St Croix State Park

Last Saturday I went to a Master Naturalist potluck/service project at St. Croix State Park.  Everybody brought food and we ate near the picnic shelter.  The day was warm enough to eat outside.  One guy demonstrated how to make a fire without using a match.  He had a hand drill and a bow drill.  He really got a work out making our fire.  The picnic shelter had an inside fireplace.  We had a fire going inside but the shelter was terribly smoky. Finally someone opened the damper.  Soon enough we saw some bats flying out the top of the chimney.  One bat flew down into the shelter.  What happens to a bat who flies into a Master Naturalist picnic and lands on a ceiling support?  He or she gets his photo taken many times.  After lunch we had a talk about the blow down that happened at St. Croix State Park several years ago.  Many acres of trees were blown down. Because of that natural event, the park, as stewards of the land, decided to replicate the oak savanna and pine barrens that were there over a hundred years ago. They removed all but a handful of trees per acre in the blow down area.  They removed all the fallen trees and are restoring the prairie.  Our service project involved collecting prairie seed to fully restore those prairies.  We collected seven kinds of seed.  I was assigned to carry the bergamot bag of seeds.

Bergamot is in the first picture. The flower was purple earlier in the year but looks like a rounded seed pod now. The leaves smell like tea. We walked along the road finding wild plants and picking seeds.  We had about 25 people collecting seed together.  It was warm enough to walk without a jacket.  Here is a photo of part of our group.

One of the wild plants were were looking for is called harebell and it was blooming right now.  We weren't able to harvest the seeds from the flowers that were in bloom but below the pretty purple bell flowers were dried seedpods that we could use.  Besides bergamot and harebell, we collected seeds from big bluestem, wild sunflowers, and Indian grass.  I wish I had thought to put a few seeds in my pocket for my own yard.