Bigelow Prairie Cemetery

[theora]

I recently had a chance to visit Bigelow Prairie Cemetery in central Ohio. It's an old pioneer cemetery where the indigenous prairie plants have survived. It's totally surrounded by farmland in cultivation since the 1800s, now corn and soy fields (I'm guessing GMO round-up ready stuff at that), so the cemetery is one of a very few places where the native vegetation survives.

The place was mad with life. Butterflies (sulphurs, painted ladies, pearl crescents, and several others I couldn't identify), bees and wasps, spiders, beetles, hummingbirds - wherever I walked I caused a commotion of living things. I wouldn't have thought that a half acre would be enough to sustain so much life, and maybe it doesn't. But I'm not sure where else they could be going for food in the surrounding ocean of monoculture fields.

Unfortunately my pictures don't do it justice; my camera likes to wash out detail in bright light. Such as they are:












There were a few mowed paths, but otherwise it was tall grass and flowers


Big bluestem - well over my head


Prairie dock - at least 7 ft tall


Royal catchfly and yellow coneflower


Pearl crescent


Don't know what these guys are


I'm thinking this is not a bee but a bee-mimicking fly


Looking out across the adjacent soy field

Comments

[dantesspirit]

I wonder if I could convince the husband to take a side trip up that way, enroute to Michigan this Oct.}:P We take 35 across Ohio, so it's not like it's far.Heh.

[theora]

If you do end up going, there are a couple of other remnant sites nearby, Smith Cemetery and Milford Center Prairie. I wanted to visit those as well, but couldn't for reasons of time.

[dantesspirit]

*takes notes* }:P

[centuryplant]

That's a pretty prairie remnant. There's something cool about prairie grasses covering up headstones.

The insect in the next-to-last picture is definitely a fly; looks like Toxomerus marginatus.

[theora]

Thanks for the id!