Post Burn Report #1

Glancing over my blog entries earlier this spring, I was glad to see that my entry on burning our front prairie had actually made it from the chaotic depths of my mind onto the web, complete with a couple pictures, no less. Towards the end of that piece, I mentioned that I was curious to see if I found any new wildflowers this spring, the burn having released them from obscurity. So here are a couple, more recent photos.

First, here is the front prairie on May 22, about 6 weeks after we burned. I love the clean lines of a newly burned grassland. Much of the soft blue-green color shown in this shot is emerging big bluestem, Andropogon gerardii. We inherited a particularly nice stand of big blue when we bought this property, although we didn't know it at the time.

Meanwhile, as far as new species showing up, there have been many new individuals of plants popping up that I'd seen a scattered few of in this prairie parcel over the last two years. This lone individual is the one new species to show up so far, Baptisia australis var. minor, a.k.a. blue wild indigo. Since it's one of my favorite wildflowers, I was particularly happy to see its bloom spikes. Added to the 2 individual plants of this species I've found behind the house and the 2 or 3 I've found in the Beyond, this makes at least 6 blue wild indigo plants on our property.

I've collected seeds from the pods that I've found each fall and scattered them in our back 5. I wonder if any of them have germinated and started new little plants back there? I'd love to have a field full of wild indigo blue!