At first glance, the decurrent false aster doesn't look like anything special. The small white-petaled flower resembles a daisy.
But in fact, the flower is a threatened species which now grows almost exclusively along the Illinois River's floodplains. It reaches full bloom from late August through early October.
Employees of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Illinois Department of Natural Resources recently surveyed an isolated alcove where the rare plant is known to thrive.
A symphony of insects greets one's ears at the edge of this field in rural Woodford County, not far from the Illinois River.
The Illinois Department of Natural Resources is meticulously cultivating an environment for native species in this prairie wetland. The tall grasses are peppered with ironweed, swamp milkweed, and other plants indigenous to this habitat. Monarch butterflies and bumblebees dart amongst the flowers to collect nectar.
The mission is to seek out the threatened decurrent false aster, a small flower referred to by its scientific name of boltonia decurrens by the biologists surveying the field.
Habitat destruction decimated the decurrent false aster's natural range, but it's believed the little white flowers are submerged somewhere deep within the prairie.
U-S Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Scott James said this particular stretch of prairie is a good place to search for boltonia because it's been subjected to fire management.
A lot of different species like some sort of what we call disturbance activity," he said. "Some process that sort of resets the vegetation like prescribed controlled burning, or carefully disking. And what those activities do is just sort of resets the vegetation, and it can stimulate certain species that respond well to that disturbance activity if done at a specific time."
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service private lands biologist Emily Hodapp is mapping the boltonia found on the property via GPS coordinates.
"If we can show that we have enough areas where boltonia can thrive and where we are seeing plants continuously, year after year, then we can delist it. That's the game plan," Hodapp said.
A delisting of the decurrent false aster would mean a victory for naturalists. Hodapp said a threatened species listing is a call to action to put in the work prevent the species' extinction before things get any worse. It's much harder for a species to make a comeback once it's considered endangered.
If the group is lucky, an endangered rusty-patched bumble bee might also make an appearance somewhere within this protected site. But that's easier said than done. Only two were spotted in this field last year - and it may have actually been the same bumble bee spotted twice.
About half an hour into the walk, the team finds its first boltonia decurrens. Some of the flowers are past their prime already, but one is still in full bloom.
Emily Hodapp says plants like the boltonia are teaching biologists a lot about prairie management practices.
"It's a weedy species, right? It comes up and it likes disturbance. And when you look at it, you're like, that's a weed," she said. "I think it's beautiful. Because 'weed' is in the eye of the beholder, right? But it does well in disturbed areas. And so that's something that we are lacking in a lot of our management is that we want to keep things...in the past, I guess, it's kind of like we wanted to keep things pristine. But we're learning more and more and more that disturbance is necessary for a lot of our species."
Hodapp and James hope to demonstrate that controlled prairie burns are an effective strategy to encourage the consistent annual growth of boltonia.
"Right now, boltonia is threatened. But because we know a little bit more about it, and how we can manage for it, and we've got all the property at great properties like this where it's doing well, we think that we can be delisted eventually," Hodapp said.
Hodapp said delisting the flowering plant from the threatened list is within the U.S. FWS five-year plan.
"Admittedly, I feel it's a very ambitious goal, but you have to have ambition, and you have to have goals and do as much as humanly possible and work with partners to do what we can," said James.
The biologists discover and map out the location of more boltonia plants throughout the field. While the flowers bloom into October, drier conditions earlier in the season seem to have largely fizzled out the boltonia's bloom in this particular prairie.
James used a bug net to temporarily capture bumble bees in a jar for examination. He catches several common bumble bees but the rusty patched bumble bee eludes the survey group.
Hodapp is working with private landowners to restore the natural floodplain habitats along the Illinois River that the decurrent false aster and other wildlife need to thrive.
She's also working with groups like the Nature Conservancy and the Wetland Initiative to spread boltonia seeds at sites like Fulton County's Emiquon Nature Preserve and the Spunky Bottoms Preserve in Brown County.
