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To the untrained eye, the restored prairie lands of Illinois look exactly how you would imagine they looked hundreds of years ago. But many plant species are still missing, and recent efforts — including a newly launched database — aim to ensure that the prairies are restored much more comprehensively.

Jack Zinnen, a researcher with the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s Illinois Natural History Survey, was part of a team that recently launched the RELIX database, alongside Jeffrey Matthews, associate professor in natural resources and environmental sciences at the U. of I. RELIX catalogs every plant species in 353 prairie remnants — parts of the native grasslands of the Midwest that were not converted to farmland during colonization.

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