Illinois Botanizer (Chris Benda) is a botanist whole travels throughout Illinois (and beyond), documenting the plants in the state, as well as animals, primarily in natural areas. As a teacher at Southern Illinois University and The Morton Arboretum, Chris's videos are informative and professionally done.
This is an excellent documentary. Thank you so much for making it!! As a budding master naturalist and a conservation professional in East Central Illinois this is the kind of high quality information that I need!!
Месяц назад
Just now I found your channel. Your videos are funny, very didactic and with and awesome style. Thanks so much for sharing your deep botanical knowledge
19:39 I hear _Megatibicen dorsatus,_ a large cicada species that thrives in tall grass prairies. Uncommon and even threatened farther east where much of the tall grass prairies have been converted into agricultural land. Recently someone uploaded a photo of this species to iNat from a remnant of the grand prairie here in eastern Arkansas which as far as I know, might be a new record.
I enjoyed your video. I have loved visiting the swamps of southern Illinois for 30 years. I would really like to explore Grantsburg swamp (Bell pond) and the swamps near the Vienna correctional center. Also Round pond off Poco road. The only thing is that I don't necessarily think it's safe to go traipsing through the swamps alone. I would really like to find people who would like to explore the swamps.
We've put a ton of work into Short Pioneer Cemetery Nature Preserve. It started out with 0.3 decent prairie and 1 acre of oaks and other species. We've eliminated the trees and things are turning around. We're now working on expanding prairie north into an abandoned hayfield.
thanks for posting! i just got into iNaturalist and am trying to learn more about the plants in my county and botany in general! i'm learning all about plants i didn't even know existed!
It's crazy how little prairie was preserved out of the 22 million acres in Illinois. Missouri fared a little better. The entomologist in my Rattlesnake Master video was from Illinois and he was shocked at how much prairie we had in MO compared to Illinois. I enjoyed your video.
Great talk! I'm wondering if you might share the paper checklist you use when walking an area to make observations? You said it was an upland forest species list, but google wasn't helpful when I searched.
Chris, As we maintain 285 acres of tallgrass prairie in Tennessee, we have controlled prescribed burns on a rotating basis. I would assume that the nearby cemetery forbids any prescribed burns to maintain the natural cycle of tallgrass prairie. Is this assumption correct?
I have tons of these around my house, both blooming ones and yet to bloom ones. I love them! A couple actually bloomed in January this year, which surprised me. It was not very warm in January, lol.
