The Colors of Eastern NebraskaFlora paints our eastern landscape with a color palette for spring and summer. |
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LIKE THE PEOPLE who live here, Nebraska’s eastern wildflowers are a mixed bag of seed. Some, like wild bergamot and showy milkweed, are as native as the tallgrass prairie itself. Hairy vetch and birdsfoot trefoil hail from Europe.
Long before human emigration hemmed the country and state into clearly defined territories, wildflowers traveled on the soles of moccasins and in the beaks of migratory birds. What was resilient remained.
More recently, intentional private prairies have emerged. Thanks to seed stock companies, purple coneflower – a true southern belle – has become a popular transplant for its bright bloom into late summer.
In the late 1960s, Dick Gray of Nebraska Department of Roads introduced a plan to stabilize Nebraska’s ditches and roadsides by filling them with hardy wildflowers. A great deal of research went into choosing just the right plants. As a result, the splash of color along 10,000 miles of highway gave immediate gratification to taxpayers and required very little upkeep. Good ideas are seldom abandoned, and the program continues today. The only change is in philosophy – a move toward native, non-invasive plants.
Gray’s favorite stretch of road is Highway 2 from Lincoln to Nebraska City, but he’s planted a fair share of wildflowers in his own front yard. Personally, he’s not one to worry about how some differentiate between wildflowers and weeds.
“A basic definition of a weed is a plant out of place,” he said. “On our roadsides, we consider it a plant in its place.”
And as long as there are road-weary travelers, inclined to slow up and roll down their windows for the sights and smells of eastern Nebraska, there’s room in this prairie for a whole bunch of wildflowers. Welcoming, diverse and lovely. Like the people who live here.
