Last spring, I was excited to see a report from Dave Nolin about his discovery of a rare fern. Nolin is a former administrator for Dayton’s Five Rivers MetroParks and a consummate naturalist.
He is passionate about Huffman Prairie, which occupies nearly 100 acres at the southern end of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. This prairie has a storied history, as it was here where Orville and Wilbur Wright honed their flying machines and housed their original flying school.
Nolin has invested countless hours into restoring Huffman Prairie, as have staff members from the air base, the Nature Conservancy and Five Rivers MetroParks. The fruits of their labor are evident to anyone who visits mid-summer.
Scarlet spikes of royal catchfly rise majestically, arcing above lemony clouds of prairie coneflower. Drifts of showy purple coneflower and dozens of other wildflowers form a colorful tapestry.
April is early season for prairies, which still remain brown and senescent. Not often do botanists pick carefully through aged prairie vegetation at this time of year.
But Nolin bucked the dominant paradigm for prairie botanizing last spring, and his search paid off when he found one of Ohio’s rarest ferns — only the third extant population known in the state.
Northern adder’stongue (
is a curious plant by any reckoning. Indeed, I suspect few people would even recognize it as a fern. A thick and fleshy ovalshaped green leaf is held erect on a short stalk. Rising from that is the fertile frond — an elongate spike bearing the reproductive spores. The overall appearance is far from Boston ferns and other familiar fare.
On April 24, I met Nolin at Huffman Prairie to see this oddity for myself. It didn’t take long to find the adder’stongues, which were in perfect condition. After marveling over their elfin charm and taking some photographs, we set out to canvass the prairie for more plants.
As a mature adder’stongue is only 6 inches or so in height, they’re easy to miss among much taller vegetation. In all, we found 100 or so plants, and I’m sure others were missed.
Fire has played an important role in the rejuvenation of Huffman Prairie. Burning clears old plant duff, allowing better growth of diminutive natives such as this fern. It’s probably no coincidence that the ferns populated areas that had been recently burned.
Heat from fire stimulates seed germination in some species of fire-dependent plants. Conflagrations also clear woody shrubs and trees; those left unchecked would eventually shade out sun-loving prairie plants. Blackened ash warms the soil rapidly, providing a jump-start for germination.
The adder’s-tongue fern is not the only interesting component of Huffman Prairie. Henslow’s sparrows, dickcissels and eastern meadowlarks breed there. For several years, rare blue grosbeaks have delighted birders.
In July, dozens of ruby-throated hummingbirds descend on to tap nectar from prairie plants. Thirteen-lined ground squirrels — our “prairie dog” — scurry about. Huffman now probably resembles what the first pioneers saw.
Ohio once had about 1,500 square miles of prairie, and more than 99 percent of it has been destroyed. We need all the Huffman Prairies we can get.