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No, not THAT newt
Jean has been out and about again…this time on the hunt for salamanders!
Getting the traps ready
Last year, Margaret asked a question I had never even thought about. Why don’t we see salamanders here? Until recently, with the creation of the north ephemeral pool and the prairie pothole, the answer may have had a bit to do with lack of reproductive habitat. The Lynch wetland is full of predacious fish and birds, making it difficult for salamanders to reproduce there. But the prairie should have provided good habitat for mature salamanders. The real answer probably lies in the intensive agriculture that took place here for years. But before we set about reintroducing the tiger salamander, we wanted to establish that they actually aren’t here.
Christopher wades in to set the traps
Don brought out his minnow traps and showed Margaret, Joe, Christopher and I how to use them. Basically, they are little metal screen buckets that snap together, with a funnel on either end. The funnel is submerged just beneath the surface, allowing plenty of space above it for animals to access air if they need to.
Critters, including fish, frogs, snakes and salamanders funnel in and have trouble finding the way back out. Daily checks will provide a record of what species live in the water. Christopher volunteered to go out into the water and set the traps for us. He set some in the north ephemeral pool and some in the Lynch wetland shallows. We don’t actually expect evidence of salamanders at the Lynch wetland, but it has been so dry since we established the prairie pothole that there wasn’t enough water there to place the funnel underneath the water.
Marsh marigolds in bloom
I was delighted to find the marsh marigolds we planted last year were blooming at the prairie pothole. I wasn’t really expecting that, because it has been so dry there. It’s the first time I’ve seen them on the property.
~Jean Wiedenheft
Ginger…or Maryanne?
Jean has been out making more discoveries around the grounds…
Wild ginger traditionally begins flowering in April, so I was somewhat surprised to see the deep red of its blossoms against the brown dirt of March. It is flowering under the pagoda dogwood, whose own leaves are just beginning to break dormancy. The beautiful curve of the ginger’s single flower is inconspicuous from the typical vantage point of the human observer, but the ants and gnats that pollinate it have no difficulty finding their way inside.
Sharing Seeds
photo by Sheri Albrecht
It gets pretty busy around the Nature Center in the fall as our lush prairie flowers and grasses turn to seed. It wasn’t always that way. When we began our prairie restoration back in the late 70′s, we battled weeds and invasive plants like the multifloral rose until our more desirable forbs and grasses took root and the seed it produced went right back into the ground. Now, we have an abundance of seed so this year, we invited the city of Cedar Rapids to harvest seed for use in their prairie restoration project at Prairie Park Fishery. Right now, it’s a park and fishery without much prairie!
So a couple of weeks ago, city workers came to the Nature Center with some equipment borrowed from the county and with the help of our land steward, Jean Wiedenheft, collected about 200 pounds of prairie seed. That’s more seed than our volunteers and staff planted to start our prairie to begin with! Parks Superintendent Daniel Gibbons estimates the Nature Center saved the city about $4000 by letting them collect the seed instead of having to buy it.
Director Rich Patterson is more than happy to share the seed with the city. As the new prairie takes root at Prairie Park, he’s hoping the city will see the environmental benefit of patches of prairie scattered throughout the area to help in flood and erosion control and dedicate more land to prairie restoration. “It’s more seed than we could possibly use here so I’m happy to see the city put it to good use.”
photo by Nancy Lackner
It’s going to take a year or more for the seed to emerge – and several more years before it’s fully established, but watch for big bluestem, Indian and switch grasses as well as yellow and purple coneflower, blazing star, butterfly milkweed, bee balm, Virginia mountain mint and other wildflowers to start reaching for the summer sky around the lake – and with it, the birds, bees and other critters that call the prairie home.
Rain, rain…go away (slowly)
The City brought in the heavy equipment to change the Nature Center's parking lot from a slant into a bowl shape
If you’ve visited the Nature Center anytime since last fall, you know we’ve been in the process of revamping our parking lot. What you may NOT know is that it was a project designed to help reduce the amount of rainwater and snowmelt (and everything it carries) that runs off into Indian Creek.
A deep trench was dug down the center of the lot for the bioswale
The City of Cedar Rapids has worked with us to redesign the entire layout of the lot and to add a bioswale in the center.
The trench gets a layer of gravel which will allow runoff water to be absorbed slowly into the ground. Notice how deep the trench is! The workers are already standing on a thick layer of gravel.
What everyone thought would be a couple-of-weeks job turned into many months (with an interruption for winter), but at long last…we’re done!
Well, mostly. The City is going to monitor the lot to make sure we don’t have any odd settlings or ruts develop and that the water does, indeed, run into and get absorbed by the bioswale rather than running off into the creek. Just this past weekend, a big group of volunteers joined our Land and Facilities Steward, Jean Wiedenheft, to plant the bioswale. Jean tells us how the bioswale finally came together…
Volunteers of all ages came for the final stage - planting the bioswale
Saturday, June 18, 11:30 in the morning. Thirty one volunteers gathered in the parking lot to create one of the more intriguing human-nature interfaces: the bioswale. Bioswales use native plants to decrease rainwater runoff from hard surfaces. Sediment and other pollutants are trapped in the swale. The water, instead of eroding the parking lot surface and racing into Indian Creek, has a chance to filter downward and gradually recharge the groundwater. The thick, deep roots that native prairie plants are known for create underground stability with a solid, tangled mass of roots, to accompany the engineering of the parking lot. The surface has to slope gently toward the swale. The swale has to be deep enough and have enough air pockets to hold the rain from the entire parking lot surface.
Nature Center Land and Facilities Steward, Jean Wiedenheft, works with volunteers to plant the bioswale with native plants
Above ground, the 800 plants the volunteers troweled into the ground will create a natural-looking refuge. From the ruby-throated hummingbirds that will visit the penstemons to the monarch butterflies that will visit the asclepias, the natural grace and beauty of the bioswale will be the first thing that greets human visitors when they come. The parking lot, shared by the Cedar Rapids Parks Department and the Indian Creek Nature Center, is an example of how natural systems can be a key component of engineered solutions. By incorporating bioswales when hard surfaces are necessary, individuals and corporations can greatly reduce their negative impact on the watershed. This project was done in partnership with ADM Cedar Rapids Corn Processing, the Cedar Rapids Parks Department, and the Greater Cedar Rapids Community Foundation.
There was lots of work to be done to get 800+ plants into the bioswale. Photo by Roger Heidt
The Nature Center seeded annual rye throughout the swale as a cover crop, to hold the soil while the native plants establish themselves. The cover crop will gradually disappear from the site over the next few years. Plants were spaced approximately 1 foot apart, with 50 percent grasses and 50 percent forbs. Forbs include: blue flag iris, blue wild indigo, butterfly weed, Canada milkvetch, cardinal flower, compass plant, cream gentian, large-flowered beardtongue, monkeyflower, obedient plant, Ohio spiderwort, pale purple coneflower, prairie coreopsis, prairie smoke, rough blazing star, smooth blue aster, swamp milkweed, turtlehead, and white wild indigo.
Thanks to volunteers from ADM Cedar Rapids Corn Processing and other community volunteers, our bioswale should contribute to a healthier Indian Creek.
Grasses include: big bluestem, cordgrass, little bluestem, northern sea oats, side oats grama, and switchgrass. This fall, volunteers will be interseeding blazingstar, butterfly weed, Canada wild rye, grey-headed coneflower, Indian tobacco, rattlesnake master, and slender mountain mint, many of which will be collected from established Nature Center prairies.
Visit our Facebook page (just click on the Facebook “f” at the top of this page) to see more photos of the parking lot and bioswale construction. We encourage other businesses and individuals to take a look at their properties and see if there are ways in which they can help minimize runoff into our rivers and streams. We’ll keep you updated on how it looks…and how it works!
Plant Sale Saturday, May 1st!
Come one, come all! The Nature Center’s spring plant sale is Saturday, May 1st from 9 AM until Noon! Vendors from around the area and our own fund-raising group (The Guild) will be offering native plants and seeds, perennials, herbs and more!
Be at the Nature Center bright and early, we’ll see you here!
