An article by Steve Stevens in the August 2, 2009 edition of the Columbus Dispatch on prairie remnants in Ohio prompts me to respond to him with information on the remnants of the Sandusky Plains (which he did not mention). Without going into the origins of prairies east of the vast prairies of the central United States (the xerothermic period of about 5,000 years ago) let me share my discovery of the prairie remnants in Marion County over seventy years ago. Perhaps this is the information needed by Mr. Stevens to complete his article on prairie remnants in Ohio
As our family took summer evening drives too cool off in the days before air conditioning we often drove along the railroad tracks east of Caledonia. Here bloomed purple, orange, white and yellow flowers that my dad (who had taught me the names of the spring woodland flowers) could not identify. But as I read the nature columns written by the late Dr. Edward S. Thomas in the Columbus Dispatch in the late 1930’s I learned there were prairie remnants in Ohio when he wrote about the Killdeer Plains in southwestern Wyandot County. His descriptions of big blue stem grass and prairie dock gave me the clues needed to identify the one mile area between the road and the railroad east of Caledonia as a prairie remnant.
For years I enjoyed the bloom each summer. Gradually I was able to identify little bluestem grass, tall coreopsis, grey headed coneflower, black-eyed Susan, spiderwort, flowering spurge, blazing star, orange butterfly milkweed, closed gentian and many other species. I learned that this is a remnant of the Sandusky Plains that in presettlement days covered over 200,000 acres. It includes the Killdeer Plains Wildlife Area in southern Wyandot County and the Daughmer Oak Savanna of 39 acres in southern Crawford County. But I had no clue to the diversity of the area that would yield almost 100 prairie species to botanists Larry Yoder, John Mack and Robert Klips among others who have studied it.
It was Dr. Yoder who confirmed my identification of the prairie remnant when I showed it to him. He enlisted his botany classes at the Ohio State University at Marion to gather seeds and to create a planted prairie on the campus on Mount Vernon Avenue.
Find the
Ohio Historical Marker just east of State Route 98 north of SR 309 and
enjoy the asters and goldenrods that are the finale to six months of
bloom on the Claridon Prairie. In the meantime upon driving along the
road paralleling the railroad, Marion County Road 114, you can now see
many of the above prairie species in flower.
Trella H. Romine
Trella Inspects Claridon Prairie - September 2006