Wetlands Gold on the Missouri River

Tyler Janke with his sedge discovery © Jason Skold/TNC

Tyler Janke, Wetlands Restoration Specialist, recently found a sedge hybrid never before spotted in Nebraska in a small remnant wetland on the Missouri River floodplain. 

Janke was out with a colleague doing springtime monitoring on a Wetlands Reserve Program-enrolled property when he spotted a plant he had not seen before.  Because its flower pieces were already gone, he decided to return to the spot later to visit it again.  It was then that he discovered it was Carex subimpressa, a hybrid between Carez hyalinolepsis and Carex pellita.

"There are something like 70 to 80 known sedges in Nebraska," said Janke.  "I couldn't find it in the 'known sedge' books, so I looked in Flora of the Great Plains, and there it was.

For Janke, this part of the job is the most rewarding.  "It probably doesn't sound like much, but I'm excited to come across new plants.  The Missouri River has been channelized for a long time, so it's hard to know what plants grew where.  When you run across a plant like this you learn something about our natural heritage," he said.  "Enrolling these remaining remnants into WRP and WREP protects flora you might not find anywhere else."