Winter 2003

New Plants Discovered in Kane County

In late September, Drew Ullberg, habitat restoration manager for the Forest Preserve District of Kane County, was herbiciding weeds and evaluating young plantings on newly protected land, when he saw some "huge" plants that were obviously too big to have come from the new plantings.

The county had recently purchased a 310-acre farm abutting Dick Young Forest Preserve (formerly called Nelson Lake Marsh). Farmed for well over 120 years, the parcel included a drained prairie pothole. To begin restoring the county's new purchase, Ullberg had seeded some sedge meadow species on the edge of the property's mud flat the prior fall. In January of 2002, he broke up the drain tiles to restore the hydrology. He scattered more seed last spring.

When Ullberg spotted the plants, Dick Young himself — author of Kane County Wild Plants and Natural Areas and namesake of the preserve — just happened to be clearing brush nearby. Ullberg asked him if he had time to come and look at some funny plants. A two-foot-tall arrowhead-like plant was growing from the mud flat, with tiny white flowers. Out in the water, a plant like an enormous water lily spread its leaves. Young, a revered regional conservationist with more than 50 years of experience, had never seen them before in Kane County.

The plant on the mud flat is Lophotocarpus calycinus, also called arrowleaf. It was last reported locally in Grundy County in 1978. Though it is native farther south, most Chicagoland botanists have never seen it. The arrowleaf has broad, triangular leaves about six inches long, with a flower cluster that resembles water plantain.

The water lily is Nelumbo lutea, the American lotus. Young had seen this plant once at Volo Bog, Swink and Wilhelm's Plants of the Chicago Region lists it in Will and Grundy Counties, some reports place it in the headwaters of the Fox River in Lake County, and large colonies do occur downstate in the Illinois River, but this lotus is not known to occur anywhere else in Chicago Wilderness. The large leaves standing on stalks like the spinning-saucers-on-sticks circus trick cannot be confused with any other plant. Though none appeared this year, the flowers are very large and pale yellow. They have a raised center column like a shower head with the nut-like seeds embedded in it.

Since lotus seeds can live for hundreds of years, Ullberg speculates that a seed may have persisted from before the land was farmed. Late spring plowing due to wet conditions may have allowed the lotus to survive by growing a little each year before being plowed under. The arrowleaf is more of a mystery — biologists know very little about the plant's reproduction.

Further explorations revealed a bush of very uncommon false aster, Boltonia latisquama, about ten feet in diameter and six to seven feet tall, and several Eleocharis colonies that none of the several botanists on hand could identify more specifically in the field. That makes four new county records for this one restoration effort.

Young says it makes glad an old botanist's heart. "We must be doing something right when exciting plants from the distant past appear in newly restored wetlands," he says. He believes we should not be in such a hurry to introduce seed until we give nature a chance to show us what was there historically.

Ullberg says it is rewarding to see such astonishing plants appear so soon. This is the first of many wetland restorations in Kane County. It gives great hope for the future.

— Patricia K. Armstrong