Story thread · 2 reports / 2 sources

How did a native Chicago plant disappear forever?

suntimes.com · 13d · first reportShare

Sandwiched between a railyard and a Ford assembly plant lie 150 acres of native ecosystem: Indian Ridge Marsh Park. Here in the South Deering neighborhood, birdsong harmonizes with the lowing of a train as we walk into the soggy prairie. The grass is up to our shoulders. The ground is thick with native plants. The mud pulls at our shoes. We’re searching for something smaller than a penny: Thismia americana. “The vegetation looks nice and lush,” says Trevor Edmonson, restoration ecologist with The Nature Conservancy in Indiana. “We’re here at the right time. The weather seems to be right. Why not?” Thismia americana is a tiny, blue-white flower first discovered in Chicago in 1912. By 1916, the plant had vanished, never to be seen in the wild again. Still, scientists like Edmonson search for it, despite the odds. Why, after more than a century, do scientists continue to look? The disappearance of Thismia americana tells scientists how humans have changed the environment, but the ongoing