Broken Kettle Grasslands Preserve, Plymouth County, Iowa

This is my 100th post! I tried to think of something special to post to commemorate that. How about the Nature Conservancy's Broken Kettle Grasslands Preserve? I think that's pretty special.

It is located in the Loess Hills north of Sioux City and his home to a herd of bison and many native plant species. Much of it is fenced off for the bison to roam as they would have before the prairies were settled. The remaining areas are open for the public.

My friend Tracy, who did her graduate work at Broken Kettle, invited me to meet her so she could show me around.

It was really interesting to see how different the plant life is just two hours north of us.

Snow-on-the-mountain

This is snow on the mountain (Euphorbia marginata). It's one of several plants that I saw a lot of in the prairie at Broken Kettle and adjacent private prairie that we toured. Another difference was the vervain--we both have a lot but the ones I've seen here are all purple, and the ones up north were purple but there were also pale lavender ones and pink ones.

The silvery plants in the above photo are white prairie sage.

We hiked along the ridge of the hills. The views were spectacular.

Lead plant

And there was a LOT of lead plant. It was everywhere.

Partridge pea

I even spotted partridge pea! It was on the side of the road. It seems to love dry spots like dirt roads.

We had very good timing! We spotted bison from the road and watched them for about five minutes and they disappeared around the side of the hill.

One of the best parts about my trip was being introduced to Tracy's friends there who have done a lot of work preserving and restoring prairie to the area. They're full of knowledge and shared with us tons of information, including IDing plants that are new to me, such as false boneset and cutleaf ironplant!

Private prairie area near Broken Kettle

See more about Broken Kettle at the Nature Conservancy website.