Les Frijo

Doug McEvers wrote:On our farm in 1993 we restored 160 acres back to tallgrass prairie. All of the grass seed used was local source (yellow tag, non-varietal) or an appropriate local cultivar if non-varietal was not available. All of the forb seed was collected from our burned native prairie remnants from the previous growing season. The species present now are so much greater than what we seeded in 1993, some came in from the native remnants interspersed in the 1993 seeding area. 3 orchid species are now present when none were planted originally, took about 13 years for the Small white lady's slipper to appear outside of the native remnants. Given a chance, nature will fill in the blanks, the seed dispersal mechanism for some of the prairie species is quite amazing. Also planted some Bur oak here in the early 1990's, native to this area but not this farm. My goal of having a bit of oak savannah is 35 years in the making !!

Doug I love it!

I've had the same goal and seen some of the same results you mention even though I've been at it about half that long. I'm really just getting started on the native grasses. I didn't realize how abused the land had been until it started to recover.

Cole, Thank you!

This sounds like just what I want. I will download it now.

INaturalist for Android on Google Play

I watched this documentary on competitive birding. I thought it was well done. Funny and weird. Not exactly a permie activity but check it out here if any interest.

LISTERS: A Glimpse Into Extreme Birdwatching

It sparked me thinking about making an inventory list of everything that grows on my 40 acres. There's going to be alot of things. I decided to start with just trees and shrubs. Within a few minutes I had over 50 different species of trees and woody shrubberies. That only counts willow once but there are many and I just don't know what they all are yet. Much work ahead.

There seem to be a whole bunch of plant identification and even diagnosis apps out there. I have not used any recently but I can't seem to find anything that would be similar to what the birders use to document and check off their sightings. It would be great to be able to add photos of the actual plants from the property that is being inventoried. I'd like to have the ability to go to any property and do a create a custom inventory of everything growing there. Maybe that could even be a valuable service to someone?

Anyone out there hear of such an app or have other ideas about how this could be organized? Any other features they would like see included?

The bark is weird. I was thinking maybe one of the hickories. I would not have guessed cottonwood but I'm only seeing one photo. It looks like there are 3 more that don't show up for me. Fungi must be in one of the other photos.

I agree completely with leaving it if you can for a snag and habitat if nothing else.

I don't know about the fungi but if you can determine that these are ash trees and have emerald ash borers in your area you may as well take them down and plant something else at this point.

It could help to know where you are but I'm guessing by didn't bloom you mean it didn't leaf out at all this year and you say it had scarce leaves last year. Is this correct? If so, my guess is that it is now dead. Looks like maybe a boxelder or an ash. I don't see the obvious signs of the emerald ash borer that I see around here but if it is an ash that is likely the cause of death. Boxelder are usually pretty weedy and not easy to kill trees.

“Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.”

— Albert Einstein