Plant of the Week

Nine-anther dalea
Dalea enneandra Nutt.
other common names: bigtop dalea, plume dalea, slender parosela, nine-anther prairie clover, bigtop prairie clover
Dalea: once called Parosela; renamed after Samuel Dale, an early English botanist
Enneandra: from Latin, meaning “with nine stamens”
Legume family: Fabaceae (Leguminosae)

Photograph by Thomas Rosburg, Wildflowers of the Tallgrass Prairie: The Upper Midwest, Second Edition

An Interview with Mark Müller: Part 1

What was the catalyst—the magic moment—that brought you to appreciate prairies in the first place? How long have you been working to protect and reconstruct them?

The magic moment may have been way back in 1968 out in western Iowa. There is a newspaper picture of me from that year when I was 10 years old on a school field trip with a black-eyed Susan in my mouth, tango style, and I’m admiring a bunch of other prairie plants. Although that moment of initial prairie magic was pushed back to the far recesses of my adolescent brain for a number of years, it all came flooding back when I met Daryl Smith at the University of Northern Iowa in 1980, when he took our class to Mark’s Prairie (Cedar Hills Sand Prairie now). Wow, that 20 acres of virgin prairie was jam-packed with a diversity of life! Along with the sheer beauty of that little patch of prairie came Daryl’s enthusiasm and reverence for how rare a sight it was. I was hooked. Still am. Later that same year after I met Larry Eilers, Bill Haywood, Paul Christiansen, Pauline Drobney, and Bill Watson, how could I not be a rampant prairie addict? Never underestimate the power of mentors and field trips—leave no child inside!

Beyond the tallgrass species, what other plants and animals are you especially interested in?

Everything. I am a certified biodiversity junkie—a silent spring would kill me. Before feeling the guilt of a hypocrite, I used to jet around the planet quite a bit. When I was in Alaska my favorite bird might be the tufted puffin, in Costa Rica it changes to a quetzal and while in Antarctica it’s the emperor penguin. We have planted hundreds of native woodland, grassland, and wetland plants here on our farmlet; the bird feeder is our TV. This fantastic array of species on this amazing planet, from the bizarre to the common, is the spice of life for me. I even find noxious, invasive species interesting, before I kill them, of course.



You’re the brains behind the laminated Bur Oak Guides. Tell us how you got the idea.

The idea for Prairie in Your Pocket came about because it was a little cumbersome for people to take the Illustrated Guide to Iowa Prairie Plants out in the field, and I thought arranging the plants by blooming colors would inspire more novices to get out and see what this amazing thing called prairie was all about. The woodland and wetland guides filled out the trilogy for Iowa’s major ecosystems. The pocket guides, posters, DVDs, etc., are all about education and awareness; the more folks know about and become familiar with the natural world, the more they will care about it and hopefully make better life-style choices to preserve and protect it. Open the obit section of any newspaper, so many dead people, but if you don’t know them you probably don’t feel much loss or sadness; the same is true if a little prairie remnant is plowed under, people unfamiliar with the importance of these gems couldn’t care less. Awareness and education are mandatory! I think the UI Press should take credit for how the amazing collection of pocket guides from mushrooms to raptors has evolved into one of the best series of natural history education/awareness publications I have ever seen.

Mark Müller, coauthor, An Illustrated Guide to Iowa Prairie Plants, and author, Prairie in Your Pocket, Woodland in Your Pocket, and Wetlands in Your Pocket

Plant of the Week

Black-eyed Susan
Rudbeckia serotina Nutt.
scientific name, 2008
Rudbeckia hirta L.
other common names: brown Betty, brown daisy, brown-eyed Susan, coneflower, donkeybead, English bull’s eye, poor-land daisy, yellow daisy, yellow Jerusalem, yellow ox-eye daisy, deer eye (Cherokee)
Rudbeckia: named in honor of two Rudbecks, father and son botanists, who preceded Linnaeus at the University in Uppsala, Sweden
Serotina: from Latin serum, meaning “late”
Daisy family: Asteraceae (Compositae)

Photograph by Thomas Rosburg, Wildflowers of the Tallgrass Prairie: The Upper Midwest, Second Edition

An Interview with David Faldet: Part 3

Besides the Upper Iowa region, what are your favorite natural areas in Iowa?
The eastern half of the Upper Iowa flows through the Driftless Area of the Upper Mississippi. I love the whole Driftless region and feel very lucky to live here. My favorite natural area is Effigy Mounds National Monument, where the Yellow River enters the Mississippi. That’s a natural area where 1,500 years of human history is an evident part of the landscape.

I have a dream for Iowa, however. That would be to have every road ditch and a strip along each side of every stream restored to wetland, woodland, prairie, or savanna. Then people would see this whole state as a rich natural area. And it would allow corridors and homes for plant and animal neighbors that are too often, these days, in short supply.

All first-year students at Luther College read Oneota Flow last summer. Tell us what kinds of responses and events were inspired by this.
It was such an honor to have 650 students and at least 50 faculty all reading the book. The day after the first-years arrived, the first activity for their dorm floors was to set out together on a river walk where faculty, staff, students, and some local folk played the roles of people I wrote about in the book: persons who lost their home in a flood, Winnebago schoolgirls, workers who harvested river ice. All of the scenes took place along the river.

I got fantastic responses from readers. One of my students lives on a dairy farm. She said for several weeks she had been having impassioned discussions about land use and conservation with her father as they milked. One boy told me he had read the book while on a canoe trip in the Yukon. One night by firelight he read a long and labored sentence, a sentence about my aged father trying to walk through a cemetery, and he said aloud, “Why would David Faldet write a sentence like that!?” Then it hit him that the sentence imitated my dad’s walking. He was an enthusiastic fan.

The book was a favorite with male students who like the outdoors: guys who don’t frequently consider themselves readers. An athletic trainer at the college e-mailed me to report that he was getting way more information about the summer reading than normal; first-year football players getting taped up before or after practice would be telling the older team members about the book.

All that was hugely gratifying.

David Faldet, Oneota Flow: The Upper Iowa River and Its People

This Week in Iowa Nature

Scan roadsides and open fields for mixed flocks of horned larks and snow buntings.

Jean C. Prior and James Sandrock, The Iowa Nature Calendar

Plant of the Week

Wild rose
Rosa species
other common names: meadow rose, prairie rose
Rosa: from ancient Latin, the name for “rose”
Species: Several species occur frequently on the tallgrass prairie
Rose family: Rosaceae
Photo: Rosa blanda
W. T. Aiton

Photograph by Thomas Rosburg, Wildflowers of the Tallgrass Prairie: The Upper Midwest, Second Edition

An Interview with David Faldet: Part 2

Tell us how you wrote this book. You interviewed lots of people, you spent lots of time on the river, you read deeply into the historical literature. How did you put it all together?
I got lots of help, and Luther College, where I work, gave me lots of time. Still, it took me twelve years from the time I started the book until it went to press. I wanted to, as Victorian writer William Morris once said, “See things bigly.” Researching involved lots of adventures: canoeing, spelunking, walking streams, talking to an amazing variety of people.

In the end, though, that meant I had far, far more material than I could use, which meant lots of cutting and reworking. One smart move in my young life was marrying someone who is a fantastic editor. My wife, Rachel, asked me the hard questions and gave me the advice you can only take from someone whose instincts you trust and respect. 



What advice would you give to writers who want to combine history,
 environmental science, contemporary events, and memoir as you have done so 
successfully in Oneota Flow?
I would say it is worth the effort, because it reflects a truth that is often hard to see. The field of environmental studies shows us that the world is vastly interconnected and complicated. There is difficulty in that, but there is also amazing beauty and wonder. Putting the pieces together is rewarding for both its truth and its aesthetic value.


David Faldet, Oneota Flow: The Upper Iowa River and Its People