2016 Midwest Roadtrip - Part IV

Part IV...don't worry I think I can squeeze the rest into about 2 more posts.  We left St. Louis and headed southwest down the I-44 toward Springfield.  It was a scenic drive passing through rolling forested hills and over the Beurbeuse River, past the ultra touristy Meramec Caverns, we even drove through Cuba and Lebanon (but didn't make it to Vienna)!

By mid-afternoon I had decided that La Petite Gemme Prairie near Bolivar would make a good starting point.  I had a list of sites and was determined to get to many of them.  Petite Gemme is 37 acres in size and is bisected by the Frisco Highline Trail.  It was purchased from the Campbell family (owners since 1855) by the Missouri Prairie Foundation in 1977.  Having only been lightly grazed as meadow it is one of a very few more or less 'original' prairies in the area.  The site is home to such creatures as the Ornate Box Turtle, Glass Lizard (a lizard lacking legs) and Henslow's Sparrow.

 

I was surprised to see photo credit for Allen Woodliffe's name in the bottom right of this sign!  No wonder the sign looks so sharp :)

Heading into the site we passed semi-familiar plants including Partidge Pea (Chamaecrista fasciculata), an annual legume that grows about knee-high.  There is some growing in Brantford at a landscaped prairie site (Union Gas offices on Elgin Street) but I would suspect this arrived in the bottom of a bag of seed from who knows where.

Another yellow legume of which I only saw a handful, Wild Senna (Senna marilandica).  There's a chance this could also be Senna obtusifolia but it's less likely given the location (and I don't know how to tell 'em apart!).  

A composite with deeply three-lobed leaves, one to be ID'd still.

Wild Quinine (Parthenium integrifolium) flowers

The leaves of Sensitive Brier (Mimosa nuttallii) retract and close up when grazed by a finger.  It's pretty cool to show somebody this trick for the first time.

Things got weird with southern grasses like Cylinder Jointtail Grass (Coelorachis cylindrica).  See range map here.  The photo below shows one plant in bloom.  The seed pods broke apart in a strangely satisfying manner...think bubble wrap.

Pale Purple Coneflower (Echinacea pallida) as close to bloom as I got.

Rose Pink (Sabatia angularis), a member of the gentian family, was a nice flower to spot among thatch and taller greenery here and there.  As the photo shows I had to do some shadow casting on plants; 100% mid-day sun made for wash-out photos.

Got Prairie Blazingstar (Liatris pycnostachya)?  I don't think I've seen a more dense patch than the lower elevations at La Petite Gemme.

Dickcissel were abundant, probably 20-30 in and around the site that afternoon.  A great way to commit a call to memory when it's all you hear.

But there were other birds calling too.  One of the trip's "stop walking, point a finger to the sky, open mouth grin and listen" kind of moments happened about 15 minutes into walking about La Petite Gemme.  A bird on the brink here in Ontario (audible in the video). 

 I was nearly hit in the face by a Prairie Cicada on more than one occasion this trip.

 

Halloween Pennant

I wanted to check in at the B&B before nightfall so we reluctantly packed up and drove to Nevada where our hosts at the Clear Creek B&B had a lovely cabin prepared for us.  Really it just had AC and a tap and that was all I could ask for.  I later found out the owner was a game warden for the state.  He recommended I see the bison at Prairie State Park and Wah-Kon-Tah Prairie.  We did get to Wah-Kon-Tah, but the bison will have to wait for another time.

Settling in I had the itch (not yet the chigger itch which would come later).  I wanted to get out for a dusk visit and headed down to Osage Prairie just south of town. 

When the massive cloud of dust had settled from our drive down the gravel road, we had arrived at one of the access points.  I would re-iterate that aside from my field trip a couple days earlier, not once did we see a person at one of these sites.  I mean, I hope they are valued and enjoyed, but the serene quiet (save for the calling birds, cicadas, crickets, whispy grasses, etc.) was awesome. 

I saw my first Common Buckeye for the trip.

Lighting makes all the difference on this Sneezeweed (Helemium sp.) .

A few good patched of Purple Milkwort (Polygala sanguinea) were found among lower growing vegetation.

Something about enjoying a prairie vista at sunset (Osage is 615 acres of rolling hills), then focusing in on a sunflower...

 ...then looking a little bit closer at the tiny things going on at the micro scale.

The next day was big, we saw a good number of sites including the Golden Prairie south of Golden City.  Through strategic acquisition of lands this site is now essentially a 1100 acre unit. 

Driving up to an access point....wait, what's that!

Bam! My first Scissor-tailed Flycatchers (2 pairs doing aerial food hand-offs and preening each other no less).

Golden Prairie was heavy on the white blooms (at least where we were).  We had seen a nice display of Purple Prairie Clover (Dalea purpurea) in Indiana at the Spinn Prairie; here we had White Prairie Clover (D. candida).  While I had heard of a historic record for Purple near the current day casino in Sarnia, White has a slightly more western range and doesn't near Ontario.  I had seen it before at the Agassiz Prairie in southeastern Manitoba.  Fun fact, the U.S. has a total of 68 species in this genus...66 more to see I suppose.

A white-flowered Lespedeza which I think could be the non-native Chinese Bush-clover (Lespedeza cuneata).  Most (all?) of the Bush-clover species in Ontario are pink flowering.

 

Heath Aster (Symphyotrichum ericoides) - something more familiar.