Another field day

 Last Saturday, I went out with a colleague and a group of her research-class students to help start a vegetation survey of an abandoned golf course in town. (Right now it's being kept as a semi-natural park, and one of our aims with this study is to encourage it to be kept so - right now people do go there to walk (there are paths and trails) and to fish in the former water hazards, which I guess have bluegill and other small fish. We're going back out again this Saturday, and while it's a bit of a push for me to add this on with four classes and my own research, it feels good to do it.

But today we went out to the local Choctaw cultural center - a couple of people from OU had come down to help a couple of their people with a survey of a prairie. I hadn't realized what TYPE of prairie it was at first - it's literal virgin prairie, as far back as land use records go, it's not been plowed, and also it has some topographical features (mima mounds) that likely would not be there if it had been cultivated. I really don't know how it escaped cultivation; I am not sure who owned it up until the cultural center was built (I wonder if it was a tribal member or members who liked it for the link to the past, and just maintained it). 

But first, we met for lunch - the center has a cafe serving traditional Choctaw food (and less traditional things: they also have a gelato bar). I wound up getting the pork plate - grilled pieces of what I think was pork shoulder (it was very, very good - grilled just right, and lightly but adequately seasoned, and it was good pork, too) and pinto beans (also good, unlike some places they don't oversalt their beans) and then something called Banaha bread, which I'd never had - it's a simple cornmeal "mush" that's steamed inside a cornhusk - like a tamale but without meat (one of the two center employees we ate with noted that it was also traditional to make it with beans in the center, and it would have been good that way, less plain). It  WAS very plain, but maybe the idea is next to the meat and the beans something plain is good? Or maybe it was keeping with tradition and that was how it was made. 

After lunch, we went out to the site, This was where Ian - one of the center employees who was most involved with it - told us it was, as far as they can tell, a site that had never been plowed. As I said, it has mima mounds which you tend not to see on sites that have seen extensive plowing. 

It's pretty amazing.

 

That's the casino and the casino hotel in the distance. It's really very close to town, which is why I'm so amazed to learn about it - I never knew it had existed before today

It's got a lot of vegetation diversity - most of the common prairie grasses you'd expect, like Indian grass (which is flowering, so I grabbed a picture)

And also an old friend I knew from Illinois (and perhaps even earlier, from Ohio): Echlinochloa crus-galli, also known as barnyard grass:

 

There were also lots of forbs - the broadleaf plants most people would think of as wildflowers

 Euphorbia corollata, another old friend I knew from prairies in Illinois. It's in the same family as poinsettias.

And I don't remember what they said this purple one was. I thought they said it was an Orobanchaceae (a hemiparasite), but the flower shape is wrong for that family, and I can't think now of what it might be. But it's pretty

 there were lots of Asteraceae (what used to be called "composites," for reasons related to their floral structure). This is probably Solidago missouriensis, Missouri goldenrod:

 

Some species of aster, not quite heath aster but similar:

 

 

Or it might be heath aster, and it's just extremely variable. (Or hairy white aster, S. pilosus)

 

And I don't remember which this one is. They mentioned the name but it's not a familiar species and I don't remember it:

 

 

There was also a tick-trefoil, likely Desmodium sessilifolium, with small white flowers. This plant was a little worse for wear but I took a photo anyway

 

It was a very good day.