If you are out identifying, a prairie guide can make things easier for you. You can notice the change in vegetation in areas where the light and moisture change. You can tell where the holding pond is even though you can't see the water, and you can easily notice the change in vegetation as you go from the prairie to the area around the fence row oaks. If you see a plant that grows only on or by the fire lanes and not in the rest of the prairie, don't be surprised if you don't find the plant in a prairie plant guide book. Not to say that everything you see blooming in the prairie is a native prairie species .
Prairie restoration is a very long-term proposition.
The soil that was destroyed by the steel plow in a little over 60 years will take over a thousand years to reestablish itself. Like all clovers, sweet clover is a legume and so would be nutritious for grazing animals. It has a sweet scent and is no doubt very tasty. However, in the early part of the century when farmers cut the sweet clover and fed it to their cows, they soon found a problem. The cows began hemorrhaging, so sweet clover got a bad name as a forage.