Jennings prairie in full bloom
BRADY TWP — The blazing star is in full bloom in the prairie area of the Jennings Environmental Education Center. And just like its heavenly namesake, the purple spiked flower in its glory won't be around for long.
In fact, according to Miranda Crotsley, the program coordinator at Jennings, 2951 Prospect Road, the blazing star's blooms peak in late July and early August so it's already slightly past its peak bloom.
Liatris Spicata, to give the blazing star it's scientific name, is just one of the attractions of the prairie area, a 20-acre remnant of the prairie terrain that covered this area 1,000 years ago.
“This is a pocket of the prairie that extended out of the Midwest,” Crotsley said. “It was never developed or farmed.”For that, the prairie can thank the glaciers that between 4,000 and 8,000 years ago left a lot of clay behind.“Anyone who's tried to garden in Western Pennsylvania knows there's a lot of clay. Here there's one or two inches of top soil and 20 feet of clay,” she said.And helping keep the prairie area clear was the fact that the plants were able to bounce back from periodic wildfires, either from natural causes or set by Native Americans.“They were adapted to wild fires where something like maple trees did not do so well,” Crotsley said.Also keeping the area clear were grazing animals — at first it was bison and elk.But with the arrival of Europeans, Crotsley said cattle drovers would stop at the nearby Old Stone House inn and graze their cattle in the prairie area because the poor soil made it unsuitable for anything else.
Jennings is in the midst of a prairie expansion project to add another 20 acres to the area.It will make room for more of the area's inhabitants such as butterflies, giant sunflowers and the massasauga rattlesnake.Crotsley said visitors walking the quarter-mile trail through the prairie have a small chance of encountering the snake.“We keep the trails mowed wide and low. It's a shy snake,” she said.
And visitors are encouraged to use the five miles of trails available on the park's other 280 acres.Crotsley said the trails provide plenty of room for social distancing but walkers should have their masks handy just in case.One visitor last week was Rick Shannon, 69, a semi-retired professional photographer from Butler Township who was in the prairie area to photograph butterflies.“I was there mostly for the butterflies. I saw yellow swallowtails, monarchs and I got some pictures of a black one with purple spots,” Shannon said.“But it seems like there are fewer and fewer butterflies around,” he said. “And the songbird numbers are declining also.”But he'd heard of one bird making an unexpected appearance. Shannon said recently a photographer at Jennings told him he had seen a painted bunting on the prairie section of
Jennings, which he said would be quite remarkable as the painted bunting is indigenous to Florida.“It would be way off course if it is here,” Shannon said.Shannon said he was a wedding and a portrait photographer before a 1991 move to Florida sent him into the commercial photography field.After a hurricane nearly destroyed his home in Punta Gorda, Shannon moved back to Butler County.“I like to go to places like Moraine State Park and Jennings,” he said. “I'm taking photos for myself these days.”
