“It’s a bad day to be a parsnip.”
— Breyden Noble, Prairie Partners Intern
Prairie Partners are back for the summer! These five interns are halfway through a joint summer internship with Groundswell Conservancy, Riverland Conservancy, Ice Age Trail Alliance, and the DNR. Every Wednesday, we visit our preserves with tools in hand, removing invasive species, collecting seeds, and learning about restoring native prairies.
Eliza Volz collecting prairie phlox seed at Westport Prairie. Photo by Sam Douglass.
We’re seed collecting again, which means I’m back with my favorite plants: hemiparasites. These are plants that survive by latching onto other plants’ roots to siphon off nutrients. They also photosynthesize, so they’re not entirely reliant on hosts for survival. Hemiparasites have names like downy painted cup, wood betony, false foxglove, and bastard toadflax. Mystical names.
Calling them parasites isn’t a moral judgement; it’s just a description of how they work. These native plants are actually crucial to keeping the prairie in balance.
Collecting seed from downy painted cup, a hemiparasite. Can you spot the wood betony, another hemiparasite? Photo by Sam Douglass.
Using Hemiparasites as a Management Tool
Prairie stewards will often use wood betony to keep aggressive plants in check. It’s common to find a planted prairie dominated by big bluestem grass. Left alone, big bluestem can crowd out other species, reducing the plant diversity that makes prairies thrive. Introducing wood betony can suppress the tall grasses. As a stand of wood betony expands and dies off in the center, that open “doughnut hole” becomes a perfect spot to plant new wildflowers.
At Westport Prairie, we have a number of hemiparasitic plants. They tend to enjoy dry, low-nutrient soils and especially love the drumlin.
Chris Gavin at Groundswell’s recent foraging field trip. Photo by Amanda Dambrink.
What’s Happening Underground
I learned something fascinating from Chris Gavin at our recent foraging field trip at Hickory Hill Conservancy. It’s another story about how root interactions underground shape the plant communities we see above.
Walking up a long hill, Chris Gavin stopped at a garlic mustard plant. He started with the practical: Garlic mustard is delicious, and once you learn to recognize the mustard family, all of them are edible. Then he got to the ecological: Garlic mustard releases chemicals into the soil to disrupt mycorrhizal networks—the underground fungal webs that allow plants to share nutrients and communicate with each other.
Garlic mustard, an invasive species, essentially poisons the soil around it so that only it can survive. That’s part of why it spreads so successfully and does so much damage.
There might be an antidote: Jewelweed, a native plant known for soothing poison ivy rashes, doesn’t rely on mycorrhizal networks. That means garlic mustard’s toxins don’t affect it. Jewelweed can grow right through a garlic mustard stand and actually outcompete it.
It’s a good reminder that nature has the tools to heal itself. Is it any surprise that the plant that heals our skin can also heal the soil? But, Jewelweed isn’t a silver bullet. Deer often eat before it has a chance to outcompete garlic mustard.
All of this—using jewelweed to outcompete garlic mustard and using hemiparasites against grasses—comes from an ethic of working with ecological connections rather than against them. Every day, we’re making new observations and experimenting in the field to better our stewardship.
Cheers,
Sam Douglass
Farm & Land Manager
P.S. If this work inspires you, please consider making a gift to Groundswell to keep the momentum going!