Prairie in a Can

A couple of days ago we were out at Cayler Prairie and my classmate Alex observed that he’d seen several similar species in the prairie across the street from our cabins. Dr. S., our professor, scoffed, “That’s no prairie; it’s someone’s wildflower garden.” He acknowledged that both areas may contain some of the same plants, but said that a prairie should have more than just a few native species.

To show us what he meant, the next day Dr. S. walked us across the street to the field. It did immediately appear to have different composition than the prairies that we’d been tromping through for the last couple of weeks. I recognized a few species: little bluestem, daisy fleabane, and June grass. Dr. S. pointed out many species that wouldn’t appear in native Iowa prairies and explained that the field had been planted with “prairie in a can,” a seed mix from somewhere in Colorado. He explained that a true restoration project takes into consideration the grasses and flowers that would appear naturally in the area. If possible, a prairie is planted with seeds harvested from a nearby, established prairie. To him, this re-seeded field could not be called prairie; instead it was someone’s experimentation with non-native wildflowers.


Dr. S. agreed that the blooms in the field were beautiful, bright showy flowers, but also said that he didn’t think that some of the plants would survive for more than a few years. The non-native flowers included blue flax, lance-leaf coreopsis, lupine, Indian blanket, Shasta daisies, and even musk thistle. Despite the field's failure to be an Iowan prairie, I was glad to it was there to enjoy, almost like a public botanical garden.

Not Quite a Prairie Rattler

Today we drove out to Kirchner Prairie. The class has been searching for some more seasonal flowers to add to our field identification notebooks, and at Kirchner we did find several new ones. One was the white camus plant, Zigadenus elegans. It belongs to the Liliaceae family and has small, six-petaled white flowers, each marked with a green band. The stamens are yellow, and, though poisonous to most animals, flies seemed to be drawn to the plant.

As I stopped to record and sketch the delicate flower, the student next to me nudged my shoulder.

“You’re not afraid of snakes, are you?” he asked.

“Wha..Why?” And then I understood and looked down. A winding black cord was making its way between my feet.

I stood very still and looked at the dark body and yellow stripes. Just a garter snake. And then, for a moment, I thought about trying to catch it. It seemed as though it’d be easy to bend down and close my hand around its thin neck. Then I’d hold it, dangling the twisting tail as the snake squirmed in my fist.

I remembered how my father would sometimes catch a garter snake in our yard, then let us pet it, hold it. The scales felt so cool, so glassy under my fingertips, like a thick beaded bracelet. And yet, for all of its rigidity and shape, the body seemed flexible and alive, definitely not a toy. The belly, wrapped in softer and smoother scales, contained a pulse, the eyes moved, and the tongue flickered. We let the snakes go in our garden. “Snakes are good,” Dad said, “they eat the things that bother us.”

Today, I didn’t pick up the garter snake. Instead, I carefully stepped over it. Here, it wasn’t in my “territory,” my yard, but I was in its home. Something about handling it seemed rude, as though perhaps there is prairie etiquette to understand and follow, rules that I’m just now learning. I didn’t even follow the snake, but stood back and watched as the it quickly slithered into less compacted grasses, then disappeared.