Just learned a single acre of prairie can hold over 300 species of plants and I'm shook

I was reading a book about native ecosystems last night and found out that in the Midwest, a single acre of undisturbed prairie can contain 300 to 400 different plant species. That blew my mind because I always thought prairies were just grass and a few wildflowers. Has anyone else stumbled on a plant fact that totally changed how you see a landscape?

2 comments

2 Comments

lilya766d ago

Oh wow that is wild honestly. I always figured prairies were just like a big field of grass with maybe some random flowers popping up here and there. But 300 species holy crap. It kind of reminds me of this time I was hiking in a place that looked totally dead and dry from the road but when I actually walked into it there were tiny little flowers and mosses everywhere. I sat down and counted like 20 different things just in a 10 foot circle. Made me feel dumb for judging a landscape by its cover lol. Nature is legit hiding stuff right out in the open.

dakota4155d ago

One thing that helps with this is actually getting down on your hands and knees. I've dragged clients out to parks before and made them look at a single square foot of ground for like five minutes. You'd be amazed how many different leaf shapes and colors pop out once you stop scanning the horizon. Another trick is to visit the same spot across different seasons. Something that looks like a dead brown clump in July might be covered in purple flowers in October, or have tiny yellow blooms in early spring that only last two weeks. That's how I started learning the difference between goldenrod and ragweed by feel, not just by looking. People think a prairie is empty but really their eyes just haven't been trained to see all the layers yet.