Scrambling after finding endangered leafy prairie clover on Langham Island

Growing up Karen Horn had a neighbor who worked at the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency in its early days. She brought home workbooks and tee-shirts, inspiring neighborhood kids to form an EPA club to do cleanups.

"I learned how to spell environment from the workbooks," Horn said. "I really enjoyed the environment."

It follows that on July 17, on a Friends of Langham Island volunteer crew, Horn found leafy prairie clover (Dalea foliosa) on the northwest edge of Langham Island, "aka, Altorf Island," as she, a native of the town abutting the Kankakee River State Park, puts it.

Horn loves volunteering.

"One example is the impact we’ve made on white sweet clover," she emailed. "Three years ago, there were large, dense patches of them. This year, we almost have to search to find them, almost. It was while scouting for the white sweet clover and black mustard that I found the leafy prairie clover down in the bedrock at the bottom of the slope."

Her find at 11:30 a.m. set off a chain reaction.

"I saw the plant," Horn emailed. "The work day was almost done. I put the plant on iNaturalist. I had been doing that throughout the morning. First option was leafy prairie clover."

She didn't the know the plant, so she texted photos to Ryan Sorrells, a young botany whiz who updated the plant list for Langham for his senior thesis at Lake Forest College. The island's plant list currently tops 500 when including surveys from the 1870s and 1970s.

"He immediately called me," Horn said. "Usually he texts me, he never calls me. He called and said, `Karen, where are you?' "

He said to protect it from deer and to let Kim Roman, a natural area preservation specialist with the Illinois Nature Preserves Commission, know.

Steve Bohan, Horn's friend, said they had fencing used to protect plants from deer. Volunteer Craig Goodwin took the fencing and helped Horn bend it into tunnel shapes. Because of the rocks, they couldn't pound in stakes, so they anchored it with rocks and logs.

Langham is best known as home to Kankakee mallow (Iliamna remota), an Illinois endangered plant native only to the island.

Leafy prairie clover, a perennial wildflower, is federally and Illinois endangered.

"The species has a rare bimodal distribution and is currently known or has been found in Illinois, Tennessee, and Alabama," emailed Paul Marcum, associate scientist, botany, for the Illinois Natural History Survey. "There are approximately 60 known sites globally, but most are rated as poor or very poor viability. . . . NatureServe ranks this species as G2 (globally imperiled). Likewise, it is ranked as S2 (imperiled) in Illinois and Tennessee and S1 (critically imperiled) in Alabama.

"Historically this species would have been more widespread in northern Illinois but was considered extirpated from the state by the late 1800s/early 1900s."

It was rediscovered in Will County in 1974 and currently exists in Will, DuPage, Cook and Kane counties. Only a few remnant sites remain.

"I will note that the leafy prairie clover is among a handful of federal listed species that we have in Illinois, and any new population that we can rediscover or successfully reintroduce will add to the conservation of the species and the preservation of the unique flora of Illinois," emailed Brenda Molano-Flores, PhD, principal research scientist at INHS.

She mentioned that Ashley Morris, Ph.D., a Furman University biology professor, has conducted population genetic work. On Wednesday, Roman said Morris had already reached out.

"It can't handle a lot of competition from other plants, it hangs in these open rocky dolomite prairies," Roman said. "Dolomite prairies have mostly disappeared. Langham Island has a little bit of that gravelly exposed dolomite."

Stephen Packard blogged background on woodsandprairie.blogspot.com. Botanist John Schwegman credited E.J. Hill with discovering leafy prairie clover on August 27, 1872, then returned in 1873 to collect more. When employed by the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, Schwegman and Bill Glass worked (brush cutting, burning) on the island from 1983-2003. They also scattered leafy prairie clover seeds from a population "discovered by Jerry Wilhelm on August 7, 1974 in nearby Will County."

With their retirement and IDNR cutbacks, the island became overgrown before Friends of Langham Island formed after a canoe trip by the Illinois Native Plant Society in 2014. Horn's discovery was the first on Langham since 1873. It's unknown whether Horn's came from seeds spread by Schwegman and Glass.

"Seed might be sitting there dormant," Roman said. "Maybe it passed through the digestive system of a critter [or there was] Goldilocks conditions for the species."

The plants survive about eight years, the tough seeds may survive for many years.

Horn summarized, "It was very exciting finding that rare plant. I can tell you, I couldn’t stop smiling. It’s just that there are so many people who have done so much that it’s embarrassing being singled out."