How do we make the most
of rare seed?
How do we decide where and when to plant it?
Some stewards are getting to be very strategic with their seed.
|This patch looks good in summer, but it's begging for spring seed.|
Consider three patches,
near to each other
in the same preserve.
The first one,
at right, is dense
conservative plants as
dropseed, lead plant, prairie clover, and more.
But it has no
bastard toadflax, shooting star, betony and, indeed,
few other spring
The spring niches are open, hungrily waiting.
Fire and competition have eliminated most invasives and temporary "weeds." All we have to do now - to restore most of the missing spring species - is just broadcast their seed in fall or winter.
We also sometimes broadcast summer-ripening seed as soon as it's ripe, assuming that the species knows how to cope with what it's coped with for eons. On the other hand, early sowing may be wasteful. Perhaps much of the early-distributed seed gets eaten by various seed eaters. (We know that some spring species, left to their own, hold their seed until fall. It would be good if someone experimented under natural conditions with various sowing times. The seed of many early-blooming species is so rare (or hard to get) that it would be worth the time to test to see what approach is best.)
I wouldn't broadcast seed of rare summer or fall flora in this patch, even if the species is still missing. Probably a very small percentage would succeed, as in nature, but what a waste of very rare seed, from a restoration perspective. Instead, if I located seed of a species that would likely add natural diversity here, I'd put it into a nearby less competitive area and let the seed of the many likely recruits there add to the seed rain so that the species could disperse from there naturally over time.
The second patch, below, may not look like much at first, but it is wildly exciting to me for its
|Here fleabane and bare ground are exciting indicators.|
How do I know that the cream of the crop will do well here? One give-away are the pale pathetic little white flowers. They are fleabane, an annual or biennial. Wherever annuals or biennials are frequent in a relatively stable sod, you know that niches have somehow opened up so that new species have a good chance. In this case, fire and competition have recently eliminated some short-term competitors. As I remember, they included bluegrass, timothy, red clover, and gray dogwood. Other species in the photo that indicate this area is ripe for seed are early goldenrod (top corners) and bergamot. If we don't quickly seed, those two plus rattlesnake master (white spheres) will likely soon become over-abundant. But, if seeded now, scores of conservative species will compete well against what's here. Last fall we did broadcast our "conservative turf" mix here. In a mere five years or so, quality prairie should be evident (even if the plants are still small) in every square foot.
in this post.
It's intermediate and needs an intermediate strategy.
Big bluestem, Indiangrass, wild quinine, gayfeather, and other mildly conservative plants are dense. That is not a matrix in which most rare seed will especially thrive.
Many spring species (especially betony) will do well. But summer and fall conservative seed would be better invested where it will thrive more.
On the other hand, it sure would be good to get at least a beachhead of dropseed, prairie clover, and their pals in here. So in a place like this I'll invest a small proportion of the best seed, expecting just a few plants to take here and there - but then to start to disperse their own seed decade after decade and ultimately do fine.
Of course, once the more receptive areas have all been well seeded, it will then soon be possible to harvest much larger volumes of rare seed, and a fine little spot like this could then be bombarded with lots of rare seed as long as needed.
Make sense to you?
Have any comments that might help others learn from your own experiences?
Have any questions?
Feel free to contribute to the discussion.
And in the meantime ...
... below, in case you're interested, are some additional tidbits about the photos:
What kinds of seeds are these? I have to admit that these are spring woodland seeds, rather than prairie seeds, because they're the best photo I could find. Most are various kinds of sedges. The wrinkled ones top left are early meadow rue. The reddish-and-white ones just below them are bellwort. Reddish brown seeds on the right edge are bloodroot. Black ones at bottom right look like wild leek. The ones that look something like apple seeds in the mid-lower left look like baneberry. Aren't they just the richest hoard you could ever imagine!
All the plants in this photo were broadcast by seed into a former pasture that, when we started, was mostly bluegrass, wild carrot, timothy etc. (Well, all but two. Can you guess which two?)
If you don't know these species, or aren't sure, would you like to learn them?
Try making a list, and comparing it with the list below?
Starting with the most obvious: the rose-purple flowers are prairie clover. White balls are rattlesnake master. Big plant with much-divided leaves is compass plant. Gray-green foliage with purple flowers in fingers is leadplant. Big simple leaves with tall naked flowering stalk (top right) is prairie dock. Yellow in the foreground and near the compass plant is early goldenrod. Slender stems in the foreground with many greenish-white buds running up the sides are rough blazing star. Fine grass leaves in clumps are the beloved prairie dropseed. Tall thick grass culms here are big bluestem. The largish leaves in the bottom right are a re-sprouting, burned-off elm tree. Coming out of the elm is one flower of wild bergamot. The fine, tiny leaves just to the left of the bergamot are heath aster, which won't head up to bloom for months.
The two species that aren't here because of our strategically broadcast seed are early goldenrod (the only survivor from the old pasture) and the elm tree.