Large clouds of billowing smoke rose over Chappaquiddick on Wednesday afternoon, on what was a perfect day for a controlled burn. State and Island firefighters helped the Nature Conservancy staff burn about 27 acres of grasslands at Wasque. The two hours of thick smoke was temporary, the smoldering landscape left behind was blackened.

Bob Bale, a burn boss with the Nature Conservancy, said setting the grass ablaze is a land management tool to retain and maintain local plants, especially plants that are rare in this area. While much of the brush, like huckleberry and blueberry, will benefit from the burn, naturalists have a particular interest in a plant called the New England Blazing Star. This is a plant that is not common on the Vineyard but it seems concentrated in this area of Wasque. “Come out here in the summer and you’ll see thousands of flowering purple plants,” Mr. Bale said. These are the New England Blazing Star. In Connecticut, the New England Blazing Star is a species of “special concern.”

This same acreage was burned in 2006.

Two weeks ago, these experts were on the Island burning 46 acres of grasslands at Katama. Mr. Bale said this is the 24th anniversary of using controlled burning as a land management technique in Massachusetts for ecological purposes and it was first done at Katama.

Yesterday the crew burned 48 acres of grassland at Long Point in West Tisbury, and they finished the fire just before the rain started to fall.

— Mark Alan Lovewell