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| A restored prairie at Elm Creek Park Reserve, Maple Grove, MN. |
On a windy summer day, a Minnesota prairie looks like an ocean. The tallest grasses move like waves, their stems bending, rebounding and bending again, an imaginary sea of grass.
For prairie plants, bending without breaking isn’t just a metaphor for survival; it is survival, one of many adaptations for life in a dry, often windy, fire-prone upland. These forces have literally shaped the grasses that dominate the landscape. Their narrow leaves minimize water loss, their low growing points help them recover after fire or grazing, and their deep roots serve to both anchor and absorb. (See this illustration of prairie plant root systems.)
Among the grasses are a variety of forbs, non-woody plants other than grasses. Depending on the site, there may be pasque flowers (Anemone patens), lupine (Lupinus perennis), butterfly milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa), prairie clovers (Dalea species), boneset (Eupatorium perfoliatum), gentians (Gentiana species), sunflowers (Helianthus speces) and many others, each flowering in its own season.
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| From left: Prairie larkspur (Delphinium carolinianum), butterfly milkweed, and bottle gentian (Gentiana andrewsii). |
They're all part of Minnesota's northern tallgrass prairie, part of a larger grassland biome in the central United States and south central Canada. Northern tallgrass once covered roughly 18 million acres in the southern and western parts of the state. About 235,000 acres remain, less than two percent of the original area.
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| The Minnesota DNR's map of original prairie (yellow) and remaining prairie (red).The original, readable map is here. |
That's not much, but there are still places to find remnants and restorations of this now-limited ecosystem. Here are some resources to help find them.
The Minnesota DNR's Prairie Finder maps public lands you can visit to explore prairies. These are state parks, historic sites, national wildlife refuges and other places where prairie is protected or restored for education, research, and enjoyment. One such place is the Northern Tallgrass Prairie National Wildlife Refuge in western Minnesota.
The U of M's Minnesota Natural Resource Atlas is an interactive map that allows you to search for native prairies and other natural resources in the state. At the website, select the Interactive Map and choose Add Layers. In the pull-down menu, check the box for Native Prairie in the Biota category and wait for the map to load. Keep in mind that some of the prairies are on private land.
In the Twin Cities area, Three Rivers Park District has restored about 1,600 acres of prairie. Crow-Hassan Park Reserve in Hanover, Murphy-Hanrehan Park Reserve in Savage and Carver Park Reserve in Victoria have the largest holdings. Entry to the parks is free. Public seed collections in late summer and fall help support additional restoration.
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| This recently burned prairie at Crow Hassan Park Reserve is already growing back, and with vigor. This is lupine, Lupinus perennis. |
The Prairie Wetlands Learning Center, part of the Fergus Falls Wetland Management District, showcases the eastern-most part of the prairie pothole region, a mix of shallow wetland depressions and upland prairie. Trails are open to the public any time. Call for Visitor Center hours. The Learning Center also offers programs for students and teachers.
If you can't visit a prairie but want to see one, you can go there virtually. Minnesota Scientific and Natural Areas Virtual Visits can take you to several, such as Bluestem Prairie near Glyndon and Lost Valley Prairie near Hastings. The websites for many state parks also offer virtual tours of their lands, such as Buffalo River State Park's panoramic views of Prairie View Trail and Big Sky Trail.
Another option is to view the PBS video Life of a Prairie, about a private, undisturbed prairie in western Minnesota. For a compilation of information about prairies, including some great photography, see the DNR's Prairie Stories.
