Plant of the Week

Wild petunia
Ruellia humilis Nutt.
other common names: hairy ruellia
Ruellia: in honor of an early French herbalist, Jean de la Ruelle (1474–1537)
Humilis: from Latin, meaning “low,” in reference to the low-growing habit of the species in many habitats. (Due to variance in the genus, some authorities combine this species with another species, R. carolinensis.)
Acanthus family: Acanthaceae

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

An Interview with Mark Müller: Part 2

How do you merge your illustration work, your writing, your DVD work, etc., with your hands-on reconstruction work?

The reconstruction work that we do merges seamlessly with all my other projects including the educational/awareness aspect. We delight in having people come out for advice on their own plantings, help with a burn, or just enjoy the raucous color display when everything is in full bloom. Of course the hands-on work often inspires the artwork and keeps things real. It’s also great when you have to draw or film something and don’t have to leave the farm!

What has changed in the outdoor world since your first days of trying to learn about it and protect it? What's better, what’s worse?
So many things in the outdoor world have changed in my lifetime for better and for worse that whole books are written to address this question. But in general I’d say that things were pretty nasty in the 1960s as far as air and water quality and habitat destruction were concerned, and at the pace of environmental atrocities at that time we would be a lot worse off now if it were not for some pretty bold legislation and the blooming of environmental groups and an explosion of awareness—thank you, Rachel Carson and Aldo Leopold et al. If you would have told me 20 years ago that you would see dozens of bald eagles munching on bullheads along the Iowa River behind McDonald’s in Iowa City or that we would have a trapping season for bobcat and river otters or that turkeys would become a nuisance here, I would not have believed it. So there have been some miracle reversals, but we may have outdone ourselves with our contribution to global climate change, which will make DDT nearly wiping out raptors, oil spills, excessive logging, near total destruction of the tallgrass prairie, wetland draining, ivory-billed woodpeckers, etc., seem like trivial events in comparison to what we may be facing. It could be more than easy to go completely negative here, so I concentrate on keeping our consumption footprint small, continue to work on protecting and creating high-quality habitat and holding my breath that people will have the courage to get up and do what needs to be done before it’s too late.

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

Canada wild rye

Elymus canadensis L.

other common names: nodding wild rye, rye grass, Canada lyme grass, Great Plains wild rye

Elymus: derived from the Greek elymos, the name for a kind of grain that has the lemma and palea tightly rolled about the seed

Canadensis: meaning “of Canada” 

Grass family: Poaceae (Gramineae)

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

This Week in Iowa Nature

Skunk cabbage blooms, which generate their own heat, often appear before the snow melts at Hanging Bog State Preserve in Linn County.

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

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