If garlic mustard or European lythrum ever shows up they will be removed completely. In adddition to tending and monitoring the site since 1995, I have been gathering, identifying and preparing voucher specimens for the site to be added to the Illinois State Museum's herbarium. Six different communities can be identified along the length of the site from the dry sand prairie at the highest elevation down to the true lowland populations which thrive in standing water. Other uncommon plants include a clematis and a frosty looking composite called Hymenopappus . The site is also host to a rare pocket gopher and to an endangered moth whose larvae live almost exclusively in Culver's root.
Every year brings something new.
In 1997 the railroad finished replacing the trestle over Pecan Run Creek. We had negotiated with them to create as little disturbance as possible, and they agreed to bring their equipment in across the field edge on the west side of the track instead of right up the middle of the prairie. 1998 occasioned an unintentional burn of much of the site. Other than rather heavily toasting down most of the prickly pear cactus, the other plants seemed to progress with relative normalcy. Spring '99, however, I saw at about a dozen blooming plants so this local population and gene pool is still in existence.