June 7, 2001

Plains Folk: On Labradors and Grasslands

Tom Isern, Professor of History
North Dakota State University

What I like about walking prairie with a Labrador retriever is that Labs are such sensual beasts. Who knows what those inscrutable pointers are thinking, if they think at all. Spaniels are just wind-up toys, But Labbies, they savor the moment.

I watch our yellow fellow rummaging through the bluestem, and I can tell he's not hunting, he's just in it for the feeling of that glorious grass caressing his muzzle. Try it yourself: get on all fours in a stand of big bluestem, and it changes your view of the world.

He also loves the honor guard of bobolinks that mark his progress through the field. Now and then he sits down smiling in the grass to watch them wheel and enjoy their chatter.

Me, I walk encumbered by western civilization and its penchant to know and classify. Lately I'm packing two wonderful new prairie guides brought to us by the land-grant universities of the northern plains.

From the North Dakota State University Extension Service comes EB-69, "Selected North Dakota and Minnesota Range Plants," by Kevin K. Sedivec and William T. Barker. From the South Dakota Agricultural Experiment Station comes B-566 (rev.), "Grassland Plants of South Dakota and the Northern Great Plains," by James R. Johnson and Gary E. Larson.

These are not your usual utilitarian bulletins, but beautiful productions accessible to people like me, that is, people who left off the study of botany with 101. The South Dakota bulletin begins with a handy treatise on grassland formations of the northern plains, then moves into descriptions of individual species. The color photos, I must say, are splendid, both edifying and informing.

The North Dakota bulletin provides a brief guide to the terminology of taxonomy, and then also takes up the individual species, incorporating not only color photos but also classic line drawings borrowed from the works of Nebraska's James Studdendieck.

Now, a word about the guys (gender specificity intentional) who put together these guides and the framework in which they work. A little over century ago, in Professor Bessey's Botanical Seminar at the University of Nebraska, the way of thinking known as grasslands ecology was born. A generation later J.E. Weaver became its foremost apostle, and his works are still holy writ. They constitute a glorious fusion of science and a type of religion. They tell us there is order in nature, an inexorable force called succession at work, and there is a logical end to the process, a stable state known as climax. When we get there, the work of creation is done.

Sometime after mid-century grassland ecology made the transition to the applied science of range management. That was because land-grant universities dominate regional science, and livestock industries dominate land-grant universities. (OK, go ahead and disagree if you want to.) This does not mean that the science fundamentally changed, however. Range scientists are supposed to help farmers and ranchers make money, but if you scratch one of these guys, inside you will find a, pardon the expression, prairie fairy.

Nowadays we have frequent, sometimes bitter conflicts between grassland ecologists (some of them women) who serve environmentalist causes and range scientists (most all of them men) who serve livestock interests. You know why? Because at the core, these people are the same. They have the same vocabulary and the same religious zeal.

I like all of them, but when they get to fighting, I prefer the company of Labrador retrievers.

###

Source: Tom Isern, (701) 799-2941, tom@plainsfolk.com 
Editor: Gary Moran, (701) 231-7865, gmoran@ndsuext.nodak.edu 

Click here for a TIF photo of Tom Isern that is suitable for printing. 
(1.5MB b&w photo)

Click here for a TIF photo of Tom Isern wearing a hat that is suitable for printing.
(1.3MB b&w photo)