Plants of Illinois Gallery

IMPORTANT NOTICE: All photos are copyrighted by Raymond Wiggers. If you are an educator or student and would to like to use any of these images, e-mail me and let me know how the images will be used. Please also credit me as the photographer. I ask that all companies, organizations, and government agencies contact me about my fees for the use of my photos, and about obtaining higher-quality versions on CD-ROM. Thanks for your understanding and compliance with the law.

Click on the locales you'd like to see:

- Cache River State Natural Area (Johnson & Pulaski Counties)

- Chicago Botanic Garden (Cook County)

- Forest Glen Preserve (Vermilion County)

- Illinois Beach State Park (Lake County)

- Indian Boundary Prairies (Cook County)

- Kane County Sites

- Morton Arboretum (DuPage County)

- Nachusa Grasslands (Ogle & Lee Counties)

- Shawnee National Forest & Other Sites in Far Southern Illinois

- Starved Rock State Park (La Salle County)

- Volo Bog State Natural Area (Lake & McHenry Counties)

9. If one counts by the number of species rather than by the number of individual plants, the orchids are the largest family of plants in the world. This Prairie State native is the grass-pink orchid (Calopogon pulchellus). It is one of a large colony that grows in the park's wet prairie, along the Dead River.

10. The black-oak savanna is another fascinating habitat found in the park's nature preserve. Among the wildflowers found thriving in its sandy soil is the native lupine (Lupinus perennis -- the tall, blue spikes). Also evident here are wild phlox (Phlox sp. -- pink flowers).

40. As though the wild plant communities aren't enough, there are also demonstration beds featuring other Illinois wildflowers in the park's parking lot and nature center area. This rather rare, spring-flowering inhabitant of dry prairies is the native pasqueflower (Anemone patens var. multifida).

31. A lord of the land. No tree defines the natural landscape of northern Illinois more than the bur oak (Quercus macrocarpa). This venerable specimen resides at the Nature Conservancy's magnificent Nachusa Grassland preserve. Bur oaks are sometimes hard to distinguish from white oaks at a distance, but their leaves, besides having a deep central notch or sinus on each side, are very light-tinted on their undersides. This is in contrast to their very dark green upper sides. The bur oak is the most cold-hardy of all North American oaks.

22. Kane County, on the western fringe of the Chicago metropolitan area, is undergoing rapid "development," and its human population is rapidly spiralling upward. Roads that were once secluded farmland byways are now choked with traffic and lined with shopping malls. In this context, is enough effort and money being devoted to saving the county's priceless botanical and geologic treasures? Here at Bliss Woods Forest Preserve diminutive wildflowers blanket the crest of the Kaneville Esker. Such early-blooming herbaceous plants are termed "spring ephemerals" -- they grow and reproduce before the leaves of the overarching trees fill in. The ephemerals' sense of urgency is well founded: by midsummer, the forest floor receives only about one hundredth the light it gets in April.

39. This site is also home to other interesting plant habitats. These prairie favorites, shooting star (Dodecatheon meadia) are part of a colony growing along a wooded path above the bog kettle. Apparently the surroundings were once much less treesy.

1. Early-morning sunlight filters through the bald cypress trees (Taxodium distichum) at Heron Pond Swamp, Cache River State Natural Area. This section of Illinois is actually in the Gulf-Atlantic Coastal Plain Region, and its plant communities reflect that fact. Unlike most other conifers, this august wetland species sheds its foliage each fall. Here the trees are seen in their "bald" state, at winter's end. Note the pneumatophores or "knees" that project up out of the water from the trees' roots. Often other swamp plants like Virginia willow (Itea virginica) will sprout and grow on the knees. Also see Photo 35, below.

8. The dark green stems growing on the right bank of Willow Creek are scouring rushes (Equisetum hyemale). This free-sporing species has ancient affinities. Its giant relatives of the genus Calamites were important members of the Illinois coal-swamp ecosystem of the Pennsylvanian Period, 300 million years ago. Fittingly, this colony of modern scouring rushes grows just a few feet away from an outcropping seam of Pennsylvanian coal -- the compressed organic remains of a just such a coal swamp.

33. The harbingers of early spring in southern Illinois. The rose-pink blossoms of the redbud tree (Cercis canadensis, at right) open before the forest canopy fills in. The white flower bracts at left, not fully opened yet, belong to flowering dogwoods (Cornus florida). At Inspiration Point, Pine Hills Escarpment, Shawnee National Forest.

41. Another eye-catching plant in the Volo demonstration area is prairie smoke (Geum triflorum). When in fruit it sports long pink tufts -- hence the "smoke." Like the pasqueflower, this species is a resident of dry prairies.

12. Even in late spring and summer, when the savanna's trees are in full leaf, a great deal of sunlight reaches the ground. As a result, this habitat is also home to a large number of late-spring and summer wildflowers -- as Photo 10 suggests.

2. This photo, and Photos 3-7, were taken in the restored oak woodland of the Garden's McDonald Woods. This site has a particularly good display of spring ephemerals -- herbaceous plants that grow quickly and flower in early spring, before the tree canopy overhead fills in and turns the forest floor into twilit gloom. Close scrutiny reveals that there are two species of white-flowered wildflowers here: in the foreground, toothwort (Cadamine or Dentaria diphylla) , and false rue anemone (Isopyrum biternatum).

3. One of the most unusual leaf forms in the plant kingdom: twinleaf, or Jeffersonia diphylla. By the first week of May, this barberry-family herbaceous plant has finished flowering and has set fruit, in the form of a stalked capsule. As is the case with a number of Northeastern- and Midwestern-U.S. plant species, twinleaf's closest relatives are native to northeastern Asia. This reflects the fact that until fairly recently in geologic history the landmasses of Eurasia and North America were still connected in far northern latitudes.

4. Spots before your eyes: a study in variegation. The plant in flower in the center foreground is prairie trillium (Trillium recurvatum); the species around it, which is not in flower here, is Virginia waterleaf (Hydrophyllum virginianum).

5. Some plants have perfect (bisexual) flowers; some plants are monoecious -- they have separate male and female flowers on the same plant. Still others are dioecious -- they have male and female flowers on separate plants. That's the case with early meadow rue (Thalictrum dioicum) . The elaborate inflorescence of this particular plant contains only male flowers. They bear dangling yellow anthers that tremble in the breeze.

6. A toxic beauty. This almost shrublike wildflower is white baneberry (Actaea pachypoda). While all parts of the plant are poisonous, it has been used in minute dosages for herbal cures. Its fruit, small white berries each with a black dot, are often called doll's eyes.

11. In the cold seasons, the savanna is obviously a fairly open environment, with a good deal of spacing between the black oaks. As with the open prairie, its long-term survival is dependent on periodic burning. The black oaks (Quercus velutina) become quite resistant to the fire as they mature. Their bark also contains the highest proportion of tannic acid found in any oak species native to eastern or central North America.

13. Pedicularis canadensis, or wood betony, is one of the black-oak savanna's early bloomers. Note its finely dissected leaves, just emerging, and last year's black-oak leaves. This dry foliage curls and remains crisp, and thereby makes good fuel for passing blazes. In contrast, the fallen leaves of maples, basswoods, and other forest trees form a flat, soggy mat that discourages fire.

14. One of the most stunning sights of summer on the prairie is the Michigan lily, Lilium michiganense. A close relative of the Turk's-cap lily found farther east, this species can grow to a height of six feet or more.

15. Blazing star (Liatris spicata), well into its flowering cycle, in one of the park's prairie sections. This aster-family plant has flower heads that have the unusual characteristic of opening in sequence from top to bottom.

16. To the untrained eye, they may be eminently ignorable, but grasses dominate the prairie and offer their own vision of form and beauty. This species is prairie cord grass (Spartina pectinata). Usually a resident of damper spots, it is also sometimes known as "gut-buster" -- its minutely but viciously toothed leaf margins can lacerate the digestive systems of cattle that unsuspectingly eat this species.

17. Emerging out a thicket by the wet prairie is a variety of smooth meadow rue -- Thalictrum dasycarpum var. hypoglaucum. Like the early meadow rue shown in Photo 5, this taxon is dioecious; this plant has staminate (male) flowers only.

18. On the windswept sand prairie facing the Lake Michigan shore, only the hardiest plants survive in the climatic extremes and impoverished, sandy soil. This prostrate shrub is bearberry (Arctostaphylos uva-ursi). In the enlarged photo you'll notice it's in full bloom, with tiny, bell-shaped, pink-and-white flowers.

19. On the famous Gensburg-Markham Prairie -- the grandaddy of the Chicago region's grassland restoration projects -- there is an unexpected sight. Colonies of royal fern (Osmunda regalis var. spectabilis) have cloned themselves outward from the original plant to form the plant-kingdom version of "fairy rings." This shot, taken in early spring, shows the fiddleheads of the current year's fronds just emerging from the ground. Long before the advent of the grasses or other flowering plants, fern communities formed their own prairielike habitats, which were probably favorite browsing grounds for herbivorous dinosaurs. For a look at a modern analog of the Mesozoic fern prairies, see Plants of Michigan Gallery, No. 2.

20. Dropseed Prairie in early spring. Interstate 57 is visible just behind the row of trees in the background. Because they have few shade-producing trees to compete with, most prairie plants display no great haste to flower at this time of year. Nevertheless, the vegetation has begun to sprout here; it is especially evident in recently burned section that is devoid of last year's dead stems.

21. An exception to the rule. A visit to Dropseed and its sister prairies in the Markham area will show you that some prairie wildflowers -- generally the ones of shorter stature -- do bloom in spring. This is the yellow form of Indian paintbrush (Castilleja coccinea f. lutea), caught in the first phase of flowering.

23. Also at Bliss Woods. That much-loved spring ephemeral, Dutchman's Breeches (Dicentra cucullaria), is in flower, but all is not well with this scene. The plants with the lighter green leaves are garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata), an extremely invasive Old World native that is now seen in woodlands throughout the Chicago region, and far beyond. Unlike most weeds, it outcompetes many native species in their own undisturbed habitat.

25. At the time in late April when many woodland wildflowers are blooming at Bliss Woods, this clump of prairie dropseed grass (Sporobolus heterolepis) is just beginning to wake up. On the gravelly slope of Prairie Kame (see my Illinois Geology Gallery, No. 48). The pocket knife provides scale.

24. The Darth Vader of Illinois woodland botany. Garlic mustard is a biennial; the plants shown here are in their second, flowering year. The four-petaled flowers are one tipoff that this detested invader is a member of the Brassicaceae -- the crucifer or mustard family.

26. This bucolic scene, in the vicinity of the Garfield Farm Museum, is an essay in the naturalistic, not the natural. Illinois' windbreak plantings -- this is one of them -- often incorporate the thorny, thicket-forming Osage orange tree (Maclura pomifera). The Osage orange is not native to this part of North America, and the windbreaks have an unnatural linear form, yet, like the hedgerows of rural England, they impart a pleasant, softening effect on the relentless and mechanized agricultural plain.

27. On damp ground, at the Garfield Farm Museum. This springtime wetland delight is marsh marigold, Caltha palustris. It produces the bright, lacquered-yellow flowers, as do various other members of the buttercup family.

29. In a shadier forested spot grows the Illinois carrion flower, Smilax illinoensis. Its arresting common name refers to the equally arresting scent of its flowers. Also note the kidney-shaped, first-year leaves of garlic mustard at lower left.

30. If you compare this woodland species to the one shown in Photo 7, above, you'll notice that it's very similar. But there is a difference: its flower dangles on a long pedicel (stalk) below the leaves. This is Trillium flexipes, the drooping trillium.

32. One of the Prairie State's most robust herbaceous plants is great angelica (Angelica atropurpurea). This hearty specimen grows by a sand boil, or bubbling spring, not far from one of the preserve's sandstone knobs.

34. Early April on the slope of the Devil's Backbone, in Grand Tower, Jackson County. This cheerful wildflower is cleft phlox (Phlox bifida). It's a calciphile, and therefore is completely at home on this limestone outcrop overlooking the Mississippi River.

36. Recent research suggests that this beautiful organism may be more closely related to animals than to plants, but it's still in the province of botany. This is a sulfur-shelf or chicken-of-the-woods fungus (Laetiporus sulphureus), growing on a newly fallen tree trunk in the park's upland woods. While this species is quite edible, you should NEVER ingest any wild-collected fungus, cooked or uncooked, until it has been positively identified by a real (and not just self-declared) expert.

37. And the meek shall inherit the bog. The low-growing, mat-forming plants here in the heart of Volo Bog are sphagnum moss (Sphagnum species). The cloverlike leaves rising above them are buckbean (Menyanthes trifoliata). Even though sphagnum is a nonvascular plant thatmust stay close to constant mositure, it often outcompetes more evolutionarily advanced plants. As it builds a floating mat across once-open water, sphagnum acidifies its environment, making it very difficult for most other plant types to flourish.

38. As the inquisitive hiker takes the park boardwalk into the bog, one of the most fascinating biological successions in all of Illinois presents itself. There are rather distinct zones, each with a different plant com-munity -- a fact that signals important changes in soil and water acidity, in microclimate, and in other factors, as well. In at least two areas where sphagnum moss holds sway, there is a profusion of wetland ferns. In this one picture you can spot at least three species: the elegant, tall-growing cinnamon fern (Osmunda cinnamomea, at center), royal fern (Osmunda regalis var. spectabilis, at far right) , and the smaller marsh fern (Thelypteris palustris var. pubescens, under the railing and in the lower righthand corner).

Would you like to learn more about the plant communities and ecology of this diverse and fascinating state? Check out my Courses, Tours, and Lectures Pages for educational events focused on the botany of Illinois.