Fall in Wisconsin is a burst of colors, brightening and fading, with shades and textures unimaginable. Driving down the road, a fall scene plays outside the window; the prairie morphs from orange to yellow to brown and into red. Patches of color blend together, all warm, all losing their chloroplasts, anticipating a lack of sunlight in the coming winter.
It’s not until you walk amongst the expanse of colors, looking down at your feet to see tiny splotches of purple. Gentians come in many forms—fringed, stiff, cream, prairie—and each has its own unique tiny flower, often a flash of bright purple life in a slowly browning world.
The first time I saw the prairie, my feet hurt. After a long winter I was emerging from my cocoon of an apartment only to realize I no longer could use my limbs, or stand for more than five minutes. The prairie was kind though, recently burned, with seedlings only recently sprouted made for easy walking; it was a perfectly hot late-spring day. The dominant color was green. Plants in early development need as much sunlight as possible, so photosynthesis is in overdrive. We were learning about our new job, and every plant called its name with help from our bosses. My body and brain were overwhelmed, in fact.
A gorgeous purple-colored fringed gentian. Photo by David Musolf.
One thing I did not expect about this new job was that I would be observing such drastic change over just one season. I especially did not expect the range of colors. Featured hues went from purple to yellow to purple again, all against a background of bright green. Summer days were hot and humid, but we were stewards of the prairie that summer, bearing the weight of a 3-gallon pack of herbicide to keep invasive weeds at bay, and the natural colors changing again and again through the seasons. Prairie plants grew taller and stiffer, and traversing the land became much more difficult. We made our way through tall cattails, boggy mush, sweltering days—and what else was it for but the prairie? While being smacked in the face by cattails and having my boots fill with bog water, I wasn’t thinking about my resume. I was thinking about all those colors I got to see and take care of every day.
At first we took the offensive, uprooting garlic mustard, spraying reed canary grass, attacking white and yellow sweetclover, and digging up wild parsnip and mullein. Dispersed between that work was education, seed collection, and dispersion. Drew, David, and Roger taught us about the geography, the ecology, and the funny stories of Faville Grove, not to mention constantly quizzing us about the IDs of various native prairie plants.
It went on that way, learning, digging, spraying, collecting. It seemed that by the end of the season, we went from pulling, digging, and spraying to nurturing the prairie itself. Every afternoon, we would collect native seeds for future planting, future life. By the fall, seed collecting was all we were doing, all nurturing, no more pulling or digging. We would learn a plant, learn its seed, and spend the day collecting it, drying it, cleaning it, and storing it. Eventually all that seed would be planted into new prairie restorations.
I got to see the prairie go through its full life cycle: from first growth to seeding and dispersing, continuing its life for another year. A year ago, I would not have been able to say I even knew one specific prairie plant, let alone an entire prairie ecosystem’s life. It’s almost magical to be looking down on a browning fall day, and see a bright purple flower on the ground. Not what you would expect, right? Sometimes the best things in life are that way—that includes being a steward of the prairie, and gentians.
Written by MaryBeth Barker, 2020 Faville Grove summer intern.
Cover photo by Carolyn Byers. A stiff gentian with purple petals is ringed with rusty-colored leaves.
