Nodding Wild Onion Project

After eight years of trying, it appears that I’m finally learning how to raise captive Nodding Wild Onions, Allium cernuum.  It’s a good thing too, because the last of the wild plants disappeared from Blue Jay Barrens three years ago.  The onions in this pot represent the offspring of six plants taken from the wild and relocated into my prairie garden.  That left only a dozen plants growing in their original location, a site that was too shady for the plants to produce flowers.  You can read about the original relocation by clicking HERE.

The plants in this pot appear to be doing their best to break through the chicken wire barrier and reclaim their positions as wild plants.  There are more onion flowers this year than I’ve had in total over the last seven years.

This spring, I took a few young plants from the pot and relocated them to one of the native plant beds in my vegetable garden.  All of those plants have grown wonderfully.  They are currently sharing the bed with Spider Milkweed, Leavenworthia uniflora, and Draba cuneifolia.  I think the species in that mix should work well together.

Nodding Wild Onions produce lovely blooms that attract a wide variety of insects.  Here we have a beetle, a fly and a bunch of ants.

The most common pollinators this year are small green Sweat Bees.

Butterflies are not frequent visitors of the onion flowers, but there are sometimes exceptions.  This Olive Hairstreak spent close to five minutes exploring the onion flowers.  The Olive Hairstreak spring brood was quite successful this year.  The second brood is now coming on more strongly than I have seen in many years.

Early onion flowers are already producing seed pods.  I should have ample seed to increase my captive population of plants, as well as scatter some seed out into suitable wild sites.  It’s taken longer than I had originally thought, but I’m now becoming optimistic that this project could be successful.

Nodding Wild Onion Project

My ongoing project to expand the Nodding Wild Onion population at Blue Jay Barrens is continuing with some signs of success.  I wrote about this project two years ago and am happy to report that things have improved since then.  If I can get through this year without disaster, there should be some excess seed to return to the wild.

Using some of the little bit of seed I’ve managed to produce, I was able to grow a few healthy plants in this large pot.  During their two years of growth, these plants have been attacked by Chipmunks, Squirrels, Skunks, Deer, Wild Turkey and Cottontails.  A chicken wire enclosure has greatly reduced the number of assaults.

Most of the animals were not interested in the onion plants.  They just wanted to dig in the pots.  The moist, high quality soil in the pot was just perfect for hunting grubs or making a nest or burying sunflower seeds.  Fortunately the excavations didn’t uproot any of the plants.

These onions are benefiting by growing conditions that are better than anywhere else at Blue Jay Barrens.  The soil is a compost-sand mix and water is freely applied.  The onions, along with a couple of volunteer prairie plants, grow better than they ever would on their own.

I’m not sure of the plant count in the pot.  The leaves come from three distinct clumps and a total of 14 flower stalks have emerged.

Each flower stalk has risen to an impressive 24 inch height.

Now it’s just a matter of seeing that the flowers get pollinated. Bumblebees commonly visit Nodding Wild Onion flowers, but the big bees seem deterred by the chicken wire barrier.  I may just go ahead and have at it with the pollination brush just to be safe.

The Prairie Garden population of onions has produced five flower stalks.  Except for occasional waterings, these plants grow under more natural conditions.

Nodding Wild Onions are not endangered, rare or uncommon, except at Blue Jay Barrens.  I could easily purchase enough onion seed to blanket the entire property.  My decision not to bring in any plant material from outside sources comes solely from my personal idea of how the property should be managed.  As far as I know, the native plant population currently found here is from naturally occurring species that historically survived on this property.  It’s those plants that I would like to see thrive.  Happily I don’t have to answer to any Boards, Committees, Supervisors or Public Opinion.  My management decisions are implemented without argument.  There are certainly some wonderful perks associated with managing your own property.

Prairie Garden - Old Part - Early April

Growth in the Prairie Garden is proceeding at a rapid rate.  Plants are roughly a month ahead of where they were last year.  The old portion of the Prairie Garden was mowed the first week of February and we’ve had above normal temperatures during the two months since then.  Plants that take their growth cues from soil temperature have emerged at a time when the top growth is still at risk from damage by a frost or freeze.  I know from experience that some of these plants cannot handle freezing and there will be a die-back of top growth when we get a frost.

The most obvious plant in the Prairie Garden at this time is the Western Sunflower.  These plants often survive the winter as a cluster of green basal leaves, so it’s not surprising that they take off as soon as the spring temperatures allow. 

Western Sunflower is an aggressive plant and will soon spread to take over just about any area.  It does produce viable seed, but most of the rapid expansion is through far reaching rhizomes that produce new plants.  The result is a large colony of clones. 

The grasses are coming on very quickly.  I’m wondering if the grasses will give more competition to the early blooming flowers.  This is a clump of Side-oats Gramma, which normally stays very short until the mid-summer months.

The leaves of the False Aloe are rapidly elongating.  These plants will produce flower stalks this year if they are not knocked back by a freeze.  At this stage they are highly susceptible to damage by a hard frost.

Purple Coneflower plants are showing some luxurious growth.

My population of Wild Nodding Onion still hasn’t increased in number.  The only plants I have are those protected by the wire cage.  Most of the seed produced by these plants has been scattered back into the garden, but no more plants have emerged.  I don’t know if the seeds are failing to germinate or if predators are eating the plants as quickly as they develop. 

The first Prairie Garden bloom this year is the Hoary Puccoon.  This is an early plant that is pretty much on schedule, but it usually doesn’t have all of this competing growth to deal with.

These young plants remain unidentified at the moment.  I’ll keep a watch on them until they reach a stage where I can either run them through the keys or I recognize what they are.  It’s not unusual for me to be baffled by a young plant in its early stages of growth.  One reason for this garden is to allow me to watch things grow on a day-to-day basis, so that I’ll be able to identify a plant the minute it sticks leaves above the ground. 

Prairie Garden - Late August

The Prairie Garden is beginning to look a little bit raggedy. The tall plants can’t contain themselves within the confines of the garden and are spilling out into the yard. Trying to maintain an abrupt transition from tall prairie to mowed yard is impossible. The tall plants at the interface between wilderness and civilization can’t help extending beyond their intended bounds.

Western Sunflower has amassed an unwieldy collection of blooms. The Thursday morning storm wove the tall flower stalks into an inseparable mat. Many of the stalks are still reorienting the flowers into an upright position. They may no longer stand tall and proud, but their ability to produce seeds has not been diminished.

Indiangrass is at full flower and has formed a screen that effectively hides many parts of the garden.

This Butterflyweed has produced a fresh batch of flowers. At the bottom of the photo you can see seed pods produced from an earlier batch of blooms. I wonder if the rainy weather is responsible for this second blooming season.

The Baptisia seed pods are almost ripe. In another month, the pod covering will lose much of its shine and the seeds will come lose and rattle in the pods.

There will be no shortage of Baptisia seeds this year. A fungus typically destroys about ten percent of the seeds, but the rest will be just fine.

Despite floods, heat and drought, the Nodding Wild Onions have managed to produce some seed. I’ll be planting these in a special bed with hopes of having many new plants next year.

Gray-headed Coneflower rushed rapidly through its blooming period and quickly produced seed. It’s been many years since this species has had such a short blooming season.

For some reason, the Red Footed Robber Flies have declared the Prairie Garden a prime hunting ground. Dozens of these big predatory flies were perched around the perimeter of the garden. There was a constant drone of robber flies changing positions and darting out to capture insects flying across the lawn. After the initial disturbance from my approach to the garden, the robber flies settled down and behaved as though I wasn’t there. They put on a very interesting show.

Nodding Wild Onion

This Nodding Wild Onion, Allium cernuum, hasn’t been incarcerated because of bad behavior; it’s simply being held in protective custody. It seems that there are any number of creatures ready to make a meal of this plant and I have reasons for wanting it left alone. It’s not considered a rare plant, but the six plants in this pen represent one-third of the entire Blue Jay Barrens population.

Nodding Wild Onion is associated with prairies and sunny, open spaces. About eight years ago I found 18 plants growing in this heavily shaded area. I figured that seeds had washed down from the prairies on top of the hill. I spent four years watching these plants and searching for other plants growing in more suitable areas. I found no others and discovered that those growing in the shade were not producing flowers. One of my goals is to increase the populations of endangered and threatened species at Blue Jay Barrens, but I am also trying to increase the numbers of normally common native species that exhibit low population numbers.

One of my management rules forbids the introduction of plants or seeds from any source other than this property. That means that the only way I could increase the number of Nodding Wild Onions was to get those 18 plants to start reproducing. It was impractical to cut all the big trees in order to bring light to the plants, so I dug six plants and moved them to my prairie garden in front of the house.

The onions weren’t caged at first. The first year in the garden, all of the plants developed large flower heads and I was congratulating myself on the success of my efforts. Then, the flowers and half the plant leaves were eaten. The second year, I put a chicken wire cage around the plants and one day found the cage knocked over and the plants eaten into the ground. I replaced the chicken wire cage with a more substantial cage and found several weeks later that a mole had tunneled beneath all the plants, leaving them dry and withered. Success seemed to be slipping farther away.

This year, year number three, has the plants protected by an even stronger cage with vertical wires that project about six inches into the soil. I’m not even thinking about getting flowers, I just hope the plants can grow unmolested for the entire season. Well, at least the plants are still there and that means I still have a chance of success.