Death of a Prairie

It's all gone. I left for work travel on Monday, and when I opened the blinds to let in the sunshine Thursday morning the vacant lot prairie had been scraped clean, down to mineral soil. Not even the seedbed remains. Only the few live oaks linger. It used to be, after all, a remnant oak savannah.

The efficiency of this near-total obliteration is shocking. I'm not mad-- not exactly. Not at the construction workers anyway. I knew this land was likely to be developed in time.  I didn't own it, and it wasn't a park. It's the speed of the shift that is upsetting. This was original, unplowed, native prairie. It had managed to hold out in an urban center for over a hundred years. Then, after discovering this prairie in May, it was gone by early June. It is such a strange twist of fate that after persisting so long without notice, I should stumble upon it, begin documenting its flora, and then lose it all in a month. I bet no one had ever performed a floristic survey there before, and now I have one just in time to list what we have lost. What bitter herbs.

The greatest hurt to me is the destruction of this genetic reserve. At a few acres, this parcel was too small to harbor a functioning ecosystem, but the bones- the plants- were there. I didn't manage to save so much as a seed. I kept telling myself they'd be ready for collection in a week, and that I'd gather them next weekend. I hate digging up native plants- to me it feels like vandalism. Now I am filled with remorse that I couldn't save anything. This is the true heartbreak. If I had been in town when the clearing started, perhaps I could have performed a salvage operation. 

In the month that I knew this little prairie, I identified 25 blooming native wildflowers, many of which were atypical to the region. Who knows else we've lost? If I'd been given a full growing season instead of just a brief window, what would I have found? If the prairie had persisted until the fall, what genetic gems might I have saved?

Last green thread growing near the new fence

I mourned the passing of my prairie to a friend over the phone, and she said that perhaps what we can take from this is that anything not explicitly protected is under threat.  The destroyers do not do so out of malice, just out of a kind of blindness. A forest, a prairie, a stream may look permanent, but everything is transitory. We cannot afford to be complacent.

Ideally I would see this loss as a call to arms. Ideally, I would drive around Fort Worth, find other lots, and save what I can. Be more ruthless about plant collection. Convert my front yard into a native plant preserve (not a bad idea, and I'm working on it). But I feel tired. It is easy to retreat, to spare my sensitive heart and love only what is already protected.

 

But I will be dogged in my search for these little remnants. I know I will continue to seek out these special places. I will seek them out with a visceral understanding of their vulnerability, and I will document them for posterity because not even knowing what we have lost is the greater tragedy.

The final plant list:

Latin Name	Common Name	Date Observed
Asclepias asperula	antelope horn	17-May
asclepias viridis	green antelope horn
Cooperia drummondii	evening rain lily	17-May
Cooperia pedunculata	hill country rain lily*	17-May
Dracopis amplexicaulis	clasping leaf coneflower	28-May
Engelmannia peristenia	engelmann daisy	17-May
Gaillardia pulchella	indian blanket	17-May
Gaura coccinea	scarlet gaura	17-May
Glandularia bipinnatifida	prairie verbena	17-May
Helianthus ciliaris	texas blue weed	22-May
Krameria lanceolata	ratany	17-May
Lantana urticoides	lantana	17-May
Lupinus texensis	texas bluebonnet	17-May
Lysimachia lanceolata	lance-leaf loosestrife	28-May
Mimosa nuttallii	sensitive briar	17-May
Monarda citriodora	horse mint	28-May
Neptunia lutea	yellow-puff	17-May
Oenothera speciosa	pink ladies	17-May
Phyla nodiflora	texas frog fruit	17-May
Polytaenia nuttallii	prairie parsley	17-May
Ratibida columnifera	prairie coneflower	17-May
Senna roemeriana	two-leaf senna	17-May
Solanum carolinense	carolina horse nettle	17-May
Stenaria nigricans var. nigricans	diamond flowers	17-May
Thelesperma filifolium	green thread	17-May
Tradescantia occidentalis	western spiderwort*	17-May
Verbena halei	texas vervian	17-May

Trying to end on a positive: native lantana growing near railroad tracks.