iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Dan Carter @prairiebotanist.com · 28/09/2026

Ancient grasslands, once destroyed, don’t grow the same plant species back www.nature.com/articles/d44.... We already knew this. There are whole organizations founded on this and which are aware of the mechanisms.

nature.com

Ancient grasslands, once destroyed, don’t grow the same plant species back

Recovering secondary grasslands have taller plants that can quickly absorb light and nutrients.

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Dan Carter @prairiebotanist.com · 27/09/2026

I pulled in the dock at the Bayfield County place. It was only in an inch of water due to drought, but it meant the mucky and sandy shore was growing cool stuff like Rhynchospora capitella.

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Dan Carter @prairiebotanist.com · 27/09/2026

Fine autumn day to dig a little more red-pine-oak savanna out of the maple-poplar-hazel thicket caused by poor forestry and fire exclusion.

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Dan Carter @prairiebotanist.com · 24/09/2026

I cut back ninebark yesterday so it wouldn't impinge on the fascist blue spruces next door. I was happy to be a good neighbor. The blue spruce will join our neighborhood's Rhizosphaera needle cast party soon enough.

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Reposted by Dan Carter

Nicolas Hénin @nicolashenin.net · 17/09/2026

Nice campaign by the Norwegian Consumer Council about the declining lifespan of products. Enjoy!

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Dan Carter @prairiebotanist.com · 12/09/2026

Violet coral (Clavaria amethystina...some new work suggest our Midwestern violet cor is not C. zollingeri). A visitor to the Mukwonago River Oak Barrens mentioned seeing this recently. We knew about it, but this year it is indeed very abundant there in wet-mesic sand under oak.

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Dan Carter @prairiebotanist.com · 30/08/2026

To “Google” used to mean search, but that had faded already. Now it means to lick boot or kiss ass.

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Dan Carter @prairiebotanist.com · 27/08/2026

Some stewards are operating in a world where this has been learned already, and they tend have success, but quite a few aren't, so this is good to see. This implies things about how old growth works and has worked. It reinforces why some practices are successful and others aren't.

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Dan Carter @prairiebotanist.com · 07/08/2026

I like this discussion. For those of us that do what we can at home, it's good. It's very good, in fact, but there are limits. It doesn't approach the importance of protecting and sustaining (burning very often in the dormant season) the remnants. www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDVc...

youtube.com

How Prairie Fires Restore Water to Soil & Why Prairies Need to Burn

YouTube video by Crime Pays But Botany Doesn't

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Dan Carter @prairiebotanist.com · 07/08/2026

We burned this fen in February for the 1st time in memory. The footprint of flowering Parnassia glauca (grass-of-Parnassus) extends farther away from the marl/gravel flats into the sedges this year, and Rhychospora alba (white beak-rush) is blooming, which I have never detected on previous visits.

White blossom with five white green-striped petals of grass-of-Parnassus with a small blue blossom of Kalm's lobelia.

Numerous white beak-rush growing among other sedges with Ohio goldenrod in yellow bud.

Sedge meadow attendant to the fen with abundant pink blossoms spotted Joe-Pye, white umbels of cowbane, and a yellow giant sunflower.

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Dan Carter @prairiebotanist.com · 29/07/2026

Lordy, I read some comments on a political site I used to frequent much more often, and folks are hot mad that #Hong might win the WI Democratic primary. They talk about young voters supporting her, but I've gone with "electable" voting my whole life and

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Dan Carter @prairiebotanist.com · 26/07/2026

Dewpoints well into the 80s in western Iowa due in part to near peak corn evaporation. Heat indices in spots over 120, and it has two or three hours to get worse.

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Dan Carter @prairiebotanist.com · 02/07/2026

Today it was generally in the upper 80s to around 90, there was a stiff breeze, heat index peaked in the mid-90s, but was generally in the low 90s. Wednesday is supposed to be "water day" at day camp. Kids told me they didn't do it, because they stay inside if the heat index is above 90! 90!?

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Dan Carter @prairiebotanist.com · 01/07/2026

Several 80F+ dewpoints in the southern half of Wisconsin today. Lisbon Mauston Airport "wins" with a dewpoint of 83F and heat index of 111F just after noon today. #Heat #Humidity #Heatwave

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Dan Carter @prairiebotanist.com · 25/06/2026

Looking at some Driftless prairies today.

Dolemite outcrop with Smooth cliff-break fern with bluff prairie behind and an area of trees and a fair weather sky with puffy cumulus clouds in the background.

Wood lily on dry prairie with prairie coreopsis and an old eastern red cedar snag with a wooded bluff and fair weather sky with puffy cumulus clouds in the background.

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Dan Carter @prairiebotanist.com · 16/05/2026

A long and hot but beautiful day on #prairie and some savanna on the bluffs above La Crosse, WI.

Primula fassettii with pink, nodding blossoms and erect developing seed capsules tucked into a little grotto weathered into a soft layer of limestone (broad sense) on a south-facing slope.

South facing prairie slope with blossoming Lithospermum canescens and sloughing chunks of hard (dolomite containing) rock and fixed pillars of stone above.

Savanna restoration (really more a reconstruction) carved out of the forest that had invaded the once savanna on the toe of the slope below a bluff prairie. Oaks are a bit tall and spindly due to past crowding. Native grasses and sedges are establishing well in the ground layer.

Absolute unit of Lithospermum incisum growing and limey, sandy colluvium in an area recently cleared of invading brush and trees.

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Dan Carter @prairiebotanist.com · 13/05/2026

I was out working to prep the remnant prairie along the wetland edge at the Mukwonago River Oak Barrens to be in an autumn burn unit and I found Hypoxis hirsuta peaking through the thatch. I’ve looked for it four years in this spot and only now found a couple flowering plants.

Sunny yellow flower of Hypoxis. The blossom has six petals and is about half an inch across.

Area where Hypoxis is growing showing dense vegetation under a blue sky with scattered clouds.

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Dan Carter @prairiebotanist.com · 12/05/2026

With a minor and not to the point correction that N-fixing bacteria in soil get their energy from organic molecules vs. the very energy intensive breaking of the N2 bond, I loved this talk, given in the context of old growth ecosystems. www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gIG...

youtube.com

The Amazing World of Wild Plant-Soil Interactions with Justin Thomas

YouTube video by Arkansas Native Plant Society

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Dan Carter @prairiebotanist.com · 02/05/2026

Minimum of 26.3 Fahrenheit. No damage to the tender oak leaves, which in past years seams to happen in the 24-26 range if the freeze isn't too long in duration and its not windy. Actually, of the hundreds of native species at our place, hairy ruellia is the only one that was zapped.

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Dan Carter @prairiebotanist.com · 22/04/2026

The enemy brought guns to debate club, so I'm glad that in the case of redistricting Democrats responded in kind for once instead of taking the high ground before being steamrolled.

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Dan Carter @prairiebotanist.com · 15/04/2026

Accountability for biodiversity outcomes in conservation is very important, and I agree with much of this wholeheartedly, but much of effective site-based conservation is grassroots and already overburdened by the need for administration for grants... www.researchgate.net/publication/...

researchgate.net

(PDF) Open letter: The need for a site‐based biodiversity standard measuring and certifying impacts from nature‐based projects

PDF | Despite growing investment in restoration, weak accountability and poor biodiversity monitoring mean many projects fail to achieve ecological... | Find, read and cite all the research you need o...

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Dan Carter @prairiebotanist.com · 08/04/2026

Will the conservative margin in Waukesha County be less than 10%?! When we moved here it was a 70-30 place. Slowly, surely. Ozaukee seems to have flipped. WOW are just now Ww. Frankly, I look at my neighbors, my community, and I'm amazed, but I'll take it!

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Dan Carter @prairiebotanist.com · 28/03/2026

Full day. The Glacial Prairie Chapter of The #Prairie Enthusiasts got in its last planned burn just under the wire of the impending growing season and just in time for me to meet up with my family at the tail end of #NoKIngs in Waukesha.

View along the fire line of a prairie burn. The burn boss and an observer look on from a cultivated field with a UTV pump unit in the background. In the front foreground are flames, further back is smoke and blackened ground. All under a sunny blue sky.

Flames dance around the bases of bare bur oak trees.

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Dan Carter @prairiebotanist.com · 25/03/2026

Round-lobed hepatica opened up at my place, where it has spread over a little convex area the oak litter blows off of (so it doesn't smother and often doesn't burn when I burn off the leaf litter). Wood betony is emerging, particularly in areas burned in the fall where the soil is a wee bit warmer.

Pale pink, six-petaled flowers of round-lobed hepatica flowering above last year's leaves, which have overwintered, moss, and dried blades of sedge from last year.

crimson shoots of wood betony emerging about an inch above the soil, looking like little ruffled ridicchios.

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Dan Carter @prairiebotanist.com · 20/03/2026

The view in the first image was burned late last October. The view in the second image was burned in February. Both areas get burned every dormant season. Now think like an overwintering #invertebrate. The clumps are Sprengel's sedge. This is a reconstructed #oak #woodland / #savanna setting. #Fire

A ring of sprengel's sedge, with a few inges last year's dead foliage present, but it's distal tips have burned off along with oak leaf litter. The bases of the leaf blades remained green after the burn and overwinter, and new green shoots have just begun to grow. Fire did not reach the center of this clump, where some twigs and other debris remain.

This area was burned in late February, and the burn was much more complete, consuming sedge shoots down to ground level. The black is a little deceptive, because it will wash away and some debris remaining because it was moist and possibly frozen when this was burned.

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Dan Carter @prairiebotanist.com · 16/03/2026

Goddammit, when are folks going to realize or acknowledge that we can't assess things like fire frequency without accounting for seasonality. Fire in tallgrass prairie ecosystems can be stabilizing or a degradatory disturbance, depending on season. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

link.springer.com

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Dan Carter @prairiebotanist.com · 14/03/2026

I still can't believe we're allowed to do this! Sometimes the day before a winter storm is the best. Here we're removing smothering thatch, volatilizing nitrogen away, and lofting phosphous containing particulates away from a fen-sedge meadow complex with several rare species...

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Dan Carter @prairiebotanist.com · 06/03/2026

I normally do my taxes just as soon as I've got all the documentation. This year I've been putting it off. It just feels gross to be party to it. This weekend, I guess.

media.tenor.com

a cartoon of bart simpson holding a green monster

ALT: a cartoon of bart simpson holding a green monster

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Dan Carter @prairiebotanist.com · 05/03/2026

Oh the joys of a constipated 6-year-old.

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Dan Carter @prairiebotanist.com · 04/03/2026

71% RH. Who cares. A little March sun and dry antecedent conditions, and praires will burn just fine. RH was actually 82% a hour before ignition!

Smoke rises from fire passing under a large bur oak matriarch (5 feet in diameter)

A burn crew member stands next to a drip torch observing the fire line and the burn-out around a dead bur oak snag in the distance.

Backing/flanking fire along the fire line with a crew member standing back and monitoring the fire break and grassy fuels on the far side of the break.

Flanking and backing fire burning into prairie with old farm structures in the background.

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Dan Carter @prairiebotanist.com · 28/02/2026

No pics, but great turn out for burn pile burning in the snow today. Wonder why💥

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Dan Carter @prairiebotanist.com · 27/02/2026

We got some small burns in today. PERFECT conditions. I wish I would have had time today to set up the bigger burns (still not super big) that needs doing. It was 9F this morning, but 40F with ~45% RH this afternoon and a 5-10mph wind.

Fire backs away from a mowed burn break through low, grassy/sedgy fuels. Smoke lofts and drifts to the right. In the background a crew member smothers fire along the firebreak with a flapper. Obscured by smoke, another crew member with a backpack water can observes.

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Dan Carter @prairiebotanist.com · 18/02/2026

The Prairie Enthusiasts' Annual Conference starts tomorrow evening. It's virtual, and sessions can be viewed live or afterwards for up to 90 days. Management, Science, Art, Culture. theprairieenthusiasts.org/tpe-events/2...

theprairieenthusiasts.org

Annual Conference | Prairie Enthusiasts

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Dan Carter @prairiebotanist.com · 12/02/2026

Similar stories underpin so many invasions of exotic flora and fauna. Often we work hard to eradicate them and ignore the underlying causes that are destroying ecological integrity and opening up the landscape to invasion. Garlic mustard. Common buckthorn. Etcetera.

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Dan Carter @prairiebotanist.com · 01/02/2026

This is what humanity looks like.

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Dan Carter @prairiebotanist.com · 01/02/2026

We need to take advantage of this in primaries so that in November we elect new legislators that aren't beholden to corporate overlords, have back bones, & are as incensed as we are about the murder goons & the kid rape island half the Admin and those same corporate overlords patronized. #Democrats

thehill.com

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Dan Carter @prairiebotanist.com · 31/01/2026

Bringing back a savanna means getting rid of the damn planted pines & black cherries smothering the white oaks & plants beneath. It's also a good cure for cabin fever, & it feels good to work with fellow citizens to make the place where we live better. It's possible to sweat when it's ten degrees.

Burn pile of glossy buckthorn, big logs from a planted Scots pine, and black cherry burning in a wooded area with snow covering the ground.

burn pile of glossy buckthorn, big logs from a planted Scots pine, and black cherry in the foreground, tall trees and passing clouds in the background along with one of the people that was feeding this fire.

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Kristen Radtke @kristenradtke.bsky.social · 27/01/2026

I wrote about my childhood friend Alexi Pretti. Please read it and share it and remember him as a human being. @theverge.com

theverge.com

I grew up with Alex Pretti

The kind-hearted ICU nurse shot by ICE agents was my childhood best friend.

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Dan Carter @prairiebotanist.com · 27/01/2026

What Senate #Democrats don't seam to grasp is how incensed their constituents are. We demand to see them LEADING on the moral authority of the moment. If complete resistance means hardship, bring it. We'll support each other. We are eager to sacrifice in order to build a free society.

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Dan Carter @prairiebotanist.com · 23/01/2026

At my location it gets this cold each winter. The warmest absolute min winter real temp I've experienced in the last 11 winters in my current location is -14F. Most have been -17F or colder. The coldest was -32F. Mornings like this ar rough, but at least it'll feel balmy when it gets back above 0F.

Screenshot of current weather conditions at the National Weather Service office located in Sullivan, WI (about 40 miles west of Milwaukee). It is -16F with a wind chill of -38F.

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Dan Carter @prairiebotanist.com · 23/01/2026

Even worse is knowing that there were no votes that were only no votes because they knew the bill would pass.

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