Michigan Prairie Plants

Michigan Prairie Plants. . , The garden below recreates the mix of plants typically found in the prairies of Southeast Michigan up until a century ago. , , Before the arrival of non-native settlers, prairie lands in North America reached from Ohio to Colorado, and from Saskatchewan to Texas. Well-stocked with medicinal plants, the prairies served as a pharmacy to the Native Americans; and because their mix of flowers and grasses provided both food and shelter, the prairies were home to a wide array of animals, from the wood buffalo and the coyote to the muskrat and the prairie chicken. , , In preparing the land for farming, however, later settlers plowed under nearly all of the grasses and wildflowers, so that they now survive primarily in abandoned or untended plots: pioneer cemeteries, roadsides, railroad right-of-ways, etc. The garden below is part of a current movement on many college campuses to seek out, identify, and cultivate specimens from these surviving remnants of the once vast North American prairies. , , Garden planted 26 April 1997 , Campus Environmental Restoration Team