Hundreds of years ago, you could have gotten lost in the prairies that blanketed what is now Will County, with the grasslands stretching as far as the eye could see. Today, the landscape looks much different of course. The prairies have largely been plowed for farm fields or paved over for parking lots and neighborhoods.

The loss of the tallgrass prairie that once covered northern Illinois and the Plains states was rapid, with 99% of it altered within just a few generations of when European settlers first arrived, the U.S. Forest Service reports. Here in the Prairie State, less than 0.01% of the 21 million acres of original prairie remains today.

The prairies we do see today are largely restored, the result of untold hours of planning and work in the field, but if you know where to look you can still find small pockets of prairie that look much like they did before European settlers first arrived in the area.

These remnant prairies were never plowed or paved over because they were of little financial worth for one reason or another, but the value they provide today is immeasurable.

“For most of post-European time, there has not been any interest in these parcels because nobody saw an opportunity to make money off of them,” said Dave Robson, the Forest Preserve’s natural resource management supervisor. “There is something unattractive about these parcels from an economic perspective.”

From a restoration perspective, these pockets of prairie are an invaluable resource because they serve as an example of the flora that flourished in our prairies.

“We’re not guessing as to what species should be there or with what frequency,” Robson said of the remnants.

Because they have not been disturbed like much of the land here, the remnants are like a time capsule.

“These are patches of the landscape that have been very lightly or not disturbed by past human activity,” Robson said. “That means the natural resources that are there — primarily the plants, but also the soil, the hydrology — are essentially undisturbed and the same as it was centuries ago, before Europeans came across North America.”

Remnants exist across Will County, varying in size, quality and even habitat type. While prairie remnants are the main focus in northern Illinois because that was historically the predominant habitat, the forest preserves are also home to remnant woodlands and wetlands that serve as representations of the plant communities that have grown here for generations, Robson said.

Prime examples

While many Will County preserves include remnant prairies, a few in particular serve as interesting examples because of why they have been left mostly undisturbed through the years.

One such example is a 1-acre plot at Vermont Cemetery Preserve in Naperville. The small plot served as a cemetery for some of the earliest settlers of Wheatland Township, and because it’s long been a cemetery it has been left mostly untouched for decades now. The land today has been protected as an Illinois Nature Preserve.

The cemetery is fenced off to protect the graves as well as the centuries-old prairie, but at certain times of year you can still see the headstones and grave markers inside. In the summer, the prairie plants inside block most of it from view. Those plants, though, are the key to unlocking what dominated the landscape before those early settlers arrived.

Because the land was only lightly disturbed by its use as a cemetery, the prairie plants there today are a good illustration of what covered the landscape when there was prairie as far as the eye could see.

“The vegetation within that original 1 acre is very representative of what it would have looked like several hundred years ago even though the area around it had probably been farmed for a century,” Robson said.

Prairie remnants at Lockport Prairie Nature Preserve are another example of how these pockets have been left undisturbed while the land use around them has changed drastically over time.

“Lockport Prairie is sitting on floodplains, and it’s got almost no soil,” he said of why the land has been undesirable for agriculture and even development. “You can’t grow anything there. It’s very rocky.”

In addition to including valuable prairie remnants, Lockport Prairie also includes a rare prairie habitat called dolomite prairie. Dolomite is a kind of bedrock, and dolomite prairies occur only where dolomite is at the surface level. They are different from the more traditional prairies that once dominated the Illinois landscape because they don’t have deep, rich soils that so many of our native grasses and wildflowers thrive in.

Providing a blueprint

These remnants at Vermont Cemetery, Lockport Prairie Nature Preserve and other preserves have been used as a guide for prairie restorations, Robson said.

At Vermont Cemetery, land adjacent to the original 1-acre cemetery has been restored so it looks much like it would have in pre-settlement times. And the remnants at Lockport Prairie have served as a guide for restoration work at adjacent preserves including Prairie Bluff Preserve and Lockport Prairie East Preserve.

Successful restoration means a return not just of the plant species native to the land, but also wildlife, Robson said.

“Over time, certainly the hope is that some of the species — mostly insect or avian — that have been at Lockport Prairie will expand out and colonize those areas,” he said. “Little by little, step by step, hopefully you start to rebuild the natural food chain and ecosystem.”

While these long-existing prairie pockets do serve as a blueprint and an inspiration for prairie restorations, it would be impossible to re-create the prairie as they once were, Robson said. One reason why is because of soil quality and how that changes with land use.

“Prairie soils are very complex. They’re ecosystems in and of themselves,” he said. “If it’s been farmed for 100 years and we’re coming back and trying to seed back in native plants and prairie plants, the soil conditions aren’t going to be suitable for a handful of them. We have to recognize that.”

You can see a visual representation of the difference in the soil at Vermont Cemetery Preserve. The fenced-off cemetery is elevated about 12 inches to 16 inches above the land outside it. This is because of the distinct difference in how the land has been used inside the fence and outside it, Robson said.

“You’ve got one activity outside the fence that’s been eroding and losing the soil, and then you have the soil accumulation that’s naturally occurring like it’s supposed to within the fence. So they’re going in different directions.”

Seeds of the future

It’s not just the composition of the plants that serves as a blueprint for the restoration work; the seeds of the plants themselves are an invaluable resource as well.

“Those are our diamonds,” Robson said, adding the seeds can be collected from plants within the prairie remnants for use in restoration work in other preserves.

It can potentially be better to use the seed from the remnants rather than getting it from a commercial source, he said.

“You’ve got genetic lineages that you’ll have in a remnant that you may not have access to commercially, and in that regard it’s good to keep that genetic material local because it did develop locally,” he said.

Of course, it isn’t always practical to collect seed from existing prairie plants for use in restorations because some plants are more difficult to collect seed from than others. “Some seed we can get a pound of very quickly, some you have to fight for a week to get an ounce,” Robson said.

As the Forest Preserve looks to manage the land in the preserves, these remnant prairies do get some special considerations. Robson said natural resources management staff take a triage approach. “We put most of our effort into the highest-quality patches of land we have, which are mostly the remnants. From there, we try and move down the list as best we can as resources allow.”

The very existence of the remnants is a gift that will keep on giving, allowing plants that may have long since disappeared to grow and prosper in their native range.

“We have individual species that probably wouldn’t be around today and available to use. They would have long been extirpated,” Robson said. Without remnant prairies, “we would have lost that plant species here in Will County.”

_{Photo credits: Glenn P. Knoblock, Chad Merda, Anthony Schalk, Matt Serafini}