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Re: prairie in NE Texas



James C. Trager wrote:

> As a brand new subscriber to this discussion group, I browsed through
> until encountering Austin Moseley's note from February. Two points:
> 1) The Heard Natural History Museum at McKinney TX has a nice prairie
> restoration and a knowledgeable naturarlist, Ken Steigman with whom Mr.
> Moseley might enjoy sharing information.
> 2) Just a hint for any novice prairie planters: watch out for switch
> grass, it can be very aggressive and you might end up with a
> monoculture.

Just North of us there are intact prairies, and theyhave near monoculture
stands of the main grasses and forbs, with
clumps of other plants here and there. The plants seem to have
sorted out where they want to be, and the composition and mass
of each varies with the year and rainfall patterns - no year is the same.
Because of our long growing season here, switchgrass gets a late start
compared to gamagrass and boots out early compared to the
bluestems, and we will be putting a lot of grazing pressure on it as well.
In addition, it seems to need water more than the other natives and
our summer droughts seem to slow it down, while the late summer
rains seem to give the other natives a boost when the switch is done
seeding out. The normal composition for us is gamagrass-switchgrass,
with bluestems and gramas on the steeper, more northerly slopes.
From what I see in our fields, Broomsedge seems to be more
invasive than switchgrass at this time.



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