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Field Notes
For three days, our staff joined community volunteers and TRPL partners from Snohetta, Confluence, and JE Dunn Construction for treks into the North Dakota Badlands to collect native seeds that will populate the future site of the Library. The effort represents a first step of the Library’s Native Plant Project, which aims to restore ecological balance and increase biodiversity in the striking grassland landscape.
Facing rain, high winds, and scorching temperatures, our teams collected a cornucopia of species in areas surrounding Medora.
On the first day, we hiked up a steep, rocky trail and climbed a sloping hill overlooking Sully Creek State Park, the Maah Daah Hey Trail, and the Little Missouri River. The 12-member team, including three local volunteers, filled dozens of bags with samples of needleleaf sedge (Carex filifolia) and wild prairie onion (Allium textile).
The second day, with temperatures topping 95 degrees, the team scrambled over open prairie lands and rugged buttes just a few miles from Medora in search of prairie wildflowers, needleleaf sedge, and more wild prairie onion.
The final day of seed collection was truly special: We drove through Theodore Roosevelt National Park and continued on gravel roads for 40 minutes to land where Theodore Roosevelt’s own cattle once roamed. Even after all these years, the landscape was largely unchanged from the one Roosevelt himself saw in the 1880s. With Roosevelt’s beloved Elkhorn Ranch in full view across the cottonwood-strewn Little Missouri, we collected leafy wild parsley (Musineon divaricatum), pasque flower (Pulsatilla patens), needleleaf sedge, and wild prairie onion.
Because of this work, the Presidential Library you will one day visit will be landscaped with descendants of the same plants that Roosevelt worked among during his time as a rancher.
As more seeds become plentiful this summer, we are planning additional collection trips into the Badlands. We’ll be hunting for needle-and-thread grass (Hesperostipa comata) and Junegrass (Koeleria macrantha). We welcome volunteers and we would be delighted to have you come along for another adventure in the Badlands!
-Chris and Cristina Moody
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