocarpa (MO evening primrose) – photo by Michael John Haddock

For 35 years, Janét E. Bare’s popular book Wildflowers and Weeds of Kansas has been one of the standards for plant identification in Kansas. When I moved back to Kansas in 1998 with a fresh botany/ecology degree, a new job in environmental consulting that required plant identification, and a desire to know the name of every plant I could find, I knew that Bare’s hardback book with mostly black and white photos had to be in my library. The going rate for this 509-page out-of-print book was around $100 at the time and I felt lucky to find a nice copy at a used book store in Kansas City for $50.

For Kansas, I have collected to date what I consider to be fourteen helpful plant identification resources (see list below). In addition to Bare’s multiple decades standard, they include a number of good paperback books with color photos, some with line drawings and county maps, and the behemoth 1402-page hardback resource Flora of the Great Plains as the most comprehensive, but very technical resource without photographs. For years, I carried a bulky collection of these books in a backpack and always had the rest close at hand back at the car or office.

Allium stellatum (pink wild onion) – photo by Michael John Haddock

Thanks to a new publication by University of Kansas Press, however, wildflower identification in Kansas just became much easier. Janét Bare teamed up with two of the most talented botanists in the state, Craig C. Freeman and Michael John Haddock (both with publications of their own – see below) to produce the updated Kansas Wildflowers and Weeds, a must-have resource for plant enthusiasts.

Zizia aurea (golden alexanders) – photo by Michael John Haddock

As the dust jacket states, “For purposes of identification, conservation, study, or the simple pleasure of thumbing through, it is a resource without parallel.” It has 742 color photographs, up-to-date nomenclature, taxonomic descriptions and a dichotomous identification key, and interesting information with regard to habitat, commonness, moisture preference, phenology, ecology, herbal/medicinal traits, DNA and more. My one critique of the book is that it does not include helpful county presence maps (only has region presence codes), but I’m sure the authors considered this and figured that including these maps would add even more pages and size to an already large 518-page resource.

This book has descriptions for 1,163 species of wildflowers and a handful of woody plants (an increase from 831 species in Bare’s earlier book) and covers roughly 56 percent of the state’s native and naturalized flora. It could be labeled both a coffee table book and a comprehensive field guide. (To get a copy signed by Haddock, come to our Summer Soirée on June 28.)

Glandularia canadensis (rose verbena) – photo by Michael John Haddock

Put this new book in your backpack along with Iralee Barnard’s new grasses resource and H.A. Stephen’s woody plants book (see list below), and you should be able to identify most common plants found on an outing in Kansas.

Happy botanizing! ~Brad

Helpful Plant Identification Books

(in addition to the new Kansas Wildflowers and Weeds by Haddock, Freeman, and Bare)

Atlas of the Flora of the Great Plains
Great Plains Flora Association
Iowa State University Press, 1977

Field Guide to the Common Grasses of Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska
Iralee Barnard
University Press of Kansas, 2014

Field Guide to the Common Weeds of Kansas
Prepared by T. M. Barkley
Kansas Agricultural Experiment Station and Division of Biology, Kansas State University
Kansas Agricultural Experiment Station contribution number 82-547-B
University Press of Kansas, 1983

Flora of the Great Plains
Great Plains Flora Association
T.M. Barkley, Editor
University Press of Kansas, 1986

Kansas Grasses
Clenton E. Owensby
Kansas Publishing Inc., 2004

Kansas Prairie Wildflowers
Clenton E. Owensby
Iowa State University Press, 1980

Roadside Wildflowers of the Southern Great Plains
Craig Carl Freeman and Eileen K. Schofield
University Press of Kansas, 1991

Sedges: Carex
Roberts H. Mohlenbrock
Southern Illinois University Press, 1999

Trees, Shrubs, and Woody Vines in Kansas
H.A. Stephens
University Press of Kansas, 1969

Weeds of Nebraska and the Great Plains
James Stubbendieck, Geir Y. Friisoe, and Margaret R. Bolick
Nebraska Department of Agriculture, 1994

Wildflowers and Grasses of Kansas: A Field Guide
Michael John Haddock
University Press of Kansas, 2005

Wildflowers and Other Plants of Iowa Wetlands
Sylvan T. Runkel and Dean M. Roosa
Iowa State University Press, 1999

Wildflowers and Weeds of Kansas
Janet E. Bare
Regents Press of Kansas, 1979

Wildflowers of the Tallgrass Prairie: The Upper Midwest
Sylvan T. Runkel and Dean M. Roosa
Iowa State University Press, 1989

Embracing Prairie Burning

Posted on April 1, 2015 by Brad Guhr

An important disturbance mechanism for prairie ecosystem health, a restoration ritual that connects a Kansan to its native landscape, and a series of sights, sounds and smells that both comforts and stirs heightened senses – prairie burning in the spring represents all these things to me.

Ever since participating in my first prairie burns during graduate school in Wisconsin, where I was trained to safely conduct prescribed burns, I have held a great reverence and respect for this process of igniting the prairie. Prairies and a whole array of plants and animals became adapted to semi-regular lightning-set fires on the Central North American Plains since the last ice age approximately 10,000 years ago.

In the last couple of thousand years, humans have also been important vectors for bringing fire to the prairie and helping determine its geographic extent on the landscape. Native Americans used fire to clear safe zones for lodging, attract or direct wildlife for food, and celebrate cultural rituals. Their actions helped extend prairie further east into areas that have since reverted back to oak-hickory forests, as the Native American presence and their fire rituals were extinguished. European ranchers on the Plains hold a similar respect for fire and use it to help fatten cattle and control invading woody plants that would eventually shade out prairie grasses.

Prairie fires in Kansas have been met with resistance. Increased human habitation and careless use of fire in untamed wild places puts residences more at risk and created an understandable fear of fire. Air quality problems affecting human health, due mostly to automobiles, power generation and industry in major metropolitan areas like Kansas City and most recently Wichita, are certainly not helped by spring prairie burns. Wildlife managers can cite that annual prairie burns in the Flint Hills have become too frequent for the success of grassland birds, including greater prairie chickens that require some residual cover for adequate foraging and nesting success.

Kansas has a rich history intertwined with the prairie and Kansans embrace prairie as an important part of our cultural and natural history, our recreation through eco-tourism (state park use, hunting, fishing, birding, hiking, etc.) and our economy (ranching). Where prairie has been removed, it has left behind a legacy of some of the best agricultural soils in the world. While mowing does provide some of the benefits of fire, it does not provide all of them, and is more costly and time-consuming. We must find ways to utilize and implement prairie burning with greater safety, intelligence, and purpose.

Simply put, a culture that values prairie must also value fire.

WARNING: The Monarch Butterfly is Threatened

Posted on March 4, 2015 by Brad Guhr

Monarchs ingest toxic cardiac glycosides when their larvae eat milkweed leaves and advertise through their adult warning coloration: “look out for me…I’m poisonous!” The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service may very soon be issuing its own warning on behalf of declining populations for this bright butterfly under the banner of the Endangered Species Act (ESA). A petition was submitted in August 2014 by The Center for Biological Diversity, Center for Food Safety, The Xerces Society, and Dr. Lincoln Brower to encourage listing of this species on the ‘threatened’ list. A ‘threatened species’ is one that is likely to become endangered in the foreseeable future throughout all or a significant portion of its range.

Dramatic Population Decline

The following graph (Graph courtesy of the Monarch Joint Venture) shows over the last 20 years the area of monarch overwintering colonies in the forests of Central Mexico, which is their only overwintering location.

Figure from Monarch Watch

Their population trend of precipitous decline is discouraging. The part that is encouraging, however, is that we know exactly what the problem is – prairie habitat loss; specifically, the loss of milkweed (Asclepias spp.), the monarch host plant. Americans do not like to be restricted or forced to spend money on anything and a threatened listing under the ESA will do just that. It is my hope that we can avoid listing of the monarch butterfly and restore its population, but this will require both education and action. The action part is what I will address here. If you live in the following monarch corridor, you must take action now.

Figure from Monarch Watch

What Can We Do?

It can be fun, easy, and rewarding to establish milkweeds and I challenge everyone reading this post to take personal action in increasing milkweed populations in the coming growing season. There are two easy ways to do this: 1) establish milkweed plants in the areas you landscape, and 2) distribute milkweed seed in a nearby unmowed area.

Plant Milkweed Plants – Landscaping with native plants is rewarding and South Central Kansans have eight commercially-available native milkweed species they can plant, including Asclepias incarnata (swamp milkweed), syriaca (common milkweed), A. tuberosa (butterfly milkweed), A. viridis (green antelopehorn), A. speciosa (showy milkweed), A. sullivantii (smooth milkweed), A. hirtella (prairie milkweed), and A. verticillata (whorled milkweed). These species can be purchased at the Dyck Arboretum of the Plains spring plant sale, Monarch Watch, and Prairie Moon Nursery. Plants establish and flower in the first year with proper care and provide beauty and insect nectar sources in addition to host plant larval food for the monarch.

Showy milkweed (Asclepias speciosa)

Distribute Milkweed Seed – Surely you know a grassland area along a nearby creek or waterway, in a park, or along a roadside that gets mowed or burned only periodically to keep it free of trees. Collect some seed from a nearby prairie or even buy some seed of the species above from a native seed nursery (good sources include Prairie Moon Nursery and Missouri Wildflowers Nursery), get permission to plant, and distribute your milkweed seeds in the fall or early winter so that germination will happen and establishment will begin the following spring. Common milkweed ( A. syriaca) is the species most preferred by the monarch and is easiest to acquire and establish. Distributing seed is a very cost effective and easy way to establish milkweed were it doesn’t currently exist.

Common milkweed (Aslepias syriaca) with monarch eggs

Do you remember the massive flocks of the passenger pigeon? Of course you don’t – Martha, the last known individual died in 1914. Your grandparents or great grandparents, however, may have been able to tell you first hand stories. First hand experiences with monarchs may be something we currently take for granted. If we don’t act now, these encounters with monarchs may be something our grandkids or great grandkids never experience. Don’t let this happen.

Fighting for Water

Posted on February 11, 2015 by Brad Guhr

(Interested in Kansas water issues? Learn about our Kansas Water Symposium on Saturday, March 7 at Dyck Arboretum of the Plains!)

“Whisky’s for drinking and water’s for fighting.” ~Mark Twain is often given credit for this quote

Kansans for decades have utilized a seemingly endless supply of water to drink, to bathe, wash clothes, manage sewage, generate power, irrigate lawns, and grow crops. We give it little thought, we turn on the tap and it is there – clean, plentiful and inexpensive. Most families pay much more per month for their smart phones than for water.

The law of supply and demand is certainly in effect here to keep our water cheap. We have developed a state infrastructure making the availability of water plentiful and we access it in two main ways. Kansas reservoirs capture an average precipitation of 30-40 inches for use across much of Eastern Kansas, and one of the world’s largest underground water tables, the High Plains or Ogallala Aquifer, supplies water for most of Western Kansas. In South Central Kansas, we benefit from both supplies.

Experts are telling us though (and common sense should too) that this unbridled use cannot last. Our Kansas population continues to grow along with our collective thirst for water, and our water supply is not increasing to keep pace. The Ogallala aquifer as a whole is declining in its level, and stream sedimentation is diminishing the capacity of reservoirs. A recent 2013 presentation by Tracy Streeter, Kansas Water Office Director, shows that, depending on the region of Kansas that one examines, the trend lines of decreasing supply and increasing demand are set to cross each other in coming decades and in some locations coming years.

The sobering unknown factor in this discussion of water supply and demand is weather. Over the last 50 years or so, we have been lucky to have above average rainfall and below average temperatures. The Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) helps us track this information and is one of the most widely-used indices to measure drought in North America. The PDSI measures the intensity and duration of long-term drought using precipitation and temperature data to determine how much soil moisture is available compared to average conditions. In a 2012 presentation by Tony Layzell of the Kansas Geological Survey, he shares the following graph of PDSI data in South Central Kansas:

Click here for the full presentation.

You can see that the two most recent significant drought events of 10-15 years in duration last happened in the Dust Bowl and the 1950s. For those of us that didn’t experience either of these drought events, the mini-drought of 2011 and 2012 gave us a little taste of relentless heat and drought, and it was distasteful enough. Here is the pending reality and problem – the law of averages is catching up with us and we are due for another drought event. Whether a little five-year event or a whopping multi-decade drought, it is coming.

We shouldn’t ignore this reality, hope that it never happens, and stick our heads in the proverbial sand in search of more prehistoric water that won’t be there or new reservoir storage, which is extremely expensive to create. Rather, we can proactively begin to appreciate how precious our water resources are and begin to use them more wisely. To survive, we will simply be forced to do so.

Center-pivot irrigation, a common sight in Southwestern Kansas (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Crops_Kansas_AST_20010624.jpg)

Solutions are available. Agricultural irrigation uses 85% of our state’s water and efficiency improvements are being made there already, but a drought will certainly force us to shift away from corn towards more traditional dry-land crops. Fossil fuel power generation is water-intensive and may diminish during a drought, but renewable alternatives are also available to pick up the slack. How we landscape our yards, parks, golf courses, etc. could significantly curtail municipal water use by shifting away from thirsty cool season grasses and utilizing more native, warm-season vegetation. We could be recycling our cleaned sewage water into drinking water; The City of Wichita Falls, Texas has been forced to do so because of a 5-year drought and cut their water supply demands over that period in more than half. The fact that North Americans wash clothes, flush toilets, and irrigate lawns, gardens, and crops with drinking water is laughable to much of the world’s population (including some other developed nations too) where access to clean drinking water is not a laughing matter. Thankfully, Kansas is in the midst of developing A LONG-TERM VISION FOR THE FUTURE OF WATER SUPPLY IN KANSAS and is considering all of these conservation solutions in addition to looking at increasing supply.

There are so many more issues to consider when discussing this complex topic of water. We invite you to the Dyck Arboretum’s Kansas Water Symposium on Saturday, March 7 and explore the above issues with eight experts speaking on a variety of water topics.

Winter Prairie

Posted on January 7, 2015 by Brad Guhr

Temperatures are cold, hours of darkness are long, and January is a nice time to observe the following beneficial features of a winter prairie garden.

Habitat for micro-wildlife – Insect eggs persist and survive on residual vegetation – a good reason for leaving thatch on site when cutting it in the spring. For animals that don’t hibernate or achieve some form of dormancy, extant biomass provides insulation for body heat, protection from wind, and visual cover from predators; seeds provide an important source of food for small birds and mammals, and these animals will eventually feed others in the food chain.

Vegetation buffer – Dormant plant matter provides an above-ground blanket or biomass buffer that reduces soil moisture loss, and slows changes in temperature. This effect improves chances of winter survival for wildlife, and the roots of living, dormant perennial plants.

Developing seed bank – Allowing seed heads to persist on site, relax, and drop their seeds builds an inventory of propagules in the soil that can produce new seedlings in the future.

Aesthetic beauty – Unique textures, variations of drab colors, organic ways of holding ice and snow, and even some landscape “disorder” provide interesting features for traditional yards that generally lack winter interest.

Be sure to enjoy the subtle nuances of the dormant prairie in winter over the next couple of months.

Happy new year,

Brad

Author Archives: Brad Guhr

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Winter Prairie

SPRING

SUMMER

FALL

GRASSES

“If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.” ― Edward O. Wilson

Helpful Plant Identification Books

Dramatic Population Decline

What Can We Do?

(Interested in Kansas water issues? Learn about our Kansas Water Symposium on Saturday, March 7 at Dyck Arboretum of the Plains!)

“If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.”
― Edward O. Wilson