Little tour on the prairie

By CHRISTIE BLECK
Lansing Community Newspapers

AURELIUS TWP. — It's hard not to notice Doug Landis's land on Toles Road in this rural area south of Mason. You'd expect a lot of greenery — it is in the country, after all — but not the abundance of yellow and lavender blooms that grace his property.

Landis, an entomologist at Michigan State University, has created a nine-acre prairie, which he showed to the public during an early-evening tour July 19 that attracted close to 60 people.

His goal, he explained, was to recreate a typical Ingham County prairie of the 1800s.

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"I call this a 'reconstruction' because right here there probably never was a prairie," Landis said. "It probably was a beech-maple forest."

Prairies used to be much more common in southern Michigan, but as is the case with many habitats, development has caused many of them to disappear from the landscape — and with them, many prairie flowers and grasses such as butterflyweed and little bluestem.

"Where do you see them now?" Landis asked.

The idea to reconstruct an Ingham County prairie evolved in Landis's mind over many years. Since 1995, Landis had maintained several small gardens filled with native prairie plants, but decided to go larger six years later.

In 2003, Landis's manual efforts got under way in earnest. What helped was that his land used to be farmed for corn, soybeans and wheat, which meant there was much less weed pressure than there would have been had it been an unfarmed field taken over by weeds. However, he had to understand his site's particular ecology, which has standing water for much of the year as well as dry, sandy soils.

Landis developed four basic seed mixes to match his site's various needs. Then he and 20 volunteers hand-broadcast the seed, which was mixed with sawdust to make it easier to spread. For plants not available or difficult to establish with seed, Landis purchased plants, or "plugs," from Wildtype Design, Native Plant and Seed, also located in Mason.

However, Landis's work in a way was just getting started. Creating a prairie involved more than just tossing seed on the ground. It had to be mowed twice in 2004 to stop the growth of annual weeds and again in 2005. This year, Landis hasn't mowed, but patrols his prairie armed with a shovel.

"I take out anything I don't want," Landis said.

That "anything" includes weeds such as yellow and white sweetclover and Canada thistle, non-indigenous plants that although might be attractive in their native lands, are insidious to a keeper of an Ingham County prairie.

Landis did notice in one spot, however, a low-growing Canada thistle, which in an unestablished prairie probably would have been much taller.

"I think it's suffering from a lot of competition," he explained.

Prescribed burns, or fires set on purpose, removed plant material when Landis was establishing the prairie, and they will play a part in its maintenance. However, he probably will leave the first maintenance fire, which he plans for next spring, to an expert.

"I'll probably hire my first prescribed burn," Landis said.

Landis expects that in five years, his prairie will show more grasses, with flowers more scattered.

The wildflowers and grasses growing in the Toles Road Prairie are many and varied. Among them are cup plant, whose leaves come together at the stem to form cups that catch rainwater; horsemint, which has the telltale square stems of a typical mint; sky blue aster, an autumn flower with pale turquoise-colored petals; and Indiangrass, which as multi-hued feathery seedheads.

So has the reconstructed prairie attracted wildlife?

"I notice a lot more activity in the prairie than when it was a soybean field," Landis pointed out.

Not only does he see a lot of bird life, Landis watches another winged variety of wildlife.

"I've had more monarchs than I've ever seen before," he said.

In fact, that can be said by other people who have planted their yards for wildlife. One of those was Elise Harvey of East Lansing, who attended the tour.

"I turned my front yard into a butterfly garden," Harvey said, "and the monarchs are all over the place. That's why I made a butterfly garden."

To learn more about the Toles Road Prairie, visit the Web site at www.msu.edu/%7Elandisd/index.htm.

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