Native Plants As Habitat For Wildlife - Native Plant Society of ...

Wildlife and Plants, a Nature Enthusiast’s Perspective
Nora Stewart
Prairie Mountain Roots, Arcola
There have been eight growing seasons since I planted the first seeds in our native plant
plots. I spend much of the time between May and October in what is now about one and a
half acres of small plots of native flowers and grasses and a separate three acres with four
species of grasses. I’ve encountered various forms of wildlife feeding in these plots.
The first planting included some healthy seedlings I had started indoors. The next
morning I found that the deer had been on the scene and, in trying to eat the manyflowered
asters, had uprooted most of them. An eight-foot fence around the flowerbeds
eliminated this browsing. The larger area of grasses was left with just a fence to exclude
cattle. Tracks show that deer travel through these plots but the only signs of eating are on
herbaceous weeds and, in early spring, on Kentucky blue grass (our most troublesome
grassy weed), so we are happy to have this “hoofed herbicide”.
I had expected to have a lot of snowshoe hares (bush rabbits) to contend with, but I’ve
only seen one in the plots and it came in, streaked past me and went through the fence on
the other side. I believe these animals have been at the lower part of their population
cycle and it will be interesting to see what the situation is if the numbers increase
dramatically.
Small mammals present a major problem. We try to keep the plots clean of debris and
only mulch with black plastic sheets rather than straw, in order to discourage nesting of
mice and voles. In early summer the mounds of the pocket gophers announce their
arrival. The first year they destroyed the American hedysarum and did some damage to
the dotted blazingstar. More recently their target is Indian breadroot and, across a fourfoot
path, silverleaf psoralea. Interestingly, these species of the same genus seem to
recover each year so maybe a certain amount of root pruning is beneficial. We have both
Richardson’s and Franklin’s ground squirrels in the area, but they’re rarely seen in the
plots.
Thirteen-lined ground squirrels, on the other hand, are there frequently. Their favourite
food is green needle grass which they “swath” as the seeds begin to ripen. If the stalks
don’t fall in a thick plot, sections of the stem may be chewed off until the seed head is
within reach. There have been cleacut sections of green needle grass, the ground littered
with stem “cordwood”. I have also observed thirteen-lined ground squirrels eating seed
capsules of harebells and pods of slender milk vetch. One year some small mammal ate a
few buds of the western red lily so we put protective cages around the rest. In the large
grass plots there is only a little evidence of pocket gophers and thirteen-lined ground
squirrels – a few mounds and a bit of “swathing” of blue grama. Last year I had a close
encounter there with the largest garter snake I’ve ever seen and I wonder whether having
this resident might deter the ground squirrels, even if they’re not part of its diet.
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