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Dan Carter @prairiebotanist.com · 30/09/2026

Man, hybrid cattail has destroyed connectivity between so many Midwestern lakes and adjacent wetlands and uplands. Pictured is Utica Lake, Waukesha County, WI with adjacent tamarack fen behind the cattails.

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Dan Carter @prairiebotanist.com · 30/09/2026

These are haycocks in what is now the Scuppernong Habitat Area of the Kettle Moraine State Forest-South.

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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 · 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 · 07/08/2026

There are several springs like this in the fen, but the most voluminous everge from cobbles, the water having pushed out all of the sand and small pebbles.

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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 · 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 · 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 · 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 · 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 · 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 · 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 · 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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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 · 20/01/2026

May not happen. It's predicated on snowpack, but most eastern hardwoods--even those restricted to the South--can withstand brief bouts extreme cold, because it does happen. They just can't take deep ground freezes or weeks of temperatues like this.

GFS 2 meter temperature model output showing a map of the southeastern United States for the morning of January 27. Temperatures between 0 and -20F cover a broad swath from E. Texas to coastal North Carolina and southern Ohio to central Alabama.

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Dan Carter @prairiebotanist.com · 20/01/2026

Maybe the faintest and lamest phone-visible pink #aurora behind the cirrus at in Dousman, WI.

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Dan Carter @prairiebotanist.com · 15/01/2026

Plant your victory gardens. 1.bp.blogspot.com/-Wd7z27sbGqY...

Frame of chicken wire over an asparagus bed with a sign on a wood frame above it that reads, "This is the awning of the cage of asparagus."

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Dan Carter @prairiebotanist.com · 31/12/2025

I live in a maybe, but if I think of this as though I were looking for a fresh start.

Map showing states I'd consider living in...West Coast, Upper Midwest (esp. MN), New England, New Mexico and Colorado. I'd be drawn to Iowa if it hadn't destroyed itself with its agriculture. Hardest no is Florida, but I have to admit to never having been there.

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Dan Carter @prairiebotanist.com · 20/11/2025

Apparently parents in my school district are offended that red oaks are monecious--they have both male and female reproductive organs. Wishtree was assigned to all students and their families to read together. #Wishtree #bookbans #oak #Kettlemoraine #Wisconsin #Waukesha

Dear Dousman Families,

Back in September, Dousman Elementary and the PTO began communicating their interest in a one-book community read....Copies of the Wishtree were sent home ahead of time so families could decide how and when they wanted to participate. This activity was also planned alongside the school’s book fair to support a strong reading culture in the building.

We have since received concerns about the book Wishtree....

As families began reading the book, three concerns were shared with the school or via social media. The first was the way the main character, a tree, introduces itself as biologically male and female. The second was the storyline involving a religious minority family experiencing discrimination. The third was that the tree describes keeping secrets, which some families felt sent a message that was not appropriate for a school wide read.

Given the concerns that have been shared, the district is taking the time to look carefully at the book and its use in our schools. We take the concerns that families have raised seriously, and when questions arise about the appropriateness of a book or material, we use our established review process.... Wishtree will move into that formal review process. The outcome may include keeping the book with conditions, limiting its use to specific settings, or removing it as a district resource....

During the review, the book will not be used as a building wide selection....

We view this as an opportunity for the district, the school board, and our community to work together. We appreciate the feedback that families have offered. Families are an essential part of the education process and your input helps us ensure that materials are age appropriate, reflect community expectations, and support a positive learning environment.

Thank you for your continued partnership. If you have questions or would like to discuss this further, please reach out.

"As families began reading the book, three concerns were shared with the school or via social media. The first was the way the main character, a tree, introduces itself as biologically male and female. The second was the storyline involving a religious minority family experiencing discrimination. The third was that the tree describes keeping secrets, which some families felt sent a message that was not appropriate for a school wide read."

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Dan Carter @prairiebotanist.com · 17/11/2025

It is the ecological and ritual season of burning. The most salubrious time to burn. Coarse stems--even seeds--stand. Terricolous lichens and bryophytes survive. Larvae rest cosy in their galls. The stage is set for next season's abundance. #Prairie #Savanna #RxFire #MukwonagoRiverOakBarrens

Bright flame in the dark of late evening creep into the wind over fallen bur oak litter and short, herbaceous plants

Flaming fronts from stripping ignitions converge at the Mukwonago River Oak Barrens on 11/13/25.

The entire foreground burned on 11/13. This shot was taken 11/17. Because this is not a productive site and it was burned last year, intensity was low, leaving even the seed heads of gray goldenrod unburned.

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Dan Carter @prairiebotanist.com · 05/11/2025

Very small burns, but if we remove buckthorn (glossy and common here) and there is enough fuel to burn in fall, we do, and then we augmentively seed in late fall with species that were likely once present but extirpated by fire exclusion / shade / litter / past grazing / etc.

Volunteers supervise fire a low line of fire as it creeps through bronze, crunch black and Hill's oak leaf litter.

After the burn the ground is mostly black and bare and will be ready to receive seed, though some patches of leaf litter persisted.

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Dan Carter @prairiebotanist.com · 31/10/2025

My happy place these days. Fall colors and textures. Home to many beings. #MukwonagoRiverOakBarenns #ThePrairieEnthusiasts #Savanna #Prairie

View of recovering oak barrens at the Mukwonago River Oak Barrens with soft plumes of gray goldenrod (mostly, a little tall goldenrod up front), gold and red hues of uniform bristleberry, and mahogany and russet marcescent foliage of black oaks. All under a blue sky with a few puffy cumulus and lit by the low autumn sun.

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Dan Carter @prairiebotanist.com · 28/10/2025

Last Friday during a volunteer work party at the Mukwonago River Oak Barrens we found this blue spotted salamander in a piece of partially burried rotten wood. We were physically pulling invading glossy buckthorn. ...another reason why I favor slower approaches to big machines with grindy bits.

A blue spotted salamander with light blue spots over a back background resting on some moist moss on the outide of the rotten wood where it was found.

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Dan Carter @prairiebotanist.com · 24/10/2025

The first hard freeze was last night. We burned some sedge meadow today.

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Dan Carter @prairiebotanist.com · 26/09/2025

Ordered Symphyotrichum ericoides. Received mix of S. erioides and S. pilosum. Booooo. It's a nursury that produces excellent plants that I've had good experience with, so we'll see what they say. #nativeplants

Inflorescence of heath aster on left with small capitula with short rays and frost aster at right with larger capitula with longer rays.

Heath aster capitulum from below at left with recurved, blunt involucral bracts. Frost aster capitulum at right with pointy involucral bracts that are ascending to divergent immediately below the rays.

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Dan Carter @prairiebotanist.com · 19/09/2025

A quick comment on #climate #resilient #landscapes. The #Driftless Area of Wisconsin is considered have some inbuilt resilience owing to its varied aspects, slopes, and soils. Perhaps as it warms more xerophytic vegetation (prairie, oak savanna, oak woods) on S and SW aspects can expand. 1/4

Leadplant dying its slow death in the shade under ironwood and maple colonizing a sandy and rocky south slope in Vernon County, WI. Maple leaves litter the ground, because they are being shed early in response to a dry spell. Other prairie plants in the vicinity were hoary puccoon, purple prairie clover, side-oats grama, big bluestem, and thimbleweed.

Leadplant with an ironwood trunk immediately behind it and a big, leafy Leatherwood (Dirca palustris) immediately behind that. Simply nuts. It wasn't the only leatherwood marching from what was presumably their cool, moist refuge around some rock outcrops on the steep north slope of this ridge.

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Dan Carter @prairiebotanist.com · 18/09/2025

BAD photos, but first time for me coming across Bartonia virginica, here in moist, sandy area under white oak...more specifically in a little clearing among royal fern, huckleberry, velvet-leaf blueberry, a bristly dewberry. Not a common thing in SE WI.

Four-petaled flowers (just past blooming) borne oppositely along the upper portions of pale lavendar stems with very reduced leaves.

A dense patch of Bartonia that appear almost like threads rising stiffly from the earth with their now ripening ovaries held high.

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Dan Carter @prairiebotanist.com · 01/09/2025

I wonder who made these galls on Symphyotrichum ericoides? #nativeplants #prairie

Enlarged “buds” or unopened capitula with enlarged involucres on heath aster

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Dan Carter @prairiebotanist.com · 26/08/2025

At 16.5 or 17 years of age it's come time to say goodbye to Thistle. With us always through good and bad, milestones, transitions, and the mundane. A very good dog, friend, member of the family. Lots of short sunny walks today and tomorrow, and the best bits, which are all she'll eat.

These pictures simply show a very good dog (a beagle mix) in happy places...on the trail and laying in the grass on a splendid spring day.

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Dan Carter @prairiebotanist.com · 22/08/2025

This led me to Parks et al. (2025, www.nature.com/articles/s41...). which in turn led me to this figure, which is brilliant and on the money.

"This conceptual model generally applies to dry conifer forests in western North America, formerly red pine dominated forests in the southeastern boreal forest, and temperate broadleaf and conifer woodlands and forests of the eastern United States. Prior to ~1880, traditional burning and lightning-ignited fires contributed to an active historical fire regime with frequent, lower-severity fires that produced tree-ring fire scars, cumulatively burned a relatively large area, and maintained low fuel loads, thereby serving as a stabilizing (negative) feedback88. The gradual increase in annual area burned from 1600 to 1880 may have resulted from a warming climate at the end of the Little Ice Age136 and is generally based on Marlon et al.7, although this pattern may manifest due to reduced records in the earlier periods of analysis137. The onset of sustained fire exclusion and suppression over many decades reduced annual area burned, reflected by a decline in tree-ring fire scars, during which time fuel loads accumulated. At present, fires generally burn during pronounced droughts, increasing the area burned in recent years, although total area burned remains below historical levels. Contemporary fires in historically frequent fire forests now often act as a destabilizing (positive) feedback88, with tremendous social-ecological effects through smoke impacts, reduced community safety, and diminished forest recovery. The future is uncertain and depends on management actions, social decisions and priorities, and climate change. Figure credit: Jessie Thoreson."

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Dan Carter @prairiebotanist.com · 20/08/2025

"Forest soils" is a bit of a misnomer in this area. Original land survey notes for transects passing over those lighter areas describe the land outside "marsh" as timbered with oak, but with undergrowth of redroot (New Jersey Tea), rosin weed, rose, and willow (probably prairie willow).

Original land survey notes for the town (and county) line in this area that describes land: "Land except marsh rolloing second rate--bur, white, yellow, and black oak. Red root, rosin weed, etc."

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Dan Carter @prairiebotanist.com · 16/08/2025

Miles of burn piles below, around, and above Taos Ski Valley in the Carson National Forest in the wake of 2021's massive blowdown event. In some areas the piles have been burned. The scale of the effort is pretty unfathomable. The high country looks nothing like it did last time I was up there...

Burn piles six to ten feet wide by five to six feet tall in the Carson national forest above Taos Ski Valley, with an average spacing propably around 25 ft. This goes on literally for miles from below the Ski Valley up almost to Bull of the Woods.

Blowdown in the wilderness area where debris has not been consolidated into piles. The effort to reopen these trails was massive. Large conifer trunks litter the ground like match sticks. Many trees tipped over. Others were snapped in the middle.

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Dan Carter @prairiebotanist.com · 15/08/2025

Parry's mountain gentians (Gentiana parryi) and felwort (Gentianella amarella)...I think...are going full tilt in the high meadows of the Sangre de Cristos in N. New Mexico.

A cluster of three large, lush, cerulean Parry's gentian flowers opening into the sunshine.

Small, star-shaped, pale purple flowers of felwort opening in axillary clusters.

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Dan Carter @prairiebotanist.com · 24/07/2025

Hole in tall prairie vegetation where rope dodder (Cuscuta glomerata) is hammering tall goldenrod (Solidago altissima) & sawtooth sunflower (Helianthus grosseserratus). Rope dodder favors composites, esp. long-rhizomatous goldenrods (tall, Canada, giant) & sunflowers. #nativeplants #prairie

Area of low prairie vegetation where tall goldenrod (Solidago altissima) and sawtooth sunflower (Helianthus grosseserratus) have been weakened by rope dodder (Cuscuta glomerata).

Rope dodder infloerescence twisting arround a sawtooth sunflower stem like a coil of rope. It's vegetative vines can be seen senescing and turning brown already, which happens after the dodder has seized its host and begun to flower.

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Dan Carter @prairiebotanist.com · 23/07/2025

Check out the dewpoints in NW Illinois. Low to middle 80s Fahrenheit. Dewpoints! The effect of well-watered corn and peak evapotranspiration. At the NWS office near where I live (SE WI), the peak dewpoint so far today is 80.2F.

Map showing dewpoints and temperatures at varieous stations in NW Illinois. Most dewpoints are 80F or above, and temperatures are in the upper 80s to low 90s F. In Freeport the dewpoint is 85F!

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Dan Carter @prairiebotanist.com · 19/07/2025

Minuartia michauxii growing out of a bitching soil biological crust of terricolous lichen (need to try and figure out which) on a dry, dolomite gravel hill prairie in SE WI. This prairie is frequently burned, so thatch doesn't smother the crust, and fire intensity is low (low fuel loads)...

Spiky foliage of a small clump of Minuartii michauxii growing out of the textured and complex surface of a soil biological crust.

Dark terricolous lichen with paler reproductive structures, the main component of this soil biological crust.

General view of prairie hillside where little bluestem is the dominant grass. Crusts and Minuartia grow in the space between the grass clumps.

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Dan Carter @prairiebotanist.com · 09/07/2025

The Baltimore checkerspots are out in my neck of the woods. I saw this one this morning while doing some work to keep hybrid cattail at bay from the sedge meadow their local host plant, Chelone glabra, depends on.

A black, orange, and white patterned Baltimore Checkerspot buttefly spreads its wings while perched on upward-facing surface of a spotted Joe-Pye weed leaf.

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Dan Carter @prairiebotanist.com · 08/07/2025

Been working on a site for two years, and still finding remnant populations species that should be conspicuous AND that I've been looking for. Today #293 and #294 were Cleland's evening primrose (pictured, Oenothera clelandii) and stiff goldenrod (Oligoneuron rigidum)...

Flower of Cleland's evening primrose (Oenothera clelandii) showing diamond shape petal and anthers and stigma exerted similarly vs. stigma exceding anthers as in Oenothera rhombipetala.

General erect habit of Oenothera clelandii. Leaves are narrower than the common Oenothera biennis.

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Dan Carter @prairiebotanist.com · 04/07/2025

The new neighbors up at the lake are drunk and obnoxious at dawn, but the sky is pretty.

Rose glow of sunrise under dying showers over a northern Wisconsin lake

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Dan Carter @prairiebotanist.com · 03/07/2025

I also wonder if maybe things used to drain around to the north vs. the present route to the south. It at least looks like Jericho Creek used to go that way before it cut south just east of Eagle Spring Lake (which is impounded and used to be much smaller and mostly open wetland). A lot going on!

Hillsahde map showing broader context, drumlin fields to the northwest and NE, beds of old pro-glacial lakes, etc.

Hillshade zoomed out slightly showing where drainage along Jericho Creek corridor emptied into broader valley. (top just left of middle)

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Dan Carter @prairiebotanist.com · 03/07/2025

The center of this area (August, 1956 photo) are Chelsea sand, which conditions on the ground line up with, but this photo appears to show much of the area farmed, planted with an August-ripening cereal crop, and differential ripening patterns caused maybe by an underlying alluvial fan? 1/

August, 1956 air photo from the Mukwonago River Corridor in the vicinity of the T/Eagle / T/Mukwonago line (the N/S fence line in this photo). The central area appears cropped (maybe spring wheat or barley?), but the cropped has differential ripening patterns (seen as light vs. dark) which reflect underlying geology. Soils are Chelse sand, but there appear to be underlying channels similar to what one migh see associated with an alluvial fan. Present vegetation is recovering black oak barrens. Species like Asclepias amplexicaulis, Asclepias viridiflora, Crocanthemum canadense, Lechea stricta, Hieracium longipilum, Liatris aspera, and Lithospermum caroliniense have spontaneously recolonized this area from edges following agricultural abandonment.

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