80AcresOnline

 Why it’s called BIG bluestem: the pole is six feet tall

Four grasses form the foundation of the tallgrass prairie biome in the US: Big Bluestem, Switchgrass, Indiangrass, and Eastern Gama.  Before this land was broken to the plow, fingers of tallgrass prairie existed here in the wetter lower spots, with midgrass (Little Bluestem, Sideoats Grama, Vine Mesquite, etc)  prairie on dryer slopes and shortgrass on the rockiest areas.  This is not quite the southernmost bit of tallgrass country, but it’s getting there.  Read the rest of this entry »

A cold front cleared out the warm moist air of yesterday and gave us a brisk chill wind out of the north and partly-sunny skies.   So a long walk in the afternoon, producing (as usual) many interesting and beautiful things to see and think about.

First was a mockingbird’s nest in an osage orange or bois d’arc tree:

Read the rest of this entry »

An introduction to some more of our “big” grasses, now flowering beautifully after the rain.   Two are climax tallgrasses, and one is (in my opinion) one of the most beautiful grasses in the country and deserves to be used more as a landscape accent.

Meet Lindheimer Muhly (Muhlenbergia Lindheimeri).  All the Muhlys are pretty grasses; some are more striking than others, but Lindheimer Muhly is the queen of the lot:

Read the rest of this entry »