photo by: Mike Yoder/File

An Echinacea plant, also known as purple coneflower, is pictured June 2, 2018, on the Akin Prairie during the prairie's annual wildflower walk.

Kelly Kindscher, a Kansas Land Trust founder and professor of environmental studies at the University of Kansas, will lead a wildflower walk next month for people interested in learning more about native prairies.

Kindscher, author of “Edible Wild Plants of the Prairie” and “Medicinal Plants of the Prairie,” will lead the annual Akin Prairie Wildflower walk on Saturday, June 3.

The walk is free but registration is required.

The Akin Prairie in Douglas County provides an ideal setting to identify prairie grasses and wildflowers and to learn about the cultural lore about individual plants, according to a news release from the Kansas Land Trust.

The 16-acre tract of native prairie, protected in perpetuity by the Kansas Land Trust, memorializes Dorothy Akin and her love of prairie wildflowers. Dorothy’s surviving family donated the conservation easement to the Kansas Land Trust in 1994.