The giant swallowtail is common in the South Eastern United States and Mexico. It is a very large dark spectacular butterfly with a wingspan of three and a half to five and a half inches. The Tallgrass Prairie Preserve is near the North Western edge of it’s range. It flies from spring to fall over most of it’s range, including Oklahoma, and all year in the south.
Both sexes are dark above with two rows of large very bright yellow spots. The rows intersect near the tip of the forewing which resembles a large X. The distinctive swallowtail tails are dark with a yellow center spot. The underwings are mostly light yellow. This is one of the most distictive butterflies found on the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve.
Larval host plants in Oklahoma include prickly ash (Xanthaxylum americanum), Hercule’s club (Zanthoxylum clava-herculis) and wafer ash (Ptelia trifolia). Nectar plants include many species common to the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve, including thistle, milkweed and coneflowers.
Sericea lespedeza is a perennial legume native to Asia. It was first introduced into the United States in 1896. The primary purposes of this introduction was for use as a forage plant for livestock and for erosion control. Sericea lespedeza remains an important forage crop in several southeastern states. However it has become a management problem as an invasive weed in the tallgrass prairie region. The dilemma is that the United States Department of Agriculture lists sericea lespedeza as a forage crop, but state Departments of Agriculture in Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri and Arkansas list this species as a noxious weed or invasive species. Which is it?
Sericea Lespedeza is very drought resistant; it will tolerate soils that are very acidic to soils with a slightly alkaline character. It does best on clay and loamy soils that are deep, fertile and well drained, but it also grows on poor sites. Dr. Terry Bidwell of Oklahoma State University describes sericea lespedeza as a shrubby, deciduous perennial about 2 to 5 feet tall. Coarse stems are single or clustered with numerous buds located on the stem bases or crown about 1 to 3 inches below ground. Stems and branches are densely leaved. Leaves are trifoliate and attached by short petioles. Leaves are club or wedge shaped, ¼ to 1 inch long, and 1/16 to ¼ inch wide. The leaves are round to flat at the top, with a conspicuous point at the tip. The lower leaf surface has silky hairs. Flowers are a yellowish-white color with purple to pink markings that begin blooming from mid-July and end in early October. The length of day and temperature regulate germination and seedling growth. Maximum seedling growth occurs at 13 to 15 hours of daylight. The ideal temperature range for germination and growth is between 68 to 86 degrees Fahrenheit.
This plant grows best where competing vegetation is short and light can
reach the germinating seed and seedlings. These characteristics tend to
enhance germination in recently burned pastures. However, where ground
cover is dense and plant competition is intense, sericea lespedeza has
trouble germinating. As Richard Leakey points out in The Sixth
Extinction
new plants have a hard time establishing themselves in a
healthy eco-system and this is true of sericea lespedeza. The
characteristic that makes sericea lespedeza such a Godzilla plant is the
number of seeds each plant produces. It has been estimated that each
produces 1000 seeds and these seeds can survive in the ground for 20
years. With the production of so many seeds it is not difficult for this
plant to gain a foothold. Once it gains even a tenuous foothold the
production of seeds over time produce enough plants to crowd out native
plants and develop an extensive seed bank in the soil ensuring its
survival to the detriment of the existing native plants.
Sericea Lespedeza can be grown on well drained soils across the United States. Because it is a perennial it is a long term forage crop. Once it is established in a field it will persist indefinitely. As a forage crop it has low fertilizer requirements. This makes it attractive as a low production-cost alternative to other hay crops. It has a high tolerance to soil acidity. It has a good yield, producing between 5500 to 6500 pounds per acre. It has few pests and does not cause bloat when fed to cattle. Sericea lespedeza has good soil building qualities because it tends to shed its lower leaves, which enrich the soil and its deep root system penetrates the soil improving its quality. Sericea hay is fast drying, you can cut the crop one day and bail it the next. Finally, the cost is minimal once it has been established. When compared to other forage crops the cost per pound to produce is much lower.
This plant can adapt to any number of sites and conditions, sericea lespedeza is a very flexible and aggressive plant. Because of its high seed production it can evolve from one plant to a dense colony overcoming other vegetation. One of the resources that it uses are the allelopathic chemicals it produces. These chemicals inhibit the growth of other neighboring plants, giving sericea lespedeza an edge. Sericea lespedeza is an opportunist; because of the dry weather last year, space was created by the die-off of desirable plants, allowing sericea to move easily into the vacant niches. Sericea lespedeza is good forage for cattle early in the growing season, but as it matures high levels of tannins develop resulting in animals rejecting the plant. The tannins bind with proteins causing them to be unavailable for digestion. As a hay crop sericea can be consumed by cattle since field drying reduces the tannin concentrations. Initially it was thought to be a benefit to wildlife, but research has shown that deer will only graze on sericea if it is kept short by mowing. Quail will eat the seeds in fall and early winter, but the energy content of the seeds will not sustain quail through adverse weather conditions. But the most serious problem created by sericea is that it deters other more beneficial plant species from developing which reduces the diversity of plant foods and additional cover needed to support wildlife.
There are several methods which attempt to control this plant. Conventional management practices of grazing and prescribed burns are not effective in preventing this plant from spreading. Grazing does not work because in a mixed grass and sericea pasture cattle will prefer grass, avoid the sericea plants, quickening the sericea invasion. Spring burns remove all the dead growth leaving an open pasture for the sericea plants to monopolize. The burns also increase seed germination from the prior year seed-crop of sericea. The most effective strategy is a combination of grazing management, burning, mowing, and the application of herbicides. This strategy is highly labor and cost intensive and includes seven steps:
Some of the recommended herbicides to use are Remedy, PastureGard or Cimarron. A more organic method of control is use of stocker goats. The use of stocker goats is a three year process. Generally, it costs about $12 to $18 an acre to spray for sericea and this spraying must be done at least two times a year plus spot spraying isolated sericea colonies. With stocker goats you have a one time cost of the goats and the cost of fencing the pasture for goats. But these costs are offset by the sale of the stocker goats as the sericea problem diminishes. In addition, the amount of other weeds and brush will be greatly reduced.
In conclusion, sericea lespededza is an invasive species with limited positive attributes. It crowds out native plants, tends to end up as a monoculture bankrupting the bio-diversity of a typical prairie. In fact a study by Emporia State University found that the number of grass and forb species in heavily infested sericea fields in east-central Kansas declined by 66- and 74-percent respectively. A Kansas State University study showed native grass production reduced by as much as 80-percent when compared to non-infested areas. The cost of control is prohibitive, for example the cost of using contract labor to spot spray 640 acres is about $2000, if you use aerial spraying that cost can rise to as much as $10,000. In fact sericea lespedeza is such a problem that the Kansas Legislative session in 1998 amended the Kansas Noxious Weed Law to include this plant. Some measures go so far as to prohibit the import of sericea hay which has been harvested after July to prevent the dispersal of serecia seed which could develop after July and be spread by livestock ingesting the hay. This plant causes more problems than it solves and is an invasive species which given half a chance will out-compete native grasses.
Quite often during the month of July there is no rain. During the years of drought it is naturally more unpleasant than during the years of wet weather, when the earth is moistened by the rains of spring and the gushing floods of June; but July, the Buffalo-Breeding Moon, is always hot, consistently the hottest month of the year.
Again the white-face bulls take the place of the bawling, mating buffalo here in the blackjacks, their mating frenzy causing their sides to work in a bellows action and their tempers to become even shorter in the heat.
The bird chorus has almost ceased, and only a few of the more independent singers ignore the blazing sun and the hot shade. The dickcissels sit on the fence posts or on a swaying weed and sing with some cheer but weakly, the cuckoo croaks with petulance, and the flycatchers—the kingbird, crested, and scissor-tailed—build their nests on the ridge, but only the crested is loudly vocal in anything that resembles song….
[Excerpt from Chapter VII of Mathews’ book Talking To The Moon, available at the Visitor’s Center of the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve.]
The Yellow-bellied Sapsucker is a medium-sized woodpecker with a medium length bill. It’s most distinguishable field mark is a bold long, white wing patch. The black breast band and dark back evenly and extensively mottled with white are also good field marks. The male has a red throat completely bordered by black with a mostly red crown. The female is distinguished by her white throat completely bordered by black and she also has a mostly red crown. It gets its name from it’s yellowish to creamy-white belly and it’s habit of drilling holes in the bark of trees to feed on the sap. In the picture of the male Sapsucker, note white band on wing, red nape and throat and black bib.
The name Sapsucker makes most people think it is a fictitious bird, but both the name and the bird are real. This is a remarkable bird; it is a keystone species which provides food sources for other species in the forest. This small woodpecker’s existence is vital for the maintenance of a community. Because sapsuckers are one of a few animals which have mastered the hydrology of sap flow in trees, they are capable of maintaining a continual flow of nutritious phloem sap from trees. That community includes bats, squirrels, porcupines and many birds including warblers, hummingbirds, nuthatches, and other woodpeckers. These animals all eat sap or feed on insects attracted to the sap wells made available by the sapsuckers. In fact Ruby-Throated and Rufous Hummingbirds time their arrival in Canada to coincide with peak sapsucker activity and the northern limit of their breeding range is determined by the presence of this woodpecker. This is not the only remarkable fact about this woodpecker, it is the only woodpecker that migrates and it is a continent wide migrant. They spend their springs in the boreal zone from east-central Alaska to southern Newfoundland. Their breeding area also dips south into northeastern Iowa and western Maryland. The boreal forest supports roughly 55-percent of the population. The males arrive on the breeding grounds in early May in the north and late March in the southern zones. The females follow shortly after the male’s arrival. But winter migration splits the population, with the males wintering from Kansas to Long Island south, while the females spend the winter in such southern climes as the West Indies, Mexico and Central America. Like some humans these birds tend to spend their winter vacations segregated by sex.
The Yellow-bellied Sapsucker is the master sap tapper. It has learned how to circumvent a trees defense when it drills its holes. When a tree receives any type of wound it seals over that wound to prevent sap from being lost. The sapsucker selects its tree, they are known to feed on over a 1000 different species of trees, but they prefer birches, sugar maples and scotch pines. They attack the target tree by drilling a few horizontal rows of holes. These holes wound the tree and cause phloem sap to dam up, collecting in the plant tissue just above the wound; the holes are made larger over the course of several days as the sapsucker extracts sap. It then adds new holes over the old holes, this results in long vertical lines and insures a continuous flow of sap as the phloem sap collects over the row of newly drilled wells. It is thought that sapsucker salvia may contain a substance which acts as an anticoagulant that prevents sap from clogging up and sealing over the holes the bird causes.
The Sapsucker is mainly a forest and woodland species. It favors early successional and riparian habitats. It has greatly benefited by man’s clearing of old growth forests which have increased successional habitats. On the breeding grounds aspen, maple and birch stands are the most frequently used habitats. You will usually find it in very young forests following logging operations that have removed the dense, coniferous climax forest. During migration and in winter it usually is found in a broader range of vegetation types, like orchards, palm groves, scrub, and bottomland hardwoods.
Sap makes up about 20-percent of the sapsucker’s diet, though at times it can become 100-percent. Sap is consumed for the sugar it contains, which will vary by tree species. Trees are selected more on sugar content than on sap flow. Sap makes up a larger part of it’s diet when the sapsucker’s energy needs are higher, such as during molt. Most of the remainder of it’s diet consists of insects, especially ants. These insects make up about 34-percent of the sapsucker’s total diet. The balance of its diet is made up of fruit, seeds, leaf buds and bast (skin fiber collected from the phloem). On hot days during the summer, sapsuckers can become inebriated from the fermented sap in the sap wells; this can make for some amusing observations. The Sapsucker drills two types of wells, the round wells are deep and extend into the xylem tissue and are harvested by the birds brushy tongue. The rectangular holes are shallow and collect phloem sap which is closer to the surface and collects in the rectangular wells.
Since males and females often return to the previous year’s nest territory, re-pairings are common. The males arrive on the breeding ground a week ahead of the females and establish their territories. When nesting they often use the same tree and often the same cavity. When they excavate a new cavity the male does almost all the excavation. It normally takes 7 to 20 days to excavate the cavity. Four to six eggs are laid and both sexes incubate the eggs for a period of 10 to 13 days. The young fledge at 25-30 days. The young are lured from the cavity by food and the family group stays together near the sap wells. The young learn to feed themselves, first on sap and later on insects. There is only one brood per year.
The Yellow-bellied Sapsucker migrates through Oklahoma and some of them stay for the winter. I have had a difficult time finding my Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, but I finally had a sighting at the Nickel’s Preserve back in February of this year. At the Tallgrass Prairie we have averaged one Sapsucker a year during the Christmas Bird Counts over the past eleven years. This bird’s winter migration starts in September; in 2012 the first sighting in Oklahoma was on January 1. They normally will remain in the area through March. The conservation listing for this bird is that of a species of least concern, human activity has expanded its habitat and this bird has taken advantage of that.
In May we had a total of 737 visitors. Of that number there were 709 visitors representing 31 states and 28 international visitors representing 14 countries. Following Oklahoma (479) in number of visitors were the top 3 states of Texas (25), Pennsylvania (20), and California (19). We had our first visitors from Bahrain and Greece in May.
The following table displays the total counts for May, 2012, with that month in previous years.
I encourage each of you to make sure you ask our visitors to sign the guest book. I think you’ve been doing a good job. Just keep it up. Here’s to a high visitor count in 2012 and a great year for the prairie!
Here we provide some links to other places worth visiting.
Here is the latitude and longitude of the Visitor’s Center that you can give to visitors for entry into their GPS navigation device.
The manufacturer’s instructions for cleaning the touch-screen recommend use of a soft dry cloth only. This proved inadequate for smeared fingerprints. Soft-paper kitchen towels work well, slightly damp with a small drop of soft handsoap. Application of a dry kichen towel removes any residual moisture.
Over time, a matter of several weeks continuous operation, I have noticed that calibration of the touch-screen drifts away from the initial set-point. If you notice that the cursor isn’t under your finger when you touch the screen then restart the kiosk by unplugging it from the wall, waiting a few moments and then re-inserting the power plug. It will restart and recalibrate.
This link points to the complete Kiosk Maintenance Manual.
Some printed 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.
All back issues are available electronically via the links shown below. All newsletters prior to December 2007 are available in Portable Document Format (PDF), which means that you will need Adobe Reader installed on your computer to read these files. All newsletters from December 2007 onwards are in HTML format that is easily read using your web-browser.
2012—January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December—2012
2011—January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December—2011
2010—January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December—2010
2009—January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December—2009
2008—January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December—2008
2007—January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December—2007
2006—January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December—2006
2005—January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December—2005
2004—January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December—2004
2003—January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December—2003
2002—January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December—2002
2001—January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December—2001
2000—January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December—2000
1999—January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December—1999
1998—January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December—1998
1997—January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December—1997
1996—January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December—1996
1995—January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December—1995
This persistent index of selected topics should make finding articles of interest easier. The list will grow as I move further into the past and it will grow as I add interesting topics from each new newsletter. Iris McPherson lent me the paper copies of the newsletter from the very early years of the docent program; I ran them through a scanner equipped with a document feeder, saving them as PDF files, then added them to Back Issues section above. Let me know of any dead links that you discover. Also, please lend me any paper copies of the newsletter that are missing so that I can scan and add them to the list of back issues.
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.