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A Day at Pawnee National Grasslands

Jen Toews
Jun 17, 2018
4 min read

On Friday several of us at the Botanic Gardens took the summer interns to Pawnee National Grasslands to visit the shortgrass steppe in all of its glory. I had only driven through a couple of times myself -- once in May before the grasses had greened up and the other time in late August on the way home from Eclipse 2017 after the grasses had faded to brown. During the latter trip, I saw countless Mentzelia (blazing star) flowers in bloom. Backlit by the setting sun, they were like a galaxy of shining stars across a straw-colored landscape and the perfect conclusion to my eclipse experience.

But on this particular visit the grasses were an almost kelly green, thanks to some recent spring rainstorms, and we stopped at the entrance of Pawnee to admire them. Everyone climbed out of the van to experience what it was like to walk through the luxurious, soft, green grass, a carpet which stretched for miles, until an endless blue sky took over. All around us meadowlarks whistled and gurgled their cheerful songs.

The grassland was dotted with the papery, lemon-yellow flowers of pricklypear cactus (Opuntia polyacantha) and the shimmery and feathery tufts of squirreltail grass (Elymus elymoides). We spent some time searching for the occasionally hot pink variant amongst the mostly yellow-flowered pricklypears.

As I wandered through the grass, I contemplated how beautiful the Great Plains are, or what is left of them, rather. Much of this lifezone has been converted to agriculture, has been extensively grazed or altered for oil and gas development, or has been bulldozed by developers to house our expanding population. What remains has been criss-crossed by roads into a fragmented landscape, one that is less hospitable for large animals including bison, pronghorn, and bears which used to roam freely here. Pawnee National Grasslands has certainly not escaped human uses and abuses. The area is a patchwork of public and private land and, as such, wind turbines form a distant backdrop to the Buttes, oil derricks bob up and down as they tirelessly extract resources from the earth, and semi-trucks frequently roar past, leaving a shower of gravel and a cloud of dust.

I have always been drawn to the idea of the prairie, perhaps in part thanks to the Laura Ingalls Wilder series Little House on the Prairie, which my mom read to me when I was a wee child. But until recently, I haven't had many opportunities to look closely at this lifezone, which reveals its subtle and quiet beauty: colorful wildflowers peaking from between the grasses, flitting butterflies and dragonflies, grasses undulating in the wind like the restless ocean, turtles slowly crossing roads, raptors soaring overhead, and a family of young barn owls underneath the highway in a culvert.

Here are just a few wildflowers that we saw at the entrance to Pawnee. Click on image for ID.

Though we could have happily spent more time botanizing, we were also visiting the Grasslands to do the Pawnee Buttes hike. So, we piled back into the van and continued on our journey. Arriving at the trailhead around noon, we enjoyed a leisurely lunch in a shaded picnic area and hydrated before setting out.

The hike showcased the short-grass steppe and we also got to see the mixed-grass prairie ecosystem:

At one point, the trail touched down into an arroyo. The photos below are taken from the bottom of the arroyo, looking up at a cross-section of the soil. Seeing the long taproot of the sage was interesting to me so I photographed it.

We saw more wildflowers on the hike including the ones below. Click on image for ID.

The interns botanized with PK, who entertained everyone with interesting stories about the plants we encountered.

DBG interns studying and photographing a species of Cryptantha.

The goal of our hike was to make it to "The Bunnery." I was not super familiar with this terms so I did an internet search, which did not produce much other than an article from the 80s in the North American Rock Garden Society's newsletter and a post by PK called "A Hunny of a Bunnery." However, I think the photos below capture what a bunnery is: an ecosystem where the plant community consists primarily of bun and cushion plants, most of which are adorably cute and resemble alpine plants. The area is often exposed or on a ridge and many species cannot survive the harsh environment except for the bun and cushion plants with their tight little habits that create their own personal micro-ecosystems, enabling them to survive. There is also a lot of bare soil.

Here are a few more photos of bun, cushion, and other hardy plants at "The Bunnery."

More photos of bun plants -- because can you ever really have too many bun plants? Nope. On the left is a bun of Eremogone hookeri with Astragalus tridactylicus growing in it. On the left, more E. hookeri with some dried Hymenoxys acaulis. "The Bunnery" was the highlight of this hike for me, as I had never seen anything like it until now.