Written by Kiegan Baranski, LREC Intern:
While the prairie has lain dormant all winter, we’ve been hard at work writing all about it here at the Glass House for the Missouri Native Plant Society’s yearly journal, Missouriensis. With James’s supervision and Emily’s assistance, together we re-wrote, updated, and added to a list of native prairie plants suitable for prairie reconstructions, based on an older version written by botanist Doug Ladd in 2003 for the same publication.
For years, the 2003 list was the only publicly-available resource of its kind for local prairie managers to access. Unfortunately, it was only available as a scanned image, and the original file was apparently lost to time. What’s more, many of the names had become outdated, so between accessibility and nomenclature, the list was difficult to navigate. So, we reached out to the original author and got his permission to re-write it as an updated, digital file that could be searched, copy-pasted, and formatted into an Excel sheet. Not only did he agree, but, to our surprise, he offered to help us publish it in Missouriensis!
Now, months after that initial offer, we’ve created a new list, with 63 additional species, updated nomenclature, and data on state endangerment rankings as well as flowering and seed collection times for each species, which came from LREC’s own data (courtesy of Adam and Allison). All of this has been added in the hopes of making the list even more accessible and useful to prairie reconstructionists looking to assess their plant species diversity and potentially add new native flora to their plantings. We hope that this will help others to restore prairies just like the ones we’re so lucky to have here.