Does this look like a cemetery to you? No? Perhaps I should explain what I mean. I visited two cemetery prairies recently, both noted for their high biodiversity and for being owned by the Nature Conservancy. For the unaware, the Nature Conservancy is a nonprofit group that is dedicated to... conserving nature. Two of their smallest preserves in the Midwest are adjacent to old cemeteries.
But what makes these prairies worth preserving? Well, take the above prairie, German Methodist Cemetery Prairie in northern Indiana, the one I visited all the way back on July 1. It has over 200 species of plants... in an area about an acre and a half in size. That's a very, very high number of plants in a tiny area. This prairie is an example of a relict prairie; that is, a prairie which has survived since before European settlement.
But why did it survive? Dead people, basically.
You see, in order to have enough room for future graves, the cemetery planners back in the 1800s set aside tracts of land to be used later. As these towns were settled in the midst of prairies, often the lands set aside were prairies. These prairies survived into the modern day, and are now typically set aside as nature preserve. Such is the case with German Cemetery Prairie.
While at German Cemetery Prairie, I witnessed a Common Grackle (Quiscalus quiscula) chase off a Red-tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis) that had flown over the farmfields adjacent to the prairie. It's always entertaining to watch such a tiny bird fight such a big one, but the fact is that the slow moving Red-tailed Hawk is really no match for the Grackle's speed and agility.
Although both cemetery prairies are fenced off, there was still plenty to see, with Leadplant (Amorpha canescens) in full bloom and Song Sparrows (Melospiza melodia) singing from the stems.
But, I know you are here to learn how I killed my camera on July 3 in Loda Cemetery Prairie, a half-hour north of Champaign/Urbana, Illinois. It was a dark and stormy day, quite literally, mixed in with periods of drizzle and gray. The first obstacle was a fence:
I found this Common Milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) near the fence at Loda, but my real goal was Eastern Prairie White-fringed Orchids (Platanthera leucophaea), found in the relict prairie section of the preserve. (There are two sections, a restored prairie border and an older relict section inside.) Walking around the fence, I made my way into a sea of Bee Balm (Monarda fistulosa)
There were thousands of plants in bloom at Loda, but as I paced through the soaking wet fields, the orchid remained elusive. I remembered seeing a picture of it in flower alongside something pink or purple, but with thousands of such flowers, I despaired of ever finding the location. Still, I knew it would likely be found in some sort of depression in the ground which kept the orchid moist. Realizing that it would be in the older part of the prairie, I walked back to that section and began to search, as the mists soaked me and my camera to the core.
A major part of the problem was that I was hunting in a field full of Rattlesnake Master (Eryngium yuccifolium), which is a white flower (with very sharp leaves) named for its use as a frontier rattlesnake-bite cure. The important part of this is that I was looking for a white flower in a sea of different white flowers, like a botanical Where's Waldo. The second major problem is that I was wearing shorts, and compounding that problem was that about half of the plants present, particularly Prairie Dock (the big leaves in the photo above), were the texture of sandpaper, scraping all the skin off my bare legs. The third major problem was that I couldn't see the orchid anywhere. The fourth major problem was that it was wet and cold. Any sensible person would have turned back.
Still, orchid madness knows NO boundaries, so I pressed on. When compared to the seriousness of the hobby that is central Illinois orchid hunting, ordinary botanizing (plant hunting) Pokemon Go and birding are a piece of cake. Even if you have to hike three miles, race another player to a Mew, and/or be called a stalker, you have it easy compared to trying to find orchids in central Illinois. To this date, I've failed to find any flowering orchids in Illinois, though I did find some just over the border in Indiana, as you can see if you check July 2016.
It's probably just me, but I have TERRIBLE luck in my searches for orchids. Loda was no exception, and the Eastern Prairie White-fringed Orchid is my new nemesis plant. (To recap, a nemesis plant is one that you can't find no matter how hard you try.) My old nemesis plant. the Rose Poginia (another orchid) had been found the day before, albeit in an inaccessible bog. (The orchid family in general is a nemesis to me, one I like to confront at any given opportunity.) Until next year, EPWFO.
Rant concluded, the Mountain Mint (Pycnanthemum virginianum) and Prairie Dock (Silphium terebinthinaceum) floral display shown above is the very last photo from my old camera. After I found a Prairie Phlox and remembered that the plant I'd seen adjacent to the orchid was the purple-flowered Prairie Phlox, I went to take a picture. "Lens error," my camera said. If it had been the orchid I was trying to photograph, there would have been swearing. No matter how many times afterwards I turned it off and back on again, no matter what internet-researched fixes I tried, the camera was broken. It's been out in the rain several times before, so I don't know what did finally kill it, but it died. I sent it back and bought a replacement in the meantime. Thankfully, the camera was under warranty, so now I have two cameras.
As I said, I never found the orchid, but I did find something worthwhile; my second-ever Michigan Lily (Lilium michiganese), photographed with my phone. Unusually, this specimen had narrow, alternate leaves, while my first, found the day before, had whorls of leaves opposite each other. I wonder if this makes this a differing species or subspecies, but I don't see anything online about this. Someday, I would love to research why this species had so many differing leaves.
Of course, the real irony of the situation caught up with me later. My camera died in a cemetery.
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