Chicago Nature Now! Alert
August 10, 2016
This Chicago nature information helps you discover the region’s finest natural wonders. Here’s what’s happening in Chicago nature, right now!:
Cowles Bog Trail, Miller Woods, and Hoosier Prairie (all in northwestern Indiana) are jumping with gymnastic ferns—in celebration of the 2016 Summer Olympics.
Visit a Tallgrass Prairie:
This is a great time to learn why many of Chicago’s prairies are defined as “tallgrass prairies.” Visit a tallgrass prairie and you’ll find yourself immersed in a sea of tall grasses that reach for the sun. Big bluestem with its purple tassels and Indian grass and its tawny feathery plume can rise eight feet into the air. Here are some local tallgrass prairies:
Fermilab Prairie is also showing offer towering prairie dock, compass plant, and tall coreopsis. I measured one prairie dock stem at ten-and-a-half feet tall!
Spears Woods‘ prairies are looking great. There are stands of tall grasses, but the prairie is really featuring the forbs (flowering plants) right now: purple and gold, prairie blazing star, ironweed, big bluestem, early goldenrod, and pale-leaved sunflower span the prairie landscape. The purple tassels of big bluestem are flowering, but time is running out. (See picture below.) In the woods, you’ll find great stands of sweet Joe-Pye Weed and pale-leaved sunflowers. Click here for the location of the trailhead that goes west into the prairies. To see the sweet Joe-Pye Weed in the woodland with a view of Hogwash Slough to the southwest, visit this spot along the trail.
Shoe Factory Road Prairie is a hill prairie with a fine display of cylindrical blazing star, but it’s too dry to allow the really tall grasses to thrive. However, the vast prairie to its south certainly does and, unlike the tiny hill prairie, you can spend hours hiking the trails here.
Theodore Stone Preserve‘s prairie to the west is tall with grasses where you’ll find delicate yellow blooms of partridge pea, a fairly uncommon plant.
Bluff Spring Fen‘s prairie is a glorious display of cylindrical blazing star on the “switchback” kame in the north-central portion of the preserve. (Use the glossary to learn about what a “kame” is.) Along the prairie trails, you may find yourself engulfed under soaring big bluestem grass. If you go early in the morning, it’s dewy and one pioneer once said, “Walking through a dewy stand of big bluestem is like jumpin’ in the creek.” I can vouch for that. The oak savanna at the entrance of the preserve features the tall plants of sweet Joy-Pye weed and golden wingstem.
Note: The trails are very narrow and overgrown, which makes it hard to always know which way to go. Just do your best. If you accidentally find yourself off trail, don’t blame yourself. Blame the land managers who aren’t doing their jobs.
Kickapoo Prairie is definitely worth checking out, though I have not set eyes on the preserve this week. The odds are it’ll be just fine.
Visit a Wondrous Woodland:
Somme Prairie Grove‘s woodland is in bloom, with sweet Joe-Pye Weed, pale-leaved sunflower, brown-eyed Susan, and Indian plantain.
See a Superb Sunset:
Saganashkee Slough is sensational for sunsets as our celestial star—a bright, burning brass ball—slowly sinks in the sky to start a sultry summer eve.
Sample photos of the ferns in some northwest Indiana preserves (from previous years):
Royal ferns in the light fog of the savanna at Hoosier Prairie in Schererville, Indiana.*
In the Cowles Bog area, a forest of royal ferns thrives in a wetland that has formed at the base of a high dune.*
Example tallgrass prairie photos:
Big bluestem grass gives the true meaning to the term “tallgrass prairie.”*
The prairies at Spears Woods are tallgrass prairies, but you don’t see many grasses in this photo. The term “tallgrass” doesn’t mean that most of the plants in the prairie are tall grasses. In fact, there are many more flowering plants than grasses in a tallgrass prairies. “Tallgrass” simply distinguishes between shortgrass prairies in the western United States, where their grass grass species are much shorter.*
This is an example of what you will find at Somme Prairie Grove in Northbrook, Illinois:
At Somme Prairie Grove, pale-leaved sunflowers surround this majestic bur oak in the savanna. You can also find a vast display of this flower at Wolf Road Prairie.*
In the open woodland at Spears Woods in Willow Springs, Illinois, summer brings tall blooms of sweet Joe-Pye weed.
Beautiful things can be found in the miniature, like the flowering tassels of big bluestem grass:
Look carefully for the yellow (or amber) flowers atop the tassels of the big bluestem grasses. Do they have a smell?*
Check out the summer sunsets at Saganaskee Slough:
On this sweltering, sultry afternoon, a golden sun sets over Saganashkee Slough in Palos Hills, Illinois.*
* Photo is representational and was not recorded this year. Bloom times vary from year to year.
If you find this website useful, please consider donating or purchasing my nationally-acclaimed book that celebrates all of the preserves on this website.
—Mike
