Green in winter

Stepping down into the ancient, moist sinkhole, I felt like an elf--or a hobbit or a dwarf or some other little woodland creature usually portrayed as living under a bright red Russula mushroom amidst ferns, mosses and bright orange salamanders. Enormous ferns draped the hillsides, offering a dramatic difference from the brown leaves/yellow grass landscape I had spent the whole morning walking through. Even now, in the cold, harsh, short days of December, mesic and dry mesic woodlands harbor thriving populations of brilliant green ferns.

Of the most commonly encountered, Christmas fern (Polystichum achrosticoides) takes the prize for the most charismatic. Found throughout the Ozarks near creek beds, in sinkholes, in the uplands where even slightly mesic soils exist, Christmas fern stands out like a giant among the leaf litter. Big, strapping evergreen fronds lie close to the ground during winter; the base of the plant is typically ringed with desiccating fronds, but during the growing season, new growth is erect, averaging 2 ft. tall. Because the leaves are so leathery and thick, the older, brown fronds persist all winter next to the green fronds.

According to Steyermark's Flora of Missouri, "pioneers used the leaves [of Christmas ferns] for making Christmas wreaths." Imagine that! There weren't enough cedars to go around for Christmas greenery in the late 1800s. Settlers resorted to fern fronds for Christmas greenery. And now we can hack down all the cedars we want for Christmas trees (and wreaths, and garland, and for kindling for backyard fires) without anyone even noticing! [Thanks, overgrazing livestock and 80+ years of fire suppression. And, thanks trashed out roadside for my stunning Christmas tree.]

Check out moist woodland rocky slopes, sandstone outcroppings and other acidic soils in the Eastern Ozarks to search for marginal shield fern (Dryopteris marginalis). In Missouri, this is the most common species of the genus Dryopteris, and can be found throughout the Ozarks and Ozark Border Divisions. I've seen it on igneous and sandstone, and not once on dolomite.

I stumbled across another Dryopteris in the Ozarks recently, D. goldiana, Goldie's fern. Known from a mere seven counties in Missouri, Goldie's fern is uncommon in the Ozarks. Missouri represents the southwestern edge of the range of this species, though Goldie's fern may have been more common here before the last glacial retreat. One of the few glacial relicts we still have in the Ozarks, Goldie's fern populations aren't very well known and should remain protected. As I told one fan of any and all rare and endangered species (I think he kept a checklist), do you have to see it to know it's there? Or is it good enough to just know it's there and being protected? He wanted to SEE it. Never mind conservation of the site, he wanted to stamp his footprints all around the plant. Probably wanted to steal a specimen. I didn't tell him where it was. D. marginalis is lovely, too, and you can find it in full, fresh green foliage right now in the Ozarks.

Textbook example, II

So, if you've ever wondered what a dry mesic bottomland forest looks like in the Ozarks, here it is:




According to my esteemed colleague, the distinct characteristics are rather specific:

Main characters: losing stream; rapidly drained; soils dry to dry-mesic but subject to flash floods. Get this. Usually no discernable stream in many. Its hard to find good ones because of all the shitty pastures upstream-hence why there's a good quality DMBF along White's Creek as there's no development in that watershed and it directly enters the Eleven Point River.

And since there were so many questions about this, I've reposted Paul Nelson's answer to all of you here:

Ok Scott, Allison, Travis and Ted. I must succumb to answering all, with a disclaimer that we might never know the complete truth. Ted. The terms "forest" and "woodland" can have many different meanings depending on the context. But for my purposes, woodlands are specifically described as a certain type of natural community distinct from forest. Allison is right; I hope you have the book. Scott. Your observations of Wildhorse Creek west of Big Spring is right on. That is the country that typically loses most rainfall that filters and percolates through porous substrate through cracks and caves eventually emerging at Big Spring (and other springs). I could just as easily taken the photo there instead of Whites Creek in Irish or Big Barren Creek elsewhere on the Eleven Point Ranger District. You are also correct that to some degree of severity, nearly every stream and river in Missouri now contains sediment overburden, the cause which is post European settlement overgrazing, land clearing, poor silvicultural practices (sorry for the politics) and overburning followed by abandonment of now degraded and worn out woodlands. And I'm not familiar with Logan Creek. Oh, and Allison you know that most every "forest" at some time in history will burn, even if every 50 to 500 years, but the point is despite an occasional fire, their structure is multi-layered.

True Forest

Rare are the occasions when I find myself in an actual forest in the Ozarks: mossy, moist, north facing slopes, ancient sinkholes, those cool places that we stumble into only occasionally. True forest is rare in the Ozarks. When we think of forests and woodlands in the Ozarks, we must think about fire, how fire moves through the landscape, where it starts and stops--for it's fire that helps shape our natural communities in Missouri.


Last week, while in the deeply dissected St. Francois Mountains, I encountered true forest only twice on my entire visit. Dry mesic igneous forests characterized by ramrod straight white oaks, ferns, mosses, moisture at the ground level exist here in small patches. If, historically, lightning struck a large oak on one of the broad ridges in the St. Francois Mountains (though lightning fires were less common in Missouri as they were in Arkansas), imagine that fire creeping downhill, moving slowly through the oak leaf litter, through the black oak leaves, shrubby oaks and rank forbs. At some point in that fire's life, it will extinguish on its own. Sometimes it would travel downslope until it reached Big Creek, but giant cane grows along the shoreline of Big Creek; giant cane is a seriously flammable grass that pops and crackles when it meets fire. But when that fire meets a forest, it may trickle through, chew up some leaves, but eventually go out-die-extinguish in a whimper. Fire does not pick up steam in a forest.


In parts of the St. Francois Mountains, dry mesic igneous forest exists in a small patch matrix of moist igneous cliffs, igneous talus, and, on the upper reaches, dry mesic igneous woodland. But the distinction between woodland and forest is evident to anyone who knows fire well enough, if you understand how fire moves through a landscape. Would fire race through that north slope that hardly sees the light of day and, therefore, has no drying time between rain events? Would fire travel over the thick bed of wet moss and ferns where leaf litter is negligible because of the area's natural ability to decompose even tough oak leaves in a matter of weeks?

Having spent ample, ample time in Ozark woodlands, I rely on my senses to help me determine which natural community I'm in: in short, I know forest when I see it. But since I can't go into the St. Francois Mountains with each of you to show you those diagnostic characteristics, I'll copy the definition of dry mesic igneous forest from Paul Nelson's landmark publication, The Terrestrial Natural Communities of Missouri:

This natural community typically has three distinct strata: canopy (65-85 ft.), understory (5-15 ft.), and ground flora (0-3 ft.). The generally closed canopy (90-100% closure) has moderate to optimum growth with tall clear trunks. The understory is thick, consisting of generally well developed shade tolerant trees. The ground cover contains mixes shade-adapted forbs and grasses....It is best developed on north or east facing slopes. Soils are shallow to moderately deep silt loams, well drained, and very strongly acid to moderately acid...These soils formed over and from the underlying Precambrian-age rocks of the St. Francois Mountains.

Now, just using Paul's description of a dry mesic igneous forest as a guide, you may fall into the same trap I have, that of considering unburned woodlands as forest. You see, there's very little fire in the St. Francois Mountains these days, at least compared to the flammable Niangua Basin, so some areas that merely haven't seen fire in twenty years could have dogwoods, pawpaws, little forest-dwelling plants. Apply a little fire to the area and the fire-intolerant understory plants will die. Again, think of how fire moves through a landscape: would forest exist on a dry ridgetop or on a dry south facing slope? Most likely not. In the Ozarks, fire dictates the natural community type.

So, this is a woodland, not a true forest:


This, too, is not a forest, but a dry-mesic woodland:


Think like a fire when trying to classify your natural communities--where would fire move on the landscape? Where would it extinguish on its own? Forest is not very common in the Ozarks, but where it exists, it's a splendid world of weeping mosses and ferns, big boulders of lichens and mesic soils that stick to your boots.

Friday in the St. Francois Mountains

Fog lifted late that morning, hovering around the draws and in moist coves covered in ferns and mosses. I set out for the St. Francois Mountains Friday morning, a vast landscape that encompasses thousands of square miles of uninterrupted igneous woodlands, an oak-dominated canopy that traipses over igneous knob to igneous knob for as far as you can see.

Step away from the crummy old logging road-turned-hiking trail and you'll discover an ancient world, one that requires channeling your mountain goat legs to reach, but worth every step. Like the rest of Missouri's Ozarks, the St. Francois Mountains were shaped by fire. Very little fire takes place here now, but when it does, as it did last spring, it reminds us that some of those dark slopes with small maples and a closed canopy are merely artifact of fire suppression; fire moves through this land and its deeply dissected terrain. True forest exists here, but not as often as the casual visitor may think.


Scattered pines can be found throughout the woodlands, suggesting -inaccurately- that pine was once more common here. Looking over the General Land Office Survey notes for this entire collection of igneous knobs, my colleague noted that shortleaf pine only appears twice: once in the now-old growth stand opposite Mudlick Mountain, and a second time in the now-old growth stand on Green Mountain. I trust that those engaging in largescale pine woodland restoration projects will consult survey records before designating areas for restoration. In the St. Francois Mountains (and throughout the Ozarks where the AB horizons have been stripped away-long gone following years of overgrazing), soils data can't tell you squat about what the historic vegetation once was and really can't guide restoration efforts. Nevertheless, the two stands of pine that exist today as they did during the land survey are thick, thick, thick with needles and duff. No bluestem here, it's not a grassy place.





The bright blue waters of Big Creek were high that day, resembling the Current River more than the little dry creek that courses through the land here. Well laid plans to wade the creek to the other side were scrapped. Walking ever slowly downslope so as not to tumble into the creek, I wondered how many other people have walked around here lately--no footpaths, no logging roads, no boot tracks slipping in the mud, not even a crushed lichen, just the sound of Big Creek below.




Heading upstream for 1/2 mile, I saw a textbook example of igneous talus: enormous boulder fields from the edge of the cliff tumbling all the way to the water. Scampering up one talus slope, rocks jostling beneath with every step, I turned to see the view from up there, a truly breathtaking wilderness landscape that continues for miles.

USACE liable for flooding the 7th and 9th Wards

I'd like to shake Stanwood Duval Jr.'s hand.

(CNN) -- The Army Corps of Engineers' failure to properly maintain a shipping channel linking New Orleans, Louisiana, to the Gulf of Mexico led to catastrophic flooding during Hurricane Katrina, a federal court ruled Wednesday.

"It is the court's opinion that the negligence of the Corps, in this instance by failing to maintain the MRGO properly, was not policy, but insouciance, myopia and short-sightedness," U.S. District Court Judge Stanwood Duval Jr. wrote in his lengthy ruling, referring to the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet canal.

"For over 40 years, the Corps was aware that the Reach II levee protecting Chalmette and the Lower Ninth Ward was going to be compromised by the continued deterioration of the MRGO ... The Corps had an opportunity to take a myriad of actions to alleviate this deterioration or rehabilitate this deterioration and failed to do so. Clearly, the expression 'talk is cheap' applies here."

Duval's ruling was issued in a lawsuit brought by six plaintiffs affected by the 2005 hurricane, who claimed the Corps of Engineers was liable for damages. The judge ruled against one couple, who lived in New Orleans East, but awarded the others, from the Lower 9th Ward and St. Bernard Parish, damages ranging from $100,000 to $317,000.

"The people of this city are vindicated," said Joe Bruno, one of the plaintiffs' attorneys. "They didn't do anything wrong. It's now time for them to be compensated."
The ruling applies not only to the six plaintiffs, attorney Pierce O'Donnell said, but to 100,000 homes and businesses in the parish and the Lower 9th Ward. Under the precedent set by Duval's decision, they too will be entitled to compensation.

"The judge's ruling today validates the feelings and beliefs that many citizens have held for four years," said New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin in a statement. "Although the ruling is liberating for thousands impacted by the devastation and tragedy of Hurricane Katrina, it is my hope that justice will prevail to help families make their lives whole again."

Once a Category 5 storm, Katrina had weakened to a Category 3 storm with 127 mph winds when it made landfall on the morning of August 29, 2005, between Grand Isle, Louisiana, and the mouth of Mississippi River. A few hours later, the storm again crossed over land on the other side of the river, its winds only slightly diminished.

More than 1,800 people died in the storm, most -- nearly 1,600 -- in Louisiana, where Katrina devastated New Orleans when the city's levee system failed and widespread flooding occurred. Overall, the storm damage covered more than 90,000 square miles and displaced nearly 300,000 people, causing more than $81 billion in damage. FEMA called Katrina "the single most catastrophic natural disaster in U.S. history."

While courts have declared the Corps was liable for Katrina flooding, judges until now have issued it a "get out of jail free" card, the plaintiffs' attorneys said.

"It has been proven in a court of law that the drowning of New Orleans was not a natural disaster, but a preventable man-made travesty," the attorneys said in a statement. "The government has always had a moral obligation to rebuild New Orleans. This decision makes that obligation a matter of legal responsibility."

Duval ruled that because the Corps failed to maintain the shipping channel, erosion widened it, and its banks -- which helped protect the levees -- deteriorated, leaving the levees unprotected, undermined and more vulnerable to waves coming off Lake Borgne. The Corps also failed to take other actions, such as armoring the banks with rocks, the attorneys said.

"This court cannot but comment that the Corps' approach reminds the court of the old adage, 'Close your eyes and you become invisible,' " said the ruling. "It is beyond arbitrary and capricious -- it flies in the face of the purpose of NEPA [the National Environmental Policy Act] and ignores the very heart of what 'operation' means," Duval wrote.

The plaintiffs claimed the Corps was not entitled to immunity because its activities regarding the shipping channel "were in direct contravention of professional engineering and safety standards," Duval wrote. "... Ignoring safety and poor engineering are not policy, and clearly the Corps engaged in such activities."

"This is not the Corps that built the Panama Canal," said Joe Bruno, another plaintiffs' attorney. "This is a different Corps. This is a Corps that's reckless."

The attorneys said they plan to go to Washington after Thanksgiving to meet with the Justice Department. Although the Corps was given immunity from liability in areas like Central New Orleans and New Orleans East, they said they would like to start a settlement process for all citizens.

"We want to leave no residents behind," O'Donnell said. "We'd like to have a regional settlement."

CNN's Dave Alsup contributed to this report.

Autumn's Grape Fern

Long winter shadows set in at 3:40 p.m. that day, shadows impending sunset only 8 hours after I woke up. I spent the whole day outside on Wednesday, planting more daffodil bulbs, spreading leaf mold and compost everywhere, trying to gain as much sunlight-derived Vitamin D as possible. But merely being outside isn’t enough. My thrice weekly visits to the woods, even trashed out woods, seem to be integral to my health and well being. So I zipped across the ever-sprawling town and the complex network of late afternoon traffic to woodlands that likely haven’t burned in 80 years and are now under siege by a burgeoning deer population.

But grape leaf ferns (genus Botrychium) are out right now, harbingers of late autumn so I set out to find one before the deer ate it. I was a hair late as some woodland creature already took a bite out of the persistent deep green blade.

Four species of Botrychium can be found in Missouri’s woodlands throughout the year. B. virginianum is a delicate spring fern, popping up in mid-May throughout the Ozarks. B. biternatum is restricted to the Southeast Missouri Lowlands, and can be found during the fall next to the most common of the grape ferns, pictured, Botrychium dissectum var. obliquum. The elegant and deeply dissected B. dissectum var. dissectum grows in the eastern Ozarks, though remains somewhat uncommon. But B. dissectum var. obliquum is pretty common in low woods, ravines, cherty uplands, and grows in unburned sites with deer problems (so that must mean it's all over the Ozarks, she grumbles).

The grape leaf ferns all have a similar shape, each one sending up a triangular leaf-like blade. All but B. virginianum remain visible for months, even through winter. This is the time of year that you also might find a fruiting branch attached to the triangular grape fern leaf. This fruiting branch contains tiny round Pacman-like sporangia all crowded on what would otherwise have been a leaf. Most are a bit smaller than BB's. These Pacmen sporangia break open and release spores that produce new fern plants elsewhere. Some Botrychium species produce two triangular fronds side by side. My colleague swears that he once observed one frond of var. dissectum growing immediately next to one frond of var. obliquum. But were they from the same root structure? He refused to dig them up to find out.

Fall harvest

We all descended on the two room house in Cedar Creek with paper bags packed with dried plant material, plant names scrawled on the outside in black marker. My contribution consisted of some non-native pine cones that I've collected all month along my running route and remarkably interesting dried stalks of hostas (which I discovered on the top of my brushpile). Today was the wreath making party for the local Missouri Native Plant Society chapter, a charming lot of people who care as deeply about native plants as good food and wine at their gatherings.

Since fall set in, the crew around the table had scavenged over 30 kinds of seedheads, rosehips (native and exotic) and pine cones from native plant gardens, roadsides and their own private property in and around the local area. We worked with a whole trailer of cut cedar branches, floral wire, and grapevine wreaths to make our Christmas wreaths for next month.

While I take note of elegant seedheads every winter, I've never really worked with them in a crafty way. Sweet everlasting -as its name suggests- made a lovely addition to all of our wreaths today. Lespedeza capitata, found on prairies and old fields in Missouri, adds a darker structural touch to dried arrangements. Panicum dicanthelium dries beautifully, as do the goldenrods when cut before the flowers open (they maintain their bright yellow color).

Stiff goldenrod (Solidago rigida)seedheads are enormous, puffy and white. Agalinis tenuifolium produces a charming, and elegant burnt sienna cluster of seeds. I tried to use only Missouri native seeds on my wreaths (one for home, one for my icky cubicle), but the multiflora rosehips (mixed in with prairie rose rosehips) were too dainty to pass up. And, because I love Western landscapes as much as Missouri woodlands, I added spruce cones donated by our hostess (whose son lives in Puget Sound).

Each of us made distinctive, charming Christmas wreaths today. We left the garage a mess of stems and cedar branches, and bags of native seeds fallen from showy seedheads that one member plans to return to her garden so we can do it again next year.