Group Name: Renak-Polak Maple-Beech Forest is a mature, undisturbed, sugar maple/beech forest remnant. The landscape within its 56 acres is rich with diverse native spring ephemerals, including geranium, hepatica, jack-in-the-pulpit, phlox, spring beauty, toothwort, nodding trillium, trout lily, and wild ginger. Pre-settlement hardwood forests in southern Wisconsin were patchy in a mostly prairie landscape which burned regularly. Root River to the west and Lake Michigan to the east may have protected this plant community from fire. The dominant natural disturbance is wind, creating tree falls and interesting pit and mound topography. Today, this type of forest is rare because of farming and continuing development. We will walk a short distance through a second growth forest section to the old-growth maple-beech forest interior. Other trees found here are basswood, bitternut, shagbark hickory, and red and white oak. Late summer plants may include Michigan lily, several asters, goldenrods - including the state-endangered blue-stemmed goldenrod - and woodland grasses. By the late 1980s, garlic mustard, an aggressive exotic, had begun to invade this site and work parties were held to eradicate the plants. University of Wisconsin–Parkside biographer, Joy Wolf, her students, and community members have been involved in an ecological study that focuses on the impact of garlic mustard on native diversity, and an eradication program for over three years. This on-going project will be discussed and you will learn about stewardship and management practices at both of these important sites. Chiwaukee Prairie is Wisconsin's richest prairie with over 400 plant species. As the shores of the post-glacial lake receded into Lake Michigan, the ridge and swale complex of the prairie was formed. This complex consists of diverse environments from the dry prairie plants on the sandy ridges to the swale a few feet away, which can be a wet prairie, a fen, or a sedge meadow. There is also an area of open oak savanna. Special plants at Chiwaukee include chestnut sedge, false asphodel, marsh blazing star, Ohio goldenrod, pale false foxglove, pink milkwort, prairie Indian plaintain, prairie milkweed, prairie white fringed orchid, and smooth phlox.