Here Comes the Sun

Its been a while since I posted anything here, but work has been going on at the Big Hollow Xeric Limestone Prairie. This summer, Dave Hopey cleared a large area of scrub near one of the best prairie patches and collected grass seed from a few patches of Sideoats Grama and Little Bluestem in the region for planting at Big Hollow. After removing lots of shrubs and trees, Dave, with some help from people at PSU, the owner of the prairie, sprayed some areas in and around the prairie with selective herbicides that will kill dicots, but not monocots. In other words, the spray should kill non-grass plants, but leave any grasses unharmed. In some areas, there really is no grass, so the selective herbicide may kill all of the vegetation, which is mostly exotic shrubs, but in other areas, stands of Sideoats Grama, Arctic Brome, and Little Bluestem are being overgrown with raspberries, Asiatic Bittersweet, shrub honeysuckles, and other woody plants. In these areas, Dave is hoping to save the grass but remove the shrubs which will shade out the grass in a few years if nothing is done. The spraying was done selectively, targeting only those plants that we want to remove, but with the dense growth of shrubs it is impossible to miss some of the prairie plants like Wild Bergamot, which is abundant on the prairie. Overall, I think much more good than harm will come from the spraying, and Dave will be keeping a close eye on things.

After spraying, Dave seeded several large areas with Sideoats Grama and Little Bluestem. The ground was scratched with a rake to expose some mineral soil before the seed was spread. There is not a lot of grass recruitment at the prairie - few new plants appear from seed - and we hope the seeding will change this. Much of the area that has been cleared shows few signs of any prairie plants under the shrubs, and past studies have indicated that there are very few seeds of prairie plants under the shrubs waiting to sprout. This means that any expasion of the prairie is likely to need some help, probably in the form of seeding.