Newsletter title

December 2014

In This Edition

Visitor’s Center

—Tawnda Hopper

Docents, thank you for a wonderful year at the Tallgrass Prairie. Wishing each one of you a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. I am excited and looking forward to 2015. —Tawnda.

Docent Council Meeting

—Kay Krebbs

We will convene our next Docent Council Meeting in the LaFortune Community Center on Friday, January 9, 2015 from 1:00-4:00pm. The facility is part of the Tulsa Parks Department, located at 5202 South Hudson, Tulsa, OK 74135.

Docent Reorientation

—Karen Cruce

SAVE THE DATE! Mark your calendars to attend one of the docent reorientation meetings, scheduled for February 21st and 28th of 2015. The meetings will convened at the Research Center on the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve, and are a great way to get all of us up-to-date on what is happening on the prairie for the new season. More information about the meetings will be in next month’s newsletter.

2015 Calendar of Events

—Bill Alexander

Now is the time to start planning for the 2015 events at the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve. Here is the calendar of events for January and February prior to the start of our regular season. Convincing friends to become docents would help to increase our coverage at the Visitor’s Center for the coming year.

January 2015

February 2015

March 2015

Preserve Enlargement

—Harvey Payne, Director Emeritus of the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve

The Tallgrass Prairie Preserve has been enlarged by the purchase on December 3 of the 320 acres owned by the family of John Joseph Mathews. This tract is very important for two reasons. First, it solidifies our preserve design in the southwest corner of the preserve. Second, it includes the historic cabin of John Joseph Mathews where he lived for many years and did most of his writing. It also contains his gravesite. This is a landmark purchase for the preserve and we hope to be able to restore his cabin and make it available to the public on a limited basis.

The ten acres surrounding the cabin were purchased with Nature Conservancy funds only. 75-percent of the cost of the remaining 310 acres will be reimbursed by The Conservation Fund as a part of the Midwest Habitat Fund’s mitigation for habitat loss of the American Burying Beetle and migratory birds.

Prairie Watching: Snow-on-the-Mountain and its Famous Cousin

—Dwight Thomas, Ph.D.

It’s December and the weather has turned cold. The landscape is bleak winter. But let’s think back to the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve and Osage County as it was in August. That strikes a familiar note: August, Osage County. Tracy Lett’s play was set near the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve, but even though it is an interesting story, it is not the only story of August in Osage County.

The Tallgrass Prairie Preserve is usually hot and dry in August. The prairie grasses have taken on a tan color by late August because of the Summer heat and dryness. But, there are still wildflowers that bloom abundantly in August, such as Prairie Blazing Star (Liatris pycnostachya Michx.) and Showy Partridge Pea (Chamaecrista fasciculata [Michx] Greene) that you can see below. So even though the grasses have lost their vibrant green, the forbs that bloom under August conditions provide the colors that we expect on the prairie throughout most of the year — purples and yellows.

Prairie Blazing Star & Showy Partridge Pea by Dwight Thomas

But let me introduce you to another species of August, a forb that really stands out even without having bright colors. That species is Snow-on-the-Mountain (Euphorbia marginata Pursh.). It is somewhat spindly, about 2 to 3 feet tall; it grows abundantly along the roadsides of the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve. It is neither purple nor yellow; its predominant flowering color is white.

Snow-on-the-Mountain is an interesting species. It is in the family Euphorbiacea, a family of plants with about 300 genera and 7,500 species ranging throughout much of the world, often referred to as the Spurge Family. Most of that diversity is found in tropical regions, but temperate regions have a good variety of spurges too. The Tallgrass Prairie Preserve has 6 genera and 22 species listed (Palmer, Michael W., Department of Botany, Oklahoma State University, The Vascular Flora of the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve, Osage County, Oklahoma, Castanea 72(4): 235-246. December 2007).

Finding Snow-on-the-Mountain along roadsides means that it is an opportunistic species, moving in where there is bare ground without much competition. A point should be made that an ecosystem such as the tallgrass prairie will have areas that have different sets of conditions — moisture, sunlight, or repeated disturbance. In those special places, such as roadsides, we can find a whole different set of species than those that grow in the stable grasslands. As we can see in the photograph below, the Snow-on-the-Mountain grows among other invader species such as Broomweed (Amphiachyris dranculoides [DC] Nutt.).

Snow-on-the-Mountain by Dwight Thomas

Snow-on-the-Mountain like many of the spurges contains a latex sap material. When you cut any part of the plant, the milky latex oozes out. The entire plant including the latex is mildly poisonous. However, the latex has been used historically as a laxative — I guess a good poison makes a good laxative. But one of its most interesting features is its flower structure. It has separate male (staminate) and female (pistillate) flowers. These flowers are reduced to the bare minimum for a flower — the reproductive structures. The pistillate flowers grow on a stalk at the fork of the top branches with male flowers grouped in bunches at the ends of those same branches. The staminate flowers have only stamens. These much reduced flowers are hardly noticeable until the plant is examined closely. What is noticed is a whorl of bracts just below the staminate flowers. These bracts are leaves morphologically, but they are different from the remaining leaves on the plant.

These bracts have a green stripe along the center with white stripes along the sides. So it is the whorl of bracts that stands out looking like large white flowers. I think nature is trying its best to fool those of us who care whether a flower is a flower or something else such as a whorl of leaves. Notice in the second photograph below the large green fruit. This developed from the pistillate flower originally below the staminate flowers. This photo also shows the staminate flowers well.

Snow-on-the-Mountain by Dwight Thomas Snow-on-the-Mountain by Dwight Thomas

Now why would I think of this plant in December? Well, my wife, Judy, just brought home a plant to use in holiday decorations. I commented on how much it was like the common prairie plant, Snow-on-the-Mountain. While we were discussing the two plants, she said she had a children’s book that described how this house plant had become part of the Christmas tradition. That is when I knew that I wanted to write about the connection between this prairie weed and its subtropical cousin that has become so ubiquitous and important, both culturally and economically.

Poinsettia by Dwight Thomas

This house plant has lush green leaves and separate pistillate and staminate flowers that are reduced; having only the essential parts for the flower’s purpose, which is reproduction. The pistillate flowers grow from a branch of the plant with staminate flowers above at the tips of the branches. The staminate flower bunches are surrounded by bracts. This sounds very similar to what I described for Snow-on-the-Mountain. The differences are that the leaves are thinner and have points at the ends of veins and the bracts are brilliant red. Likely you have guessed that the house plant is the Poinsettia (Euphorbia pulcherrima Poinsett). If you cut or break the plant anywhere, you will see the milky latex sap. So the plant we are using for decoration is a relative of Snow-on-the Mountain, which is a common prairie weed.

The Poinsettia was introduced into Christmas traditions with a legend from the plant’s original home, southwestern Mexico. The legend says that a young girl had worked so hard on her family’s gift to Jesus for presentation in a community procession on Christmas Eve that she herself had no gift. So along the way to the church, at the instruction of an Angel, she gathered a bunch of roadside weeds. She was embarrassed by the meagerness of her gift, but she presented it anyway. As she laid her bunch of weeds at the foot of the Baby Jesus Cradle, the weeds began to glow with a red star at the top of each branch. Further, when the community left the church, all of those weeds had been similarly transformed making the town glow with the red stars, la Flor de Nochebuena. (DePaola, Tomie, The Legend of the Poinsettia, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, 1994).

Poinsettia by Dwight Thomas

Do you suppose those weeds might have looked like our Snow-on-the-Mountain before their miraculous transformation?

This is a beautiful legend, but we don’t necessarily need a miracle to transform our Snow-on-the-Mountains into something beautiful. Perhaps a little horticultural breeding could make them look less weedy, but they are beautiful just as they are with their white star flowers in the middle of the Summer in the middle of the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve.

And now you have another August, Osage County story, one without any screaming or scheming.

Christmas Decorations

—Bill Alexander

Bunkhouse Christmas by Bill Alexander

It never fails that there is something new to delight at each Tallgrass Prairie Preserve docent day; this December it was the headquarters decorations for the Christmas season. It isn’t easy to catch this since we only have a couple of weeks open during December, though it is a sight you won’t quickly forget.

For anyone who has been there since the November Roundup, the bison seem to be everywhere along the road, which is great for pictures and even more wonderful for the visitors. People have been able to see the bison up close and in substantial numbers. One might think that it is less interesting when the grass is brown and the flowers are not in bloom, but there is always something to surprise you and make your day. We also set a new personal record pbserving seventeen deer in the preserve as we departed for the day.

Visitor Counts

—Iris McPherson

The month of October had 687 visitors with 660 from 33 states. Oklahoma was represented by 391 visitors followed by Texas (31), Kansas (24) and California (21). There were 27 visitors from 6 foreign countries.

Visitor Counts

It’s interesting to read the comments that our visitors add to their sign-in. There are many who don’t put anything in that column, but of those who do add a comment it is usually one word and positive, such as Beautiful, Wonderful or Fantastic. There are many comments about having seen or not seen bison. Some people write a short note of thanks for preserving the prairie. There are those who are unhappy about the road or just finding the preserve. There are words of disappointment when they find the Information Center closed, but when it is open, they have nothing but good words for the docent who is there to explain the prairie to them. On a rare occasion there is someone who writes more, such is the case of a man from New Mexico. His statement is Get a program for children like the Jr. Ranger program at the National Parks — patches, education and reading material to engage the children in the history, ecology and biology of the Tall Grass Prairie. He has a good idea that someone might want to pursue.

Keep up the good work of getting as many visitors as possible to sign the guest registry. We seem to be having a pretty good year, as far as number of visitors is concerned. The numbers will probably begin to drop now that the weather is cooler and schools are in session. Hopefully the weather will be good until our closing date in mid-December.

Docent Coverage Of Season Days

—Bill Alexander

If the snow had not kept docents away for a couple of days, the docent year-to-date coverage would have improved this past month. In looking forward, be sure to encourage your friends to consider signing up for docent training in February of next year, as having more docents is the best way to improve our docent coverage in 2015, which will be extremely well received by our many visitors to Tallgrass Prairie Preserve.

Docent Coverage of Season Days

Other Places to Visit

Here we provide some links to other places worth visiting.

Tallgrass Prairie Preserve Visitor’s Center Latitude & Longitude

Here is the latitude and longitude of the Visitor’s Center that you can give to visitors for entry into their GPS navigation device.

Back Issues

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.

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2002—January  February  March  April  May  June  July  August  September  October  November  December2002
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1996—January  February  March  April  May  June  July  August  September  October  November  December1996
1995—January  February  March  April  May  June  July  August  September  October  November  December1995

Selected Topics Index

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.

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.