From a distance, the 10 acres of the Rockefeller Natural Prairie in north Lawrence look like a sea of sand. Get a little closer, and see the sand become millions of wheat-colored stalks, stretching their fingers toward the sky and blocking the vision of even the tallest person. Get closer still, and notice the traces of purples, whites, blues, blacks, grays and reds that sprinkle the landscape.

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Seed Collecting at the Rockefeller Natural Prairie

Members of KU Environs helped collect seeds for the purpose of preserving and restoring the prairie on Saturday, Oct. 31st, 2009.

Standing in the middle of this plot of land, which has never been plowed, never been grazed to stubble by domesticated animals, never been corrupted by human hands, you are taken to a time before settlements and agriculture, to a time when buffalo roamed freely and prairie grasses covered most of Douglas County.

Today the prairie remains confined to scattered plots of land and students and University members are working to preserve it.

Preserving history

The prairie, in all of its simple beauty, does not distract Kim Hernandez, Hutchinson senior, from her task.

She searches, scouring the plants in front of her for a natural bouquet of white, star-shaped petals known as tall boneset. Almost 100 years ago, this tiny plant, which is an immune system stimulant, helped some of our ancestors beat the 1918 flu epidemic.

“I found some,” Hernandez calls to her scavenging partner, Ryan Callihan. “Over here.”

Callihan, Lenexa senior, joins her and together they collect the small petals, crush them in their palms and extract the centimeter-long brown seeds.

The two were joined Saturday by about 20 other members of KU Environs and others to collect seeds of native prairie wildflowers and grasses as part of an on-going effort to restore the native prairie that once blanketed Lawrence in rolling fields of grasses and wildflowers.

KU Environs is a student group dedicated to sustainability and promoting environmental education. Members of the group volunteered in the effort to preserve what’s left of the prairie in Douglas County.

“The prairie is a unique resource we have, so we’re doing our part to keep it,” said Sara Schenk, Omaha, Neb., junior and secretary for Environs. “The prairie is part of Kansas history. We need to hang on to what little we have left.”

In the 1850s, approximately 94 percent of Douglas County was covered in native prairie, according to a study on native prairie remnants released in 2005. As of 2005, only 0.5 percent of that prairie remained.

Kelly Kindsher, senior scientist at the Kansas Biological Survey and co-author of the 2005 study, led the group of students to the site to collect the seeds. He said he would store the seeds in a refrigerator at the Kansas Biological Survey until April, when it came time to plant them.

Kindscher said Kansas lost most of its native prairie to agriculture. He said preserving and restoring the prairie was important not only to the history of Kansas, but to existing animals and plants that relied on the prairie habitat, such as the federally endangered mead’s milkweed and the state bird, the meadowlark.

“If we don’t start protecting the prairie and their habitat, we’re going to see these species continue to decrease or even disappear,” Kindscher said.

In this decade alone, Douglas County has lost all of its prairie chickens to habitat loss and degradation, he said.

Braving the prairie

The Environs students braved the thorns and thistles of the native prairie, along with its resident, often large, spiders, for three hours to collect seeds in manila envelopes. Kindscher said the group collected seeds from about 30 species, a small but important fraction of the 200 species currently growing on the preserve.

Chelsea Paxson, Newton junior, searched amidst grasses a full two feet taller than her to find rattlesnake masters — a waist-high plant known for its sharp, black thistles once used by the Fox Indians to keep rattlesnakes at bay, according to Kindscher.

Though the rattlesnake masters, and the season, prevented any rattlesnake sightings, they couldn’t protect Paxson and her partner, Derek Glasgow, Winfield graduate student, from being cut by the thistles, despite the gloves they used to extract the seeds.

“The prairie is pretty, in its own way,” Paxson said, pausing, “when you’re not getting stabbed by everything in it.”

While they were feeling the pain of the rattlesnake masters, Emily Lubarsky, Shawnee freshman, collected Indian grass seeds — among the more popular and easily found plants on the prairie.

“It’s an awesome opportunity for KU students to get hands-on experience with the environment and form an attachment to a part of it that’s endangered,” Lubarsky said. “The prairie isn’t as showy as the rainforest, but it’s just as important.”

Lubarsky partnered up with Shade Little, husband of Chancellor Gray-Little. He said he joined the students to experience a habitat he’d never seen before.

“It is a big part of us, even though we don’t think about it,” he said.

The seeds collected Saturday will be planted next April along a new cement path that winds its way through the native prairie. Although the trail would disrupt some of the habitat, Kindscher said, it would also allow the land to be more accessible to people for research, education and admiration.

And with native prairie lining the path, he said, people will get a closer look at the natural beauty this area once held.

— Edited by Abbey Strusz