This week I visited a friend’s farm in north-eastern Iowa.  She’s doing some of the same things I’m doing here – planting prairie in old crop fields, and restoring oak savanna areas.  It’s a gorgeous place – we had a great time in spite of the 95 degree weather.

MJ (the owner of the land) had arranged a tour led by Tom Rosburg, a botanist and ecologist, and a professor at Drake University.

Tom made a list of the interesting plants we saw, taught us all some new ones, and gave MJ ideas of how to best restore some of her problem areas.

Here we all are, getting oriented.

Terri, Rusty, MJ, Tom, Tim

MJ and Tom

This is the oak woods.  The understory (mostly buckthorn) has been removed, and savanna plants are beginning to return.

This shows how steep the woods is – it’s on a very steep south-facing slope.

Looking down through the woods to the river – the boundary of MJ’s property.

MJ photographing a stand of Poke Milkweed

We scrambled down in to a deep ravine.

Rock walls at the north end of the ravine

Botanizing in the ravine

The air in the ravine was cool, so the dark trunks of the trees steamed when the hot sun hit them.

We saw some interesting fungi growing on dead logs in the bottom of the ravine.

While we were exploring the ravine, we noticed an interesting plant about half way up the rock walls – completely out of reach.  Tom and I both decided to try to get a specimen – MJ took pictures.

We got one scraggly specimen, but Tom got a better one later on.  I don’t know yet what it turned out to be.

Looking south out toward the bottom of the ravine

After exploring the ravine, we walked back up through the fields and had a picnic lunch next to the windmill.

Here’s a slide show MJ did to showcase the prairies that she planted. She calls it “Faux Prairie” because it’s been planted – an attempt to reconstruct what would have been there before it was farmed.  She used local Iowa seeds – to make the reconstruction as accurate as possible – and the birds and bugs seem to be very happy there.