So you decided to visit the Prairies of the Indiana Dunes. This page will also give you some information on the history of prairies and various plants in the prairies. I bet you are wondering just how old these prairies are. Well, first of all you need to remember that a prairies’ main plant is grass since prairies are also known as grasslands. The question really is- how old is grass? Grass developed around 25 million years ago in what is called the "Miocene Epoch". So then how do grasslands develop? Grasslands evolve around areas that are flat and do not have vast amounts of rainfall. Believe it or not fires can be good for a prairie, because fires used to be so common that tall grass prairies became dependent on them.
There are many different kinds of plants in a prairie, as a matter of fact, most of the plants of a prairie are just grasses! However, many of them are not, such as: prairie dropseed, milkweed, gray goldenrod, boneset, and wild onion. These are only some of the wonderful kinds of plants you might find in a prairie.
Wow! Did you know that there are over 350 native species in the prairies across Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin? These plants can be beautiful to look at. Most of the plants you see are can be classified by communities. Ecologists discovered that this was in part because of the variety of moisture and texture of the soils.
