Homegrown Diversity
By Krishna Ramanujan MA'01

Curt Caslavka

People who are used to seeing vegetables in the gardens often take notice of Curt Caslavka's colorful prairie. They're intrigued by the rows of magenta-flowered blazing star, sky blue and smooth asters, pale pink nodding onions, and stiff, spiky-leafed compass plants with their tall yellow blooms. They ask about the different grasses, like little bluestem, with its fluffy, cotton-like seeds; the thick tufts of northern dropseed; and the aptly named bottlebrush grass.

For the last thirty-three years, Caslavka has worked as an academic staff member with UW-Madison's Biocore program, an interdepartmental biology program for undergraduates. As part of the program, he uses two Eagle Heights plots as a nursery for prairie species. Some of the plants are transplanted directly into a small but diverse prairie demonstration area up the hill from the gardens. Also, plants grown in the plots provide seeds that are harvested, cleaned, and later spread onto a nearby Biocore prairie restoration site.

So far, Caslavka has planted sixty-one species of plants in an area about the size of a large classroom. He says he plants something every square foot.

"You need a lot of plants," he says. "Trying to restore a prairie is very labor intensive." But, he adds, the work is important because there are so few natural prairies left. This year, he hopes to expand the demonstration area to twice its original size. Eventually, plants will have placards to identify species for students and others who are walking by.

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