Information provided by David Pittman

INTRODUCTION

When the early American pioneers came to Central Illinois, they discovered a soil that has become among the most productive agricultural land in the world. Early farmers struggled to break through the thick prairie roots but quickly discovered the value of the soil. Chillicothe’s LaSalle Prairie area, which roughly corresponds to the ancient, glacial gravel beds underneath, is a wonderful example of land quickly converted to profitable grainfields for export via the Illinois River. While the Chillicothe area today has several large gravel excavation areas, much of the land remains in agriculture. In several small areas, there are remnants of the native pre-settlement plant landscape. Root Cemetery is one of those precious examples.

Root Cemetery, like many other Illinois pioneer cemeteries that are also nature preserves, is part of American history. It is also a dynamic, complex, and threatened native plant habitat. In working to preserve this special place for future generations, it is important to understand and protect the burials and monuments, as well as the native plants, critters, and the ecological community unique to Root Cemetery. (The Root Cemetery Revised Burial List provides specific information on burials, as well as some analysis.)

See species of flora and fauna identified at Root Cemetery Savanna and Nature Preserve on iNaturalist.

NATIVE PLANTS

The plant community at Root Cemetery began to evolve as the last glacier melted away, about 10,000 years ago. No one can claim with certainty what plants were the first to grow at Root, but the combination of modern plants encountered by Native Americans had certainly been present for thousands of years before humans ever arrived.

The 2.5 acres of Root Cemetery represent a type of plant community that, 200 years ago, had only a few trees and many dozens of flowers, grasses, and shrubs. Native Americans regularly used fire in this area to encourage animal hunting habitat and local shrub and tree food harvest.

About 200 hundred years ago, pioneers employed fire suppression to protect their farms and crops. This practice, plus the introduction and spread of non-native plants, changed the ecological balance of the native plant community. The return of occasional fire has helped re-establish the balance of native plants. Restoring Root Cemetery’s historical plant community to a state of ecological balance may be a possible template for future restoration efforts across the Midwest.

There are two important and challenging biological goals, in realizing the long-term promotion of the greatest possible sustainable native bio-diversity. The first goal is to re-establish the balance of native plants within the Cemetery. Too much smooth sumac, for example, smothers out grasses and flowers. Beginning in 2024, the obvious dominance of this plant and other fire-responsive plants was gradually reduced to allow an increase in diversity of other natives. This process also improved access to many of the surviving tombstones.

The second biological goal is to remove non-native plants. Some of these plants include Siberian honeysuckle, bluegrass, sweet clover, autumn olive, and wild parsnip. Each non-native plant has its own best method of removal that will cause the least harm to other nearby plants. Fire is always helpful in control or removal of non-native plants, as non-natives are not adapted to the ancient prairie fires.

WHAT IS A SAVANNA?

Root Cemetery is called a savanna, a term that makes some people think of the African Serengeti. Savanna is defined as a mixture of a few trees, a few shrubs, and lots of grass and flowers. While the exact mixture or matrix of plants will vary from one place to the next, savannas exist all over the world. Savannas almost always require periodic fire, although how often is a point of debate and is probably different from one place to the next.

Root Cemetery was burned every year for nearly 40 years from 1910 to 1950 as a way to avoid labor-intensive mowing. This excessive burning (from a central Illinois native plant perspective) has had significant impact on the native plant community, some of it good, some of it bad.

There are many types of savanna, including oak barrens, tall grass oak, and sandy savanna, each of which support unique communities of plants that thrive in these specific ecological settings. Root Cemetery is a moist soil or mesic savanna, wetter than a desert and drier than a forest

PLANTS (FLORA)

Root Cemetery is a mix, or matrix, of native grasses, flowers, shrubs, ferns, and occasional trees. The primary grasses are Indian grass, big bluestem, side oats gramma and little bluestem. The occasional trees are primarily chinquapin oak, which has fire resistant bark and leaves that actually provide excellent fuel for fire. Chinquapin oak requires lots of sunlight to grow and re-sprouts easily from its base. These are traits adapted to fire. Root Cemetery had far more flowers and grasses 50 years ago than it does in 2024. One of the biological management plan goals for Root Cemetery will be to find a balance of fewer trees and shrubs while promoting native grasses and flowers.

Root Cemetery’s native plants in 2024 included tall cup plant, compass plant, echinacea, New Jersey tea, climbing bittersweet, and wild yam vines. Dominant forbs include white wild indigo, rigid goldenrod, purple Joe Pye weed, spiderwort, flowering spurge, and prairie parsley. High quality savanna plant species include false toadflax, white trout lily, wild geranium, wild columbine, sweet william phlox, and western sunflower.

Root Cemetery native shrubs include smooth sumac, hazelnut, and elderberry. Some of the native flowers that need to be controlled include the larger sunflowers, plus Joe Pye weed, Jerusalem artichoke, and the solitary blackberry bramble.  

CRITTERS (FAUNA)

Root Cemetery is good habitat for many birds and butterflies, including the northern flicker, the yellow-breasted chat, the field sparrow, and gorgone checkerspot butterfly. Thirty-four other bird species have been identified as either nesting or using the area during breeding or migratory seasons. An exceptional 28 species of butterflies have been observed. A digital inventory of insects is being undertaken by a Root Cemetery volunteer and will be available by the late summer of 2025.

INVASIVE SPECIES

The globalization of humanity has spread non-native plants, bugs, and other animals all over the world. Every plant evolves with certain ecological restrictions on their growth and survival. A plant that finds itself in a new environment without those restrictions will grow, often out of control. At Root Cemetery, plants such as Kentucky bluegrass, wild parsnip, iris, peonies, daylilies, cypress spurge, and bush honeysuckle have a harmful impact on the native savanna plant community. An important part of the Root Cemetery Management Plan is to remove or at least dramatically reduce these invasive species.

SURROUNDING AREA

Root Cemetery is a square, 330 feet on each side, an area of 2.5 acres. It was established as an Illinois Nature Preserves Commission (INPC) site in 1997. The cemetery lies on the upper edge of the historic floodplain of the Illinois River, bordered by a gravel road on the west and north sides of the cemetery. On the other side of the gravel road is an 11-acre privately owned created prairie, approximately 15 years old. Maintaining this tallgrass prairie restoration area would be very beneficial to grassland and forest-edge birds.

There is a large cornfield on the south side of the Cemetery and a steep dry creek bed on the east side, with woods on the opposite bank. A high voltage power line is also on the opposite side of the creek bed from the cemetery. These woods total about 50 acres and contain several large flooded gravel quarries. A plant survey would be useful to help identify this habitat for native species.

The creek bed that borders Root Cemetery on the east goes directly north 1000 feet into Senachwine Creek, a year-round, free flowing stream with a 40 square mile watershed draining the upland glacial moraine to the west and north. The topography includes both residential and agricultural uses. After passing Root Cemetery, Senachwine Creek crosses a two-mile gravel bed floodplain and empties into the Illinois River. A gravel mining operation is nearby, with flooded areas that provide year round water access for wildlife and limited private commercial recreation.

WEATHER & SOIL

Root Cemetery receives about 40 inches of precipitation annually. May is the wettest month, while January is both the driest and the coldest month. The warmest month is July. Changing weather patterns of the past 15 years have had longer periods of drought with isolated larger storm volume events, almost always in the form of heavy rain. Total annual precipitation has not changed in the past 50 years.

Root Cemetery soil is classified as part of the Illinois River Section of the Upper Mississippi and Illinois Rivers Bottomland Division. It is well drained and suitable for a wide variety of plants. When Jeriel Root Sr. set aside this plot of land for a cemetery, he sacrificed high quality farmland.

FIRE

Fire is a basic requirement for survival of almost all savannas worldwide. Because savannas exist as a dynamic balance between trees and grasses, the fluctuating use of prescribed fire at Root Cemetery over the past 70 years, combined with invasive plants, has created an overgrowth that volunteers must reduce if the savanna is to recover its biological health. When prescribed fire is used, it will occur as a low surface fire, never rising into the trees, which is called a canopy fire. Native Americans are known to have used fire often to shape their environment to encourage foraging deer, bison, and nut-bearing trees. Prescribed burns will occur every other year at Root Cemetery, burning only half of the savanna each year, to allow safe reproduction of slow moving critters like bugs, salamanders, and reptiles that might not be able to escape the fire.

ROOT CEMETERY MANAGEMENT PLAN

The Illinois Nature Preserves Commission (INPC), has established a Root Cemetery management plan that is dynamic and flexible. It will change based on success or failure of restoration work results as measured by volunteers and professional INPC biologists in the next five years. The management plan has a timeline that is unique to Root Cemetery and prescribes specific recommendations to hopefully improve, then maintain native habitat at a very high quality level. The management plan is unique to Root Cemetery but is very similar to other site management plans, with the inclusion of periodic fire, plant monitoring, timeline, invasive species control, and reduction of aggressive native plants that upset the balance of native community ecology.

Measurement of plant distribution and assessment of insects, birds, butterflies, reptiles, and mammals are important tools to assess how well a particular intervention or series of interactions actually works. An especially important evaluation will be to assess for possible agricultural herbicide drift through the air to unintended locations, a phenomenon that recent state-level research indicates is pervasive across all of Illinois and harms nature preserves in all parts of the state.

Specific Management goals for Root Cemetery include re-introduction of fire in a way that does not cause excessive harm to tombstones, wildlife, and unique plants. After the first year burn (2025), only half of the cemetery will be burned at a time, which will help meet this goal. Root Cemetery was last burned fifteen years ago, but its 40-year history of consecutive annual burns (1910-1950) created an imbalance within the native plant community. That’s because some plants respond to fire with increased aggressive growth, including smooth sumac, certain sunflowers, hazelnut shrubs, elderberry and blackberry vines. These plants will need to be reduced using physical removal and herbicide.

A regular prescribed fire will occur after the existing overgrowth has been reduced and surviving vertical headstones have been protected from cracking caused by accidental excessive heat. This protection will be done by removing all fuel 6 inches in every direction from the vertical headstones. Continued protection of the headstones, digital identification of all known burials, special recognition of military veterans and providing access for family visitation are included in the management plan.

NATURAL AREAS BEYOND ROOT CEMETERY

In terms of adjacent areas, maintaining the nearby tallgrass prairie restoration area would be very beneficial to grassland and forest-edge birds. A survey of the easterly woods for unique plants, especially viburnums, would be useful to identify this habitat quality and native species. Exploration of the potential for inclusion of nearby Senachwine Creek for increased protected status might enhance this biological corridor that connects Root Cemetery to the wooded areas to the north and northwest.

ILLINOIS NATURE PRESERVES COMMISSION AREAS & NEARBY SITES

The Illinois Nature Preserves Commission is a state agency, established in 1963 to assist private and public landowners to protect high quality natural areas and significant archeological resources. There are 629 sites that total 123,000 acres, including both land and water sites. These areas, like Root Cemetery, are protected in perpetuity and may include stewardship, management, and other protection efforts. Illinois was the first state to create this innovative land protection program and was a national model for many other states. Root Cemetery became a part of the Illinois Nature Preserves system in 1993 but has not had active volunteer management for 15 years.

Peoria County has nine INPC preserves, totaling over 1710 acres, mostly forest areas with small meadows called glacial hill prairies. Root Cemetery is the only savanna in the county. Its 2.5 acres are very special; the goal is to preserve a plant community that has almost vanished.

The closest mesic savannas to Root Cemetery are Hetzler Cemetery Prairie (60 miles, 1.0 acres in Bureau County) and Tomlinson Prairie Cemetery in Champaign (120 miles, 1 acre). Pioneers often chose cemetery locations that were relatively free of trees, and since people wanted to keep using the cemetery for additional burials, they kept the area free of excessive trees, often using fire or cattle for grazing. This practice allowed the native plant communities to survive despite the surrounding agricultural development, and it is why many of today’s remnants of native savannas are also cemetery locations.

PEORIA COUNTY NATURE PRESERVES (all are open to the public)

Brimfield Railroad Restoration Prairie, 6 acres along ½ mile of former railroad bed.

Detweiller Woods, 246 acres with extensive high quality mesic, dry-mesic upland forest and several glacial drift hill prairies.

Forest Park, 357 acres of ridgetop woods.

Forest Park South, 134.6 acres extensive mesic and dry-mesic upland forest with a remnant glacial drift hill prairie.

Jubilee Park, 60 acres in the northeast corner of the 3200 acre Jubilee College State Park with high quality mesic and dry-mesic upland forests dominated by oaks, hickories, and maples.

Robinson Park Hill Prairies, 151.5 acres of forest and high-quality glacial drift hill prairies.

Rock Island Trail Prairie, 3.75 acres of mesic prairie representative of the tall grass prairies.

Root Cemetery Savanna, 2.5 acres of mesic savanna located west of Chillicothe adjacent to a broad floodplain and gravel terrace.

Singing Woods, 735 acres of upland forest and glacial drift hill prairie. Tawny Oaks Visitor Center, on Singing Woods Road, offers hiking trail access. It is a 10 minute drive from Root Cemetery.

OTHER NEARBY NATURAL AREAS

Chillicothe is blessed with Coal Hollow Park, 48 acres, a former coal mine site that includes large prairie areas, extensive trails and upland woods.

Elwood Wildlife Preserve in Norwood is 80 acres of high quality bluff woodlands. There is meadow restoration work and a 10 acre oak barren, a type of savanna.

Rocky Glen Park in West Peoria, 125 acres with a unique geological box canyon and hilltop meadows.

Peoria offers Springdale Cemetery Savanna, 14 acres of tall grass oak savanna located within the 254 acres and 70,000 burials of historic Springdale Cemetery.