Dan Carter
banner
prairiebotanist.com
Dan Carter
@prairiebotanist.com
Ecologist of Midwestern fire-dependent ecosystems & volunteer land steward @ Mukwonago River Oak Barrens. Opinions mine. Among them is the need to stop viewing grasslands, savannas, & woodlands through a productivist lens. Ban AI. He/Him
Bison were only present as small, scattered herds in northern and NE Illinois before European disease impacted indigenous populations, and the prairies that developed over thousands of years in the region did so with little influence of bison. This is misguided.
December 10, 2025 at 12:46 AM
Note RE: Michigan that most Urtica dioica is the native subsp. gracilis.
December 6, 2025 at 1:34 AM
I wear blue jeans, carhart work pants, and sweatpants 24-7-365, but on your wedding day--for your wedding photos--put on some goddamn grown-up man-at-a-serious-event pants. The firearm with drum magazine is dumb, but the pants shouldn't be something mom wouldn't let you wear to Sunday school.
November 22, 2025 at 10:15 PM
Well, we written those at our school responsible for this expressing out support for them, but that's all at this point. There haven't been any meetings or anything like that.
November 22, 2025 at 2:57 PM
Yeah, that is an absurd map and there never ever would have been tallgrass prairie if it were even remotely close.
November 20, 2025 at 1:10 AM
Most of the plants people would find familiar are monecious. It's simply their biology. They are plants not humans. We aren't talking about penises and vaginas. Why must the idiotic concerns of bigoted morons govern us?
November 20, 2025 at 12:08 AM
see Forgotten Fires: Native Americans and the Transient Wilderness by Omer Stewart. But also fire every 3-5 years leads to woody succession into prairie and savanna. And the fires that occur at that interval are too intense due to high fuel loads and cause lasting damage to fauna herbaceous flora.
November 19, 2025 at 11:46 PM
Based on tree ring scars? Trees only record scars when fire is intense enough to damage them. But it's also not about the historical fire regime, it's about what stabilizes vs. destabilizes the ecosystem. Even in the south there are many accounts of fires being very frequent.
November 19, 2025 at 11:46 PM
A lot of them don't lose their leaves to fire (if they are basal). They also get a long spring cool season to make some hay.
November 19, 2025 at 11:10 AM
Where I'm referring to gets burned every year, almost always in fall, maybe once or twice in February.
November 19, 2025 at 11:08 AM
because litter is the problem.
November 19, 2025 at 1:22 AM
seem to do best on convex slopes and around bases of trees where litter blows away and fire often doesn't reach. Indeed kittentails, birds-foot violets, early buttercups, prairie larkspur, and many others have a lot of winter green, and fire (if frequent enough to be less intense) helps them,
November 19, 2025 at 1:22 AM
Can't comment at the other place, around that burned sedge pictured, there is a bunch of woodland phlox. Yes, it's overwintering leaves get burned off, but it still does really well. Other things like round-lobed hepatica, which rely a lot on winter photosynthesis
November 19, 2025 at 1:22 AM
In northern WI it grows in xeric oak-pine barrens. In SE WI it has more a tendency to grow in moist savanna transitions to wetlands--even sometimes rooting in histosols. Probably more to know there.
November 17, 2025 at 10:37 PM
Well a lot is probably AI at this point. My partner is an NP and says that a lot of the rejections are just nonsensical.
November 14, 2025 at 12:25 AM
Highly invasive Phragmites australis subsp. australis.
November 8, 2025 at 2:50 PM
This almost certainly has relevance for invertebrates (research tends to lump all fire), plants, and soil biological crusts, and my guess is that they follow similar patterns and that this is some of why the most frequently dormant burned prairies are the most resistant to degradation.
November 7, 2025 at 2:29 PM
*our* argh
November 7, 2025 at 3:16 AM