Reading Pictures

Myth or Dare

The photo is beautiful, and unexpected. What are these plants? Is this prairie Eden somewhere around here? In fact, you can find increasingly many sites like this. But you couldn’t have, in most of the recent past.

Those strange creamy blooms are prairie Indian plantain. About them, H.S. Pepoon in his 1927 An Annotated Flora of the Chicago Region wrote: “Wet prairies west of Chicago, very abundant, covering many acres of the marshy grasslands with its white blanket of bloom.”

Half a century later, in 1979, Swink and Wilhelm write grimly in Plants of the Chicago Region: “Pepoon’s statement of 1927, though no doubt true then, now reads like a myth.”

But today that myth is reality. A miracle, yes, but palpable, fragrant, visited by bees and butterflies—and people. Don’t look at this photo for the insect jewels that find habitat in these flowers; the photographer arrived while the day was still too new and cool, as indicated by the mist between the shrubs and trees near the horizon. But do notice the huge leaves of prairie dock, which remind us of roots going 15 feet into the black soil.

Do notice more than 120 perky magenta flower heads of smooth phlox, reminding us of another associate, the prairie white-fringed orchid, a plant on the federal endangered list and also on the upswing in these wet prairies. But it’s that Indian plantain, which is the quality indicator visible in this photo. Swink found it to grow regularly with leadplant, rattlesnake master, white prairie clover, spiderwort, little bluestem, and prairie dropseed. It’s a rare and classy plant with classy associates. It grows back gangbusters when stewards have the vision and daring to get the permits, burn the duff, and sow the seeds.

People have referred to Chicago Wilderness as “a myth.” Yes, but it’s a myth that comes true.

Photo by Mike MacDonald/ChicagoNature.com.
Words by Stephen Packard.