1. In its tallgrass prairie habitat, it is one of the first plants to bloom in the spring, often before the late winter snows have thawed.

2. Tallgrass prairie once blanketed some 140 million acres (57 million hectares) of North America, but more than 95 percent has vanished.

3. You can get lost in the tallgrass right up to Kaziranga's southern edge, but just beyond you're among kids, dogs, chickens, milk goats, and miles of rice fields.

4. Amid tallgrass the coat of a tiger becomes a cloak of invisibility, the camouflage raising the odds for a successful kill.

5. Life in Color: Green Valleys carve up Kansas' Texaco Hill, part of the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve.

6. An American bison stands in a field on the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve in Oklahoma.