MPF Webinar: Missouri’s Prairie Orchids with Steve Buback

Orchids are most familiar as tropical plants that seem at home growing off a tree branch in a swamp or rainforest, but Missouri is home to 27 orchid species that occupy niches ranging from swamp in the Bootheel to loess hill prairies in northwestern Missouri. Of these orchids, nine species from three genera are found in tallgrass prairies. These orchids share some traits with their shade-loving kin, but also have a slew of adaptations to surviving in a drought- and fire-prevalent system. Presenter Steve Buback will pay particular attention to the federally threatened eastern and western prairie fringed orchid, Platanthera leucophaea and P. praeclara, as these are some of the most well studied of the prairie orchids.

Steve Buback is a Natural History Biologist with the Missouri Department of Conservation, a position he has held for 11 years. Prior to this, he earned a Bachelors Degree at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, a Master’s from Duke University in Durham North Carolina, and worked for Forest Park Forever in St. Louis, MO. He has a particular fondness for rare plants, insects, and ecosystems.

Learn more at moprairie.org

This webinar was created live on June 8, 2022.

Видео MPF Webinar: Missouri’s Prairie Orchids with Steve Buback канала Missouri Prairie