From barren parent material soils left behind and exposed from glacial ice retreat (melting), low growing tundra plants were the first to colonize the soils. Over thousands of years, the tundra line continued to move north to follow retreating ice, but boreal forest trees of spruce, willow and others adapted to warming environments.

Boreal forests eventually became mixed with some deciduous trees. All this in turn was followed thousands of years later by a gradual influx of less trees and more grasses because the landscape was getting naturally warmer and drier. Thus, Midwest prairies had their start, a start that dominated for well over 15,000 years since the last glacial ice melted into Hudson Bay. Iowa’s pre-settlement landscape was explored and surveyed in the early 1800s. Surveyor notes and naturalist’s notes gave vivid descriptions of the land and what was growing on that lands surface.

By the time a good picture of what Iowa territory was like, a westward expansion of settlers was primed to enter. Iowa lands were approximately 85 percent native tallgrass prairie lands, another 13 percent were forests, and the remaining two percent was water. Iowa settlement was underway by the 1830s and 40s.

Iowa became a State in 1846. The land rush was on, and it never looked back.

The forests were located primarily along the Mississippi River and its major river tributaries — internal river systems like the Cedar, Wapsipinicon, Iowa, Des Moines, Raccoon, Skunk and others. Water sources were obviously within the river systems.

A huge amount of water was also found in temporary to permanent potholes that had been carved out by glacial ice movements, and the biggest of these carve outs were to become the Iowa Great Lakes areas — Clear Lake, Okoboji, Spirit and more.

Within the bulk of the Iowa land, that segment that covered 85 percent of Iowa, were tall prairie grasses. Examples included Big bluestem, little bluestem, indiangrass, Switchgrass, Prairie cordgrass, Canada wild rye, Side-oats grama, Dropseed, Sand Lovegrass and many many

more.

This diverse mixture of species was dominant. Depending upon the soil types they were growing in, one might find more of several kinds and less of another, but the overall scheme of what early surveyors and settlers discovered was just a big sea of grasses.

Settlers had learned that if they could plow that soil, its rich and thick fertile topsoils could grow crops, and some of those crops were also grasses like corn, wheat, rye, oats, barley, sorghum and millet.

Grasses can be easily consumed by livestock, which in turn transforms that energy into meat. If we eat meat, we are eating grasses and grains from grasses.

Why should we even bother or learn about grasses? Well, for starters, it has been a primary plant mix in human survival, plain and simple.

Grasses cover one-third of the earth’s surface. One-half of the USA is covered with grasses. The grass family has the third largest number of species in the world. Only orchid and daisy families exceed grasses.

Grasses can grow at the outer extremes of habitat types and severe climate environments. The fruits of grasses have a concentrated source of protein, carbohydrates and minerals.

Being dry, these fruits are easy to store and transport. Grasses are a major food source for people.

One of the main obstacles to any plant’s survival are the weather conditions that include drought and wind, fire and grazing animals. If grazed by bison or other livestock, these animals clip off green shoots and leaves, leaving the base of the plant ready to send out new shoots and new leaves. Grasses may also have rhizomes that send outside growing horizontal stems that can then send up a new vertical stem.

Grass root systems are extensive, way more extensive than the parts of the plant we may see above ground. Sometimes, more than 90 percent of the weight of a grass plant in the root system underground.

The energy in the form of starches below ground helps the plant survive grazing, and fire, and drought. If most of the grass plant mass was above ground, it would lose too much water to the atmosphere and could not survive.

Grass root systems are so extensively branched so as to make maximum use of soil spaces, and in so doing, outcompetes other plants trying to grow at the same site. Tallgrass prairies are what people in Iowa may be used to seeing. They will grow taller than a person is tall, and the dark rich soil they grow on is the result of thousands of years of accumulated organic matter from the rotted remains of grasses growing previously.

Tallgrass prairies like the more humid environments of the Midwest. Similar tallgrass prairies exist in other places of the world such as the pampas of Argentina or the Black Earth Belt of Russia, and the humid environments of the Midwest could allow trees to grow if we allowed it.

Prairie management is in part a constant struggle to remove trees by fire, or cutting, or grazing. Trees and shrubs will always try to invade a prairie and if allowed to dominate, can change the grassland forever, but even the Native American Indians managed the landscape to encourage grasses by their use of fires set on purpose to make the new grass shoots tender and vigorous for bison, deer, elk and pronghorns.

Prairies are now greatly reduced. From that 85 percent cover over Iowa, there remains only one-tenth of one percent.

Only relic patches in the far odd corners of some farm fields, or along old railroad rights-of-ways, or sometime is specifically set aside large segments of land such as in a few Iowa State Preserve sites. These were the result of forward thinking botanists who saw what was transforming in the land in Iowa and said “surely Iowa can set aside and preserve some small segments of our original land native vegetation.”

Another example of native grasslands in an extensive area is in eastern Kansas called the Flint Hills. There are about 4 million acres in this area, and a main reason why that prairie is still prairie is because right below the surface are rocks, it is too rocky to plow.

The fantastic local botanical preserve called the Marietta Sand Prairie is a treasure. It is an open book to those willing to put in the time to learn what the prairie is willing to teach.

Yes, there are a lot of misconceptions about native prairies. Take for example the statement “They have no flowers.” Not true. The flowers are just small and inconspicuous, and differ in structure.

Or “They have no color.” Not true. One just has to look closer with the help of a magnifying lens.

“They all look alike.” Also not true.

The Marietta Sand Prairie’s first parcel was acquired in 1983, and it held just 17 acres. Within those 17 acres, over 200 species of plants were found, from the dry sandy wind deposited dunes now growing prairie grasses to the wet sedge meadows along its eastern edge where percolating groundwater slowly seeps to the surface. The plant diversity in this segment helped get it dedicated into the Iowa State Preserves System.

It was dedicated as a Preserve on Sept. 6, 1984, one of the highest levels of land dedication possible under Iowa State law. A decade or so later, an addition to the Sand Prairie was made when the 212 acres of the remaining Howard Conrad farm was purchased.

That land segment has its own jewels of special botanical history. One is a fen, a unique and rare wetland supplied with slow up-welling of water from below that allows some very rare and endangered plants to grow, and the bulk of any former crop fields within its sandy and dry ridges have been seeded with native grasses and flower species. It is a successful reconstruction.

A heartfelt welcome is in order to all the prairie plant enthusiasts, biologists, botanists, researchers, and prairie land managers who will be coming to the Marietta Sand Prairie, many for the first time. I trust they will like what they see, what they feel, and what they experience in Mother Nature’s unique botanical garden.

——–

Summer arrives officially on June 21. Are you ready? I am.

——–

Garry Brandenburg is the retired director of the Marshall County Conservation Board. He is a graduate of Iowa State University with a BS degree in Fish & Wildlife Biology.

Contact him at:

P.O. Box 96

Albion, IA 50005

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