Video: Visitors at our August Prairie Tour walk through Prairie Dock, Water Hemlock and Cord Grass

We have annual, free Prairie Tours each summer.  In this short video, visitors at our August Prairie Tour walk through Prairie Dock, Water Hemlock and Cord Grass.

[Steve at Prairie Moon Nursery] The really tall ones are the Silphium terebinthinaceum; Prairie Dock. That’s the one with the true elephant ear type leaves. The really tall one here with the smooth flowering stems that’s the Silphium the Prairie Dock. Again, it’s another yellow composite flower. Some of the other ones that you will see a lot of…This is kind of interesting this is the Cord Grass (Spartina pectinata), one of the really neat things is the sod from the Cord Grass was typically used for the sod houses out on the prairies. It is a wetland species but I’ve seen it on some of the driest sand species also but just really short, and that speaks to certain amount of diversity too. You’ll see in our catalog these are the dry species, these are the wet species but in a natural environment you’ll see a really big crossover in range on that. Another species that’s quite overstated here now is the Water Hemlock (Cicuta maculata), and that’s of the same family of the Hemlock that Socrates used to kill himself, his was the European Hemlock, this is Water Hemlock, equally as poisonous if you decide to munch on the root but I just would not munch on any of it…just to be safe!