Eight o’clock in the morning and already we’re sweating through our shirts. But we’re on a mission. To find a needle in a haystack – a seed pod about the size of a pea in a sea of tall prairie grasses. The return of an endangered butterfly depends upon us.
Finding wild garlic plants is pretty easy. If you know where to look. And Midewin ecologist Bill Glass does. He and other volunteers previously marked the location of remnant populations of these native plants. The clusters of rosy, corn nut-like seeds stand atop tall stalks about waist high. They pop off easily in your hand. We don’t harvest all the seed, leaving some to naturally re-seed the area. But each of us comes away with a tidy sackful.
Searching for prairie violet seed is much more difficult. To begin with, it’s an uncommon native plant in northern Illinois. Fortunately, a few remain at Midewin. But they’re hard to find even when marked. Now that the purple blossoms are done, all that’s left are the fingered leaves for identification. And those leaves are on stems no more than six inches high. And those stems are all but lost in grasses and forbs that reach three to four feet in height.
And even when you do find one, not every plant has a seed pod. Or at least a seed pod ready to harvest. About the size of a pea, the whitish-green pod is ready to harvest if it is pointing up. It’s not yet ready if it’s bowed downward. Then, too, some seed pods have already opened, releasing a small quantity of tiny seeds onto the earth.
After an hour-long search, we come away with fewer than a dozen seed pods. As Bill explained, there are very few commercial sources for the prairie violet or its seed. If you want it, you have to grow it. And that’s exactly what Midewin’s going to do – add it to the growing number of plant species it cultivates in its seed beds.
The ultimate goal is to cultivate enough seed and plants to establish a sustainable population of prairie violets in restoration areas such as South Patrol Road Prairie. But why? Why is this one, uncommon plant so important to add to the nearly 200 of species of native prairie plants already established?
Because violets are the sole food source for the larva of the regal fritillary butterfly. Once common in the prairies of Illinois, the regal fritillary is now officially listed as a threatened species in the Prairie State.
To return the regal fritillary to Midewin – as the Peggy Noteabaert Nature Museum did last year at Paintbrush Prairie Nature Preserve in Markham, Illinois – requires establishing a viable population of prairie violets. And that requires first enduring a hot and humid day in search of a few pea-sized seed pods. No sweat.
