By CELESTE BAUMGARTNER

Ohio Correspondent

MANCHESTER, Ohio — The “Monarch Right-of-Way: Demonstration Plots” project at the Ohio State University Mansfield Campus is more than just pretty flowers – this collaborative effort is a way of getting habitat on the ground for pollinators, as well as exploring some alternate management options that can be done under rights-of-way.

“Our interest is strictly underneath our high-tension power lines,” said Patrick Failor, FirstEnergy Corp. transmission forester. FirstEnergy is an electric utility headquartered in Akron, Ohio, and a collaborator.

“The transmission line that crosses the OSU campus at Mansfield is 100 feet wide. We planted herbaceous vegetation, primarily pollinator-friendly milkweeds, and native plants as a test plot to see how well the property responded to a planting.”

The demonstration plots are in the middle of campus in an area that gets a great deal of traffic, said Marne Titchenell, wildlife program specialist with OSU extension. All those people passing by can learn about pollinators and what can be done to help them.

“The demonstration plots are divided into four separate areas,” Titchenell said. “With each of the smaller plots, we used a different mix. We chose mixes that would be easy for homeowners to find.

“Some of the seed mixes were donated by Ohio Prairie Nursery. All of the mixes are designed to have blooms that start in the spring and then go through the end of the year, providing nectar for a variety of pollinator species.”

The plants are mostly native – things like coneflowers, liatris species, asters, lobelia and more. Once the plants are established, they will be full of blooms throughout the growing season. The plots were seeded in 2015, and additional plugs were added in the following springs.

“Traditionally, with these native plants it does take them some time to get established,” Titchenell said. “They’re putting their root systems down first, then they start putting blooms up. The first couple of years they looked like weedy patches. This past year the plots looked great, and they’re only going to get better.”

For its part, FirstEnergy wanted to demonstrate that its herbicide program promotes pollinator-friendly vegetation on its rights-of-way, Failor said. Removing the woody vegetation, which can be a liability for FirstEnergy when they are too tall, can be of benefit.

“We apply our herbicides primarily between May and August,” Failor said. “Here in Ohio we are on a five-year cycle. Some research that OSU has done has shown that there is beneficial vegetation to pollinators in our herbicide program vegetation.”

FirstEnergy does not typically plant anything after applying herbicides, but what comes up is herbaceous. It has opened up a seed bank that was there all along.

“It is our finding that once you remove the woody vegetation, it does promote herbaceous vegetation, and in turn is drawing pollinators to our rights-of-way,” Failor said.”On a bigger picture, those rights-of-way act as highways for the migration of pollinators.”

So why is the project called the Monarch Right-of-Way when it is meant to attract all kinds of pollinators?

“We wanted a name people would be able to identify,” Titchenell said. “But what we are planting in these plots is beneficial to multiple species – not just butterflies, but bees, both honey and native, and some pollinating flies and beetles and such.”

Other collaborators include OSU Mansfield and Main Campus, Ohio Prairie Nursery and more.