1. Are Prairies In Ohio? Yes, beautiful ones, special ones, not just old fields with common weeds or
brush. Ohio has real prairies where real prairie plants such as big bluestem grass, prairie coneflower,
and other prairie species are found.
2. What’s a Real Prairie? First, it’s important to know what is not a prairie. A prairie is not an old
patch of ground that has been left to grow. Ohio has thousands of acres of these “old field”
habitats, places with common plants such as Queen Anne’s Lace, common milkweed, Kentucky
bluegrass, and other often-weedy plants. But these unkempt areas are not prairies.
A real prairie is composed of special, uncommon plants that are seldom found in other
habitats. A prairie is defined by its special plants.
3. What Plants Define an Ohio Prairie? There are so many prairie plants that this could be a
lengthy answer. For a rather complete list, see List of Ohio Prairie Plants [A separate web page with a
table listing Ohio prairie plants]. But some of the more common species are described below.
Almost all prairies are dominated by special grasses. The most common prairie grass is big
bluestem, Andropogon gerardii. Big bluestem is found on most Ohio prairies. Indiangrass,
Sorghastrum nutans, is another frequent prairie grass. Switchgrass, Panicum virgatum, is the third
common Ohio prairie grass. There are several other Ohio prairie grass species.
In addition to special grasses, prairies have unique wildflowers
(properly called forbs). Prominent prairie forbs include prairie
coneflower, Ratibida pinnata; dense blazingstar, Liatris spicata;
sawtooth sunflower, Helianthus grosseserratus; prairie dock,
Silphium terebinthinaceum; Ohio spiderwort, Tradescantia
ohiensis; and many others.
4. Why Are Prairies in Ohio? This is an important, and
somewhat difficult question. Ohio is rather moist and well-
watered by frequent rains throughout the year. If nature were left to itself, with no human
intervention over the centuries, Ohio would have been covered completely with forests and
wetlands. Prairies, which can’t grow in the shade of trees or in the continuously soggy soil of
wetlands, wouldn’t have been found in the Buckeye State without two historic factors: 1) an ancient
period of dry climate that favored the growth of drought-tolerant prairie species in the first place,
and 2) the frequent setting of landscape fires by Native Americans before European settlement
that maintained the prairies for several thousands of years.
In short, Ohio has prairies because of a long, dry climate period that occurred from about 4-8
thousand years ago, and because Native Americans burned the remnants of these prairies for
thousands of years after that dry period.
5. What Was This Long, Dry Period in Ohio? About 4-8 thousand years ago, the climate in both
Europe and North America became rather warm and dry. Much of Ohio had a dry climate similar to
today’s Iowa and Nebraska. In this centuries-long drought, forests were stressed, and drought-
tolerant prairie plants invaded from the West and began to grow here. This important dry period is
known as the Xerothermic Interval. (Xerothermic is pronounced "zerr-oh-THERMIC.")
6. Why Did Native Americans Burn Much of the Landscape? Numerous historical records from
across all of North America show that Native Americans burned forests and grasslands frequently.
These common annual fires were not destructive in the modern sense, but were set to control the
growth of brush and thick vegetation that hindered travel and made hunting difficult. Frequent natural
landscape fires reduced fuel accumulation and prevented the spread of large destructive fires. The
forests and prairies of Ohio were commonly burned by Native Americans, and these fires promoted
the growth of prairies.
7. Why Did Native Americans Burn the Prairies? Native Americans have burned all of North
America’s grasslands since humans entered the continent from Asia at the end of the Ice Age.
Grassland burning has been a human trait throughout history in all grassed areas of the world. The
burning of North American grasslands was merely a continuation of an ancient, perhaps definitive,
human trait. Humans burn grasslands wherever they can, for a number of successful purposes.
In Ohio, Native Ohioans burned prairies for the following reasons. The most important was to
suppress the growth of shrubs, brush, and young trees, all of which if left unburned would soon
overgrow and shade out the sun-loving prairie. Native Americans knew that a prairie grassland left
unburned for five or ten years became choked with thick woody vegetation and was difficult to walk
through. After another ten or twenty years without fire, the prairie would be covered by young trees
and the prairie would be lost to forest. Annual fires kept the prairies open and free from brush and
trees.
Open prairies were very important to Native Americans because they were the habitat of essential
animals that supplied food and clothing. The most important of these was the whitetailed deer. In
summer and fall, deer were attracted to the abundant and nutritious forage of a frequently-burned
prairie. Modern studies have shown that a burned prairie produces about twice as much forage
protein as an unburned one. Frequent prairie fires encouraged the migration of deer out of the forest
on to the prairies in summer and fall where the nutritious grass promoted the growth of strong and
healthy offspring.
Deer were a major, even essential source of food and clothing (leather). On Ohio’s prairies, deer
were commonly harvested by the setting of autumn “ring fires.”
Coordinated teams of Native Americans would set large rings or fronts of fire in the prairie that would
drive game animals in a particular direction. The encircling tall (10 - 20') flames would conveniently
herd the animals toward a single, confined location where hunters could then easily slay the deer with
flint-tipped weapons. In a single prairie fire a large number of deer could be harvested, providing both
meat and clothing for a coming winter.
The hunting fires also removed the dead stems and leaves on the prairie, exposing the ground to
sunlight the next spring so that unshaded new growth could begin vigorously. The annual burning of
the prairies restored the high nutrition of the grasses for the next growing season, which again
attracted deer out onto the prairie for another winter’s food and clothing. This self-restoring annual
prairie fire hunting cycle worked for thousands of years on Ohio’s prairies.
The third reason prairie fires were set (the first reasons were to clear brush and to herd deer for easy
hunting) was because prairie fires are plainly exciting. The prospect of igniting several square miles
of 6-8' tall dry grass has excited men for thousands of years. Those few who have seen even a small
modern prairie fire on any of Ohio’s modern tallgrass prairies know how thrilling (and yes, dangerous)
a prairie fire can be.
8. Doesn’t Frequent Fire Destroy the Prairie Plants? We all learned from Smokey Bear that “Only
You Can Prevent Forest Fires!” And yes, forest fires can be destructive. Hot forest fires can destroy
trees and those kinds of fires should be prevented.
But prairie plants simply can’t be destroyed by fires of any kind. It’s the other way around. Prairie fires
actually cause prairie plants to grow and thrive, not languish and die. Virtually all prairie plants are
adapted to, even require fire. So no, prairie fires don’t destroy prairie plants. Fires actually encourage
the reproduction and growth of prairie plants. Prairie fires are not destructive. They are restorative, a
crucial and essential part of the prairie’s unique ecology.
9. How Can Prairie Plants Survive Frequent Fires? Any plant that once lived on a prairie that
couldn’t thrive after thousands of years of fires has, by now, gone extinct, or retreated and survived in
unburned habitats. All of the over 300 Ohio prairie plant species survive and thrive after being
burned. How? By a few simple mechanisms.
First, most prairie species grow from just below the ground, not from stems above ground. The
grasses are particularly good at this. So when a fire occurs, unburned growth tissues are always
protected by the cool earth. After a fire, the prairie grasses shoot up new growth from the root crowns
slightly below the surface. A prairie fire is very hot, but it can’t last long in any one place because fuel
is quickly burned away. Therefore, the soil around a prairie plant’s roots never gets very hot. Prairie
plant roots are always cool and protected, ready to restart new growth after a fire.
Prairie plants store energy in their roots that is used for new growth after a fire. And this new growth
is easy because the fire cleared the dead stems and leaves, allowing exposure to full sun for good
growth. The black ash of the prairie fire has a slight fertilizing effect that also promotes strong new
growth.
10. What Happens to a Prairie Plant That Gets Grazed by Large Animals? This is another
apparent threat to prairie plants. Ohio’s prairies had large herds of deer, moderate herds of large elk,
along with small herds of real bison (although Ohio never had giant herds of buffalo like those on the
Great Plains). All of these animals ate prairie plants during the growing season.
But grazing is similar to fire. It removes the top part of the plant, leaving the roots and base of the
plant intact. To survive, the plant re-grows new stems and leaves after being eaten. Like fire, prairie
plants can survive grazing (if it’s not too intense).
11. Is There Anything Prairie Plants Can’t Survive? Yes – shading and plowing. If a prairie gets
shaded by encroaching shrubs or trees, its days are numbered. Prairies require full sun. Trees and
shrubs will cause the loss of a prairie. But for thousands of years Native Americans burned Ohio
prairies and those fires killed invading shrubs and trees, preserving and maintaining the prairies.
In the end, the greatest threat to Ohio’s prairies was the steel plow. Prairies proved to have some of
the most fertile soil in the world, and the steel plow allowed settlers in the 19th century to convert
Ohio’s great prairies to productive farmland. By 1900 only scattered plots of unturned, native prairie
still survived. By the 1970s, only a few minor plots along some railroads and inside a few pioneer
cemeteries remained unplowed. Most of Ohio’s prairies had been converted to fertile farmland and
few Ohioans even knew that prairies once were prominent landscape features in the Buckeye State.
Most Ohioans were taught that Ohio was originally covered by forest, that a squirrel could climb a
tree at the Pennsylvania border and work its way over the forest tops all the way to Indiana. Modern
development, both in the creation of farms and cities had destroyed most of Ohio’s great prairies.
12. Ohio Still Has Prairie Plants. How Did These Survive into the Modern World? In many
cases, they did just barely. The plow destroyed the great landscape prairies, but prairie plants are
survivors in the face of adversity. A species that can survive annual fires, frequent grazing, even the
sharp-cutting hooves of large animals, has a lot going for it. Consequently, the plow turned under the
great masses of prairie, but prairie seeds drifted into ditchbanks, grew along un-mowed rural
highways, and survived in obscure, isolated rural patches in former prairie areas. Until the 1960s and
70s, many rural landowners continued to burn woodlots and old fields each spring, and these fires
helped preserve small, isolated populations of local prairie plants. The great, intact prairie plant
communities did not survive. But their scattered and fragmented species did. A few native prairie
species probably did become extinct in Ohio. But today, from the efforts of modern prairie scientists
and motivated amateurs, Ohio’s rare prairie plants have been rediscovered and are being grown and
preserved for future generations. This is a major goal of the Ohio Prairie Association, to find and
grow Ohio’s prairie remnants.
Frequently Asked Questions
About Ohio Prairies P. 1
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