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My excitement for wild plants is as far abroad fromMad Max : Fury Roadas you may ideate . My best botanizing risky venture , by compare , would be more like an open - airMy Dinner with Andre . An afternoon with my plant life - obsess compatriots would bore the bejesus out of most Americans or , for that matter , most of my friends . But even if we area footling mad , our favorite landscapes are not“steampunky dystopian hellscapes . ”The best wild areas are subdued retreats that animate our souls and our gardens .
I wrote last month about my four - year - oldmake - believe prairie odyssey . A few days later , I visited a Kentucky prairie — therealdeal — near Cecilia , Kentucky , with three friends . We poked along at a snail ’s pace , sometimes on our work force and knees . We were look for unusual native perennials , grasses , sedge and even a few trees and shrub . We were n’t disappointed .
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While brainsick Max fight for survival in an apocalyptic world , Dee Ann Peine and Hilary Cox analyze the quiet nuances of a Kentucky prairie .
Dee Ann Peine works at the Indianapolis Airport Animal Emergi - Center . When she ’s not lean modest , domestic fauna , she turns her attention to wild flora . Dee Ann got tumble off in 2006 about the Kentucky prairie from a admirer with a relative who possess the property . Dee Ann knew she ’d hit wage dirt .
Hilary Cox , Julian Campbell and Dee Ann Peine near Cecilia , Kentucky
Hilary Cox, Julian Campbell and Dee Ann Peine near Cecilia, Kentucky
She generate the next week with Hilary Cox , author , photographer and garden clothes designer , formerly of Indianapolis and now live in Tucson , Arizona .
Dee Ann and Hilary can just obscure their enthusiasm for their take over Kentucky prairie project .
Together , in over 50 visits , they have recorded and photographed what is growing here . Echinacea simulata , Hypericum dolabriforme , Thaspium chapmaniiandViola pedataare among the dozen species from the Kentucky prairie that they have send to theMillenium Seed Bankfor safekeeping .
Lance-leaved selfheal, Prunella lanceolata
Julian Campbell , a gifted plant scientist with an impish grin and bushy eyebrows , join us . Julian could be the theoretical account for a John le Carré cold war spy lineament . One trouble : He ’s not at all cloak and sticker . His deductive reasoning and plant know - how are superb , but he roll in the hay nothing unspoilt than to share his wakeless knowledge of Kentucky plant coinage . He ’d make a dreaded spy .
Julian and I met in Louisville on a gorgeous mid - May dawn and drive down to Hardin County together to forgather Dee Ann and Hilary . Julian , a Lexington occupier , has reconnoitre the Commonwealth from prow to stern since 1972 , but he had n’t see this site .
fishgig - result selfheal , Prunella lanceolata
Rose at home with Joe-Pye in late July
Dee Ann and Hilary first show me this bona fide Kentucky prairie , in the karst limestone region call the Barrens , near Mammoth Cave , last August Although , this prairie now and then has been cut for hay , it has never been deal .
I knew very little about prairie 35 years ago . I ’d spent my former career in gardening tucking perennials into neat and neat borders — English style .
Joe - Pye mourning band change all of that . I imported animprovedcultivar from England in the former 1980s . It looked barely unlike from what was develop during the summer along roadsides in Western North Carolina , where I was endure at the time .
White blue-eyed grass, Sisrynchium album. Hilary Cox photo.
Rose at domicile with Joe - Pye in later July
I mentioned to my friend Pamela Harper , author and gardener , that I could n’t sympathise the fuss over the English Joe - Pye selection ofEutrochium ( Eupatorium)maculatum . Pam is English to the nitty-gritty ( as are Hilary Cox and Julian Campbell ) . Though Pam has know in Seaford , VA , for years , she importune that the Joe - Pye weed must be a better cultivar . It was , after all , from England !
Thus the Joe - Pye skunk , with English cachet , came into being here in America . And with that descend acceptance of a common American roadside flora , along with the recognition that there might be fresh garden opportunities for other native flora such as ironweed and goldenrods that had long been ignored .
The yellow blooms of hoary puccoon, Lithospermum canescens, with rattlesnake master, Eryngium yuccifolium in the background. Hilary Cox photo.
White blue - eyed grass , Sisrynchium record album . Hilary Cox photo .
Kurt BluemelandWolfgang Oehmeopened my eye further in the late 1980s . The fabled German gardener and writer Karl Foerster had instigate them as they plunge deeply into gardening , while starting their careers in Europe . Even before they emigrate , Bluemel and Oehme had fuck our native North American plants . Once they arrived in Maryland , in the early sixties , the two Isle of Man begin preaching about a novel American garden design style : Why dither around with ones and III of this and that when you could plant huge sweep of stacks or even hundreds of Rudbeckia , echincaceas and panicums ?
The yellow bloom of hoary redroot , Lithospermum canescens , with rattlesnake master , Eryngium yuccifolium in the background . Hilary Cox photo .
Their influence , and my development from devotion to orderly English gardens to something a little more robustious ( but not tooMad Max ) made me front closer at nature . Now , I am more observant in prairie , the Ellen Price Wood and my backyard .
I feel a tremendous thrill when I collected a few dark brown seeds of glade cress , Leavenworthia uniflora , a flyspeck mustard family relative , lying on an peril limestone slab . I ’d never heard of it and would n’t have seen it if Julian had n’t signal it out .
Viola pedatawas finishing up in the Kentucky prairie on May 14th . Houstonia canadensis , Lithospermum canescens , Prunella lanceolataandSisrynchium albidumwere in full bloom . genus Parthenium integrifoliumwas just bulge - up . Dee Ann spotted a calico pennant dragonfly .
Talk about crazy ! Still , I knew better than to step on it into the Elizabethtown , Kentucky , convenient store on my elbow room home and vaunt aboutLeavenworthiato the counter shop assistant .
When I got home , Rose did n’t seem too interested , either .
No matter . No one can take off my not - so - unhinged day of risky venture in arealKentucky prairie .
