Wetland and Watershed Seminar at Wolf Road Prairie
Presenters/Opening Comments
Q and A
Plant Propagation and Transplanting Demonstration
Wolf Road Prairie and Buffer Restoration Field Trip
Wrap Up Session
|
Presenters 
Dr. Darrel Murray Professor Emeritus of Biological Sciences University of Illinois at Chicago Comments The availability of local native seed and plants is a major bottleneck that limits revitalization and reconstruction of prairie, wetland, savanna, and forest communities. Since Wolf Road Prairie is a dedicated Illinois Nature Preserve, there is a mandate that the seeds and plants produced at off site locations be derived from seeds collected at the prairie. If the goal of revitalization is to reintroduce a species that is no longer present, then the plants or seeds produced for the prairie were collected from sites as close to the prairie as possible. My focus for this seminar was to describe an approach to plant propagation in the greenhouse that produces native plants that can be transplanted into seed gardens and back into the wild. A good deal of attention was given to the pretreatment conditions associated with the germination of seeds of 220 native plant species. In particular, examples were presented from over 1,000 independent experiments conducted on 86 species to determine relative rates of germination under both cold dry and cold moist pretreatment conditions. The quantitative data derived from these results allows one to determine the cost, in terms of lower germination rates, of using one method of stratification versus another. In addition, techniques for transplanting seedlings and juvenile plants were demonstrated and participants were provided with a sample of seeds for stratifying and seedlings for transplanting. The seminar session concluded with a tour of the prairie, including the site where experiments were conducted on revitalization of a population of Great St. John's Wort, and a visit to seed gardens established in a nearby prairie buffer site that produces seeds for return to Wolf Road Prairie Nature Preserve. Jack Pizzo Jeff Swano return to main page, Save the Prairie Society |