Newsletter title

August 2009

In This Edition

Painting Party—Saturday, September 19

—Dennis Bires

Tallgrass Docents and other friends of the Preserve are invited to a corral painting work day on Saturday, September 19. Come enjoy the mild weather we have planned for that day and help make the bison corrals more weather resistant and attractive at the same time. We will provide all the equipment, so just throw on some worn out work clothes and join us for a day of productive fun.

Meet at the Visitor’s Center at 10:00 a.m. We will work until about 3:30, with a lunch break from noon until 1:00. Bring along a lunch, some water, and sunscreen. A camera would also be handy to record the gleeming results.

Brome

—Van Vives

The area south of the Gift Shop has a lot of matured Brome. See the photograph. They appear to be slightly different and Mike Palmer of OSU considers them to be variations of Japanese brome. He said that many taxonomists now lump Japanese brome as the same species as European Field brome, which is Bromus arvensis.

Bromus Japonicus

Some common names for brome are brome grasses, cheat grasses or chess grasses, of which there are 160-170 species. Bromus species occur in temperate regions such as America, Eurasia, Australia and Africa. The inflorescence usually droops or nods, in some cases spreads.

It is not considered to have much human value. The Tarahumara Indians in northern Mexico use the grains of some Bromus species to aid fermentation of their cultural beverages. Bromus fibrosus, Poverty Brome or Ripgut Brome may harm livestock because of their high silica content. Some Brome is used to prevent erosion of soil, but it must be controlled as an invasive weed.

[Information source: Wikipedia]

Stinging Nettles

—Van Vives

Well, I guess it is not surprising that people think something that can cause pain is not edible. Not so with Stinging Nettles, Urtica dioica. I confess that I have not tried it myself. Samuel Thayer, author of Edible Wild Plants, tells us not to give up on stinging nettle, a highly nutritious green.

It is a tall perennial herb that grows from narrow rhizomes. The stems are narrow and have four deep grooves running from top to bottom. The bark of the stems have strong fibers. The main stem and leaves have stinging hairs. The leaves are 2-5 inches long and coarsely toothed. The flowers are small and greenish. In some areas the plant grows very tall and has more dangerous stingers which can cause pain for days.

You may want to use gloves in gathering the leaves, but with practice one can use the tougher parts of the fingers with very few stings. The leaves should be gathered in the spring, a few weeks after coming up.

Cooking the greens, even briefly, destroys their stinging property. The greens can be used just like spinach. There is no bitterness or strong taste. A little salt is usually added. Finely chopped leaves can be used to flavor soup or to make a broth. The dried leaves can be used to make tea.

Nettles are high in vitamin C, vitamin A, calcium, potassium, magnesium, and iron. You will have to wait for spring to try stinging nettle soup.

Not so Silent Spring

—Dawn Stover

As humans drown out nature’s precisely partitioned symphony of cries, clicks, and calls, researchers may be witnessing the first steps in an evolutionary shakeup…. See this link to the Conservation Magazine article: http://www.conservationmagazine.org/articles/v8n2/not-so-silent-spring/.

Visitor Counts

—Iris McPherson

The total number of visitors signing in during June was 1026. There were 42 states (984) represented with the highest counts after Oklahoma (526) being Texas (55), Arkansas (36) and California and Kansas (35). There were 10 foreign countries with a total of 42 people. England had the most visitors with 15. We added one new country in June when we had visitors from the Canary Islands. Just a little history concerning number of visitors in June, we had 629 in 2006,737 in 2007, 664 in 2008, and now 1026 in 2009! Forty-eight states have been represented by visitors so far this year. We had our first visitors for the year from West Virginia in June. We still haven’t had visitors from Wyoming, North Dakota and the District of Columbia.

In looking at the comments I noticed one that said very friendly staff, so pat yourselves on the back for doing such a good job. Another comment that caught my eye among all of the beautiful, awesome and wonderful comments was one from some visitors from New Jersey saying that it was their 10th visit, followed by one from an Oklahoman, who said it was their 30th visit.

Please remind the visitors to sign the guest register.

Botany Tidbits #1

—Van Vives

I was given a book entitled Botany in a Day, by Thomas J. Elpel. I can’t take the author seriously if he really thinks that is possible, for me, at least. I couldn’t just read the entire book in a day, much less digest the subject. So let’s take a small step in our development into a botanist.

I have heard the terms monocot and dicot with no hint as to what they mean. I know that mono means one and di means two. The two classes of flowering plants are known as the Monocotyledon class and the Dicotyledon class. A monocot plant seed sprouts with only one leaf and the dicot seed sprouts with two leaves. Simple? Well, how do you look at a mature plant and tell if it is a monocot or dicot plant. There is no seed visible. The author of the above book gives hints on how to answer that question.

Monocotyledon:

  1. One seed leaf
  2. Parallel veins in the leaves
  3. Horizontal rootstalks
  4. Usually simple branching
  5. Floral parts mostly in 3’s

Dicotyledon:

  1. Two seed leaves
  2. Netted veins in the leaves
  3. Usually tap rooted
  4. Usually complex branching
  5. Floral parts mostly in 4’s and 5’s

That word usually leaves us room for error. Take the aster for example. Asters are dicots. Most plants have floral parts in a similar order: a ring of sepals on the outside, then a ring of petals, a ring of stamens, and the pistil or pistils in the middle. Some parts may be missing, but the order is always the same. Asters are different. The sepals are really bracts (modified leaves), and these appear in the multiple layers. The petals make it look like one big flower, but inside are very many small flowers. And you guessed it, there are other plants that are different. Surprisingly the strawberry and apple tree are in the same family.

Well, that nails it down—or does it?

Kiosk Operating Instructions

  1. Kiosk Login ScreenLeave the kiosk running. It is plugged into a power-surge suppressor and should keep going until something fails through normal wear.
  2. If the screen-saver is active or the screen is blank, press the Esc-key to reveal the Topic Index or the last page viewed.
  3. If the login screen is active, as shown in the picture at right, then:
    • Type the user-name visitors followed by a press of the Enter-key.
    • Type the password visitors followed by a press of the Enter-key.
    The login screen will appear when the computer reboots after an interruption in electrical power.
  4. The Topic Index should appear after a few minutes. No other intervention is required.

Back Issues

Back issues of the Docent Newsletter, to February 2009, can be found in the two green and one blue-black zip-binders, stored in the Perspex rack by the file cabinet in the office of the Visitor’s Center.

Newsletter Publication

Deadline for submission of articles for inclusion in the newsletter is the 10th of each month. Publication date is on the 15th. All docents, Nature Conservancy staff, university scientists, philosophers, and historians are welcome to submit articles and pictures about the various preserves in Oklahoma, but of course the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve in particular.