The Battelle Darby wet prairie is a low damp area dominated by grasses and wildflowers without many trees. This ecosystem is primarily dominated by grasses, and forbs with very little brush or over story trees.
The dominant grasses in this prairie are Andropogon gerardii (Big blue stem) and Sorghastrum nutans (Indian grass), pictured above. Both grasses can get up to about 8 feet tall and make up the majority of biomass in this prairie. Big blue stem is identifiable by its purplish blooms in the characteristic shape of a turkey foot. Indian grass inflorescence are more of a bronze color and, when flowering, have tiny yellow flowers. Very cool grasses!!! But what makes them a grass?….
Natural History Note: Sedges vs Grasses
In the picture above we can examine, sedges vs grasses. While these plants can look very similar they have some key differences in their anatomy that differentiates them. First, grasses have hollow, typically round, stems while sedges have triangular, solid stems. Also, the leaves of grasses grow on opposite sides of the stem, while the leaves of sedges tend to spiral around the stem and overlap each other.
Other important prairie plants are wide-leaved wildflowers called forbs! Above is a prairie forb called Eupatorium perfoliatum, or Common boneset. Eupatorium is genus of tall flowering plants with heads of several small flowers clustered together. Eupatorium perfoliatum, specifically, is identifiable by its characteristic taper pointed, perfoliate leaves (kind of grow around the stem instead of off it). Forbes are important in prairie ecosystems for a number of reasons, one being they attract pollinators which are beneficial to other plants as well. Some even fix nitrogen, such as Baptisia lactea or White wild indigo, which we also saw!
While a low amount of tree cover is an important characteristic of this ecosystem that must be actively maintained, there are still a couple of species of trees in this prairie. The first of which is pictured above (left of picture), Populus deltoides, or Common cottonwood. This tree can be identified by its coarse toothed, somewhat triangular leaves and flattened leaf stalks. Also, the cotton-like wind dispersed seeds that give the tree its common name.
Another tree found in this ecosystem is Platanus occidentalis, or Sycamore. Though these trees can get very large, most of the trees in the prairie are kept to a smaller size similar to the cottonwood pictured above. The sycamore pictured below was outside the prairie in the parking lot area. Sycamores can be identified by their large 5 lobed leaves and grayish brown bark that flakes off revealing a smooth white-ish under-bark.
