Summer 1998

Restored prairie and woodlands allow visitors a look at Illinois 200 years ago

Cook County, Illinois

Poplar Creek Prairie and Woodland comprise a big and beautiful 600 acres of Cook County Forest Preserves in Hoffman Estates. It's also part of the 4,200-acre complex of Poplar Creek Preserves. And it links up (via a conservation easement through the international offices of Sears) with yet thousands more acres in the Spring Creek Preserves south and west of Barrington.

All this land is great habitat for animals and has great restoration potential, but the best quality is in a few hundred of these 600 acres. Dry prairie on a gravelly, well-drained hill slopes down to mesic prairie and finally to wetland communities.

Poplar Creek has 125 different species of native plants and, although most of the land was farmed for more than 100 years, there are surprisingly few exotic species. The Poplar Creek Prairie Stewards have worked on the site since 1989, assisting with prescribed burns, reseeding and planting native species, and pulling of exotics. Back then, more than 80 volunteers planted 8.4 miles of contour strips, 20 feet wide and 40 feet apart. Nearly a decade later, the strips are dense tall prairie, and the land between is starting to be recolonized by natives as well.

Another benefit of the size of the area is that certain animals — especially grassland birds such as bobolinks and savanna sparrows, which require large areas to breed, settle, or nest — find this large prairie adequate to their needs.

Visitors will find prairie plants such as wild false indigo, penstemon, seneca snakeroot, lead plant, blue eye grass, and many others. Coreopsis, coneflowers, prairie blazing star, and others make the prairie a feast of color during the summer. One may also find unusual plants like porcupine grass, which has long, needle-like seeds. Dropping to the soil, these seeds twist and bend in response to changes in humidity, literally corkscrewing themselves into the soil. In the lowland areas, volunteers are removing drainage tiles to restore the natural wetland hydrology.

In the oak woodland west of the parking lot, visitors will find august bur oaks and hickories presiding over rich assemblages of shooting star, wild hyacinth, Joe pye weed, and others. Some of the oaks in the area are 250 to 300 years old. Bur oaks with thick, cork-like, insulating bark are toward the edges of the grove, where they withstood the flames of prairie fires and witnessed the passing of the Potawatomi and the buffalo.

An additional benefit derived from a prairie of this size is the sense of serenity one gets when gazing out over the rolling hills, unbroken by roads, buildings, or other man-made objects. One can imagine how Illinois looked 200 years ago. For more information contact Crab Tree Nature Center at (847) 381-6592. For volunteer information contact Jill Flexman at (847) 931-9491.

— Jim Kostohrys