Rising above the flow of the Kankakee River stands one of Kankakee County’s hidden natural gems: Langham Island.

Coined the “Island of Rare Plants,” the 20-acre parcel sits near Kankakee River State Park and has been the focus of conservation efforts by the volunteer group Friends of Langham Island since 2014.

Unique among the island’s more than 500 surveyed plant species is the Kankakee mallow, or Iliamna remota, a native Illinois flower not found in the wild anywhere else on the planet.

After going unseen for more than a decade, it reemerged in the summer of 2016 thanks to work from the Friends of Langham Island involving cutting away overgrown brush and conducting prescribed “rolling bonfires” beginning in the fall of 2014.

Now, as of July 17, the second rarest plant species original to Langham Island, the leafy prairie clover, has been discovered for the first time since 1873.

Karen Horn of Altorf was pulling invasive sweet clover and black mustard during that volunteer visit and wandered down the steep slope on the northwest side of the island, an area she hadn’t ventured to in a couple ofyears.

It was there that the five-year volunteer found the leafy prairie clover, a state and federally endangered perennial wildflower not seen on the island for 152 years, according to surveys from the 1870s and 1970s.

“I’m not a botanist, but I knew I hadn’t seen that before,” Horn said.

She snapped a photo and texted it to Ryan Sorrells, a young botanist who updated the plant list for Langham Island for his senior thesis at Lake Forest College in 2024.

Sorrells immediately called Horn and confirmed that the plant was leafy prairie clover, suggesting that she protect the plant from deer and notify the Illinois Nature Preserves Commission.

The volunteers sprang into action, with Steve Bohan finding some unused fencing and Craig Goodwin helping Horn to secure the fencing over the plant, which had sprouted among the rocky area of the island’s bank.

“It’s a challenging habitat, but this plant is known for living in shallow soil over bedrock,” volunteer Stephen Packard, former director of science and stewardship for the Illinois chapter of The Nature Conservancy, wrote in his blog post recounting the day. “It faces hardships and finds its way under conditions where most other plants can’t.”

The discovery is a testament to the ongoing conservation efforts by the volunteers, who travel to the island by boat for each day of stewardship to work for hours year-round.

A special island

Bohan, a volunteer for about five years and a friend of Horn’s, said being part of that stewardship “feels great.”

“The island is so special,” he said. “It was identified early on by the botanists as a prairie savanna that needed to be saved.”

When first studied by a botanist in 1872, Packard wrote, the little island was found to have an extraordinary number of species that were then very rare and now are on endangered lists.

Bohan, a 10-year resident of Altorf, which is adjacent to the state park, said part of the reason there are so many plant species is due to the different mini ecosystems present on the island.

Each area of the island has its own unique set of environmental factors, which harbors its own selection of rare plants, he said.

“It’s wonderful to see them coming back,” Bohan said. “It seems like every year, or even six months, one of the volunteers discovers something that hasn’t been seen before or for at least some period of time.”

Molly Bilderback-Ulrich has been a regular volunteer since 2020 with her partner, Nathan Ulrich, both of Kankakee.

Bilderback-Ulrich noted a lot of the work has involved clearing the shade and returning open sunlight to the ground level, which is characteristic of what the native plants adapted to.

“What’s so special about this area is our intact natural habitats,” she said, continuing to search for invasive honeysuckle to remove.

The conservation journey that the Friends of Langham Island are on began about 10 years ago, when a group from the Illinois Native Plant Society took a canoe trip in 2014 but couldn’t get on the island due to the overgrowth of invasive honeysuckle and other non-native species.

The Kankakee mallow also was nowhere to be found.

This realization motivated volunteer stewards to restore the island ecosystem, forming the group and kick-starting the long process of restoration.

“We would have never seen [the leafy prairie clover], or hardly any of these others, if we hadn’t gotten rid of the honeysuckle and invasive species,” Horn said. “So it’s really nice to be outside and doing good for nature.”

‘Critical importance’

As the workday wrapped up, a few group members headed back toward the boat, walking past a patch of 6-foot-tall pink Kankakee mallows swaying in the breeze. A great blue heron flew low over the river’s surface.

Taking a seat in the break area, Bohan looked out over the Kankakee River.

“There’s a real critical importance in maintaining endangered species,” he said, “but beyond that, fostering a sense of community – not just among the volunteers, but by connecting the broader population to the natural region, including Langham Island – by sharing what was here, what could be here, what’s left and what we’ve lost. Awareness is absolutely the goal.”

Many current and past volunteers agree.

“I want everyone in Kankakee County to be able to appreciate this local but globally rare jewel on the Kankakee River,” Trevor Edmonson, an early volunteer and biologist, wrote in a 2020 column for The Daily Journal. “Without stewardship of the island, this piece of our ecological heritage would have been lost, and we can’t take that important continued effort for granted.”

The group works weekly on alternating Saturdays and Thursdays when the water or ice is not too dangerous to cross.

The next volunteer stewardship day is Saturday, Sept. 6. Those interested should meet in the Kankakee River State Park’s Island View parking lot at 9 a.m. Bring water and a snack, and wear appropriately layered work clothes, including long pants, long sleeves and closed shoes. River travel by boat is provided.

Reach out to langhamisland@gmail.com if planning to attend, and follow the Friends of Langham Island on Facebook at facebook.com/LanghamIsland for future volunteer events and updates.