Gottfried prairie an Arboretum Field Trip

When the first settlers came to the Fond du Lac County area, it was covered by 36,000 acres of native prairie, scattered forests, and wetlands. These native grasslands were home to bison, prairie chickens, bobolinks, and other wildlife. Due to the prairies being plowed in the mid to late 1800s and other changes over the past 150+ years, most of the native prairie has been lost. At the Gottfried Prairie and Arboretum, adjacent to the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, Fond du Lac campus, a group of volunteers reestablished the native plants that once grew on this site.

The Gottfried has over 50 acres of restored native prairie established with seed collected from remnants of some of the last remaining original prairie sites in Fond du Lac County. The site's diversity and scale have attracted many species of invertebrates, birds, and small mammals that lived here at the time of early settlement.

The formal arboretum is an innovative attempt to depict the native plants and plant communities of Wisconsin in a design representing the “Tension Zone” of our state. The tension zone overlaps northern and southern Wisconsin plant communities in the Fond du Lac area. It consists of southern hardwood forests, oak savanna, prairie, pine savanna, lowland forests, northern conifer-hardwood forests, and boreal forests, plus their associated wildflowers.

https://gottfriedprairiearboretum.org/

There is no charge to visit. Transportation is on your own, but clubs could arrange car-pooling among their members. We’ll meet at the shelter for lunch and a social gathering at noon.