I overlook things all the time – but insects don’t. I walk, bike, and drive the roadsides of Kankakee Sands every day, nearly oblivious to the thousands of hoary vervain ( Verbena stricta ) that I am passing. But the insects are keyed in—they know that this plant is a treasure. Hoary vervain grows…
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Nature isn’t always what it seems —a chatty little grasshopper sparrow taught me that. For the first ten or so years that I worked at the Kankakee Sands Nursery, I was always looking down, either at the native plants that I was planting into the soil or at the seeds that I was harvesting for our…
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Skunk Cabbage: The Smell of Spring After a long gray Indiana winter, it’s a real joy to smell skunk cabbage ( Symplocarpus foetidus ), one of Indiana’s native, fascinating flowers. The name says it all—it does not smell like roses! But seeing and smelling skunk cabbage is a sure-fire, sweet sign that…
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With its short days, grey skies, and cold temperatures, February in Indiana can be trying even for the ruggedest soul among us. But, I love winter. Without winter, our Kankakee Sands prairies would not be the amazing, life-filled, flower-flowing, insect-buzzing places that they are. The success of…
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One Bat, Two Bat By Alyssa Nyberg This spring we were delighted to look up and find that our furry, winged, big brown bat mascot was hanging upside down again this year in the rafters of the Kankakee Sands seed processing barn. Ah! Some normalcy in these craziest of times! The big brown bat…
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Is That a Viceroy or a Monarch? By Alyssa Nyberg In early September, our Kankakee Sand prairies are aflutter with orange on yellow, white and purple. Monarch and viceroy butterflies are nectaring on goldenrods, bonesets, and ironweed, and it is one of the prettiest sights to be seen! Both the…
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The Upside-Down Bird With the Strange Song By: Alyssa Nyberg If you think saying the word “bobolink” is fun, you’d be right! Even more fun is seeing the bird itself. It’s the male bobolink ( Dolichonyx oryzivorus ) that will turn your mind upside down. Many birds, such as bluebirds or chickadees, are…
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Sedges Are a Buffet for Bison in the Indiana Dunes By Alyssa Nyberg This July we will be busy with harvesting hundreds of pounds of sedge seeds to include in this year’s prairie planting at Kankakee Sands. We will be harvesting twelve different sedges, each one so unique, and really quite lovely…
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Dung Beetles and Bison! By Alyssa Nyberg We often talk about the types of plants that our Kankakee Sands bison are eating, and how that will affect the prairies. What we rarely talk about is what is happening at the other end of the bison. Bison poop, bison patties, dung, feces, meadow…
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Guest post by Alyssa Nyberg of Kankakee Sands Just like many of us that are working from home, our bison continue to work from their home at Kankakee Sands. The bison have been busy enriching the plant diversity by eating a plethora of grasses, creating sandy depressions when they wallow in the…
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