Prairie Plants | Remnants Once vast Tallgrass ecosystem |
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our hundred thousand square miles of tallgrasss prairie once covered the North American Continent, but now less than 4 percent remains, primarily in the Flint Hills of Kansas. On a recent visit to the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve, I had the opportunity to experience a small sample of this environment.
Prairie plant communities are a result of drought and fire, although originally some characteristics also result from animal grazing. Drought is both a direct stress on the prairie ecology and creates conditions conducive to fire by drying potential fuels. Wide scale prairie fires regularly occurred naturally, usually in five- to ten-year cycles. If fire cycles are removed from a prairie ecosystem, woody shrubs and trees eventually replace the grasses.
“The wealth of the tall grass prairie was its undoing.” - John Madson
