Tallgrass Prairie (Interior) - ID

Fire on Tallgrass Prairie (A Flash Fire of a Lesson)

1. All real rangemen love to burn- Fire was a natural component of grassland ecosystems long before man appeared on Earth. Fires which were ignited by natural sources, especially lightening, occurred for millinia before evolution of thinking man (Homo sapiens). Fires ignited by lightening are as much an atmospheric phenomenon and component of climate that determines structure, function, and productivity of grasslands as are precipitation patterns (including drought), temperature regimes, wind, etc. Prehistoric men took their lessons from Nature and fired their ranges in order to produce more feed for game, facilitate hunting and travel, encourage growth of medicinal and pot herbs, and even as a tool of war against enemy tribes. In the Americas white men adopted this practice of the Indians but were careless and excessive in the practice. Thus the first professionally trained range and forest practitioners over-reacted against the otherwise wise use of this essential environmental (largely climatic) component as a tool in Range Management and Forestry. Understandingly this lead to the unwise policy of fire suppression in the name of conservation. Campaigns initiated to stem overburning “backfired” and grasslands were invaded by trees and shrubs, especially when combined with overgrazing.

We are slowly relearning the lessons taught by our aboriginal brothers and using prescribed burning as a management practice. Ranchmen in the marvelous “cow country” of the Flint Hills-Osage and Cherokee Prairies Region of Kansas and Oklahoma never forgot the teachings of the Indians. Spring burns are a routine practice among progressive prairiemen.

A prescribed spring burn on an excellent big bulestem-upland switchgrass range in the Osage Questas of the Central Lowland Prairie Province. Greenwood County, Kansas. April.

Excellent general sources for role of fire on vegetation and in Range Management and Forestry include such standards as Kozlowski and Ahlgren (1974), Wright and Bailey (1982), Chandler et al. (1983), Biswell (1989), Whelan (1995), Bond and van Wilgen (1996), and DeBano et al. (1998). The definitive work on fire and grasslands is Daubenmire (1968). Fire in the central North American grasslands was discussed in the symposium procedings edited by Collins and Wallace (1990). The definitive summary of fire as an ecological factor in range ecology remains chapter 9 in Humphrey (1962; ps. 148-189) while the classic for use of fire by man in agricultural practice is Sauer, (1952; ps. 10-18) and for general grassland management, Sauer (1950). Man’s use of fire in an historic context was covered comprehensively in the series by Pyne (1982, 1984, 1991)

"I know of no basis for a climatic grassland climax but only of a fire grass ‘climax’ for soils permitting deep rooting." (Sauer, 1950).

2. Growth of bottomland switchgrass 14 days post burn- Erath County, Texas, March.

3. Growth of bottomland switchgrass 31 days post burn- Erath County, Texas, April.

4. "The only thing that makes me happier than fire is water"- Dense stand of big bluestem on a Flint Hills range about five months following a spring (April) prescribed burn. On the left (to left of conspicuous Baldwin ironweed in center) was an experimental plot that had been treated by repeated spring burns every third year for a number of yeards prior to the current growing season prescribed fire. Many of the tillers of big bluestem had developed into sexually reproductive (flowering) shoots in response to this current growing season burn that was part of the every-third-year burning fire regime. Current and regular periodic spring fires served to elicit this morphological-physiological response. Increased incidence of flowering along with greater density of shoots and height of individual shoots following spring fire is a typical response of big bluestem on tallgrass prairie (Knapp et al. 1998, ps. 203-205).

On the right (right of ironweed) another plot had been fired in the same April burn (five months prior to photograph), but this portion of the big bluestem-dominated tallgrass prairie had not been subjected to fire for the last consecutive 15 years (growing seasons). By contrast, big bluestem on this experimental plot did not respond (at least not as greatly) to the spring prescribed fire (ie. there was no increase in flowering, shoot density, or shoot height). This is also a typical result to grassland fire for this climax vegetation. It is apparently the entire fire regime (pattern, including chronology, of burning as well as season, intensity, kind of fire, etc.) and not just conditions of the current fire that is responsible for prairie plant responses to burning.

Konza Prairie, Riley County, Kansas. Early August.

5. "Fire? It's about time!" (Or "You're years late")- Stand of big bluestem on the same Flint Hills range and burned by the same April fire as some of the prairie vegetation presented in the immediately preceding photograph (that to left of ironweed) except that this experimental area had not been burnt for 15 consecutived years prior to the current growing season prescribed fire (five months previous). Big bluestem did not respond to the same degree with regard to shoot flowering, density, and height as did big bluestem in adjoining plots that had received spring (April) burns every three years. However, shoot response, especially flowering, was greater than that under annual burning (the every year for eight consecutive years treatment). Again, it is the complete history or fire regime that is important in determinig response of grassland plants to any given fire.

Konza Prairie, Riley County, Kansas. Early August.

6. "Another fire? So what else is new?"- Upland big bluestem-dominated tallgrass prairie range that had received prescription fires for the last eight consecutive springs. This was another experimental plot adjacent to the plots ahown and discussed in the two immediately preceding slides. On this range plot there was no increase in sexual reproduction by big bluestem due to fire (there was very little flowering at all). Furthermore, biomass production was about the same between this annually burned tallgrass prairie and that of companion plots that were burnt only one year every 15 years. The main difference between such extreme fire treatments was in flowering rate (proportion of sexually reproductive shoots) of big bluestem and general appearance of the vegetation (less standing and down detritus from previous years on the plot having yearly prescribed fire).

Synopsis of burning "shedule": 1) burn every year (as for eight years straight) there is no increase in shoot flowering, density, or height; 2) burn irregularily (as only one year in 15) results in some increase of flowering (development of asexual shoots into sexual shoots), but not as much as at closer interval (say, every third spring) while herbage yield is similar to that under annual burning; 3) burn at regular multi-year spaced intervals (at, in this trial, every third year) there was a big increase in shoot density, height, and flowering rate.

Konza Prairie, Riley County, Kansas. Early August.

7. Blackjack oaks top-killed by a hot heading fire on a big bluestem-dominated loamy prairie range site. Blackjacks are resprouting (weakly) from the up7er roots and stumps but continued prescribed burning at intervals of three to five years will reduce oak cover and maintain the fire-type tallgrass prairie in the Cross Timbers Region. Five weeks post burn. Tallgrass Prairie Preserve of The Nature Conservancy (but it was the stewardship of the previous owner, the famed Chapman-Barnard Ranch, whose management preserved the Excellent range condition of this pristine grassland).

Osage County, Oklahoma, May. FRES No. 39 (Prairie Grassland Ecosystem). K-66 (Bluestem Prairie). SRM 601 (Bluestem Prairie) and/or 710 (Bluestem Prairie). Cold Temperate Grassland 142, Plains Grassland 142.1, Bluestem "Tall Grass" Series, 142.11 of Brown (1998, p. 40). Transition of Flint Hills Ecoregion 28a and Northern Cross Timbers Ecoregion 29a (Woods et al., 2005).

8. Hot improvement- A cow-calf range on tallgrass prairie (big bluestem, switchgrass, and Indiangrass dominants with tall dropseed and Canaada wildrye as associates) that had been prescribed burnt about two and a hald to three months previously. This range had not been burned for several years and had a serious invasion of roughleaf dogwood, bois d'arc or Osage orange, and honey locust. On this upland range site the prescribed burn had done an outstanding job of topkilling almost all woody plants.

This tallgrass prairie was in an area that was a transition between the Flint Hills and Chautauqua Hills sections of the Central Lowlands physiographic province. The natural (climax) vegetation of the Chautauqua Hills is Northern Cross Timbers so incursion and invasion of woody species is in the natural order of things-- as is prairie fire. And Mother Nature always welcomes the helping hand of man in regards range improvement by hot spring fires.

House Hereford Ranch, Crowley County, Kansas. Late June (early vernal aspect). FRES No. 39 (Prairie Grassland Ecosystem). K-66 (Bluestem Prairie). SRM 601 (Bluestem Prairie) and/or 710 (Bluestem Prairie). Cold Temperate Grassland 142, Plains Grassland 142.1, Bluestem "Tall Grass" Series, 142.11 of Brown (1998, p. 40). Flint Hills Ecoregion, 28 (Chapman et al., 2001).

9. Hot enough for ya?- Four Horsemen tallgrass prairie (with tall dropseed and Canada wildrye as associate species) range that had been seriously invaded by roughleaf dogwood, bois d'arc or Osage orange, and honey locust about about two and a half to three months following a prescribed burn. Almost all woody plants had been topkilled except for a few shoots of roughleaf dogwood and one crown of bois d'arc that had somehow (and most unfortunately) been spared. These woody species will almost assuredly sprout back, but fuel for prescription burns is a renewable resource.

Bois d'arc is especially sensitive to fire. If trees of this species are not in the middle of a thicket where grass herbage is minimal (as was the situation with regards the live crown of Osage orange here) they will be quickly topkilled by a typical spring burn on tallgrass prairie. This is the case even for especially large trees. These dead trunks can then be harvested for use as the most durable of all wooden fence posts.

10. We like it hot and moist- Example of the range vegetation of the tallgrass prairie that had been burned about two and a half to three months previously on an upland site. This was the same cow-calf range shown immediately above. Local sward of big bluestem, switchgrass, tall dropseed, and Canada wildrye. Indiangrass was present, but not abundant in the "photosample" presented here. There was some of the naturalized Eurasian Japanese brome or Japanese chess. Forbs were absent

11. Recovery after abuse after recovery- About a decade ago (prior to these two photographs) this tallgrass prairie in the Osage Cuestas of eastern Kansas was suffering from an invasion of bois d'ard (Maclura pomifera) , black cherry (Prunus serotina), American elm (Ulmus americana), and a few eastern red cedar (Juniperus virginiana). Then a spring (late March) wildfire, an extremely hot wildfire by tallgrass prairie standards (due to so much presence of woody fuel), burnt off this cattle prairie pasture. Climax prairie grasses, especially big bluestem followed by switchgrass and prairie dropseed responded like "gang busters". Not only were large invading trees (some boisd'arc were anywhere from six to fourteen inches diameter breast height) topkilled, but decreaser tallgrasses were physiologically rejuvinated both vegetatively and sexually.

The landowner responded by overstocking this fire-improved stocker cattle range so that after five or six years the pasture, which was grazed in early spring through mid to late summer, was overgrazed resulting in a great reduction in tallgrass species (both cover and density of plants/shoots) and a corresponding increase in tall fescue, an introduced (exotic), semi-naturalized, perennial, cool-season grass and the introduced forage legume, sericea lespedeza (Lespedeza cuneata). In this pattern of seasonal grazing, the exotic--and unpalatable (especially compared to native panicoid grasses like big bluestem)--tall fescue received relatively little utilization whereas the native tallgrasses were overutilized. The noxious exotic invasive sericea lespedeza that had also invaded the prairie bsecame the number two weed on this grazing-degraded range. The tallgrass prairie that had been restored by wildfire to a high successional status (high Good range condition class) became a lower seral state (roughly low Fair range condition classs) based on estimated relative cover and biomass production. The climax big bluestem-dominated tallgrass prairie was converted by overgrazing into a de facto tame pasture of tall fescue with sericea lespedeza as an associate agronomic species.

Next drought (Moderate to, eventually, Severe Drought on the Palmer Index Scale), the single most inevitable disturbance for this grassland, ocurred. This drought persisted through four consecutive years interrupted with a few moist periods in various seasons. In year two of the four-year drought the coldest winter temperatures (down to minus 30 degrees Fahrenheit; in February) entered this atmospheric "equation".

Meanwhile the landowner no longer ran cattle on this pasture (or no longer leased out the pasture to other stocker operators). For at least two (and possibly part of a third, if not all of three) years there were no cattle on the 1) wildfire-razed, then 2) recovered, and finally 3) overgrazed tallgrass prairie pasture. By the first spring after the four-year drought, grass vigor, biomass (grass herbage) production, and successional state (high Good range condition class) were as shown in these two slides.

Tall fescue was almost completely gone and sericea lespedeza was reduced almost as much proportiontely: the cool-season agronomic exotic and had been wiped out and the warm-season weedy legume greatly reduced by drought (maybe exacerbated by estremely low winter temperatures) while big bluestem, switchgrass, and prairie dropseed had returned, even though to lesser cover, size and vigor, density, and productivity of their former glory (their post-fire zenith before overgrazing and drought ravaged them). Almost assurredly, competition--in absence of grazing--with the native tallgrass species had been a major factor in nearly complete demise of the two agronomic forage species turned highly invasive weeds.

The conspicuous cover of black-eyed susan (Rudbeckia hirta) and annual fleabane (Erigeron annuus) as seen in foreground of the first slide, along with near-absence of decreaser forbs such as Maximillian sunflower among the composites and native herbaceous legumes, bespoke the high seral but sub-climax state of this recovering tallgrass prairie pasture.

Such is the dynamics of native grazinglands and the forgiveness of Mother Nature. Tallgrass prairie has some of the greatest potential for recovery of vegetation (even back to climax) through secondary succession of any range plant community in North America.

Allan County, Kansas. Late June; early estival aspect. FRES No. 39 (Prairie Grassland Ecosystem). K-66 (Bluestem Prairie). SRM 601 (Bluestem Prairie) and/or 710 (Bluestem Prairie). Cold Temperate Grassland 142, Plains Grassland 142.1, Bluestem "Tall Grass" Series, 142.11 of Brown (1998, p. 40). Central Irregular Plains- Osage Cuestas ecoregion 40b Chapman et al., 2001).

The following short section was of woody invasion of tallgrass prairie in the Osage Plains of southeast Kansas, specifically the Osage Cuestas portion of the Central Lowlands physiographic porvince, that had, in the preceding year, burnt in a wildfire. Post-widlfire vegetation a year after burning was shown and discussed. This was an early spring wildfire. Most of the natural, dominant grass species, which are warm-season panicoid grasses, were dormant. Cool-season native grass species were not dormant. Images showed that almost every tree was topkilled. Pioneering plants--mostly r-selected species--invaded the post-burn location. Most of these pioneers were annual forbs--both native and naturalized exotics--except for a native shrub species.

The woody plant community that burned had developed around the outskirts of a former farmstead (mostly jusst a rural residence). This home site had been abandoned several years before the wildfire with the house being moved while ramshackle outbuildings were salvaged and then demolished. In the disturbance of the farmstead and with no grazing (other than browsing by white-tailed deer [Odocoileus virginianus], mowing, or burning the former tallgrass prairie was invaded by native tree species and became a stand of young trees (mostly medium pole-sized sub-adults) of wild cherry (Prunus serotina), eastern cottonwood (Populus deltoides), black walnut (Juglans nigra) and eastern red cedar (Juniperus virginiana) in that relative order of cover (dominance).

An interesting local story (a bit of anecdotal history) concerned this fire and the one described in the immediately preceding slide/caption set. These two locations were within about one mile of each other along highway US 54 in Allan County, Kansas. Gossip around the cracker barrel and the coffee cups was that a local "firebug" (an unsung hero of the pyromaniac bent and, of course, unnamed fame) set these fires. In fact, this range arsonist had quite a record (and a reputation of dubious worth) for his alleged passion and pasttime.

At any rate, these accepted-for-fact, human-ignited wildfires made for a nice lesson in the essential role of fire in maintaining tallgrass prairie in humid and subhumid precipitation zones. It was remarked above that, in effect, any climate (especially precipitation patterns) capable of growing herbaceous tallgrass prairie plants will also support woody plants native to that region but that typically were confined to the more moist, less fire-prone habitats such as rivers and creeks (bottonland forests) or to drier environments (eg. shallow, rocky breaks) which are less apt to grow sufficient fuel for hot fires of such intensity as to topkill woody species.

The following short section was empherical evidence of that accepted ecological fact (or that article of faith among prairiemen).

12. Lot of invasion- Scene one year following a wildfire that burned a stand of young, native trees that had developed around a previous rural residence on a former tallgrass prairie in the Osage Plains (Osage Cuestas) of southeastern Kansas. This local woody community was composed of young trees (sub-adults of approximately medium-pole size) of black cherry, eastern cottonwood, black walnut, and eastern red cedar. These four tree species were all indigenous to this region, but a plant community of these native trees was not the climax (potnntial natural) vegetation for this tallgrass prairie site.

This local assemblage of native tree species was an example of afforestation, establishment of a forest (in this instance a forested tract) by human action on land that prior to human intervention had not suported a forest community (ie. forest is not the natural plant community). This stand of trees was an unintended establishment of a forest. It was afforestation resulting from human disturbance: establishment of a residence and farmstead and, later, suppression of natural grassland fire.

It has been argued repeatedly throughout parts of Range Types of North America that fire is 1) primarily a feature of climate and 2) as much a part of many range cover types (especially those of grasslands)--of range ecosystems--as flood, drought, blizzard, wind, grazing, or light. In this instance, the lack of fire (or of inadequate components of the natural fire regime) is a disturbance just as lack of adequate precipitation (drought) is a disturbance. In this instance it is not fire that is the distrubance, but rather the inadequancy of fire that is the disturbance.

As shown here and in slides that follow, fire is a tremendous disturbance to woody pants, but woody plants in such proportion or concentration (dominance, cover, density, abundance, etc.) as to constitute a forest or even savanna are not the native plants, not the native plant community, of tallgrass prairie. Furthermore, fire is not always or even typically a disturbance to many species of prairie (herbaceous) plants; contrariwise, it is an "invigorating", a restorative (if not an essential), factor in survival of the climax plant species of the tallgrass prairie.

A prairieman's toast: To fire which brings death to woody species that invade natural grasslands!

This was a textbook example of secondary plant succession starting with the first step or first process in the Clementsian Model of dynamic plant ecology that is often known as relay floristics. The first step or process in this classic view of secondary plant succession was denudation, removal of the existing plant community, which in this instance was the wildfire. The second step is the first seral stage of secondary succession: establishment of the pioneer plant community of the sere. The sere is the land--a specific range site--on which a particular climax vegetation, a potential natural plant community, is possible through re-development processes (successional restoration). Establishment of each seral stage, beginning with migration of plant propagules, is the Clementsian outcome known as invasion. In this example, fruits of invaders (pioneer species of the first seral stage) such as achenes of composites were either already part of the soil seed bank or arrived after the wildfire. Details of the invading or, in this case, pioneering plant species (species of the first seral stage) were given below. The invaders (here they were the pioneers of the post-fire community) were the first cast of plant actors to appear on the successional stage of tallgrass prairie in the humid precipitation zone.

Please, advance the carousel slide projector...

13. Invasion a year after a pyromaniac's blessing- Two views (a "nested photoplot") inside a stand of tree species that invaded a tallgrass prairie in the Osage Cuestas in southeast Kansas a year after a wildfire topkilled almost all trees. Tree species included black cherry, eastern cottonwood, black walnut, and eastern red cedar. The "tree skeletons" in the first slide were eastern cottonwood, a species that--as widely scattered individuals--is part of the climax tallgrass prairie vegetation. The blackened snags in foreground of the second slide were black cherry. Tree crowns with some green leaves in the distant background of both slides were on the margin or perimeter of this local man-made forest where intensity of the fire was less. Even these trees were top-dead (they just did not know it). Almost none of these trees had resprouted at this point in post-burn time.

The green plants in these images included horseweed or mare'stail (Conyza canadensis), a native, annual, composite; annual sunflower (Helianthus annuus), another native annual composite (and the Kansas State Flower); common ragweed (Ambrosia artemisiifolia), a native, annual composite; common European thistle (Cirsium vulgare), a naturalized, Eurasian, annual composite (not a legally designated weed in Kansas), tall thistle (Cirsium altissimum), a native, biennial (or short-lived perennial) composite; pokeberry or pokeweed (Phytolacca americana), a native, pioneering perennial forb; and smooth sumac (Rhus glabra) a native shrub that requires (or at least responds vigerously to) periodic fire.

There were almost no grasses in the post-wildfire pioneer plant community. It was explained below that the only grass plants present (and these were limited to a few spots) were of were individuals of an agronomic pasture species, and these few plants had established prior to the wildfire.

14. Pioneers in the fire-treated invasion- Plant life inside a woody invsion of tallgrass prairie one year after a spring wildfire (illegally set by a local pyromaniac) topkilled all trees. The tree with forked trunk, largest trunk with a large limb coming off the right side of its bole, was black cherry. The limbless, single trunk to left of the forked trunk was eastern cottonwood. The tree with its trunk in immediate right foreground of the first slide was eastern red cedar. Eastern red cedar is a non-sprouting conifer (and one of the worst invaders of tallgrass prairies) so it was "kilt graveyard dead". Hurray!

All green plants visible in these two images were forbs, most of them annuals. Forb species included annual sunflower, horsewed or mare's tail, common thistle, pokeberry, common or annual ragweed, and, as exemplified by the large plant in immediate center foreground, tall thistle. The one woody species that had sprouted at this point in successional time was smooth sumac, a nice specimen of which was present in the lower left corner of the second slide. A plant of anual or common ragweed was also featured in this second slide as were many plants of pokeberry or pokeweed. These same species were also present in the first slide. No grasses or grasslike plants were present (nor visible) in either of these photographs.

This burn area was in the Osage Cuestas of the Central Lowlands in southeast Kansas. This local forest (perhaps more like a stand of trees) consisted of four, native tree species. This forest stand was a man-made forest that developed on the disturbaned land of a former residence and barmyard from which natural fire had been excluded (until a local arsonist set the wildfire). This was an example of afforestation, the process of creating by human action (or inaction by not using prescribed fire) a forest on land which previously had not supported a forest (land on which forest was not the potential natural vegetation).

15. Invaders deposed; invading pioneers- Another "nested photoplot" with a larger or wider view (first image) and a smaller view or "subplot" (second image) of the "whole plot" of a local man-made forest (it constituted a woody invsion) on tallgrass prairie one year after it burned in a human-ignited wildfire. The "center of attention" tree-wise was three eastern red cedar (first slide) and two of these eastern red cedar (second slide) that were killed by the spring wildfire. Eastern red cedar, a native species, is a non-sprouting conifer. With eastern red cedar, topkill is synonymous with total or complete kill. It is likely that fire was the single most important reason that, on the pre-whiteman prairie, eastern red cedar was absent except for rare habitats that were less likely to burn. The examples proudly presented here demonstrated that fact. Textbook examples. Such burnt "skeletons" were this rangeman's ideal of natural brush control.

Green plants were almost all forbs including annual sunflower (most of the forb cover in the first slide), horseweed or mare's tail, pokeberry, common thistle, common or annual ragweed, and tall thistle. All of these forb species were native annuals except pokeberry and tall thistle which were native perennials or, in case of tall thistle, sometimes a biennial. Common thistle was a naturalized, Eurasian annual. Pokeweed was the only forb that was not a composite. The other plant represented by green shoots was smooth sumac which is a native, rhizomatous shrub that thrives under periodic --though not annual--burning.

There were almost no grass species present in this first-year, first-seral stage successional plant community. (See the next two-slide/caption set for two grass species present as a few widely scattered plants on this post-burn site.)

16. Invaders of an invasion- Two "photoquadrants" of the pioneer (first seral) stage one year after a spring wildfire burned a stand of native tree species that had invaded a disturbed tallgrass prairie. Black cherry, eastern cottonwood, black walnut, and eastern red cedar (tree species that are indigenous to this region) had developed into a local anthropogenic (man-made) forest around an abandoned farmstead in the Osage Cuestas of the Central Lowlands physiographic province in southeastern Kansas. Soil disturbance including some tillage and overgrazing in a barnyard along with exclusion of natural prairie fires were perturbations responsible for the tree invasion of this tallgrass prairie. These disturbances had permitted development of this woody plant invasion--and range retrogression (departure of the range plant community from climax vegetation).

A wildfire set illegally by a local "firebug" set the stage for range recovery (grassland restoration) by topkilling all trees. The non-sprouting eastern red cedar was "done for".

Almost all species of invader (a plant species that establishs itself on the sere of a range site) were either forbs--both native and naturalized, annual and perennial (or biennial)--or the native shrub, smooth sumac. At time of photographs hardwood trees had not resprouted. There were two species of grass visible in the second of these two slides: 1) tall fescue present as pre-fire established plants that had survived and were regrowing and 2) barnyard grass (Echinochloa crusgalli), a widely naturalized, Eurasian annual that thrives under disturbance (ie. generally a weed). There was one plant of an unidentifiable grasslike species, possibly a Cyperus species.

It was not known if any native tallgrass species like big bluestem or switchgrass were present in this man-made forest, but if plants of these decreaser grass species had been in the understorey of the stand of trees it would be almost "a guarantee" that some plants of these grasses would have been present after the fire. This is especially the situation given that these warm-season tallgrasses were dormant at time of the wildfire.

It was more likely that the trees had established in either 1) a tame pasture of tall fescue (ie. a conversion of native prairie to an agronomic forage) or 2) the semi-naturalized tall fescue had volunteered or at least some plants of tall fescue had self-established along with the trees in the disturbed area around the rural residence or barnyard. Either way, native tallgrasses were probably not present with these trees. The few plants of tall fescue that were present in the post-burn plant community may be those that survived the spring wildfirewhich burned when the cool-season tall fescue was in active growth.

17. Smoky Bear has too many friends- Invasion by Ashe, blueberry or post juniper (Juniperus ashei) and redberry juniper (J. pinchotii) on an overgrazed tallgrass prairie range in the Grand Prairie of northcentral Texas. This brush invasion was a classic example of a cedar brake and, as explained shortly, a man-made cedar brake.

This pasture had not been burnt in a century--and it "looked the part". This range was in the fourth continuous year of drought (varied from Severe to Extreme Drought on the Palmer Index), but the paucity of grass herbage (= fuel) was due to overgrazing by beef cattle. Attempts at prescribed burning of this range would give mixed results because there was very limited herbaceous material (fine fuels) to carry a fire. However, once fire got into the crowns of these junipers (ie. became a crown fire) flames would burn "hotter than the hubs of Hell". In other words, even with absence of fine fuels over much of the cedar-choked, former grassland it would be an easy matter to run a tremendously hot crown fire through this cedar brake.

This dreadful brush invasion was due to lack of fire (which to some extent was an artifact of overgrazing). The only plant of redberry cedar (juniper) seen in this horrid lineup of brush was the second tree from left in the first (upper) slide. Redberry juniper resprouts; blueberry or Ashe juniper does not. A hot top-killing fire would wipe out almost all of the existing junipers in this cedar brake.

With friends like those of Smoky Bear this grassland did not need enemies. Unfortunately, this former tallgrass prairie also had enemies (along with Smoky's friends). Overgrazing had been the history of this small ranch, and there was continuing overgrazing with mismanagement by university personnel. (The author of this publication was himself a university employee--a full professor--who purposely kept himself out of any management of this land. Proper range management was a lost cause on Hunewell Ranch.)

Tarleton State University Hunewell Ranch, Erath County, Texas. Mid-April; early grass growth stage of phenology.

Closer look at a cedr break- Outside edge of a cedarbrake. An invasion of redbery juniper (left) and blueberry or Ashe juniper (right) on an overgrazed, underburned Grand Prairie range formerly dominated by little bluestem. (Most of the herbage in front of the cedarbrke was little bluestem, but there was also Sporobolus clandestinus, purple-flower dropseed; Stipa leucotricha, Texas wintergrass; and Carex planostachys, cedar caric-sedge.)x Overgrazing was a major factor, but absolutely no burning for over 60 years was a joint factor in loss of this grassland pasture. keep looking ..

Tarleton State University Hunewell Ranch, Erath County, Texas. Early April; last year's dead hrrbage, early grass growth stage of phenology.

Going into a cedarbrake- Moving in closer to the cedarbarke intorudced in the immediately preceding two-slide-caption unit. In both of these slides redberry juniper (left) and blueberry or post cedaar or juniper (right). Most of the grass visible in the first of these two slides was little bluestem. but some was purple-flower dropseed.was also present. Probably no living human being knows when this range was last burnt, but it was probably when the Comanche were still raiding and holding white folks at bay (more or less).

Cedarbrakes on grasslad range sites like this one that was part of the Grand Prairie tallgrass prairie are absolutely brush invasions. This brush invasion was probably due to a combination of factors starting with cessation (suppression) of grassland fires and overgrazing. Past tillage was not a factor on this never-plowed prairie sod.

Next stop: into the cedarbrake

Tarleton State University Hunewell Ranch, Erath County, Texas. Early April; last year's dead herbage, early grass growth stage of phenology.

Breaking into a cedarbrake- Entering the cedaarbrake shown in the immediately two two-slide-caption sets (first slide) and deep inside of the cedarbrake (second slide). In the interior of this brush maze no grass was allowed. Contrast the bare understorey of this cedarbrake with the grassland sward in the above slides thaat showed the extrior (margin) of the cedarbrake and the grassland sward immediately adjoining it.

Tarleton State University Hunewell Ranch, Erath County, Texas. Early April..

18. Outcome of a Smoky Bear state of mind- Another view of the same Grand Prairie range (northcentral Texas) shown in the immedaiatly preceding two slides. This local range plant community consisted of a "decadant" (senescent) stand of winged sumac (Rhus copallina= R. copallinum var. latifolia) with an understorey little bluestem (Andropogon scoparius), tall dropseed (Sporobolus asper= S. compositus) and purple-flowered dropseed (S. clandestinus) plus an invading plant blueberry or Ashe juniper.

Lack of grassland fire was responsible--at least largely so--for the two plant succession/range management problems in this local vegetation. The first (first in time) problem was senescence of the valuable browse plant, winged sumac. Many of the Rhus species are so adapted (natural selection) to periodic prairie fire that in the absence of fire this highly rhizomatous, clonal, colony forming shrub undergoes senescence. Specifically, individual shoots of Rhus species are comparatively short-lived so that production of new shoots from woody rhizomes ("rootstocks") is an essential vegetative (asexual) process for continued life of individual genotypes (genetic individuals). Fire is one of the main abiotic factors responsible for development of these new, clonal woody shoots. In absence of fire, the fairly short-lived clonal shoots (modules of the genetic individual) are not replaced. The result is eventual die-out of the genetotypic colony or what some folks refere to as "decadance", the stand becomes "decadent". Senescence is the last stage of life before the final or eventual state of death. Fire rejuvenates the highly clonal colonies of winged sumac and increases the longevity (perhaps the near "eternal" feature) of this modular species for which asexual (vegetative) reproduction is an essential part of its life cycle.

The second (later in time in the dynamics of this local vegetation) was invasion by Ashe juniper. It was explained in the preceding caption that blueberry juniper is a nonsprouting species. A prairie fire (natural or human-ignited) would kill--and kill readily--the invading plant of blueberry juniper seen in this colony of winged sumac and its understorey of native prairie grasses. Little bluestem is the climax dominant of most range sites in the Grand Prairie Shiflet, 1994, p.)..

A simple and relatively low-intensity fire would solve both: 1) the condition of browse (winged sumac) senescence and 2) invasion of a noxious tree species (Ashe juniper). Otherwise, the range vegetation seen here will remain in a state of range retrogression (the corresponding retrograde change in direction from plant succession on the range). In fact, this range vegetation will more than likely deteriorate further with the eventual development of a cedar brake like the example shown immediately above. The range plant communities shown and described in this slide/caption set and in the preceding set were only about a three-minute walk apart.

Negligence has probably been responsible for as much range deterioration (degradation through retrogression) as active mismanagement. Overgrazing is an example of the latter. Elimination of periodic fire is an example of the former (whether misdirected strong action is taken to prevent natural fire or whether laxiness and/or fear results in absence of prescribed fire). Either man must manage range resources or get out of the way and let Nature do it.

Tarleton State University Hunewell Ranch, Erath County, Texas. Mid-April; early grass growth stage of phenology.

19. Start of an invasion- A circle starts or ends wherever one arbitrarily chooses. A vicious cycle of self-sustaining invasion by eastern red cedar (Juniprus virginiana) on grassland or forest can be seen as originating with the fleshy seeds which are especially palatable to certain species of passerines such as the American robin (Turdus migratorius). As the eaten seed passes out of the gastrointestional tract of birds it is planted, often in opportune microhabitats. Such zoochory (plant propagule dispersal by animals) has been one factor resonsible for invasion of eastern red cedar into natural plant communities ranging from tallgrass prairie to bottomland forest.

This is not only a self-sustaining process, but an expanding one as well. Birds plant trees that attract birds that plant other trees and so on. One factor (agent) that breaks the cycle is fire. In the process fire maintains grassland that is habitat for grassland birds though not so much a home for the migratory American robin. Eat your little red breast out, robin. With fire you will not be eating many fleshy seeds of eastern red cedar. Go hunt worms. They're more nutritious anyway.

Ottawa County, Oklahoma. Late December; seed-ripe phenological stage.

20. Seeds of potential invasion upclose- Detailed views of the fleshy seeds or ovuliferous cones of eastern red cedar. These fleshy cones were on a young tree less than twelve feet tall. Juniperus species are almost always dioecious. These females were doing what females do best (what they have evolved for): reproducing.

Any good teacher knows that if something is important it bears repeating. Do you think this teacher wanted to be sure that his students got the idea about the fleshy seeds of eastern red cedar.

Ottawa County, Oklahoma. Late December; seed-ripe phenological stage.

21. Start of something bad on tallgrass prairie- A new seedling (less than six months old) of eastern red cedar that came in on degraded tallgrass prairie in the western Ozark Plateau. The photographer placed the terminal end of a seed-bearing leader eastern red cedar at base of the seedling for scale and insturctional purposes.

This was the start of an invasion of eastern red cedar in what should be a natural grassland community. Well no, this particular seedling was not long for its prairie world once your author captured on film the start of a would-have-been invasion. At least the little woody weed lives on in instructional medium. (And, unfortunately, there will be no shortage of future seedlings of eastern red cedar invading tallgrass prairie.)

Ottawa County, Oklahoma. Late December; very early seedling stage.

22. Big invasion secret- Total of five two-year-old seedlings (in the three slides) of eastern red cedar (Juniperus virginiana) that had been growing at the edge of an oak-hickory forest/tallgrass prairie ecotone in the Ozark Plateau portion of the Prairie Peninsula. Some near-by, yound (though sexually mature) eastern red cedar provided fleshy seeds as the source for many seedlings like the ones seen here. Your author pulled up these seedlings from soft soil that was moistioned by spring rains. Most of the root systems of these eastern red cedar seedlings came up intact permitting inspection of the seedlings.

Although all these seedlings had well-developed taproots the most prominent feature of their root systems was the relatively large, elongated lateral roots. Some of these lateral roots were more than two and a half times the length of the shoots (aboveground portion of the seedling plants). And, of course, parts of the outer (or deeper) roots broke off in spite of the photographer's most careful efforts to preserve such portions during extraction.

The self-evident adaptation (survival characteristic) of eastern red cedar was that elongated, greatly extended lateral roots just below the soil surface permitted seedlings to quickly appropriate (capture) surface water before it evaporated or percolated quickly through the rocky soil of the Springfield Plateau (the western part of the Ozark Plateau, a chair of ancient mountains worn down to their roots). This morphological adaptation of elongated lateral roots to quickly, efficiently acquire surface moisture is more commonly recognized in desert plants, especially various cactus species. It was interesting that drought-tolerant eastern red cedar had evolved the same mechanism for survival in the Humid precipitation zone. Shallow, rocky soils of the ancient Ozarks are extremely droughtly.

Ozark hillbillies have long recognized that on such upland, stony soils a drought is always only two to three weeks away during hot summer growing conditions. Development of extended lateral roots in seedlings of this native conifer was a natural selection adaptation that permitted eastern red cedar to be able to compete (outcompete) and establish itself with climax species of both tallgrasses like big bluestem and Indiangrass as well adults of hardwood trees ranging from oaks and hickories to elms (Ulmus spp.), white ash (Fraxinus americana), and hackberry (Celtis occidentalis).

A root system highly evolved to survival in environments of periodically dry conditions combined with intense rainfall events was paired with leaves that were water-conserving, scaly, evergreen needles; plus rapid growth early in its life cycle growth, and precocious seed production resulted in a native species that was made to order for invasion into climax vegetation of which it was not a member, under more natural conditions.

What then had permitted recent invasion of eastern red cedar and, later or ultimately, replacement of climax angiosperms by the successional new-comer conifer, albeit it a native plant species? FIRE (or, in this instance, absence of fire). One adaptation that eastern red cedar did not evolve was sprouting (resprouting following defoliation, as by fire). In fact, those scaly, fine neeedles that can tolerate great desiccation in hot, droughty summers and, even more, during dry, cold winters make for some of the finest "tinder box" fuel imaginable.

These eastern red cedar seedlings were (had been) on the edge of a second-growth oak-hickory/degraded (and, former) big bluestem-dominated upland chert prairie. Less than a century and a half ago (somthing like 130 years before), this land had been the virgin sod of tallgrass prairie at the western edge of the Ozark (Springfield) Plateau (a southern extension of the famed Prairie Peninsula that stretched south from the Prairie Provinces of Manitoba and western Ontario). This prairie land was in Indian Territory less than a mile from the State of Missouri. Later this prairie became part of the Sedalia Cattle Trail that was also known as the Kansas Trail; Texas Trail (or Texas Road), Texas being the source of most of the trailed cattle; and also the Shawnee Trail (probably after the Shawnee Indian tribe).

An old trail driver visited this location and told the author's grandmother stories about trailing Texas cattle right through this spot where there had been a fine spring for watering cattle (before wells dried it up decades later). Here on the old Sedalia cattle trail (which followed Indian trails which followed game trails) there had been only a few scattered ancient trees of American elm (Ulmus americana), red or slipper elm (U. rubra), blackjack oak (Quercus marilandica), post oak (Q. stellata), and eastern persimmon (Diospyros virginiana).

Most of these trees were of immense size at the time when your author spent his boyhood on this his homeplace. For example, one blackjack oak had a stump circumferance of over ten feet while an American elm had a basal cirumferance of over twelve feet. Many of these large, old-age trees had fire scars. One American elm had a fire chimney that extended over twenty feet up its trunk which was burnt almost half way through yet surrounded by healthy woody tissue. Ancient male persimmons had stump circumferences of over three feet and produced root sucker progeny two hundred feet away from their trunks.

After settlemen by the white man and his cessation of prairie fires--many of which had undoubtedly been set by the red-skinned first Okies--all manner of invading species took over. This even included the fungal Dutch Elm Disease (Ophiostoma ulmi) that wiped out the ancient elms.

At any rate, the white man's culture, including Agriculture, (your author refrained from calling it civilization, though of course it is) permitted invasion of eastern red cedar within the limits of the species remarkable adaptation.

There is no preservation and wise use of tallgrass prairie without proper use of fire.

Underburning and Overgrazing on Tallgrass Prairie

The following slides provided a dramatic lesson in management of tallgrass prairie in the famed Flint Hills of Kansas.

Utilization (Degree of Use) on Tallgrass Prairie

This section served as an introduction to Proper Degree of Use, the first and most important of the Four Cardinal Principles of Range Management. Unfortunately--though of necessity--some examples were of improper degree of use, especially overuse.

23. Flint Hills disgrace- An overview of overgrazing of a tallgrass prairie cattle range in the famed Flint Hills of central Kansas. The foreground was an ungrazed (outside) fencerow of big bluestem, Canada wildrye, switchgrass, and Maximilian sunflower (Helianthus maximiliani). Behind was an overgrazed stocker range that had been covnverted to buffalograss with a lot of naturalized smooth brome (Bromus inermis) plus invader forbs notably Baldwin ironweed (Vernonia baldwinii), western yarrow (Achillea lanulosa= A. millefolium), and tall thistle (Cirsium altissimum). All three of these forbs are native, but indicator species of disturbance like overgrazing. The dominant forb in the ungrazed outside fencerow was Maximillian sunflower. Bothe the native shortgrass species, buffalograss, and the introduced agronomic pasture grass, smooth brome, are invader grass species on this range site.

The range was currently overstocked with 700 to 800 pound steers. Size of cattle was incidental. The relevent factor was that there too damn many of them. Not only was this stocker range being overgrazed currently, but it unquestionably had a history of the same abuse. A pasture dominated by big bluestem, switchgrass, and Canada wildrye is not converted to buffalogrss and/or a de facto tame pasture of smooth bromegrass in one, two or even three grazing/growing seasons.

Butler County, Kansas. Early June; late vernal aspect. FRES No. 39 (Prairie Grassland Ecosystem). K-66 (Bluestem Prairie). SRM 601 (Bluestem Prairie), more generally, or SRM 710 (Bluestem Prairie), more specifically. "Tall-Grass" Series, 142.11, of Plains Grassland biotic community, 142.1 (Brown et al., 1998, p. 40). Flint Hills Ecoregion, 28a (Chapman et al., 2001).

24. More than difference in utilization- An ungrazed outer fencerow of big bluestem, switchgrass, and Canada wildrye (as the dominant species) with a nice plant of Maximillian sunflower as representative of the dominant forb was shown in the foreground (in front of the fence) of this slide. The background (behind the fence) was an overgrazed stocker range converted to a mixture of buffalograss and smooth bromegrass a native shortgrass and an introduced domestic species, respectively.

Invader species, including forbs, were shown in two fenceline contrast views in the next slide/caption set. Next set of sad slides, if you please...

25. Outside-in, inside-out; disgraceful mismanagement either way- The ungrazed (outside) side of a fencerow--left and right side, respectively, in the first and second slide versus the overgrazed (pasture-side) of a fencerow--right and left side, respectively, in the first and second slide-- of a tallgrass prairie stocker range in the Flint Hills of central Kansas.

The overgrazed "remains" of the tallgrass prairie pasture had been converted into a mixture of buffalograss, a natve shortgrass, and smooth bromegrass, an introduced forage species, while the ungrazed tallgrass prairie was dominated by big bluestem, switchgrass, and Canada wildrye with Maximillian sunflower as the major forb. Major forbs in the overgrazed pasture were Baldwin ironweed (the short forbs at right in the second slide) and western yarrow (the white-headed plants at right in first slide). There were three larger plants (for this stage of the annual growth cycle) of Maximillian sunflower in the ungrazed outer fencerow (right side of the first slide).

All the major range plant species growing on the overgrazed stocker range were invaders for this range site. All the dominant, associate, and major grass and forb species in the ungrazed outer fencerow were decreaser species (members of the climax tallgrass prairie vegetation) for this range site.

A sad, but instructive lesson. The good news was that most Jayhawkers fortunate enough to own land like that shown here cherish the range that has been intrusted to them and do not abuse it like that shown here. The other good news is that even the tallgrass prairie pasture that had been degraded by overgrazing could recover, and recover dramatically and fairly rapidly in successional time scale. Dr. Wilfred E McMurphy, the author's undergraduate professor at Oklahoma State University, pointed out to his students that it was almost impossibe to permanently degrade a Flint Hills tallgrass prairie range by overgrazing with cattle, at least overgrazing short of turning it into a feedyard.

26. Livestock in and livestock out- An exclosure on a tallgrass prairie (part of the once-expansive Fort Worth Prairie) range grazed by beef cattle, sheep, and white-tailed deer. The exclosure was livestock-proof but did not exclude deer. This range was supposedly under a high intensity-low frequency grazing program for cattle and continuous grazing management for sheep. (Electric fences that divided the range into grazing units--cells, paddocks, traps, whatever name was used--were high enough above ground that sheep grazed wherever, whenever, however they chose.

Interior of the exclosure was on the right in the first or upper slide and on the left in the second or lower slide. Visually there was only one difference in species composition between inside and outside the exclosure: annual broomweed (Gutierrezia draculoides) with its "canary yellow" flowers was conspicuous outside the exclosure (the grassland range grazed by livestock) and almost completely absent inside the livestock- (but not deer)- proof exclosure. One area inside the exclosure did have annual broomweed growing next to (almost against) the exclosure fence. That fenceline contrast was shown in the first slide. Even at that one micro-location the contrast in cover and density of annual broomweed inside versus outside the exclosure revealed a stark contrast. From this observation post there appeared to be more plants of the annual euphorb, snow-on-the-mountain (Euphorbia marginata) outside the exclosure, but cover, density, and frequency of this annual forb were not not determined. Likewise, the contrast was not self-evident as was, undeniably, the case for annual broomweed.

The only tentative, conditional, or observationally qualified conclusion that could be drawn from this contrast of livestock-grazed versus not livestock-grazed tallgrass prairie was that sheep and/or cattle were not fond of annual broomweed.

The dominant range plant species inside and outside the exclosure were little bluestem, big bluestem, Indiangrass, and western ragweed (Ambrosia psilostachya). Percent composition was not determined, but in several local "mind's-eye" quadrants western ragweed was dominant based on the criterion of estimated foliar cover.

The invasion by woody species--especially honey mesquite (Prosopis glandulosa), bois d'arc (Macula pomifera), and sugarberry (Celtis laevigata)--of this otherwise relict tract of Fort Worth Prairie was obvious to viewers upon close study of the second slide. For whatever reasons the management group of this ranch operation refused to practice prescribed burning. Their phobia was obvious. This range needed "a good spring burning" in the worst way. This pasture will be a brush patch within a quarter century if proper woody plant management (that means BRUSH CONTROL) is not followed.

McFarland Ranch, Parker County, Texas. Early October; peak standing crop of climax dominant grasses.

27. The wretchedness of overuse (and by an agricultural college nonetheless)- Severe overuse of two plants of little bluestem (Andropogon scoparius) on an overgrazed range on the Grand Prairie. These two plants had been "gnawed into the ground" by beef cattle during a Severe Drought. The two determined plants had put forth this regrowth following a few rain showers that occurred roughly two and a half months before the average first killing (autumn) freeze. In spite of their noble efforts to endure their survival was doubtful (especially given that cattle were still in this pasture).

Though it pained the author to include these dreadful examples of overuse (excessive defoliation of current season's growth), particularly given that they were on the ranch of the college of which he is a member, their sad state of abuse provided an ideal example of improper management of excessive utilization. Instead of reducing the stocking rate, providing for a period of rest, and using other standard drought management practices, this management just "doubled-down" on what few range plants remained. Sadly, but surely it was a teachable moment. Perhaps the plants "did not die in vain".

Hunewell Ranch Tarleton State University, Erath County, Texas. Late October; autumn and late-spring regrowth.

Disclaimer: this author did not have the authority to do anything with regards to management of range resources on Hunewell Ranch anymore than he had authority to set rules for FFA Range Contests held on it. For the record, this author did not try to wash his hands of this state of affairs. He was not Pontius Pilate; just a Roman soldier hired for crowd control.

28. Fenceline through a stand of tall dropseed- Local colony of tall dropseed (Sporobolus asper) on part of a degraded (by decades of overgrazing with beef cattle) tallgrass prairie pasture in the western Ozark Plateau (Springfield Plateau portion). The first slide was looking across the ungrazed outside fencerow (foreground) into the overgrazed deteriorated prairie pasture (mid-and background; behind the fence).

The second slide was an obvious fenceline view that showed ungrazed herbage of tall dropseed on the outer fencerow (outside the pasture) at left and the residual herbage on the overgrazed (longterm overuse) prairie pasture (inside the property line, the pasture, fence) at right . Images were at end of the warm-growing season and showed the degree of use at termination of grass growth for this year. (For scale of grass height, the top wire of this fence was about four and a half feet.)

Tall dropseed (along with a few other grass species) had obviously been overused again in the current growing/grazing season (to right of the fence).

What was remarkable in this lesson was the mere survival of (ie. presece of any) tall dropseed on this pasture that had been overgrazed for at least a half century. Any detectable presence of tall dropseed was, to some degree, a lesson of the fortunes of "just enough rain at just the right time". Tall dropseed at persisted in small amounts (very low cover, density, etc.) even with overgrazing, including current over- utilization. With fortunious rain at "just the right time" tall dropseed produced an abundance--and conspicuously so--of herbage. This was noticable with the unusually high yield of herbage (the peak standing crop at growing season's end) on the unused, outer fencerow.

By the way, this yield of tall dropseed herbage came in the second year of "average" (close to the arithmetic mean) precipitation following a five-year drought that registered Severe To Extreme on the Palmer Index. If the landowner had not overused this pasture in the last two typical years tall dropseed would have increased at least some in cover (and probably plant density) on the degraded grassland.

How much had he overused it? Next slide ...

Ottawa County, Oklahoma. Late December: early hibernal aspect, peak standing crop stage of dormancy.

29. High yield and basis for comparison- Ungrazed shoots of tall dropseed on the outer fencerow of an overgrazed tallgrass prairie pasture as they appeared in early winter. These plants served as a "baseline" with which to compare grazed shoots so as to determine utilization (degree of use) of tall dropseed on the pasture. In nothing else, a rangeman could compare ungrazed to grazed plants and make a visual estimate of utilization. The outside fencerow served as a de facto exclosure.

Ottawa County, Oklahoma. Late December: early hibernal aspect, peak standing crop stage of dormancy.

30. My goodness: grazier actually left a little- A plant of tall dropseed on a depleted tallgrass prairie pasture that had been overgrazed for over a half century. Somehow after this period of abuse--and following a five year Severe to Extreme Drought (Palmer Scale)--scattered plants of tall dropseed had survived and produced a notable herbage crop.

This tall dropseed specimen was on the overgrazed prairie pasture presented in the immediately preceding two-slide/caption unit. Students should scroll back up and compare size, cover, etc. of ungrazed tall dropseed in the two preceding slide sets to the heavily (over-) utilized plant seen here. Students can also compare height of the sole remaining shoot of this plant to height of herbage remaining on the grazed portion of it. Such height of residual herbage is called stubble height. Stubble height is one measure (among many) of utilizsation (degree of use).

This one shoot of tall dropseed had flowered and produced fruit, which in Sporobolus species is an achene rather than a grain (the actual seed is loose inside the fruit). In perennial grasses of the tallgrass prairie sexual reproduction is not nearly as effective as asexual (= vegetative) reproduction. Shoots of the Sporobolus species are almost always tillers such that individual plants are bunchgrasses. Nonetheless, sexual reproduction does have two advantages: 1) it permits on-going evolution by creation of new genotypes that might be better adapted to current environments and 2) it enables wider dispersal of plant propagules therby increasing rate and areal extent of plant invasion (establishment of new plants of a species in a new "home". (Students were referred to invasion on pages 166 to 168 of Weaver and Clements [1938]). With regard to point )2, tillers do not disperse very far from their parent plant.

Degree of use should almost always permit of sexual reproduction, especially on depleted ranges and pastures. In other word, there should usually be some remaining fruit-bearing grass shoots. Even this poor, mangled specimen produced a few seed for potential new plants that might just miraculously on this "beat-to-hell" pasture. Good luck and God Speed.

Observant students would have taken note of the small patches of remaining snow in midground of this image.

Ottawa County, Oklahoma (Springfield Plateau). Late December: early hibernal aspect, peak standing crop stage of dormancy.

31. Fruit stalks- Dead (ripened, fruit-shatter stage) sexual shoots of tall dropseed with constricted panicles partly enclosed in the boot (enveloping leaf sheath) shown at progressively closer camera distance. These shoots that had grown on the outside fencerow in the far-western Ozark (Springfield) Plateau were examples of sexual reproduction of this species. These were examples of how creation of new genotypes in readily dispersed propagules can be critical to re-establishment (re-invasion) and a species so as to contribute to range revegetation via secondry plant succession.

Sporobolus species are bunchgrasses that generally only tillers (intravaginated or vertical shoots) which are usually far less effective in increasing cover than the stolons and rhizomes, extravaginal (horizontal) shoots. Sexual propagules are an important augmentation to tillers in such cespitose species.

Sexual propagules or the fruit of Sporobolus species are--strictly speaking--achenes, or at least, they are not true cayopses given that the seed coat is not fused to the pericarp (Gould, 1976, p. 286).

Some patches of residual snow enhanced the winter season in the first two of these three slides.

On most range sites of tallgrass prairie tall dropseed ranges from decreaser to increaser, but it is a climax member of most tallgrass prairie plant communities. Differences in the proportion (relative plant cover) of tall dropseed in the climax range vegetation site-by-site. Tall dropseed is not a "major player" compared to the Four Horsemen of the Prairies (big bluestem, little bluestem, Indiangrass, switchgrass), but it is a key indicator species of the the potential natural vegetation. Weaver and Clements (1938, ps. 518, 520) regarded tall dropseed as a midgrass species and a "major dominant" of the true praiirie and a "less frequent" domiant of the tallgrass prairie.

32. Sad lesson in grass defoliation (at expense of grass and tax-payers)- Young shoots of big bluestem shredded (the tractor-pulled implement was a shredder or so-called rotary mower) to the soil surface as part of make-work by a county road worker (public--tax-supported--employee) . This hatchet-happy, mindless, busy body activity provided a sad--but very instructive--lesson in destructive defoliation (overuse; actually, "complete" use) of range plants.

Shoots of shredded big bluestem varied from a mowing height of four inches down to sub-soil surface levels with the shredder functioning more as a rotary tiller than a rotary mower), but height at which shoots were left after passage of the shredder was irrelevant for existing shoots because nearly all shredded shoots, especially shoots that were severely mangled, died anyway (see shortly below). The reason why mowing height was so irregular was that the land surface varied somewhat and depths of the road ditch varied greatly. (County road workers were no more proficient at operating road-grader blades than they were at operating a mechanical shredder). Plus, affects of undulating topography and fouled-up road ditches were exaggerated by pulling a comparatively large shredder over "little country". At this stage of the growth cycle of annual shoots of this decreaser, perennial grass unmowed shoots (behind defoliated shoots) varied in height from roughly eight to eighteen inches.

Big bluestem is categorized as a short-shoot grass species meaning that shoots are not elongated (internodes are not highly extended) until some latter portion of their annual cycle (life cycle of annual aboveground plant parts) that is relatively late in the warm-growing season. This is in contrast to long-shoot grass species such as Indiangrass and switchgrass. Almost all mid-grass species and clearly all shortgrass species are short-shoot grasses. There is an obvious survival advantage for the short-shoot elongation growth pattern under conditions of severe or extreme defoliation such as that shown in this section. It was almost a biological certainity that if the shredded tallgrass species had been Indiangrass or switchgrass, the ultimate effects from ground-level shredding (complete killing of big bluestem shoots) would have been even more dramatic (deadly). of big bluestem

Ottawa County, Oklahoma. Late June; Severe Drought (Palmer Index). Unelongated culm, pre-boot stage of phenology.

33. Road district prefers briars to big bluestem- At edge of a colony of big bluestem defoliated to soil surface (and sub-surface in spots) by a rotary shredder. Shoots of dewberry (Rubus flagellaris), a low-growing, trailing blackberry, were somehow spared the shredder's blades and were growing completely undamaged in the place where healthy shoots of climax big bluestem grew before; before busy body, hatchet happy county road workers carelessly shredded off shoots of big bluestem to the soil surface (or below).

This provided a textbook example showing that all agents (natural or man-made; biotic or abiotic) of defoliation defoliate selectively. Even an Ottawa County, Oklahoma worker should be able to correctly tell which of these two plant species they gave the competitive survival advantage to. (At least on average they would guess correctly half the time.) Of course they did not care as shredding (and ancillary damage to the land) was job security. Weeds and brush would give them even more of an excuse to earn wages-- at expense of tax-payers' and the native vegetation.

It should be mentioned that this action took place during one of the most worst drought in weather record history (third consecutive year of drought that ranged from from Severe to Extreme categories on the Palmer Index Scale.

Unelongated culm, pre-boot stage of phenology. Neighboring unshredded shoots varied in height from eight to eighteen inches. Late June; early summer. Severe Drought (Palmer Index).

34. Surviving and regrowth tissue from ground up- At edge of a closely shredded (to ground level) stand of big bluestem some torn, twisted shoots (tillers)--although dreadfully mangled--had survived in spite of severe injury. These organs--as shown here--had initiated limited regrowth. This was apperance of some such tillers (both leaves and culms) four (4) days following shredding with a so-called rotary mower. Shredders (common "lawn-mowers" are the most common example of these rotary movement blades) do not cut, clip or mow per se, but instead break, beat, crush, and twist off plant shoots. That bruising, breaking, smashing form of defoliation was shown in these two slides, the immediately succeeding slide, and various images below.

In these examples, students should note that damage to plant parts extended well below the actual point of contact with tissue loss by tearing, ripping, etc. action being much lower or farther down (involving much more plant tissue) than at the highest remaining point of leaf or culm. Defoliation done by shredders or, even, disk mowers (in fact any edged--however sharp--implement besides a sickle-bar mowing machine) typically involves both 1) jagged breakage at point of immediate contact and 2) ripping downwards, especially along the midrib of leaves. That was shown to advantage in the next slide...

Ottawa County, Oklahoma. Early July; Severe Drought (Palmer Index). Unelongated culm, pre-boot stage of phenology prior to shredding; earliest stages of regrowth of defoliated shoots following shredding-- in early summer. (Neighboring unshredded shoots varied in height from eight to eighteen inches.)

35. Extent of injury to surviving shoots (along with injury escaped shoots)- Dramatic damage to leaves and culms on tillers of big bluestem four (4) days following defoliation by a rotary shredder. These plant parts were on the outer edge of a swath in which aboveground parts of plants were completely removed (in spots the soil had been disturbed by shredder blades). At outer edge, as shown here, some tillers were not beaten and torn off to ground level. Even these partially defoliated shoots had suffered physical damage far beyond (below) the point of shredder blade contact, with the uppermost remaining plant tissue having been torn along jagged breakage lines and, in characteristic pattern, being ripped downward for comparatively great distances along the midrib (midvein) of leaves.

The undamaged, neighboring compound leaves were those of dewberry, a trailing, low-growing blackberry. The plant parts of this shrub were closer to the ground level than big bluestem tillers and as such escaped injury. This classic shot showed students that all agents of defoliation (whether biotic or abiotic, natural or anthropogenetic) defoliate ("graze" or "browse") selectively. The mechanical "angel of death" or botanical "grim reaper" passed over the shorter-growing range plant. Dewberry is an invader on this range site while big bluestem is a decreaser. Excessive defoliation was in the Clementsian model of secondary plant succession, the initial cause of range retrogression and woody plant invasion (degradation of this tallgrass prairie, a relict of climax grassland).

Straw in the background was that of big bluestem tillers killed when these shoots were broken (twisted) off and otherwise left intact by the beating action of rotating blades.

Ottawa County, Oklahoma. Early July; Severe Drought (Palmer Index). Unelongated culm, pre-boot stage of phenology prior to shredding. (Neighboring unshredded shoots varied in height from eight to eighteen inches.)

36. Rapid recovery (no other option--except death)- New tillers of big bluestem ten (10) days following shredding to a height of about two (2) inches in late June on an upland habitat of tallgrass prairie. Some of these shoots arose from the rootcrown (proaxisis) while other regrew from meristem in shredded tillers that did not completely die ( tillers were not killed but had some live tissue remaining at their bases).

These shoots were at edge of a swath in which a rotary shredder actually tore up the ground (thereby tilling the soil surface). Tillers shown here were at the perimeter of that swath where stubble height (height of remaining or post-shredding shoots) was roughly two (2) inches rather than zero (0) inches in the tilled ground.

Ottawa County, Oklahoma. Early July; Severe Drought (Palmer Index).

37. Rapid recovery under extreme stress- Regrowth (from rootcrown, the proaxis) of big bluestem tillers 22 days after removal of all aboveground grass tissue by tillage of surface soil. Disturbance of the soil surface (including breakage of chert rock) was by too-close shredding with a rotary blade shredder (blades were obviously too low to the ground: stupid, careless operation of county road equipment by a tax-paid worker).

New tillers arose from rootcrowns or, perhaps, a few short rhizomes. Regrowth from belowground organs requires considerably greater expenditure of stored nutrient, especially energy, reserves than when regrowth if from pre-existing aboveground organs such as tillers because more growth has to take place when growth initiation is from subterranean tissues.

Ottawa County, Oklahoma. Early July; Severe Drought (Palmer Index). Early regrowth stage of development.

38. Close-up view of summer regrowth- Close-in details of partially regrown tillers of big bluestem 22 days following complete removal of all grass shoot material by tillage of the ground surface through improper use of a rotary shredder (careless, apathetic county road worker failed to maintain adequate distance between the land surface and shredder blades). This early (22-day old) tiller growth was from root crowns and maybe from short rhizomes, but not from meristematic tissue of existing tillers (there were none). Regrowth from subterranean organs--either rootcrowns, the proaxis, or short rhizomes--is much more costly in terms of stored energy reserves than is regrowth from aboveground, pre-existing tillers. Growth of new plant tissue is greater and begins from earlier stages of development when it has to originate from belowground organs.

Furthermore, this regrowth took place during Extreme Drought (Palmer Scale).

Ottawa County, Oklahoma. Early July; Severe Drought (Palmer Index). Early regrowth stage of development.

39. Amazing survival ability- Strip of tallgrass prairie sod previously populated by big bluestem that was stripped bare to soil surface by improper use of rotary shredder (blades were obviously too close to the ground) by careless, unskilled county road worker. This disturbance was, in effect, tilled soil when the shredder was used as a rotary tiller (even chert rocks previously in the surface soil were broken up). This photograph presented the tilled strip as it appeared 24 days following the disturbance. The small plants were tillers of big bluestem that regrew from rootcrowns or short rhizomes (all new shoots arose from underground organs as all grass tillers had been killed and turned into macerated straw).

Details of regrowth of big bluestem on this disturbance area (at 22 days post-surface tillage) were presented and described in the two immediately preceding slide-caption sets. Complete defoliation of big bluestem shoots took place in late spring (shortly before summer solstice) and during Severe Drought (Palmer Scale). Big bluestem on this disturbed microsite proved to be remarkably resilient, but survival of these regrowth plants through to end of the of warm-growing season (until first killing frost) remained to be proved. Furthermore, complete removal of all plant life from the ground surface and mechanical disruption (stirring or mixing) of the surface soil created "prime habitat" for invasion of weedy pioneer plants (both native and exotic). More on that later...

Ottawa County, Oklahoma. Early July; Severe Drought (Palmer Index). Early regrowth stage of development.

So what became of the exotic flannel mullein (Verbascum thapsus), the weed that the Ottawa County, Oklahoma road crew mowed down (and, in the make-work, something-to-do process, killed out the big bluestem)? Already seen the killed big bluestem. Now, let's take a look at the mowed mullein.

40. Out of the mowed (but not dead), new- Flowering regrowth shoots in flannel mullein following mechanical shredding. This regrowth grew out of the primary (original shoot that arose from the embryo) and in the second growing season matured into a sexual (flowering) shoot. It was knocked off by a rotary mower, but regrowth shoots arose from interclary meristem of the living shoot below the point of mechanical removal.

In other words, mechanical removal did not prevent subsequent fruit/seed production. Undoubtedly, less fruit/seed was produced (yield was lowered by machine defoliation), but production of a seed crop was not prevented. More than enough seed was produced for the next biennial crop of flannel mullein.

Regrowth was shown at about three weeks post-defoliation. Secondary (regrowth) shoots varied from 11 to 15 inches in height.

Furthermore, soil disturbance by the shield of the shredder (left to center immediate foreground in second slide) facilitated emergence and growth of flannel mullein seedlings as well as reduced competition from perennial plants which were scrapped off by the outer housing of the roatary shredder.

Whose side were the county road crew workers on anyway?

Ottawa County, Oklahoma. Early July (early summer); regrowth of sexual shoots and mid-bloom phenological stages.

41. What's this? It was cut off!- Two examples of adult sexual shoots of flannel mullein that were broken off by roatry shredders and then promptly regrew secondary sexual (flowering) shoots. The shredded shoot in the first slide quickly grew back three shorter secondary shoots after removal of the primary (seed or embryonic shoot). The shredded shoot seen in the second slide only grew back two secondary shoots only one of which was blooming at time of photograph (a later, smaller shoot was on the lower left side of the shredded shoot).

The three regrowth shoots in the upper photograph were 12 to 16 inches in height while the flowering secondary shoot in the second photograph was slightly less than three inches tall.

In the Roman version of the earlier Greek legend, the superhero Hercules was given twelve labors. One of these was to slay the nine-headed Hydra, a sea monster guarding the lake of Lerna. Every time Hercules cut off one of the nine heads (some versions have more than nine heads) two heads grew back in its place. Obviously, these shreded plants of flannel mullein were "botanical Hydras".

Upshot: mechanical removal of flowering shoots of flannel mullein did not prevent subsequent regrowth and production of fruit/seed and restoration of the soil seed bank.

Recall from above that big bluestem did not survive yet alone produce grain (seed).

Ottawa County, Oklahoma. Early July (early summer); flowering stage in regrowth shoots.

So what did the manicured kill plot look like next year?

42. Ottawa County, Oklahoma weed control manicure- Winter views of the manicured kill plot of tallgrass-oak/hickory savanna, an area scraped down to mineral soil (the A horizon) that was shown and described above. Winter rosettes of the Eurasian biennial, flannel mullein had established on the spot where county road crews scraped off the soil surface with rotary mowers and then returned and mowed (mowed at it) adult mullein plants after these plants had produced seed. Mowed plants promptly resprouted and produced a smaller second crop of seed (ie. mowing resulted in more rather than less seed in the soil). Ottawa County Oklahoma make-work busybodies had propagated an exotic weed.

The mullein plants seen in these two photographs had germinated and grown to their rosette stage over the latter part of the preceding summer. Mullein plants were now overwintering as their cool-season rosettes.

The dead shoots in the above two images included those of weakened (by being scraped to their root crowns by rotary shredders) big bluestem that had been produced during the previous warm-growing season. Other dead plant material produced in the preceding cool-growing seaon and warm-growing season included included Japanese chess (Japanese brome), dewberry (Rubus flagellaris), catclaw sensitivebrier (Schrankia nuttallii), black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta), and eastern daisy fleabane (Erigeron annuus).

Ottawa County, Oklahoma. Early January; onset of winter.

More of the Ottawa county, Oklahoma roadside manicure- Another view and another year of the tax dollar wastage of the Ottawa County, Oklahoma commisoners. Ovrwintering rosettes of flanel mullein, a Eurasian biennial weed of the snapdragon family, that had established where an inept operator of a rotary shredder dug up the road bern (and plowed up native tallgrasses like ibig bluestem and purpletop) and therby created an excellent seedbed for ths weed.

There werre five rosettes in the location shown in the first slide. The second slide showed degree of "winter burn" (freeze damage) to one roette. This damag did not kill the plant. Early cold temperature just arrived before the plant could "hardern off". It pulled through.

Ottawa County, Oklahoma. Late December Early January; onset of winter.

PS: with the next election the current commissoner was voted out and the reigning road crew supervisor who was responsible for most of the operator boondoggles was fired. If flannel mullein could vote and follow elections it would have been disappointed in the election outcome.

43. Weed crop looking good; big bluestem lookin' purty peaked- Plant life in a a fencerow that had supported a colony of big bluestem and scattered forbs and dew berry the spring following shredding (and scrapping off of soil surface or, in essence, "plowing") by improper use of a roatary shredder in the previous spring. The deck or shroud around the rotary blades did the scraping.

Winter (overwintering) rosettes of flannel mullein were conspicuous. Seedlings of this biennal Eurasian species had sprouted in late summer/early autumn after the destructive shredding/scrapping two months earlier. This was their first full growing season (spring-summer period following winter rosette stage). Brown coloration was a combination of mature annual bromegrass (mostly Bromus japonicus, a naturalized Eurasian species) and dead shoots of big bluestem that had been killed the previous year by the shredding operation.

Green coloration was a combination of various species but that in the background was mostly live herbage of big bluestem that was beyond the swath of last year's shredding.There were also some shoots of big bluestem in left foreground that grew down in and at edge of the bar (barrow) ditch which was below the rotating blades of the shredder. Other green plants in the not-shredded area included dew berry, catclaw sensitive-brier, eastern daisy fleabane, Illinois bundleflower (Desmanthus illinoensis), and black-eyed susan. All of the just-listed plant species except catclaw sensitive-brier and Illinois bundleflower also grew in the shredded area (last year's swath).

This fencerow was in a southern part of the Prairie Peninsula at the western edge of the Ozark (Springfield) Plateau. The potential natural or climax range vegetation was a savanna of oak-hickory forest and tallgrass prairie dominated by big bluestem.

Ottawa County, Oklahoma. Late May (mid-spring).

44. Weeds growing; some bluestem still alive (barely)- An Epson Perfection (it is not perffection) 700 scanner over-exposed this slide, but elongating sexual (floral) shoots of flannel mullein were visible along with still-unvegetated scrapped soil from previous year's shredding /scrapping operation. Much of the green background was dew berry, but there was substantial cover of big bluestem there also along with eastern daisy fleabane and black-eyed susan. The clumps of grass in the immediate foreground were shoots of big bluestem which was growning down in and at side of the county road bar ditch where rotating blades of shredders passed over the previous year (ie. they were spared shredding and scraping).

Shredded big bluestem was either dead (winter-killed: died over winter) or barely alive at two inches in height.

The climax range vegetation of this fencerow was a savanna of oak-hickory forest and big bluestem-dominated tallgrass prairie.

This photograph was taken at sundown under bright, late-evening light.

Ottawa County, Oklahoma. Mid-June (late spring).

45. Mullein growing faster than grass- The scene of a supposed roadway maintenance operation where the year before an inexperienced equipment operator pulled/drug a rotary shredder along the outer outside fencerow and, with a combination of too-close shredding and scraping off the soil surface, killed big bluestem and other native prairie plants such as catclaw sensitive-brier, black-eyed susan, and Illinois bundleflower while simultaneously creating an excellent reduced-competition seedbed for flannel mullein and other weeds.

The first of these two photographs is the exact location (same plants) shown in the immediately preceding photograph. This slide was taken two weeks after the preceding slide aand showed increased development/size of flannel mullein and some increased size of three clumps of big bluestem in the immediate foreground. These three plants had grown enough to obscure the patch of scraped bare soil more evident in the previous slide. Big bluestem, dew berry, and other plants that were growing behind last year's swath of defoliation. (For whatever reason the tractor operator did not take take the shredder up to the fenceline. Made for a swathline contrast.)

The second of these two slides presented part of last year's shredded/scraped area at the inner edge of the barrow ditch. Some of this area had been scraped clear by the shroud or deck of the rotary shredder the previous year while other nearby parts or patches were passed over, depending on lay of the land at small scale (microtopography). There were bare areas; former bare areas that supported ripening plants of the Eurasian, annual bromegrass known as Japanese brome or Japanese chess; various plants of flannel mullein (throughout the swath); at far-right there were two large plants of the native, annual composite giant ragweed (Ambrosia trifida); and one plant of big bluestem that miraculously escaped death because it grew low enough in the ditch that the blades passed over it.

Potential natural vegetation of this range site was a savanna of big bluestem-dominated tallgrass prairie and oak-hickory forest. It was in the Prairie Peninsula of the western Ozark (Springfield) Plateau. This fencerow served as an example of the relict range plant community (when it was not destroyed by hatchet-happy incomponent county road workers).

Both of these slides were taken under an overcast sky.

Ottawa County, Oklahoma. Late June (early summer).

46. Key species both blooming- The dominant decreaser, big bluestem, and the obvious, prominent (and exotic) invader, flannel mullein, were at peak bloom stage in a fencerow in the oak-hickory forest-tallgrass prairie savanna in the western Ozark (Springfield) Plateau. The side-by-side comparison of a severely disturbed (shredded/scraped) swath (foreground) and the untreated or control area behind it (background) served as a swathline contrast for study of plant succession.

Last year (in the late spring of the previous year) inexperienced, busybody shredder operators defoliated to either 1) ground level (by shredding with rotary blades) or 2) below ground level (by scraping with the shredder deck to bare, mineral soil) a swath width that served as a disturbance treatment. The disturbance killed out almost all big bluestem which, prior to distruction treatment, had dominated the local tract of relict climax vegetation. Big bluestem was largely replaced by the alien Eurasian biennial, flannel mullein, along with the native dew berry which grew in from the adjacent barrow ditch and other unshredded micro-locations.

Flannel mullein was in its conspicuous flowering stage. Behind the shredded/scraped swath that was dominated by mullein there was an undisturbed (not shredded/scraped) area that was dominated by the climax big bluestem which was also in bloom (mostly in early anthesis stage of phenology). There were also some plants of big bluestem in front of the mullein-controlled shredder swath. These individuals of big bluestem were growing at the edge and down in the bar (= barrow) ditch where rotary blades of the shredder could not reach them (shredder passed over these plants).

This stark contrast in range vegetation served as a textbook example of defoliation-induced range retrogression (dominance or, at least, occcupation of the sere by plant species of lower successional order; creation of a range plant community of an earlier seral stage as induced by some disturbance).

From a management perspective, shredding was misuse, mismanagement or improper management because it propagated weeds and plants which obstructed more of the roadway view than the native decreaser, big bluestem ever would have. STUPID writ large.

Ottawa County, Oklahoma. Early July (early summer); full-bloom phenological stage.

47. Key species made made seed crops- In a swath of distruction created the preceding year (spring season of the previous year) by improper use of a rotary shredder flannel mullein was at peak bloom where in that previous year big bluestem had thrived. The shredded swath also had greater cover of dew berry, eastern daisy fleabane, and giant ragweed.

The area behind the shredded (and scraped by the shredder deck) swath was a strip of vegetation had not been shredded with obvious greater or denser herbage and plant cover. Most vdgetational cover in the unshredded area (the de facto untreated or control plot) was that of big bluestem, the climax dominant decreaser of the potential natural plant community. Big bluestem in the undisturbed area, the de facto control plot, was also at peak bloom (early anthesis phenological stage). As a general rule, most reproduction in perennial prairie grasses is asexual, vegetative production of more shoots, rather than sexual by grain production. Quite conspicuously, big bluestem had resorted to both sexual and asexual reproduction--where it had not been killed out the previous year by excessive defoliation by too-close shredding and scraping down to mineral soil.

In the swath of severe (excessive) disturbance there were some barely alive shoots of big bluestem. Even though some shoots had persisted, most plants of this climax dominant species had died (either last summer or over winter dormancy), and the few surviving man-made runts were petering out fast.

This was a tract of relict range vegetation that was an ecotone or transition zone between tallgrass prairie and oak-hickory forest in part of the Prairie Peninsula that developed here at the western edge of the Ozark Highlands (Springfield Plateau).

Ottawa County, Oklahoma. Late July (mid-summer).

48. Mullein life cycle complete; dew berries happy; shredded big bluestem dead- This was the ecological state of affairs on part of a shredded/scraped swath made by hatchet-happy, unskilled county road workers pulling a rotary shredder over the edge of an outer fencerow along a section line road in the western Ozark Plateau. This was a remnant of relict savannah vegetation that developed in a a transition zone between oak-hickory forest and big bluestem-dominated tallgrass prairie.

In spring of the preceding year the shredding/scraping action created a defoliated area that had been a population of big bluestem. Part of that area of disturbance or defoliated patch was shown in this "photo-plot" shoen extending from right to center foreground with part of an undisturbed area behind and at the far left of the shredded/scraped patch. The defoliated area supported flannel mullein, annual bromegrrass (mostly Bromus japonicus), and dew berry, a trailing Rubus species. The taller, denser plant cover behind and to left of the defoliated patch was cover of big bluestem, the climax potential dominant of this savanna tree form of tallgrass prairie.

Both the cool-season, weedy annual grass and the biennial, rank-growing forb (and both are also Eurasian exotics) had completed their life cycles. The climax, perennial big bluestem (overall dominant of the once-vast tallgrass prairie and State Grass of Kansas and Missouri) was also completeing its annual cycle with sexual shoots fully developed and flowers in early anthesis stage. Likewise, asexual reproduction by proliferation of shoots was being successfully completed and photosynthetate being stored for upcoming winter dormancy.

All plant species had achieved what they had evolved to do--secure propagation of the next generation of their race. In instances such as that shown here it is up to Man, the Manipulator of Range Ecosystems, to decide if the bountiful Earth is to produce the plant life its Creator obviously intended or, alternatively, weeds (the "thorns and thistles" warned of in Genesis 3:18). Apparently the commissoners of Ottawa County, Oklahoma opted for weeds to insure continued shredding/scraping. It was not so apparent that with air-conditioned, shredder-pulling tractors, county employees would experience much "sweat of thy face" (Genesis 3: 19).

Ottawa County, Oklahoma. Late July (mid-summer); flowering/seed-set stages of phenology.

Other examples of make-work and accomplish nothing (except waste tax-dollars) in regards weed control: shown in the following section were even more preposterous examples of ineffecftive efforts and expenditures--both time and public money--toward control of weeds along a section line road. These examples were, again, of flannel mullein.

49. Knocked down (partly); still reproduced- An incompetent county equipment operator drove a rotary shredder over a large plant of flannel mullein that resulted in the plant being "laid low" but otherwise unscathed. Some leaves were knocked off the shoot, but the plant was already senescing with ripe (mature) seeds being released through valves in its capsule fruit. For all intents and purposes, the plant was already dead. Specifically, this biennial forb had completed its life cycle having fulfilled its purpose of sexual reproduction therby insuring the potential for many progeny and future generations of flannel mullein. This plant had made its contribution to the soil seed bank with many seeds which, like most other weed species, can remain viable (live) for decades.

And that was not the whole story in this case. Sharp-eyed students probably already noted the bare patch of soil in front of the pushed-over flannel mullein. The heavy deck or shroud of the rotary shredder had gouged the ground resulting in a scrapped soil surfact. This was an unintended man-made seedbed for next year's mullein crop. Seedlings of flannel mullein require (at least, do best) in bare soil.

Not only did inept tractor drivers and "bread and circuses" county commissioners waste tax payer money by failing to control the weeds they attempted to kill, they wound up planting even more of the same noxious forb species. On the other hand, perhaps there was a "method to their madness". By growing more plants of flannel mullein they were insuring their jobs. Wasting tax funds by failed weed control (and successful weed planting) assurred that there would be some mullein to shred next year which would enable them to waste more tax funds next year shredding mullein to grown more mullein so they could ~~waste~~ (invest) taxes next year to show they had done something (for the next year, for the next year...). Such is the folly of man.

Ottawa County, Oklahoma. Late July (mid-summer).

50. Rode 'em high; mostly only peeled- A "totally incompetent" rotary shredder operator apparently tried to mow down (and instead rode over) two mature plants of flannel mullein when they were at early fruit/seed-shatter stage. On one plant did have its mature flower cluster, which was bearing ripe or mature seed, broken off. The other plant merely had the outer layers of its shoot scraped off and the sexual shoot remained intact.

Shredding was obviously too late for any form of noxious plant control because fruit was mature (or nearly so) and had already "set seed" . The fruit of mullein is a two-valve capsule of which there are hundreds, each of which bears numerous seeds. In fact, removal of the upper sexual shoot in the one plant resulted in even more seeds. How could that be? Next slide showed the answer...

Ottawa County, Oklahoma. Late July (mid-summer).

51. These two were cut high (and too late) with a nunque result- Two plants of flannel mullein with mature seed-shedding shoots were run over by a tractor and rotary shredder resulting in breaking off of one plant and only bending over the other eith some outer tissue of the shoot rubbed off. The plant that lost its seed-filled shoot responded by producing several new shoots (secondary shoots or resprouts) from intercalary meristem of the former (primary) shoot. This loss of the terminal meristem by shredding released lower intercalary meristematic tissue from apical dominance. The result was that new flowers and seed-filled capsules were produced that would not have been formed had no misdirected defoliation occurred.

Instead of preventing reprodution of seeds for the next crop of this Eurasian biennial weed, even more more seed was being produced. Seeds were already being released from capsules before the shoot was broken off. Maybe the shredder helped disperse these tiny seeds. One thing was certain: the rotary bladed implement permitted more--rather than less--seed production. It was now possible as to produce even more weeds than if there had been no shredding. Shredding resulted in production of a second seed crop, Supposed weed control was, in fact, weed planting.

Yes, strange as it may seem shredding of flannel mullein greatly enhanced--rather than prevented-- propagation of this Eurasian biennial noxious plant. How could this be? For twelve points provide the answers. Answers: 1) cutting off the by-now mature, already seed-shedding flower stalk relieved apical dominance resulting in production of a second flower cluster and more rather than less seed for subsequent generations of mullein, 2) shredding created a bare soil surfacewhich benefitted seedling emergence and subsequent growth, and 3) shredding injured existing perennial plants so as to weaken them thus reducing competition for the mullein seedlings.

All these moron county workers did was make more weeds for them to shred (shred at is more like it) next year (ie. self-serving job security, except that they were probably too stupid to comprehend this fact of Weed Science).

Ottawa County, Oklahoma. Late July (mid-summer); fruit production/seed maturity stage of phenology.

52. This one was cut low (and still made no difference)- Regrowth in flannel mullein 19 days after low shredding (rotary shredder). Regrowth shoots were in immediate pre-bloom stage. Flowering and subsequent seed production were imminent. There had slso been some defoliation by feeding of adult differential grasshopper (Melanoplus differentialis). Flannel mullein was, in effect, unscathed in regards to sexual reproduction which is, obviously, the ultimate purpose of every living thing.

Even with close shredding (removal of all the adult shoot so that leaves of winter rosette were the only aboveground portion of plant remaining) this plant successfully set seed and insured production of the next biennial crop.

Mechanical removal of the total shoot of flannel mullein did not prevent seed production because shoots regrew, flowered, and restored the soil seed bank of flannel mullein. Yes, certainly there was less seed produced, but that is irrelevant because enough fruit/seed was produced to insure maintenance of this alien weed.

In fact, the act of shredding aided (enhanced) rather than hindered propagation of flannel mullein for the next wed crop even with less seed produced.Why? Explain for ten points. Answer: 1) shredding disturbed the soil surface thereby facilitating seedling emergence and growth and 2) shredding injured perennial and exotic annual grasses thus reducing competition for the mullein seedlings. Plus, as shown above some shredding actually resulted in a second seed crop.

All that was accomplished by use of tax-payer money in this ill-conceived, ineffective make-work action was to insure the next crop of weeds to provide more busy work for county government employees. Shredding was all about job security and had nothing whatsoever to do with noxious plant control (or anythng else).

Ottawa County, Oklahoma. Late July (mid-summer); latae (yet effective) regrowth stage.

So what about plants that were neighbors to the flannel mullein? Next set of slides, please.

53. Shredded? Uprooted was more like it- Two examples of shoot (tiller or vertical shoot) units of broomsedge bluestem (Andropogon virginicus) that were uprooted or, more specifically, broken off of the root crown by the twisting, ripping, breaking (flailing) action of rotary blades of a shredder. These grass parts were torn from three plants that grew about 20 feet from the "walked down" plants of flannel mullein presented in the immediately preceding four slide/caption entries.

Broomsedge bluestem is a native, perennial prairie grass that has low palatability to livestock except in its early (immature) growth stages. Broomsedge is in the same section of Andropogon as big bluestem (Hitchcock and Chase, 1951, p. 750), but it is unpalatable throughout most of its annual growth cycle. Nonetheless, broomsedge bluestem is palatable at some stages, provides good soil protection, and, as a native prairie plant, facilitates plant succession on grasslands and savannahs of which it is a natural part.

So, the net result of the shredding operation by county workers (at tax-payer expense) resulted in death of numerous tillers of a native, perennial grass and either no impact on flannel mullein, a Eurasian biennial weed, or increased seed production of this exotic noxious species.

The following lesson in mechanical and direct biological defoliation used examples from leaves of beaked panicgrass (Panicum anceps) or, in one instance, of Florida paspalum (Paspalum florida) growing on mesic to wet prairie in the Ozark (Springfield) Plateau in northeastern Oklahoma. They were in the fifth consecutive year of drought that had varied from Severe to, over part of one summer, Extraordinary drought. Ottawa County, Oklahoma. Mid-June to early July.

54. Week-old regrowth- A large plant of beaked panicgrass (Panicum anceps) seven (7) days following shredding almost to ground level (stubble height was two to three inches) by a rotary blade shredder. This defoliation was by the same implement and the same careless, ambivalent equipment operator that induced disturbance to big bluestem (and the soil surface) described in the immediately preceding section of this chapter.

The microsite seen here was on mesic to wet tallgrass prairie on which beaked panicgrass, Florida paspalum (Paspalum florida), and switchgrass (Panicum virgatum) were climax (decreaser) dominants. Grasses on this water-rich range site would be expected to grow and generally recover and survive more readily than on the drier upland site on which big bluestem was the dominant decreaser species as shown in the preceding slide-caption sets.

All of these examples were on tallgrass prairie in the Ozark (Springfield) Plateau in northeast Oklahoma.

While these climax grass species appeared likely to survive it was also to be expected that , certain weed species would invade the more moisture-favorable mesic to wet prairie.

Ottawa County, Oklahoma. Early July; Severe Drought (Palmer Index). Early regrowth stage of development.

55. Damage inflicted by a rotary shredder- Closer-in views of damage to leaves of the beaked panicgrass plant introduced in the two immediately preceding slides. Blades of a rotary shredder (and dull blades at that) severely mangled these leaves because the defoliation mode of a shredder is to beat, tear, rip, crush (ie. to shred) rather than mow (shear or clip) as is the action of sharp cutting edges of mowing machines such as the knives and sections of a sickle-br mower.

Thus, damage induced by shredders (beaters and rippers in contrast to mowers) is much more extensive and extends considerable distance and tissue away from the exact point at which the cutting edge (typically a dull edge that breaks rather than cuts or slices per se) contacts plant organs. Allowance needs to made for this fact which was clearly (and dramatically) shown in these and succcessive image.

Rgrowth of leaves of this beaked panicgrass had been from at their basal portions (axils of blade and sheath) not leaf tips. This is the pattern or mode of plant growth much like animal hooves, nails, and hair fibers grow out from their matrix (matrices, plural). Plant regrowth tissue is plants' meristem. Meristematic tissue can be either apical meristem (from tip of shoots, not individual leaves that were already developed) or intercalary meristem (meristematic tissue along sides of shoots, mostly culms in grasses).

Ottawa County, Oklahoma. Early July; Severe Drought (Palmer Index). Early regrowth stage of development.

56. Damage done by a rotary shredder- Details of tears and rips on leaves of beaked panicgrass inflicted by the dull edge of rotary blades on a tractor-pulled/powered shredder. These leaves were produced on plants growing on a county road right of way in a mesic to wet tallgrass prairie. Effects of defoliation shown here were seven (7) days post-shreddding such that there had been leaf regrowth below the point of blade impact featured here.

Shredders do not make "clean" or "smooth" cuts like those made by sharp-edged knives and sections of a sickle-bar mower (or the teeth of grazing animals. Instead, the dull blades of rotary shredders break, beat, tear, rip, crush, etc. off parts of plants therby leaving a much greater area of tissue damage than that made by sharp blades (or teeth). Allowance must be made for this fact, a fact shown distinctly in numerous slides of grass leaves presented herein.

Ottawa County, Oklahoma. Early July; Severe Drought (Palmer Index). Early regrowth stage of development.

57. Damage done by a rotary shredder (close-up)- Details of leaves of beaked panicgrass showing extent of injury brought about by rotating (and very dull) blades of a traactor powered/pulled shredder. Viewers can see clearly that leaf damage extended for two (2) to nearly three (3) inches below point at which the steel implement contacted the leaf. Rather than "clean" or "smooth" cuts to leaves as done by the shearing, severing, cutting action of shears, scissors, sickle-bar mowering machines, or animal teeth shredders or rotary beaters break, crush, tear, rip off plant tissue leaving jagged, irregular edges on leaves that extend much lowerr than the actual point at which organs or tissue were remove.

Typically with shredding, grass leaves are riped or split downward along their midrib (midvein) such that functional tissue for photosynthesis, translocation, and nutrient storage is much less than a cursory glance at the shredded point suggests. Crop-wise growers realize this phenomenon and make allowance for it in setting height of shredder blades above the ground . County employees are obviously either unaware of this or care for naught except "employment security" which they can insure by killing out native climax grasses and growing invasive weeds. For example, "wiping out" Panicum and Paspalum species thereby creating favorable growing conditions (habitat) for taller-growing annuals like horseweed (Conyza canadensis) or giant ragweed (Ambrosia trifida) or exotic biennials such as flannel or velvet mullein (Verbascum thapsus)

Ottawa County, Oklahoma. Early July; Severe Drought (Palmer Index).

58. Damage done by a rotary shredder (close-up of another species)- Details of damage inflicted to a leaf of Florida paspalum (Paspalum florida) by a rotary shredder. The comparative greater extent of injury to plant organs by shredders (in contrast to much less area of plant injury brought about by sharp edges of mowing machines, especially sickle-bar mowers and teeth of grazing animals) is due to beating, twisting, ripping, crushing (ie. shredding) action rather than cutting, slicing, severing (ie. mowing) action.

Hence, effective shredding stubble height (length of post-shredding shoots) is much less than that as measured from exact point where the defoliating implement contacted the plant organ. Allowance must be made for this fact when evaluating defoliation effects induced by shredders (see again, immediately above).

Ottawa County, Oklahoma. Early July; Severe Drought (Palmer Index).

59. Damage done by a disk mower- A plant of beaked panicgrass showing leaves that had been mowed six (6) days earlier to a height of approximately three (3) to four (4) inches by a disk mower. This plant of beaked panicgrass was growing on a mesic to wet tallgrass prairie and its leaves had a little over one (1) inch regrowth in this length of time. The second slide showed at closer camera distance a portion of tillers (aboveground vertical shoots) including both culms and leaves. Regrowth had been from meristematic tissue at basal parts of both leaves and culms.

The maximum mowed height (stubble height) of four (4) inches was too short for proper management (ie. it did not leave enough plant material for rapid grass regrowth and survival following the disturbance of mowing or clipping). A proper mowing height for this native panicoid grass would have been more like at least five (5) or six (6) inches (or even a little higher). Given the favorable habitat of moist soil this beaked panicgrass was undergoing adequate regrowth. Recovery seemed likely even though the plant was stressed even before mowing by existing multi-year drought conditions.

Mowing was part of hay-making that had been the use of this land for over a half century. This plant was growing on part of a mesic to wet tallgrass prairie in the Ozark (Springfield) Plateau in northeast Oklahoma.

Closer-to-plants and more detailed photographs/descriptions of beaked panicgrass leaves defoliated by the disk mower were presented immediately below...

Ottawa County, Oklahoma. Early July; Severe Drought (Palmer Index).

60. Damage done by a disk mower- Leaves of beaked panicgrass that had been clipped by a disk mower six (6) days earlier. These two progressively closer-camera-distance slides showed the extent of leaf damage caused by mower blades. The considerably lesser damage to plant parts, especially leaves, by the disk mower contrasted sharply to the much more extensive injury to leaves and culms of the same grass species caused by a rotary shredder (as was displayed above).

These two slides and, even more, the next three slides/caption unit were dramatic examples of how much less injury to grass shoots is caused by the disk mower. Disk mowers were engineered as hay-making equipment (ie. plant-mowing implements for forage harvest) in contrast to the coarser, cruder, more plant-damaging rotary shredder that was designed as a brush control implement for the defoliation of woody plants. Shredders were not manufactured to cut herbaceous plant material. As indicated by their name, shredders actually shred or coarsely lacerate plants by beating, tearing, ripping rather than severing . Nonetheless, shredders are routinely used--that is, misused--for the purpose of defoliating herbaceous species.

As seen in these slides and, even more so, in the slides immediately below disk mowers result in a "cleaner", "crisper" removal of plant material rather than, as in the case of shredders, leaving a mangled and crushed or "coarse" (jagged, ragged, or broken) edge at point of actual contact between implement and plant. Even more importantly, injury incurred in mechanical harvest by a disk mower to the partly defoliated, remaining live plant does not extend as far below or beyond the point of contact as with the beating, ripping, tearing action of a shredder.

Ottawa County, Oklahoma. Early July; Severe Drought (Palmer Index).

61. Damage done by a disk mower (close-up)- Examples of the maximum damage caused by the relatively sharp-edged blades of a disk mower. Injury to plant parts, especially grass leaves, is often considerably less than the extent of damage seen here. These examples were leaves of beaked panicgrass six (6) days after mowing for hay harvest. Regrowth had taken place at basal portions of these leaves, but the featured topic of these three slides was extent of injury to mowed leaves. Injury was, of course, at upper (higher) or more distal portions of the leaves. These remaining live parts of leaves along with living culms collectively made up the live hay stubble.

These three photographs were examples of increasingly greater damage to beaked panicgrass leaves (succcessively larger area or longer distance from contact point of blade). The third or closest camera-distance image showed the most extensive or most severe injury to a leaf caused by a disk mower that this photographer found. Students should compare these views, especially the third photograph, to those above that showed the much greater injury to beaked panicgrass leaves caused by a rotary shredder. By the way, shredded and mowed leaves were within a few yards of each other with shredded leaves being in a county road right of way just outside the mowed hay meadow (ie. shredded leaves were in the outside fencerow while mowed leaves were in the inside fencerow).

Viewers should note that even with greatest injury from the disk mower (second and, especially third slide) ripping or tearing of leaves downward from point of implement contact and along parallel veins was much less than was injury brought about by a rotary shredder. With shredding, grass leaves had leaf splits (tears) downward along the midvein (midrib) that were much longer than with mowing. Compare mowed leaf edges seen in these slides with those of shredded leaf edges seen above.

These examples were taken from mesic to wet tallgrass prairie in the Ozark (Springfield) Plateau of northeastern Oklahoma. Ottawa County, Oklahoma. Early July; Severe Drought (Palmer Index).

Historical note related to mowing: the least injury inflicted to organs and tissue of herbaceous plants (eg. grass) by mechanical defoliation is from mowing by a sickle-bar mower (the classic "mowing machine"). The opposing razor-sharp sections and serrated sections of a sickle-bar operate with a shearing or slicing action like that of scissors or shears. These more "highly tuned", higher "precision" moving parts are more vulnerable to "non-target" objects (rocks, soil) and, hence, more subject to breakdown when abused than are single bar blades (with duller edges) like those of disk mowers and rotary shredders. In this respect, the latter bar-bladded implements are less readily damaged by the likes of county road workers who could "break a crowbar" or "tear up an anvil".

It was explained in the preceding caption that disk mowers were designed for mechanical harvest of herbaceous forage crops with minimal injury to remaining living plants whereas rotary shredders were manufactured for mechaincal control of woody brush having larger and harder shoots (stems). Shredders were not really designed to defoliate herbaceous species like weeds (even those with larger, coarser stems). Shredders are even less effective at effective at defoliating grasses and grasslike plants because shredder blades break and tear off rather than cut, but (and because of this beating versus cutting action) shredders cause much greater damage to graminoids.

When grass is to be subjected to defoliation by shredders (as in mechanical brush control), allowance needs to made for this incontrovertible fact. Specifically, shredder blades need to adjusted higher off of the ground because the area, shape, and distance of injury induced by shredders will invariably be much greater than than induced by mower blades. In fact, producers who cherish their grass will refrain from using shredders where they want grass and palatable forbs to replace woody plants (brush). Besides, woody dicots will just resprout (and they often come back at a competitive advantage to the also-shredded grass species).

Management synopsis regarding mechanical defoliation of grass: Use agricultural implements for the purpose and in the prescribed manner for which they were designed and manufactured. Rotary shredders were not engineered to mow grass or other herbaceous plants; they were made for shredding brush (woody woody plants). Mowing machines, strictly defined such as sickle-bar mowing machines or disk mowers are manufactured for hay harvest and clipping pastures.

When rotary shredders are used for brush control they should be used in such as way as to minimize damage to herbaceous plants and, instead, optimize removal of unwanted woody plants. In the example used above (Ottawa County, Oklahoma), rather than shredding county road rights of way during spring, summer, and autumn when most climax grasses and forbs are vulnerable, county road workers should shred fencerows and bar ditches during winter when ecologically desirable herbaceous species are dormant and yet woody species with aboveground, perenniating shoots would have that year's growth removed. With annual shredding there would never be more than one growing season's aboveground growth, but high seral and climax herbaceous plants would be permitted to grow and increase. By contrast, shredding during growing seasons reduces cover, density, and proportion of climax native plants; creates favorable habitat for weeds; and does no more to reduce brush than annual winter mowing.

Of course, the truth (reality) is that county employees--especially supervisors and elected county commissioners--just want to make a conspicuous "big showing" and have secure "make work" or "busy work". Thus, they grind big bluestem and switchgrass into the soil surface using shredders as rotary tillersthereby growing giant ragweed and mare's tail that they can then beat down to show that they have done something. Such public relations stunts have absolutely nothing to do with proper management of roadside vegetation or road maintenance. In fact, abuse of equipment (using shredders as rota-tillers), exposing bare soil, and reducing herbaceous cover are mismanagement of resources resulting in increased soil erosion and road flooding which in turn raises costs, reduces effectiveness of road maintenance, and, in cases where debris is left in the road, increases the hazards of road travel.

Such is the deceit and the folly of man.

62. Now for "real" defoliation- One cespitose plant of beaked panicgrass (first or upper) slide and a portion of another plant of beaked panicgrass (second slide) grazed by beef cattle (cow-calf pairs) and differential grashoppers (Melanoplus differentialis) on a dry to mesic upland site of tallgrass prairie in the Ozark (Springfield) Plateau of northeastern Oklahoma.

Differences in bite marks and location of feeding on beaked panicgrass leaves were treated immediately below.

Ottawa County, Oklahoma.Early July; Severe Drought (Palmer Index).

63. Some slicked right off- Leaves of beaked panicgrass on edge of an upland tallgrass prairie pasture grazed by cow-calf pairs. These two images were a "nested photo-plot", with the second slide being a "sub-plot" of the first slide. These views served as an example of the bite mark of beef cattle and as a comparison of lightly grazed and ungrazed leaves of a climax panicoid grass.

In the first photograph (the whole "photo-plot") two leaves at left were ungrazed or intact while the two leaves at right had been lightly defoliated by cattle. The second photograph presented at closer camera distance the two lightly grazed leaves. In the second slide the leaf at left obviously had received somewhat greater defoliation (greater degree of use; more utilization) than the leaf at right. This obvious (though perhaps not physiologically important) difference was a nice example of the phenomenon of feeding selectivity. Even at remarkably close distances, species that are large grazers (have large mouths) defoliate differentially (ie. graze selectively).

Ottawa County, Oklahoma. Early July; Severe Drought (Palmer Index).

64. Grasshoppers versus cattle- Differences in bite marks between beef cattle and differential grasshopper on leaves of beaked panicgrass on upland tallgrass prairie in the Springfield Plateau. The first (upper) slide showed leaves in the foreground that had been grazed by beef cattle and leaves in the midground (to rear of cattle-grazed leaves) that been grazed by differential grasshoppers. Cattle removed tips and upper (outer or distal; away from the culm) portions of leaves whereas grasshoppers fed more along margins (sides) than at tips or apices of leaves, although insect-feeding had been in both of these general leaf areas.

The second (lower) slide presented at closer camera distance the leaves of beaked panicgrass shown in midground of the first slide (note individual, distinctive bite marks such as the large area of tissue removal along right margin of the largest and center leaf). This example of leaf defoliation by differential grasshoppers showed both pattern of feeding and extent of tissure consumed (area from which leaf material was removed). In other words, this second slide showed degree of use (proportion of consumed herbage; utilization) or intensity of defoliation by the phytophagous (plant-feeding) insects. Degree of use is the measured or, at least, observed expression of stocking rate. Proper degree of use is the first and, generally, the most important of the Four Cardinal Principles of Ranage Management.

Ottawa County, Oklahoma. Early July; Severe Drought (Palmer Index).

65. A study in bite marks- Two photographs of leaves of beaked panicgrass showing distinct differences between bite marks of beef cattle and differential grasshopper. In the first (upper) slide, two leaves with their apices grazed by cattle were above and to right of an ungrazed leaf while a leaf with telltale bite marks of differential grasshopper was beneath and to left of the ungrazed and two cattle-grazed leaves. In the second photograph, two beaked panicgrass leaves in foreground and one (the tallest) leaf in background had bite marks of cattle while the leaf with left-most tip (immediately behind two fore-most leaves) bore the more ragged-edge bite mark indicative of of grasshopper feeeding.

Reasons for differences in bite marks: The tongue is the main prehensile (grasping) organ by which cattle convey feed to their mouth, but usually plant parts are broken or cut off by the opposing incisors (only in the lower front jaws or mandibles) and cartilageous dental pad in the upper jaws. By contrast, grasshoppers directly bite off plant parts by small teeth on opposing mandibles. These differences in biting organs and resultant differences in removal of plant tissue--combined with the obviously smaller mouth parts of the orthorpterans (members of insect order Orthoptera)--resulted in the more jagged edge at which leaf tissue was removed (consumed). Whereas a cow or calf could remove tips of several leaves in one bite, it took two or more bites by a 'hopper to remove the portion of one leaf tip or leaf margin. What jagged edges were left on beaked panicgrass leaves following cattle feeding were due to the more bite-resistant midrib (midvein) and immediately adjacent tissue.

Students should remember that orthopterans have biting-chewing mouth parts in contrast to piercing-sucking mouth parts of insects such as the hemipterans (the so-called "true bugs" that comprise order Hemiptera).

Ottawa County, Oklahoma. Early July; Severe Drought (Palmer Index).

66. Different bite marks- Two images of paired leaves of beaked panicgrass with the mouth part bites of differentiated grasshopper on leaf tip at left in first (upper) slide and leaf tip at right in second (lower) slide and bite marks of beef cattle on leaf tip at right in first (upper) slide and leaf tip at left in second (lower). There were smaller bite marks of differentiated grasshopper on margins of leaf at right in first slide and along the margin of leaf at left (near bottom of image) in second slide.

Anatomical basis for differences in pattern of bite (bite mark characteristics) between cattle and grasshoppers was given in the immediately preceding caption.

Ottawa County, Oklahoma. Early July; Severe Drought (Palmer Index).

67. Control (no mechanical defoliation)- Intact or undefoliated (ungrazed; not mowed or shredded) leaves of beaked panicgrass on mesic to wet prairie in the Ozark (Springfield) Plateau in northeastern Oklahoma. This example was growing in a fencerow immediately adjacent to examples of beaked panicgrass leaves that had been mowed by a disk mower and those that had been shredded by a rotary shredder.

Ottawa County, Oklahoma. Early July; Severe Drought (Palmer Index).

Now examples of degree of use (utilization) of the entire aboveground portions of tallgrass prairie grasses. The following part of this chaapter showed excessive defoliation (overuse) of tallgrass species on a reseeded range. This range had been an old cottonfield that was abandoned and reseeded to weeping lovegrass (Eragrostis curvula) at suggestion of the county Soil Conservation Service. (The agency had a target of so-and-so many acres reseeded to this introduced range grass.) Later, a supposed range management professor had a farm hand plow up the weeping lovegrass which had stabilized a sandy soil some of which was on an eight (8) percent slope. Your author (another range professor) got expert advice from five soil science professors (who were on the plowed field for an intercollegiate soil contest) and the local Soil Conservation Serrvice district conservationist. With stength of these six witnesses of record (plus that of your bellicose author) the highly erodible land was reseeded to a native mixture that included little bluestem, Indiangrass, and big bluestem. After five years an excellent stand of these three species became established. Six years following the reseeding success story the operations manager of the property, through neglect and lazyness, was severly overusing the reseeded range that had been an outstanding stand of these tallgrass species. The slides presented in the section below were taken after only two years of severe to extreme utilization (degree of use) by a herd of cows and calves. White-tailed deer had access to this reseeded pasture over this entire period of time (as did feral hogs). Deer did not feed on the reseeded grasses, but grazed on some forbs in the reseeded pasture and on existing woody plants at the margin of the reseeded pasture (and, later, on woody plants that began invading the reseeded range). Feral hogs (Sus domesticus= Sus scrofa domesticus) served as biological control of Johnsongrass (Sorghum halapense) that had invaded the tilled ground and prevented initial or early estaablishment of the reseeded grass species. (Hogs go "hog wild" over Johnsongrass rhizomes, and, of course, they do their own version of tillage with wallows.)

The year--the warm-growing season--in which this set of slides was taken had been a slightly better one than was typical. for summer in the West Cross Timbers. Judging by grass growth in past years and by size/height of ungrazed plants of sideoats grama (and others like dropseeds) in the current year, ungrazed plants of Indiangrass and big bluestem at their maturity and end of their anual growth cycle would haver ranged in height from five to slightly over seven feet. It should be empahasized that these slides were taken at end of the current warm-growing season (most slides taken in mid-September or late summer and some taken in late October-which was mid-autumn). In other words, the degree of use (it was overuse) shown was net result for the currrent growing-season: end of year utilization. A different grazzing management situation would have existed had this degree of use (heavy grazing) been earlier in the growing season so that grass plants had a chance to regrow to a state where root/rootcrown reserves could have been replinished sufficient for survival in dormancy. Such was not the case. Heavy grazing took place throughout the warm-growing season with the season's end result being the sinful, deplorable state of overuse as shown below. This set of slides presented a textbook example of improperr grazing management and consequent range retrogression. This was range deterioration "on the mover" (even if it was shown in still photographs). Do not blame this on drought!

The sweet-turned-bitter tale was shown in the following slides. These slides began at the level of local microsites that supported several individual grass plants. Then the slides progressed to details of individual plants. Then sldes showed invasion by western ragweed (Ambrosia psilostachya) at local scale. Then at larger spatial scale, a slide presented part of the reseeded range with an invasion of the redberry cedar (Juniperus pinchotii). Sad story, but an educational one. (And when university politics and human sloth are included, education in things additional to Range Management.)

The restored being grazed out- General view of a bottomland sandy land range that had been successfully reseeded to a stand of Indiangrass, big bluestem, little bluestem, and sideoats grama that was being severely overused. Most plants of the tallgrass speices (Indiangrass, big bluestem, and little bluestem) had been eaten about as low as cattle can graze. Sideoats grama was less heavkly used which was a classic example of plantpalatability and grazing selectively. In center field of the first, wolf plant(s) of sideoats grama and, to its left two, plants of purple-flowered dropseed (Sporobolus clandestinus), a perennial, remained untouched by range animals while an Indiangrass plant to immediate right of the dropseed was severely overused. Also in the first slide, a plant of big bluestem that had been grazed almost to ground level by cattle was in cdenter foreground. Wolf plant is the term for plants that, for whatever reason, were undefoliated by grazing, burning, mowing, etc. such that their mature growth became so unpalatable that they remained ungrazed by animals Although white-tailed deer along with feral hogs had accesses to this restored tallgrass prairie pasture, it was stressed that your author did not see any evidence of feeding on any tallgrasses by white-tailed deer in years when cattle had been excluded from the reseeded old field. Feral hogs served as a biological control of Johnsongrass (Sorghum halapense) that had invaded the reseeed land and this was the only thing that permitted the reseeded native tallgrasses to become established. That was another story told elsewhere in this chapter. The indisputable evidence was that overuse shown in this section was due strictly to mismanagement of a herd of cows and calves by lazy 'don't-give-a-damn" Tarleton employees who had the authority and responsibility for ranch management.

The second slide was a closer-up view of the same place showing the wolf plant of sideoats grama at larger size and to its immediate left, indicated by the author's staghorn handle Henkel stockman's knife (and you have to look hard to see it),.the "remains" of a plant of big bluestem that had been grazed by cattle to almost ground level (a stubble height of about two or three inches). Sideoats grama was untouched.

Another lesson: grazing selectivity. Grazing/browsing selectivity is the combination of plant palatability (plant factor), animal preference (anaimal facctor), and (moderated by) availability (the plant feedstuff must be there at the right time and place to be effectively reachable by animals). Selectivity= Plant Palatability + Animal Preference + Availability.

In the example shown here sideoats grama, big bluestem, and Indiangrass are equally available; they are a mere few feet away from each other. Beyond doubt, big bluestem and Indiangrass were preferred by cattle to sideoats grama. Given this three plant choice sideoats grama was unpalatable to cattle, cattle had preferences for big bluestem and Indiangrass while completely rejecting sideoats grama when all three species were equally available.

Grazing selectivity in turn affects (may completely determine) plant responses to grazing or browsing. This is especially the case when defoliation by animals (and in conjuction with growing conditions like soil moisture, temperature, sunlight) is stressful enough to adversely impact range plants (eg. reduce plant regrowth or general plant vigor, limit storage of nutrient reserves, restrict absorption of soil water and mineral nutrients).

Competition interacts as an indirect factor in concert with direct impacts on individual plants. Taken in total, different plant species react differently to stress, especially extreme stresses, such as drough or overuse/overgrazing, and to selective stresses like those that put an "extra" buden on more palatable plant species. For example, plant species or individual plants that are not eaten (or eaten only very little) such as wolf plants versus "regular" plants of the same species, unpalatable or self-protected (eg. poisonous or mechanically 'armed") species, or uncommon (less abundant) plant species will be--other things being equal--less adversely impacted simply beecause they avoided being eaten or were less eaten and therefore less stressed. And, of course, the plants and plant species that are more stressed--maybe even stresed to point of death--results in more plant growth factors being available to those plants and plant species that were less stressed as, say, by being less selected by range animals.

The result is that plant species react differently to stress.Some plant species are more stress-tolerant. Or they appear to be more tolerant to, say, drought, because they were not stressed or were less strressed. This is particularily the situation when some plants or plant species were not eaten when their more palatable neighboring plants or plant species were eaten. Thus, ultimately if the stress (excessive defoliation, prolongued drought, etc.) contingues long enough (and is selective enough) some plants and plant species will be less competitive (or, amounts to same thing, they will have to adapt or survive under an extra or additional stress). These disproportionally stressed plants or plant species will be less vigerous, less competitive and, hence, be reduced in size or may eventually even die out. Then the weakened or dead plants/plant species will be replaced by more stress-tolerant (or less-stressed) plants or plant species. This can be the situation even though these less stressed plants/plant species might be less competitive, less drought-tolerant (actually less stress-tolerant) if the stressed plants (say, more palatable species) had not been subjected to more and selective stress as, for example, because they were eaten first, eaten more often, eaten more completely.

Range ecologists classify range plant species based on their responses to extreme stresses. (It should be "stressed" that just about everything affecting range plants is a "stress", but it is the out-of-the-ordinary stresses that impose an extra burden, a potentially life-threatening stress, that is relevant in this regard.) The apparently less-tolerant range plant species and, therefore, the first or earliest plant species to die under "undue" (prolonged or more intense) stress or, same thing, the more sensetive-to-stress or the more-likely-to-be-stressed plant species (perhaps due to being more palatable, more preferred) will eventually be replaced (or, at least reduced) by apparently more-tolerant or less-likely-to-be-stressed plant species. This is especially so for those plant species that aare more grazing-tolerant (or, perhaps more likely, appear to be more gazing-tolerant because they were/are less-likely-to-be-eaten due to their being less palatable).

Range ecologists have traditionally labeled those plant species that are the first to decline or disappear under the stress of excessive grazing, especially prolongued overuse, as decreasers.Range plant species that respond to a decline in decreasers by becoming more plentiful, becoming relatively more abundant (increase in plant density, cover, size, etc.) are called increasers. If the stress of grazing (as due to even more or longer overuse or continued grazing at the wrong season) the increasers will eventually decline and be replaced by still yet more stress-tolerant plant species called invaders. Invaders may continue to expand on the range until even they might diminish or even disappear, although this latter seldom takes place.

The only stress that range managers such as ranchers or agency range conservationists can influence is grazing/browsing. Therefore, classification of range plant species based on their response to stress is limited to response to grazing. Drought, flooding, soil conditions are generally beyond managerial inputs in management of ranges. As a general rule, if land managers could change soil constions such as through irrigation or fertilization, the land heretofore used as range would become crop land (something besides range at any rate). Given that grazing management imputs such as the Four Cardinal Principles of Range Management: degree of use, distribution of use, season of use, and kind/clsss of animal (the proper use of these inputs) comprise the most important (ususlly the only) managerial tools..

Decreaser, increaser, and invader are ratings based on range plant species to grazing/browsing. Responses of plant species to other stresses are often similar to or the same as responses to grazing/browsing. For example, responses of grassland plants to drought were very similar to responses to grazing as reported for th;e Great Drought of the 1930s (students whould read the monumental work coming out of Nebraska that was led by John E. Weaver and his remarkable students).

Decreaser, increaser, and invader are range site-speific. An example is sideoats grama, State Grass of Texas. In the sandy botomland range site (in the sub-humid precipitation zone) discussed here sideoats grama was an increaser. In much of the semi-arid Rolling Red Plains and High Plains (major parts of the Great Plains phsiographic province, much of which is mixed prairie) sideoats grama is a regional climax co-domnant (with Andropogon saccharoides, silver bluestem), a decreaser with a capital D. On clay bottomland range sites (in, say, the humid precipitation zone) sideoats grama is an invader where switchgrass and other moisture-loving tallgrass species are decreasers.

Decreaser, increaser, and invader distinctios are tacitly based on responses to the major native herbivores. Take the tallgrass species of big bluestem and Indiangrass which figured as climax decreasers in the reseeded and restored tallgrass prairie that was the subject of this section. Obviously, buffalo (Bison bison) was the dominant native herbivore throughout the vast interior region of North America from the eastern tallgrass prairie through true prairie and on to mixed prairie and shortgrass plains grasslands.Hence Decreaser, increaser, and invader designatins are (at least, should be) based on theoretical or, perhaps, observational responses to overuse by bison. Domestic cattle (Bos taurus) might not be an exact ecological equivalent of bison, but they are close (certainly, generalist grass-feeders) and clearly much closer to bison than are small ruminants or camelids. Decreasers under grazing by bovids might well be increasers under range animals that are more forb- or browse-feeders but these would not be the animals on which to base climax responses to excessive defoliation by grazers. If, on a particular range site such as sandy bottomland, big bluestem and Indiangrass increased under sheep (thus labeled as "increasers" under grazing by Ovis aries) this would be incorrect overall, but it could be useful as a management label anyway. If a range manager desired to increase big bluestem and Indiangrass on a given range and these two tallgrass species increased under sheep-grazing and decreased under cattle-grazing then running sheep instead of catrtle--if possible or managerially feasible--would be a way to increase cover, density, etc. of the tallgrasses.

In the two 'photoplots" presented here on a sandy bottomland range site in the Western Cross Timbers big bluestem and Indiangrass were decreasers and sideoats grama was an increaser. Other "photoplots" shown below will illustrate examples of invaders.

Tarleton State University Hunewell Ranch, Erath County Texas. Late October, mid-autumn.

Lot of utilization; no respect for range imrovement (or even for cattle feed)- Two views of a sandy bottomland range that had been reseeded with, ultimately after five years, a resultant excellent stand of Indiangrass and big bluestem with less cover of little bluestem and sideoats grama. The college employee who was charged with ranch management simply left all gates on the place open and cows and their calves "camped out" on the reseeded range. This mismanagement (a lack of any active management) caused this textbook example of late-growing season close grazing that resulted in overuse. Cattle had gnawed the shoots of plants of Indiangrass and big bluestem about as close as they could without eating last year's stalks.

The proper--and, ultimately, essential--use of fire notwithstanding, if this range been burnt in the spring prior to greenup there would have been none of the previous years grass shoots and cattle would have eaten these plants to ground level.

The heavy degree of use seen herre would not necessarily have been improper if this had in early to mid-summer so tha the grass plants had time to regrow and restore rootcrown and root reserves sufficient to survive through the dormant season and send up new shoots next spring. Obviously this was not the case. This was growing season-long overuse.

Tarleton State University Hunewell Ranch, Erath County Texas. Mid-September; late summer..

Different degrees of use for different species, but all degrees were overuse- Two views of severe overuse (very close grazing) at end of the growing season of Indiangrass and big bluestem. With its stiffer, harder shoots the longshoot (elongation of shoots earlier in growing season) Indiangrass had not been grazed as closely as the more mallable, hence more palatable, shoots of the shortshoot (elongation of shoots later in the growing season) big bluestem. The lower remaining clumps were of the shortshoot big bluestem. A good example of this was in the second of these two slides where in left-center foreground a stunted plant of big bluestem was growing (barely) in front of neighboring larger, taller cllumps of Indiangrass. Close observation will also reveal flowering shoots of western ragweed growing around the margins iand right of the center of the nearly dead big bluestem. This vegetational deelopment was shown in more detail below in this section.

In the left-f-center foreground of both slides younger, shorter shoots of ungrazed western ragweed (Ambrosia psilostachya) had emerged and were getting the competitive advantage of the overused Indiangrass and big bluestem. Students can see the beginning or range deterioration (retrogresion in the range plant community, the opposite directional change of plant succession). Prolonged overuse leads to overgrazing. Improper (in this instance, excessive) degree of use of range plants that results in shorter term (over a briefer span of time) changes in vigor, health, productivity of individual plants which make up the range vegetation, if not corrected, eventually will result in changes in species composition of the range plant community (ie. overgrazing). Longterm overuse results in overgrazing and degraded range.

Tarleton State University Hunewell Ranch, Erath County Texas. Mid-September; late summer.

Little different composition, but same sad story- On the same reseeded old field as shown above with successfully re-established Indiangrass and big bluestem there were some local spots where the locally native (not reseeded) purple-flowered dropseed and tall dropseed (Sporobolus asper) werre growing. The first (upper) of these two slides had plants of boh dropseed species growing immediately behind an overused plant(s) of Indiagrass.

The second (lower) slide featured several severly grazed (extremel overused) plants of Indiangrass. Cattle had grazed these tallgrasses to varied stubble heights of roughly four to 14 inches--and this was at end of the growing season for these plants. If this degree of use had been limited to no later than mid-summer so that the grases had ample time to regrow and restore the root/rootcrown reserves this heavy grazing (high degree of use) could still have been proper degree of use. As it were, it would be questionable if these plants would survive the upcoming dormant season let alone still have ample reserves to initiate spring growth. It was very telling that cattle had grzed the longshoot Indiangrass plants so closely that they had even eaten some of the "left over" (remaining) hardened, solid stalks of last year's growth. There will not likely be any such remaining stalks for next year's "pert nar' gnawing to ground" degree of use.

Tarleton State University Hunewell Ranch, Erath County Texas. Mid-September; late summer..

Messed up by Perfection scanner-OK the color is wrong. Epson Perfection 800 scanner turned the correct-color slide to a "pert 'nar" black color, but your photographer author still included it because this ssd shot showed regrowth in two clumps of Indiangrass Immediate foreground)*. The two grass plants were "bravely" trying to survive in a reseeded range severely overutilizeed by cows and calves. These two Indiangrass plants had been grazed (gnawed off) to the surface of the soil, at least as close as the thicker chin of cattle would permit. By contrast, the smaller, thinner chin of smaller ruminants would have permitted ever closer grazing--"Believe It Or Not"!

*A fact not commonly known is that power hitters in baseball also have a high number of strikeouts. They go for broke, and often go broke. lFor example, while the legendary Babe Ruth had 714 home runs and a total of 2,873 runs he also struck out 1330 times. Your author showed photographic "strikeouts" (this one Epson's, not his, fault) the same as some good base hits. (By the way, did I caution readers against buying Epson products? Already too late for me.)

Tarleton State University Hunewell Ranch, Erath County Texas. Mid-September; late summer..

In this the college way? Looks like it was at Tarleton State University- Overuse (close grazing at end of current growing season) of big bluestem and Indiangrass on a reseeded old field (sandy land on an 8% slope) in the Western Cross Timbers of northcentral Texas. In the first slide a hard-to-detect clumped plant of big bluestem was growing to the immediate left of (adjacent to) a larger clump of Indiangrass. Both severely overused. Growing all around these (probably dead by spring: winterkilled) plants were shoots of the strongly rhizomaous, naive, perennial forb, western ragweed. In fact, there was a flowering shoot of western ragweeed growing on the back edge of the big bluestem and one at the front edge of the Indiangrass (in immeidate right foreground).

In the second "photoplot" a severely grazed plant of big bluestem was on the left and a severely grazed plant of Indiangrass was on the right. This degree of use was extreme overuse. It would be hard to imagine such extremely close grazing as ever being proper use other than in a specialized grazing practice such as, perhaps, short duration grazing in which animals would not be allowed to graze these plantss for anothe three months..In this instance that would be in the early winter when these plants would be dormant (or, in this instance, most likely dead). This extreme defoliation was in late summer and even if no further grazing took place in this growing season (and, of course, it did) these poor things could not regrow enough to replinish their rootcrown reserves adequate for survival during dormancy and then have enough for first growth (spring greenup) at onset of next growing season.These poor grass plants were most likely doomed.

In these "photoplots" students can see the onset of range degradation, range retrogression (the reverse direction of plant succession). On this sandy bottomland, and under these management condition, western ragweed is an invader. Viewers can see vegetational development (F.E. Clements' "dynamic vegetation") in which dead, dying, or weakened climax tallgrass species are being replaced by a native invader. Western ragweed was only able to begin its reign as the new dominant range plant because of human mismanagement. Once overuse (excessive defoliation) has continued long enough (over enough grrowing seasons) that some range plant species begin to die out or become so weakened that they are less competitive other plant species benefit at the former dominants' expense. Decreasers are replaced by increasers or, as in this case, directly by invaders. In the case presented here western ragweed is truly a WEED, but the native forb invaded to WEED status only because of human action. In its "proper place" (its role, cover, function in a properly managed range ecosystem) western ragweed is a desirable member of the range plant community, even in climax vegetation.

Important: from the standpoint of range analysis, utilization provides a faster (earlier-on) indicater--mesurement or assessment--of the successional status of the range plant community. This case on reseeded tallgrass prairie range illustrated that fact. Overuse always preceeds overgrazing. Degree of use (utilization) is the earliest practical barometer (indicator) of range mismanagement. Overuse is the start of range deterioration. Overuse occurs before (sometimes just before) changes in the species composition of the range plant community. This is why determination (estimation) of utilization is so important: it is more seensitive early on. Range trend is the ultimate measure or estimate of successional status (or a general yet detailed assessment of "range health", a term this author deplores). Range trend requires at least two measurementss of range condition class over a span of time (perhaps over a time period of several years or, even, decades). Utilization can be determined at end of one growing or grazing season. Start with estimates of utilization

(On some of the more fragile ranges, such as those having steep slopes, changes in soil conditions, especially of the soil surface and soil cover, are more sensitive indicators that 'something is wrong" about grazing practices.)

Students should note that degree of use was so severe that cattle had even eaten the hardened shoots remaining from last year. There will not be any such "left overs" from this year's shoots. By the way, last year's standing residual shoots under proper grazing interfere with animals being able to get at current season's growth. This is why ranchers (or renting landowners) routinely burn off tallgrass prairie pastures, especially those used for grazing of yearlings (stockers) as in the famed Flint Hills of Kansas. Such prescribed buring not only increases stocker gains, but is essential to prevent invasion of woody plants into these treasured grasslands. Sadly, if prescribed buning had been used on this reseeded range it would have resulted in even more severe overuse. There would have not even have been the small protection provided by residual stalks. ANY TOOL EVER INVENTED CAN BE USED FOR GOOD OR EVIL. IT ALL DEPENDS ON THE ONE USING THE TOOL.

All the plants of big bluestem and Indiangrass were plants that grew from grains planted as a reseeding/restoration project on land previously in weeping lovegrass (Eragrostis curvula) which, in turn, had been planted on a former cotton (Gossypium hirsutum) field. Obviously no respect for range plants. Hard to imagine that agricultural university personnel did not even appreciate forage for cattle.

How could such mismanagement take place on property of a traditional agricultural college? Lazyness and no ovesight (at least no ovesight with authority for correction). The employee charged with "management" of the little Hunewell Ranch just left every pasture gate open and the cattle camped out on the reseeded pasture which, being about the only stand of palatable grass left (at least the only palatable stand that was readily available), was grubbed into the ground.

Tarleton State University Hunewell Ranch, Erath County Texas. Mid-September; late summer..

Invasion in action- A severely overused (probably dying or will winterkill and not see next spring) plant of big bluestem that was so weakened its growing space was being invaded by westernr ragweed, a native, highly rhizomatous, perennial forb. Overuse has now become overgrazing. Overuse has been so extreme or severe over a long enough period of time (about two or two and a half growing season) that the native forb had invaded and, having already surpassed its cover, density, frequency under the restored climax tallgrass prairie had increased to WEED status.

Overuse (excessive grazing use; defoliation that exceeds proper use) had been the first warning sign that range retrogression--the current state or condition shown in this "photoplot"--was "on the way".This is why determination (estimation) of utilization is so critical in range analysis. Degree of use is a more sensistive or, at least, an earlier useful measure than the ultimate determination of successional development as derived from the also essential and the ultimate measure known as range tend.

Tarleton State University Hunewell Ranch, Erath County Texas. Mid-September; late summer.

Weedy invasion about complete- A set of three "photoplots" at increasingly larger scale or closer-in views of grazed-out big bluestem on a reseeded sandy bottomland old field in the Western Cross Timbers in northcentral Texas. After two years (two warm-growing seasons) of severe overuse big bluestem plants that were of approximately 12 to 13 years old had--"for all intents and purposes"--been killed by severe to extreme overuse by a herd of cows and calves. An old cotton field on sandy land ha been reseeded to weeping lovegrass and then the weeing lovegrass pasture was plowed out. After three of disastrous farming with winter wheat (Triticum aestivum) and sudangrass (Sorghum sudanensis)--on up to eight (8) percent slopes--the land was reseeded to a native mixture of little bluestem, Indiangrass, big bluestem, sideoats grama, and bffalograss. After five years an excellent stand of Indiangrass and big bluestem had become established (thanks in large part to feral hogs that moved in to feast on Johnsongrass rhizomes that had retarded establishment of the reseeded tallgrass species). Then for a period of six years the stand of Indiangrass and big bluestem was ungrazed (the hogs largely moved out but continued to provide some biological control of Johnsongrass; white-tailed deer fed on forbs, mostly weeds, and some invading woody plants and ignored the now-established tallgrass species).

Disaster struck for the next two to two and a half years (following the six years of no grazing) when the university employee(s) in charge of Hunewell Ranch, on which the tallgrass prairie had been restored, simply opened all the pasture gates and a herd of cows and calves moved in and "camped out" on the reseeded range. Grass on the reseeded pasture was the best feed on the little place (at least over course of two growing seasons) so the inevitable happened.

These three "photoquarants" showed physiological responses of individual grass plants (big bluestem) and successional impacts on the range plant community at end of the second year (end of warm-growing season).

In the first slide there were two "essentially dead" plants of big bluestem photographed in their "last gasps of life". Yes, there were still a few "brave" shoots of two or three inches in height, but this was end of the growing season and there waas not enough stored or reserve carbohydrates in their rootcrows/roots to survive winter dormancy and send up new shoots come spring.Closing in on the dying, in-their-deah-throes two big bluestem plants ws an invding hoard of western ragweed shoots from the rhizomes(and maybe a few achenes) closing in to utilize plant survival resourees previously used by the climax decreaser, big bluestem. It was a rout.

The second photograph was more of a top-down view of a single "good-as-dead" plant of big bluestem that steadfastly had dared to send up shoots that were four to five inches tall while "umteen" flowering shoots of western ragweed were closing in for the killl.

"Cannon to right of them, Cannon to left of them, Cannon behind them Volley'd and thunder'd; Storm'd at with shot and shell, ... They that had fought so well Came thro' the jaws of Death Back from the mouth of Hell, All that was left of them...".

The Charge of the Light Brigade, Alfred Lord Tennyson

The third photograph was saddest of all. With its last few leaves a once-grand plant of big bluestem was being overwhelmed by rhizome-sent flowering shoots of western ragweed. The dying plant with the last remaining, rotting organic matter of a once immense root system was providing nutrients to an invader handily held at bay when the king grass briefly regained supremancy over a domain held for millenia by its forebears. All that is left is to sing the grassland equivalent of the country gospel song, Farther Along.

Tarleton State University Hunewell Ranch, Erath County Texas. Mid-September; late summer.

Ever wonder why cedar is a problem- On an old cotton fiield reseeded to a Indiangrass, little bluestem, big bluestem, sideoats grama, and buffalograssa a tallgrass prairie had been restored only to be overused, unburned and currently being invaded by the native sprouting conifer, redberry cedar (Juniperus pinchotii). All plants of red-berry juniper had come in over a period of not more than 13 years (from time of land preparation and reseeding to the time of this photograph). The large juniper shown here could have been 12 to 13 years old while smaller junipers were only three or four years old. The reseeeded tallgrass prairie pasture had been grazed by cattle for only five years with the last three years being of overuse. White-tailed deer and feral hogs did feed to any measurable extent on the reseeded grasses. Rooting by hogs was so miniscule as to be unimportant. The extent of overuse (excessive defoliation) by cattle (cows and calves) was shown quite graphically in the foreground and rgiht midground where large plants of Indiangrass had been grazed down to a stubble height of six to ten inches with some regrowth that cattle had not managed to eat at time of this photograph.

Important: it was lack of fire not improper grazing (underburning not overusing) that had permittted older cedars to become established. Younger redberry cedars may or may not have benefitted from lessened compettion from weakened grass plants.All plants of Juniperus pinchotii had achieved their potential growth (under weather and soil conditions of their lifetimes). Prescribed burning would have topkilled these plants and they would have had to send up new shoots (regrow) from their lignotubers. Belowground organs like lignotubers would not have been killed--at least most likely not killed, especially in instances of larger (older) cedars--but all existing shoots (aboveground parts) would have been killed. (All junipers would have been topkilled in a proper prescribed burn). The net result of prescribed burning would have been much lower cedar cover--at minimum and perhaps lower juniper denisity if some smaller trees had also been rootkilled due to death of younger, smaller lignotubers.

A combination of underburning, first, following by uveruse had permitted a reseeded range in Excellent range condition class to retrogress to Fair range condition class such that range trend was down and "crashing" even farther and faster. Given observations on juniper invasion of adjoining pastures this sandy bottomland range site would be a cedarbrake in less than 20 years from time of this sad scene. This was obviously improper range management. If range trend is down due to human action range management is improper.

Tarleton State University Hunewell Ranch, Erath County Texas. Mid-September; late summer.

A problem on virgin sod as well- A local area of Grand Prairie grassland dominated by little bluestem and with Indiangrass as assocate species. This part of a range used by cows and calves and white-tailed deer was in Excellent range condition class--except for invasion by redberry juniper. Underburning (cmplete lack of fire for over half a century) not overgrazing was responsible for this situation. This local population of little bluestem was an exception to the usual situation on this ranch, and even with the extraordinary sward of this climax tallgrass prairie brush invasion was a problem.

Fire is essential for perpetuation of prairie. Remedy for onset of brush (cedar) invasion on this patch of pristine prairie was prescribed burning.

Tarleton State University Hunewell Ranch, Erath County Texas. Late October; late summer.

No wonder mesquite is a problem- A young mesquite (not more than13 years old) on an old field, a sandy bottomland range site, that 13 years earlier had been plowed and reseeded to a mixture of Indiangrass, little blueste, big bluestem, sideoats gram, and buffalograss. The reseeded pasture did not receie any prescribed fire which was an "open invitation" for invasion by woody plants like this mesquite and the red-berry juniper shown in the immediately preceding alide.

Viewers should note that as in the above slides, there were overused plants of Indiangrass and big bluestem growing (and fighting for their lives) all around this multi-stemed mesquite sapling. At the same time there had been no browsing on (or burning of) the mesquite. This provided a classic example of one reason (actually two including lack of range fire as well as overuse/overgrazing) why mesquite invasion is such a problem. Human mismanagement was "cultivating" or "selectively fostering" mesquite at expense of climax grasses on a restored tallgrass prairie, a range improvement project that had involved substantial expense (and, in the sad end, misplaced hope and trust).

Tarleton State University Hunewell Ranch, Erath County Texas. Mid-September, mid-autumn.

Hedged grass; proper degree of use - Slides of three individual plants of little bluestem that had been properly used, somewhat on the heavily grazed side of some shoots and nonuse of a few shoots. Given that these images were taken at end of the warm-growing the slightly different degrees of use would all fall under of the category of proper degree of use (for the grazing/growing season). In fact, .defoliation (amount--quantity or proportion--of plant biomass harvested by grazing animals which was cattle in this case) could have been somewhat greater. This was what is known as conserrvative grzing A "little extra" was left just in case. In case of drought or a unique opportnity "happened by" (eg. good buy on some short-time stocker cattle). The first two plants had a few sexual shoots that had not been grazzed at all (on right side of both cespitose plants). Cespitose refers to the bunched or clumped morphological form or habit which typically means that all shoots are tillers, vertical or intravaginated shoots.

Sexual reproduction is almost invariably less important than asexual reproduction in tallgrass species. In the case of bunchgrasses like little bluestem asexual or vegetative reproduction is production of tillers (which had been substantial in these three little bluestem plants). Nonetheless, establishment of new little blurestem plants (new genotypes) via seedling establishment is or can be important. On the Grand Prairie pasture on which these plants were growing there seedlings of little bluestem havee been found.(They make good plants for identification on high school range contests.)

Perhaps the main immediate usefulness of grazing to a degree of use or to a point at which some sexual (flowering) shoots remain is as a diagnostic tool. Experience has often indicated that when a "few" ungrazed shoots of a bunchgrass (like little bluestem) remain, degree of use has not been excessive. Such residual intact or whole shoots with their fluffy little caryopses leaves open the "option" of seedling establishment (if conditions are favorable). The pattern of feeding on plants, especially woody plants,, by larger herbivores results in a "hedged" form or outline such as those shown in these three little bluestem plants that had been grazed by cattle. More intense hedging leaves no intact shoots (it is, afterall, a hedged or heavily clipped plant with few if aany "wild hairs" sticking up or out). When there are some (at least a 'few') whole or intact (ungrazed/unbrowsed) shoots this indicates that defoliation was not as severe as it could have been. Of course, even grazed, browsed, or hand-clipped shoots (tillers in little bluestem) might have some flower clusters, spikelets, or caryopses.Tillers need not have been "untouched" to have grains.

These three example of hedged plants reveald something else. While these plants of a tallgrass species appeared to have a lot of plant material or "foliage" left, some of this was from last year's growth. Tillers produced last year and that persisted into this year were more weathered and could be readily distinguished from current (this year's) tillers, and that distinction needs to be factored in when determining utilization (degree of use). In herbaceous range plants utilization must be limited to current year's (growing season's) production. This becomes a much more complicated judgment in woody plants--those with perennial aboveground parts--because while each year's production (each year's internode) can be easily seen, browsers might remove more than one year's production (yet leave unused other woody shoots).

Little bluestem plants in the first and third slide had substantial numbers of last year's tillers so that these two plants were "partial" wolf plants. (Wolf plants was described and discussed in the caption under the first slide-caption set in this section.) These two plants had received lighter use (fewerr tillers fed on) last year and this restricted cattle grazing.These two little bluestem plants contrasted with the little bluestem plant in the second slide which did not have last year's residual tillers. It was likely that little bluestem plants in the first and third slide would have received greater utilization by cattle were it not for some protection provided by last year's tillers.

Tarleton State University Hunewell Ranch, Erath County, Texas. Late October, mid-autumn.

68. Recovery of an abused native legume- Shoots of one plant of Illinois bundleflower (Desmanthus illinoensis) ten (10) days following partial dfoliation by a rotary shredder. This plant was growing on the same county road right of way as shredded plants of big bluestem, beaked panicgrass, and Florida paspalum presented and described. The tallest shoot at far-right side of the plant was not taken off by the rotary shredder. All the other shoots had about their annual growth removed.

New growth on these partially defoliated shoots was presented at closer camera distance and with greater detail. Defoliation had taken place in late June in the fifth straight year of drought that varied from Severe to, briefly, Extraordinary Drought.

Ottawa County, Oklahoma. Early July; Severe Drought (Palmer Index).

69. Growing back- Regrowning shoots in Illinois bundleflower as seen ten (10) days following partial defoliation in late June by a rotary shredder. Shoot "stubs" (broken ends of remaining shoots following shredding) were visible in both of these slides though more so in the second image. Regrowth consisted of both 1) new shoots growing or arising below the broken-off or "de-topped" shoots (growth initiated from intercalary meristem) and 2 ) increased growth of pre-existing stems and compound leaves.

Grass leaves associated with Illinois bundleflower were mostly those of Johnsongrass (Sorghum halapense). These range plants were growing in the far-westernpart of the Springfield Plateau in northeastern Oklahoma.

Although forbs generally are less adapted to defoliation than grasses and grasslike plants, all range plants have some capacity for regrowth as an evolutionary adaptation. Otherwise they would be extinct.

Ottawa County, Oklahoma. Early July; Severe Drought (Palmer Index).

70. Growing back more later on- A plant of Illinois bundleflower 30 days after it had been shredded (crushed, torn, riped, beaten, pulled apart) by rotary blades on a county road right of way in the Springfield Plateau in northeastern Oklahoma. This was the same plant presented in the two immediately slide/caption sets. A comparison of regrowth seen in this slide to foliage remaining after shredding and, then, ten days later showed the tremendous capacity for regrowth of this native papilionaceous legume. Plus, this regrowth was made in the fifth consecutive year of drought that varied from Severe to, briefly, Extraordinary ratings (at time of this regrowth the drought ranked an Extreme Drought on the Palmer Index).

The ability of many native range plant species to grow and survive under almost seemingly impossible conditions is an amazing phenomenon. It would seem that those who work with such plants, such as county road maintenance workers who shred them down, would appreciate this fact, but such adaptation and beauty is lost on them ("pearls before swine" as Jesus put it). Enlightened range folk have understood the survival capacity and production potential of Illinois bundleflower. For example, the Soil (later, Natural Resources) Conservation Service Plant Materials Center in Knox City, Texas selected and released 'Sabine' Illinois bundleflower for range reseeding.

Ottawa County, Oklahoma. Late July; advanced regrowth stage of phenology.

Natural Revegetation of Tallgrass Prairie

Shown in the following short section were two examples of ongoing natural restoration of tallgrass prairie, recovery of the native prairie plant community through secondary plant succession. One of these recovering prairie ranges was on a bottomland range site while the other was on an upland range site. Grassland vegetation on bottomland had progressed along its sere to climax whereas the upland prairie plant community was roughly in mid-sere with climax grass species just becoming established. Both of these short photographic case histories were on old fields or "go-back land" that had been farmed (row crops and small grains on both fields) for several decades (both for at least a half century) and then retired from farming. The old fields were then abandoned for a period of about 40 years on bottomland and 20-25 years on the upland prairie site. (Obviously there were two different potential climaxes or terminal range plant communities.) No attempts at artificial revegetation such as reseeding had been made on either of the old fields. The bottomland had been mowed for hay once annually since shortly after abandoment. (No comment necessary to describe forage quality--or lack thereof--in early years of vegetation recovery.) The old field on the upland site was mowed annually for hay only a few times afterwhich it was completed "idled" with grazing limited to native animals.

The author grew up with and watched land use and recovery of range vegetation on both of these old fields over the course of his lifetime. No systematic records were kept because the author was not present at all times and therefore could not keep accurate or complete notes on management. The following photographs with empherical and incomplete observations were examples of what F.E. Clements called "dynamic vegetation", plant community development by the set of processes known as plant succession (secondary succession in these two instances). These lessons in old field succession were Vegetation Science applied to Range Management as taught in Nature's own lecture hall. Some fellow rangemen and students of vegetation have not so been so fortunte as to have seen such successional sagas unfold. Ya'll will have to be satisfied with this personal and partial narrative, at least until your're better paid.

71. Its reign regained- An old field that through secondary plant succession returned to climax vegetation of mesic tallgrass prairie in the western Ozark (Springfield) Plateau roughly 40 years following cessation of farming. The dominant--far and away--on this Bottomland range site was eastern gamagrass with secondary, though abundant, species including blackeyed susan (Rudbeckia hirta), rosinweed (Silphium integrifolium), purpletop, common wild four o'clock (Mirabilis nyctaginea), and a few seedlings of black walnut (Juglans nigra). When in high school the author helped farm this ground seated on a John Deere Model A. He hauled pea and millet hay (a catch crop planted in a summer drought) off of this little field 45 years before he took these photographs. This land was farmed for a period of about five to seven years after that at which time it was retired from farming by the old couple who owned it. . The field had been mowed once each summer after farming ceased with the first yers hay crop consisting of crabgrass and annual weeds (cows had nothing better to do than pick out grass according to the elderly owners) Annual mowing in late summer has continued ever since tillage ceased. There were no management inputs except for hay harvest. This author first saw eastern gamagrass on the old field approximately 30 years following abandonment. The recovered grassland vegetation shown here was as it appeared about 40 years since the last pass with the plow.

A most remarkable story of natural revegetation through secondary succession. Where did the caryopses of this granddad, decreaser grass come from? This little field was on the outer (upper) floodplain of a typical Ozark creek. A climax sugar maple (Acer saccharum)-basswood (Tilia americana)-white ash (Fraxinus americana)-pignut hickory (Carya cordiformis) forest that developed on the north slope of bluffs along the creek was only 70-80 yards from the range plant community shown here. There was no eastern gamagrass in that north slope mesic forest. Likewise, the author was unaware aof any plants of eastern gamagrass upstream from this field. A few other plants of eastern gamagrass were growing in the fencerow across a county "dirt road" from the recovered old field-vegetation presented above. What was their source" Was it the same as that of the ones on this abandoned field or did those across the road come from grain disseminated from this old field stand?

So where did the initial Tripsacum dactyloides germinules of recovery emanate from? What where these plant propagules?. The first question above implied that grain was the source of this regenerated stand of eastern gamagrass. The more recently established (the younger) individual clumps of eastern gamagrass appeared to have originated from the initial plants established earlier in ssuccession, and probably by grain disseminated short distances. But what (and where from) were the first disseminules that led to establishment of eastern gamagrass in the revegetation process? Caryopses? Perhaps grains in the soil seed bank that had laid dormant decades. Or could they have been rhizomes, those big, scaly rootstocks of this grandpaw grass species? If initial reestablishment was by asexual reproduction (as from rhizomes) whinther these propagules?

Obviously God alone knows. It was a miraculous recovery of a bottomland tallgrass prairie. That much is known by those with their imperfect knowledge. Or perhaps not miraculous at all (except in the sense that a sunrise or birth of a new calf are miracles), but rather the inevitable return of a "super organism" inexorably developing along its sere with the particulars of plant migration yet to be discovered by those who follow F.E. Clements.

Trees in the background were those of a bottomland forest adjoining a typical Ozark creek. Many of them were sycamore (Platanus occidentalis), honey locust (Gleditsia triacanthos), white ash, and pignut or bittrnut hickory immediately upstream from the sugar maple-basswood-white ash community that developed on bluffs above the creek. There was certainly no plants of eastern gamagrass or rosinweed in these forest communities.

The thin, buff-colored strip of vegetation between creek bottom forest and eastern gamagrass-dominated grassland was naturalized tall fescue (Festuca arundinacea). This agronomic species has naturalized over much of the Ozark Region and is frequently a noxious species especially on tallgrass hay meadows and pastures. Tall fescue stood no chance against eastern gamagrass and, in fact, the latter was slowly encroaching on the stand of tall fescue. Sic 'em grandpaw!

Ottawa County, Oklahoma; greater floodplain of Modoc Creek. July (estival aspect); peak bloom in the most common composite species and grain-ripe to grain-shatter in eastern gamagrass.

72. Throne reclaimed- Stand of eastern gamagrass with rosinweed as the local assocaite species on an old farm field that revegetated through secondary plant succession to a climax, bottomland tallgrass prairie in the Ozark Plateau. This was another view of the same old field and natural restoration of potential natural range vegetation introduced in the preceding two photographs and described thereunder. The creek bottom forest and narrow strip of tall fescue behind the eastern gamagrass and rosinweed was also described immediately above. It bore repeating that eastern gamagrass was slowly invading the established sward of the naaturalized, often weedy, tall fescue. (That vegetational development also makes frequent visits to this recovered tallgrass prairie range well worth the short excursions.)

These three views of the same plants of eastern gamagrass and rosinweed were taken over course of eight years with the first and third views captured eight years after the center view (second slide). Once these two climax decreaser species had become established things successional were slow to change. Size of shoot clumps of these clonal perennials vried from year-to-year depending on plant growing conditions.

Ottawa County, Oklahoma; greater floodplain of Modoc Creek. July (estival aspect); peak bloom in rosinweed and grain-ripe to grain-shatter in eastern gamagrass.

In Nature nothing is static- Former cropland in the floodplain of a small creek in the Ozark Plateau through secondary plant succession achieved the climax vegetation of a fertile bottomland grassland over the course of about a half century. The climax plant community was of eastern gamagrass (Tripsacum dactyloides) and rosinweed (Silphium integrifolium) with a few plants of big bluestem and purpletop (Tridens flavus).

The landowner harvested hay off of this go-back bottomland for several decades. Then he sold his cattle and abandoned the hay meadow of the recovered bottomland site of tallgrass prairie that adjoined a bottomland forest that developed along the creek. No fire or grazing other than by white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) occurrred.

Within two years following hay-making and no fire having taken place native species of hardwoods from the contiguous bottomland forest had started to invade the climax eastern gamagrass-rosinweed community of tallgrass prairie. The successional development was documented in the section below.

73. Throne threatened- Eastern gamagrass (a climax, decreaser tallgrass) with rosinweed (a climax composite) as associate species had successfully invaded and became the grassland community on a bottomland range site of tallgrass prairie in the western Ozark (Springfield) Plateau roughly fifty years after this small field had been retired from row crop production. That successional development was described above in this section.

The owner of this property harvested hay off of this grassland for roughly two decades. (Hay was harvested once a year and eastern gamagrass continued to increase its cover and density under this harvest regime.) Then the landowner sold his cttle and stopped mowing this prairie for hay. Within two years ceased hay harvest (mowing) seedlings of hardwood trees and shrubs from an adjoining gallery forest along a bordering stream had begun to invade the restored pristine eastern gamagrass prairie. The line trees in center to right background of these two slides is the edge of that gallery forest.

The interesting (disgusting to this grasslander or prairieman) thing about this invasion of seedling trees was that most of the tree species were minor species in the adjoining bottomland, floodplain, or gallery forest that was dominated by bitternut or pignut nut hickory (Carya cordiformis), sugar maple (Acer saccharum), white ash (Fraxinus americanus), sycamore (Plantanus occidentalis), northern red oak (Quercus rubra), American elm (Ulmus americana), and basswood (Tilia americana).

That woody invasion in the second year post-mowing was showin in these two slides and in the three slides in the immediately succeeding slide/caption set. Prominent or major woody species in the first slide included black walnut (Juglans nigra), blackjack oak (Quercus marilandica), post oak (Q. stellata), American elm, common persimmon (Diospyros virginiana), and the shrub, redbud (Cercis canadensis). There were also a few seedlings of northern red oak and American elm which, with black walnut, were the only mesic tree species or those typically found on bottomland or north and east slopes in this part of the Ozark Plateau. Post oak and blackjack oak are the less mesic, drier-site-adapted oaks. These two oak species are regional dominant trees of drier upland forests which, along with common persimmon, are hardwoods of the prairie/oak-hicklry forest edge or ecotone.

On the floodplain of Modoc Creek, Ottawa County, Oklahoma. Late to late July.

74. Reign challenged- A climax bottomland tallgrass prairie that redeveloped on farmland within 25-30 years of abandoned tillage to become an eastern gamagrass (dominant)-rosinweed (associate) community. This bottomland prairie was mowed for hay once a year for about two decades (maybe a quarter century) and the two major climax decreaser prairie plants continued to increase (cover and density) under this harvest management. Then the landowner sold his cattle and stopped harvesting hay off of this recovered hay meadow. Within two years of ceased mowing and without fire or defoliation except minor browsing by white-tailed deer native hardwood species had begun to invade the climax grasslant.

These species included black walnut, redbud, blackjack oak, post oak, common persimmon, northern red oak, and American elm in that approximate order of number of plants and relative cover. In the third slide there was a plant of nettleleaf noseburn (Tragia urticifolia), an intresting native of no known indicator value in this instance, in lower left corner. There were a few incidental plants of tall fescue (Festuca arundinacea) which probably volunteered from a tame pasture on the other side of a county road that bordered this bottomland tallgrass prairie.

The concluding observation on this development is that woody invasion into an established climax grassland sod ocurred during two years of Severe Drought (Palmer Drought Index). This development in the life of this vegetation was a most disturbing phenomenon to your rangeman author and born-again prairieman. He will continue to monitor the ecological situational as it unfolds along the floodplain of Modoc Creek.

Ottawa County, Oklahoma. Late to late July.

Grassland or Forest?- That is the concluding question for this change in grassland community development at this point in vegetation dynamics. Students are seeing the essence in dramatic, graphic form of what Frederic Clements termed "dynamic plant ecology". Is this dynamics on-going plant succession? Or is it a textbook example that grasslands in humid and subhumid zones can only persist with some continual defoliating agent such as natural fire or, in this immediate instance, mowing or hay harvest?

75. Reign change- By the third year of not mowing or harvesting for hay it was becoming obvious that the grassland vegetation dominated by eastern gamagrass which had established on an old field was, in fact, clearly on the vegetational way to becoming a bottomland forest. It was not known whether this dynamics in range plant community was natural secondary succession or, alternatively, woody invasion of climax grassland in absence of tree control (whether defoliation was natural by fire or grazing/browsing or human action such as mowing or chemical treatment).

For whatever reason(s) eastrn gamagrass mysteriously died out simultaneously with encroachment of tree and shrub species. Some of these woody species such as black walnut and northern red oak, were present in a closely adjoining climax bottomland forest of hackberry (Celtis occidentalis), American elm, and white ash, but most woody plants were species of upland forest or oak-hicklry forest-tallgrass savanna and not present in the adjoining floodplain forest. These species included redbud, post oak, blackjack oak, and eastern persimmon.

A phenomenon that heightened the intrigue of the mysterious disappearance of eastern gamagrass was persistence of the exotic (an introduced forage species) tall fescue which had died out in a field field located just across a section line road during recent years of Extreme Drought. Native climax (decreaser) forbs, including rosin weed (Silphium integrifolium), were still thriving on this old field.

On the floodplain of Modoc Creek, Ottawa County, Oklahoma. Mid-July.

76. Recovered grassland lost- An old field that had "gone back" to an eastern gamagrass-dominated bottomland grassland and served as a hay meadow for over two decades was being invaded by native species of trees and shrubs three years after hay harvest ceased (three years after cesssation of mowing and hay production).

Woody plant species visible in this heratbreak "photo-plot" of Paradise Lost included redbud, eastern persimmon, black walnut, post oak, blackjack oak, and northern red oak. Black walnut and eastern red oak were the only species growing in an adjoining climax bottomland forest (upper right corner of slide). All other woody species were found on neighboring uplands of oak-hickory forest, tallgrass prairie, of savannas (ecotones) of these two climax plant communities.

There was still some cover of tall fescue which had "volunteered" (invaded without human propagation) in this old field even before colonization by the climax dominant, esstern gamagrass. In a hay field just across a county road from this old field tall fescue had been planted some 40 years earlier and that stand of tall fescue had mostly died out after several years of Extreme Drought. Why, in absence of hay harvest (or, at least, mowing/shredding) the native eastern gamagrass died out (for undeternined reasons) and the introduced coo-season tall fescue persisted remained what Paul called a "great mystery" (Ephesians 5:32) .Unfortunately from a rangeman's perspective it was a sad mystery.

On the floodplain of Modoc Creek, Ottawa County, Oklahoma. Mid-July.

77. Regaining its ground- The climax regime of tallgrasses (here represented by big bluestem and upland switchgrass) was slowly--perhaps inexorably--returning to an old field 20-25 years post abandonment following at least 60 years of farming. In fact, this land could have been farmed for as long as 70 or even 80 years, but there was living locals who could remember back to that time. This old field had produced various crops including wheat (Triticum aestivum), dent corn ( Zea mays var. indentata), grain sorghum (Sorghum vulgare= S. bicolor), and soybeans (Glycine max) for at least the better part of six decades. Even the exact time (year) of the last field crops was apparently forgotten by current owners, but the author who was raised in this locality can trace the point of retirement from cropping from roughly 20 to something less than 30 years prior to time he took these photographs. No attempts at artificial revegetation were made. Seral vegetation on this "go-back land" was mowed for hay one time in each of a few summers (exact number of hay harvests was unknown to the author), but this was soon discontinued. No mowing had taken place on this old field for at five or six years prior to the year in which these photographs were taken

This land had passed through the textbook sequence of old field succession from an initial pioneer sere of crabgrass, horseweed, giant ragweed, old field (annual) threeawn, redroot pigweed, and some cocklebur through to the seral community dominated by biennial forbs and weedy or ruderal perennial grasses, especially the native broomsedge bluestem and the naturalized Johnsongrass. The seral plant community shown here and in the succeeding photograph was the latter phase of the weedy, perennial (with lots of anuals and biennials still present) stage that was progresssing into the next (another mixed) stage of weedy perennials grasses plus weedy forbs and with initial establishment (Clementsian migration) of native climax (decreaser) tallgrass species. Big bluestem and switchgrass of the upland form as the first of the Four Horsemen tallgrasses had achieved a successional "beach head" on this "go-back land". Thickening of these individual clumped plants by increasing number of shoots (asexual reproduction) was part of the process Clements called aggregation (Weaver and Clements, 1038, ps. 4, 145-147).

This was the second example presented in this section showing natural recovery of tallgrass prairie in the western Ozark Plateau by secondary plant succession. The same question that was asked for the first example presented and described above was reasked here, "Where did the plant propagules of these climax grass species come from?" How did the initial disseminules get here or, if present from the initial virgin sod that was plowed 60 to 80 years previously, how did they persist under decades of farming? What were the germinules? Tiny, fluffy spikelets? Fragments of rhizomes or rootcrowns?. What were the agents of dispersal (wind, birds, rodents, even farm implements perhaps)? Numerous plants of big bluestem were growing within approximately one-fifth mile from these plants, but the author was unaware of any switchgrass within a five mile radius. Imponderables.

Broomsedge bluestem was the dominant plant in this mid-sere vegetation. The associate species varied locally and seasonally. For example, in this late spring society the naturalized Eurasian biennial umbel, wild carrot or Queen Anne's lace (Daucus carota), was the major forb and a local associate. Other major species included Johnsongrass (Sorghum halepense), a naturalized perennial grass that was also a local associate, hairy crabgrass (Digitaria sanguinalis), Japanese chess (Bromus japonicus), yellow hop clover (Trifolium agrarium), and tall fescue. Clearly, exotic invaders dominated range vegetation on this old field; it was also obvious that the native decreaser tallgrasses had invaded so that aggregation was underway and migration ongoing.

Ottawa County, Oklahoma. Mid-June (vernal aspect); various phenological stages depending on plant species.

78. Winter yet a new beginning on an old field- Scene of the recovering upland tallgrass prairie just shown in the winter following the above summer scenes. Most of the herbage was broomsedge bluestem, but three plants of switchgrass (upland form) were present (foreground to near background). There were even more plants of big bluestem, but the readily degradable shoots of this decreaser had already decomposed to the point of falling to the land surface.

Ottawa County, Oklahoma. January (hibernal aspect); depth of winter dormancy.

79. Another new beginning: another old field in another season- Another old field or "go-back land" (= "go-back ground") adjoining the one whose secondary succession vegetation was shown in the two immediately preceding slide/caption sets. These two old fields (this and the one in preceding slides) were actually parts of a single farm field that had produced dent corn, winter wheat, and soybeans continuously for 70 to 80 years. (No living person could remember or confirm the exact number of years that this land had been in continuous crop production, but farming operations were reliably traced back to at least 70 years.) This land had been retired from field crop production for about 23 years at time of these photographs (three years after slides in the two immediately preceding slide/caption sets had been taken).

The portion of the old field seen in preceding slides had been harvested for hay once a year (with a few exceptions) over a period of about 20 years ("give-or-take"). The portion of the old field shown in these three slides of grassland vegetation in summer, the next single slide of successional grassland in summer, and then the slides of winter grassland vegetation in the next two slide/caption sets had not been harvested for hay and, instead, had just been "let go" (= no direct human influence). Livestock did not graze either portion of this "go-back land". Neither portion had any fire treatment following discontinuation of farming.

There was no way by which the natural vegetation of this land could be known, but based on soils, small relicts of vegetation along edges of the old field, and similar remnant plant communities on land contiguous with the old field, and, perhaps most importantly, the recovering plant life (species composition of the plant community after about a quarter century post-farming) the virgin vegetation on this "go-back land" was almost undoubtedly a tallgrass prairie. Based on these criteria it was likely that the dominant plant species in the pre-whiteman grassland was big bluestem followed by switchgrass and Indiangrass.

Those three species plus the C3, cool-season, rosette panicgrass known by various common names including as hairy rosette panicgrass or western rosette panicgrass (Panicum lanuginosum var. fasciculatum) comprised most of the present range plant community. Beaked panicgrass (P. anceps) was the fourth major species based on visual appraisal. Other plants in the successional plant community presented in these three slides included Johnsongrass (Sorghum halapense); tall goldenrod (Solidago altissimum); blackberry species, especially dewberry (Rubus flagellaris); and sericea lespedeza (Lespedeza cuneata), and broomsedge bluestem (Andropogon virginicus) in that approximate order. Johnsongrass and sericea lespedeza are introduced agronomic forages that are often weeds under certain conditions (such as invasion of native grasslands like the one featured here).

Attention was drawn to the fact that the predominant plant species of "go-back land" and abused tame pastures in this area was almost always broomsedge bluestem. Given the small cover and density of broomsedge bluestem--combined by predominance of grassland cover by decreaser grass species (climax dominant tallgrass species)--the unavoidable conclusion was that this successional grassland community was in an advanced seral stage; in fact, at or close to climax vegetation. Certainly range condition class was the low end of Excellent, overall, and with almost no spots below high Good condition class.

The largest clumps of grass in the first two of these three slides were switchgrass whereas the large clump of tall shoots in center foreground of the third slide was Indiangrass. Both switchgrass and Indiangrass are long-shoot grasses, grass species that elongate their shoots and elevate their apical meristems relatively early in the warm-growing season. This is in contrast to big bluestem which is a short-shoot grass, species that do not elongate their shoots or elevate apical meristems until comparatively late in the warm-growing season. At this point of grass development big bluestem was at a comparative "disadvantage" in regards to aspect dominance of this recovering range plant community. Aspect dominance is the general perception of relative importance of plant species cover as it relates to overall appearance of the vegetation.

Ottawa County, Oklahoma. Early August; peak standing crop, milk stage to soft-dough stage of phenology in dominant grasses.

80. Summary view of a new beginning- An advanced seral stage (just below climax) of "second-growth" (= recovering) tallgrass prairie in the western Ozark Highlands (Springfield Plateau) after almost a quarter century retirement from field crop production that had extended over three quarters of a century. Major plant species seen in this composite photograph of the old field were switchgrass, Indiangrass, big bluestem, beaked panicgrass, hairy or western rosette panicgrass, Johnsongrass, tall goldenrod, sericea lespedeza, broomsedge bluestem, and dewberry in roughly that approximate order of plant foliar cover. The two large cespitose plants in left-center foreground and right-center midground were switchgrass. Several plants or local colonies of beaked panicgrass and tall goldenrod were prominent in the near background.

This photograph provided a synopsis view of the same part of an old field presented in the three slides of the immediately preceding slide/caption unit. Go-back ground" seen in this slide (and the three slides immediately above) was part of an old field that had received no human impact following retirement from field crop production.

Another portion of that old field, which had been hayed about every year since retirement, was presented in two slide/caption units (showing both late spring and winter foliage; vernal and hibernal aspects) immediately above the preceding three-slide/caption unit. The three slides of the hayed part of the old field were photographed three years prior to the photographs seen here and in the three slides presented immediately above. Recovering (successional) vegetation of the hayed portion (mowed/baled only once each summer) of the old field was conspicuously less advanced than the successional vegetation of the non-hayed portion presented here and in the immediately preceding three slides.

It could be argued that three more years of secondary plant succession "made the difference" in vegetation recovery. This was not the situation. Successional (seral) or recovering vegetation on the hayed portion of "second-growth" tallgrass prairie was not much different three years later. Drought (varying from Severe to Extreme on the Palmer Drought Index)--along with hay production--was less conducive than total elimination of grass harvest (during drought) to recovery of tallgrass prairie. Even the minimal impaact of hay-making had slowed (impeded) recovery of tallgrass prairie via secondary plant succession.

This "go-back land" had been in continuous farming--and with clean tillage of a moldboard plowing, disking, harrowing sequence--with production of dent corn, winter wheat, and soybeans for between 70 and 80 years. Nothing was done to the land following cessation of cropping. Share croppers just "rode off and left it" to "go-back" on its own. Climax grasses (three of the Four Horsemen of the Prairies) had retaken possession of its prairie heritage in a quarter century! These three decreasers were "tri-dominants" of this "second-growth" tallgrass prairie. The two increaser grasses. beaked panicgrass and hairy or western rosette panicgrass, and the introduced (now naturalized) Johnsongrass were local associate species. Another associate species was tall goldenrod. This large forb (it grew to over six feet in height) was also a local dominant (probably also a decreaser species).

The $64 dollar question (the highest award on a popular Columbia Broadcasting Radio quiz shot) or the later $64,000 question (the highest award on a CBS television quiz show) for this old field was this, "Where did the plant propagules (grass grain, goldenrod achenes, etc.) come from that so effectively restored this "go-back ground" back to tallgrass prairie? The "$64 question ($64,000 question) became familar expression in popular culture for a particularily perplexing situation, question, development, etc. The now-proverbial $64 question has often been invoked to describe an almost (or semmingly) unanswerable phenomenon. "Where did these prairie plant propagules come from" was the $64 question.

The phenomenon as to source of plant germules in soil of this old field could be relegated to Saint Paul's "great mystery". An explanation beyond--at least slightly so--Biblical parlence of a miracle and "great mystery" had to be the fact that seeds of these native prairie plants had resided in the soil seed bank for the 70 to 80 year span of field crop production. (There were not enough local, current seed sources to have brought about this extent of natural revegetation.) Through tillage, planting, cultivation, and harvest year in and year out the plant germules had laid dormant (probably some seed germinated each year only to be killed in the process of crop production). Then when cropping ceased and the field was abandoned enough seed germinated and established plants which, in turn, produced more (new) plant propagules (sexual and asexual; seed and shoot). In "due time" populations of the former native species re-established and the tallgrass prairie was restored to some semblance of its former greatness.

This repopulation of native plant species was accompanied by establishment of introduced, naturalized, and (often) noxious forage species such as Johnsongrass and sericea lespedeza. No, complete restoration of the original climax vegetation had not yet been achieved, but it was not a bad start for only a quarter century. The land eventually reclaims its own.

Ottawa County, Oklahoma. Early August; peak standing crop, milk stage to soft-dough stage of phenology in dominant grasses.

Champion specimen- One very large plant (almost as much area as that of a conventional pick-up truck) of beaked panicgrass growing on an old field in the Springfield Plateau. The soil in which this specimen was growing had been that of a tallgrass prairie before it was "broke out" and farmed for over three-fourths of a century (both row crops and small grains). Then the field was abandoned 25 years ago and secondary plant succession had taken the recovering grassland vegetation back to climax or almost climax (near-climax) stage.

Surrounding range plant species were switchgrass (left), Indiagrass (upper right corner), and a rosette panicgrass (center background) known variously as hairy rosettegrass, hairy panicgrass, or wooly rosettegrass, (Panicum lanuginosum var. fasciculatum= Dichanthelium acuminatum subsp. fasciculatum).

Ottawa County, Oklahoma. Early August; approximate mid-maturity grain stage of phenology.

81. The other new beginning in another winter-The scene of "let go" "go-back land", featured in the two immediately preceeding slide/caption sets, undergoing secondary plant succession on its way back to tallgrass prairie in the Springfield Plateau as it appeared in winter aspect. This old field was populated by switchgrass, Indiangrass, big bluestem, hairy or western rosette panicgrass, and beaked panicgrass in that relative order based on ocular estimates of foliar cover. Other range plants included tall goldenrod, Johnsongrass, dewberry, broomsedge bluestem, and sericea lespedeza in that approximate order of plant cover.

This "second-growth" (recovering via secondary plant succession) tallgrass prairie was in low Excellent range condition class overall with local areas in high Good condition class. This was part of an old field that had been abandoned (retired from production of field crops, especially dent corn, winter wheat, and soybeans) about 23 years prior to time of this slide. Before abandonment this field had been farmed continuously for slightly over 70 (maybe, 75) years. Land preparation for crop production was "clean farming" or bare-soil tillage using a moldboard plow-disk/spiketooth harrow sequence.

The part of the old field presented in this, the two immediately preceding, and the immediately following slide/caption units had not received any human input beyond retirement from farming (ie. "let it go back on its own", "we're leaving it be"). Another part of this old field had been harvested for "volunteer hay" once almost every summer since abandonment. Recovery of tallgrass prairie vegetation on the once-a-year haying management had been noticeably less (= slower rate of natural restoration or successional revegetation) than on the part of the old field that had not been mowed during the growing season. There was no livestock grazing on either part of the "go-back land". There had been no chemical or burning treatments applied to the plant life on the old field.

Ottawa County, Oklahoma. Late December; hibernal aspect, winter dormancy.

82. A second chance as seen in winter- Part of an old field in the Springfield Plateau of northeastern Oklahoma as seen 23 years following abandonment after over three-fourths of a century in continuous clean-till farming for production of field crops (primarily dent corn, winter wheat, and soybeans). The recovering grassland vegetation was made up of (in this relative order based on estimated foliar cover) switchgrass, Indiangrass, big bluestem, hairy or western rosette paincgrass and beaked panicgrass. Other plant species included (again, in approximate relative order) tall goldenrod, Johnsongrass, dewberry, broomsedge bluestem, and sericea lespedeza. Of these species, only the last four were not climax decreaser species. The first three species (tallgrasses) were, of course, the potential dominant species (three of the Four Horsemen of the Prairies; only little bluestem was absent). Johnsongrass and sericea lespedeza were introduced, agronomic forage species that naturalized and often become noxious plants. Dewberry is a native and probably an increaser and, at higher proportions of species composition, an invader.

Switchgrass made up most (substationally over half) of the grass herbage (biomass, cover, tillers) in these three views of recovering tallgrass grassland in its winter aspect. This grassland plant community was approaching climax state (low Excellent condition class as shown here). The third of these three slides was a general or composite perspective (a larger spatial view) of the "let go" old field. In this view there were some local areas of range vegetation (such as in the foreground) that were in high Good condition class. Much of that foreground vegetation (eg. herbage of plants growing around large switchgrass clumps) was hairy rosette panicgrass. Young--and quite small--green shoots of the hairy rosette panicgrass (a cool-season, C3 species) were not visible beneath the thick, heavy cover of last year's shoots.

In less than a quarter century following continuous cropping (for three quarters of a century nonetheless) recovery of this tallgrass prairie vegetation had almost miraculously "gone-back" to the near-climax state. Natural revegetation through secondary plant succession had to be seen to be believed. As such, images of this natural, in-its-own-time prairie restoration were used for the education and viewing pleasure of range students, most of whom were not fortunate enough to experience this degree of recovery first-hand. A work of Nature in progress and process.

This was one of those moments when the author saw the ghosts of Henry Chandler Cowles, Frederic Edwards Clements, and John E. Weaver striding through this "go-back prairie". Like the dead Captain Ahab lashed to Moby Dick, the saints of sucession beckoned. Herein, this author followed the successional spirits to show and re-tell the tale of "dynamic vegetation".

Ottawa County, Oklahoma. Late December (Christmas Day); hibernal aspect, winter dormancy.

Natural History Note: The changing color of foliage of the tallgrass species is parallel to that of the leaves of deciduous hardwood species in the North American eastern deciduous forest. Seasonal aspects of the tallgrass prairie (and, to lesser degree, true prairie) are quite conspicuous and pronounced due to this dynamic foliar color of the grasses. Add to this changing grass coloration the often brilliant--and certainly varied--color of forbs (= "wild-flowers") and the tallgrass prairie holds its own in raw beauty against even the spectacular autumn coloration of hardwood forests.

83. Remarkable stand- An unbelieveably large stand or colony of one of the more widespread cool-season, rosette species of panicgrass known variously as hairy rosettegrass, hairy panicgrass, wooly rosettegrass, wooly panicgrass, western rosettegrass or western panicgrass (Panicum lanuginosum var. fasciculatum= Dichanthelium acuminatum subsp. fasciculatum) in an old field 24 years (more or less) after abandonment. This land had been clean-farmed (intense secondary tillage) for row crops and, especially, winter wheat. At this time (less than a quarter century following century long farming) a tallgrass prairie was becoming established with the major plant species being (in relative order based on apparent foliar cover) switchgrass, Indiangrass, big bluestem, hairy or western rosette paincgrass and beaked panicgrass.

To this rangeman, the natural restoration (re-establishment via secondary plant succession) of this former tallgrass prairie was almost on par with Biblical miracles. The grain of these native climax (decreaser) grass species had somehow managed to remain viable (continue to live) for decades under year-in-and-year-out tillage and continuous crop production!

This land was a quarter mile from where your author garnered his first eight years of education in a one-room, yellow-brick schoolhouse (his father laid most of the bricks). Then in his sixth decade of life, this one-room schoolhouse schoolboy walked on this recovering sod, knelt amid the prairie grasses, and brought these images to viewers almost none of whom knew the joyful experiences and the unique education of the country schoolhouse, or of the natural return of the natives.

(The author only hoped that his students could find--in some small degree--the inspiration that he drew from witnessing the "forgiveness of Nature".)

Western edge of the Ozark (Springfield) Plateau, Ottawa County, Oklahoma. Early August; peak standing crop, ripening grain stage.

84. Long, tall, and cool in summer- Vernal (spring) tillers (vertical, intravaginated shoots) of hairy rosettegrass, hairy panicgrass, wooly rosettegrass, western rosettegrass, wooly panicgrass, or western panicgrass at their peak developmental stage complete with vernal panicles and their ripening caryopses. These vernal sexual tillers were some of the countless such shoots in the immense colony presented in the two immediately preceding photographs.

As noted above, plants in this colony (and several others of slightly smaller size) "magically" appeared on an old field that had been farmed (clean-tillage for row crops and small grains) for over three-fourths of a century. Less than a quarter century following abandonment, the old field had "gone back" to a tallgrass prairie of switchgrass, Indiangrass, big bluestem, hairy or western rosette paincgrass, and beaked panicgrass (in that relative order of cover).

Absolutely amazing.

Western edge of the Ozark (Springfield) Plateau, Ottawa County, Oklahoma. Early August; peak standing crop, ripening grain stage.

85. Cool (season) shoots in spring- Composite view of the vernal sexual shoots of hairy rosettegrass, hairy panicgrass, western rosettegrass or hairy panicgrass, a species of the rosette panicgrass group (the Dichanthelium subgenus of Hitchcock and Chase (1951, p. 627-633). The species name of this taxon has been shown variously as Panicum lanuginosum var. fasciculatum, Dichanthelium acuminatum subsp. fasciculatum, as well as some others. Nomenclature and taxonomy of the rosette panicgrass species have been (and probably will continue to be) debated for decades.

Panicum species in the Dichanthelium subgenus are cool-season, C3 (the three Carbon atom-based photosynthetic pathway) grasses. P. lanuginosum is one of the more picturesque (for lack of a better term for now) of the rosette panicgrasses in that its vernal and autumnal shoots (production of these is a key characteristic of the Dichanthelium subgenus) are distinct from each other (Hitchcock and Chase, 1951, p. 638, 656). This was discussed in greater detail below.

The clusters of short leaves shown in this slide, which resemble rosettes except being on the upper sexual shoots rather than being basal, are structures called fascicles (Hitchcock and Chase, 1951, p. 638, 656, 992).

Ottawa County, Oklahoma. Mid-June; soft-dough phenological stage.

86. Closer looks at cool in spring- Vernal sexual shoots of hairy rosettegrass, hairy panicgrass, western rosettegrass or hairy panicgrass seen closer (shorter camera distance) showing, in the first or upper slide, the more open fascicles of the vernal phase of shoots (versus larger, more closed fascicles of the autumnal shoots) and, in the second or lower slide, the diagnostically useful villous nodes of the shoots.

Panicum lanuginosum is in the Lanuginosa group of Hitchcock and Chase (1951, p. 638, 656) the species of which sometimes--though not typically--produce fertile grain in the primary panicles of vernal shoots. The heavy grain crop shown here and in the immediately following slide was apparently produced under unusual growing conditions.

Ottawa County, Oklahoma. Mid-June; soft-dough phenological stage.

87. Hairy fruit of a contested rosettegrass- Panicle with fertile, ripening caryopses of a rosette Panicum species known under an assortment of names including wooly rosettegrass, hairy rosettegrass, hairy panicgrass, western rosettegrass, wooly panicgrass, or western panicgrass (Panicum lanuginosum var. fasciculatum= Dichanthelium acuminatum subsp. fasciculatum). In his classic Grasses of Oklahoma Featherly (1938, p. 101) described the flower/grain structure of the rosette Panicum species thusly: "... spikelets of primary panicle not perfecting seed, the small secondary panicles with fertile cleistogamous spikelets". Cleistogamous refers to flowers (florets in grasses) that do not open (exert anthers or stigma) and, thus, are self-fertilized (Hitchcock and Chase, 1951, p. 638).

In addition to the basal rosette, another unique thing about the rosette Panicum species in the Dichanthelium subgenus is that they produce (growing conditions permitting) both vernal and autumnal sexual shoots with panicles designated as vernal and autumnal phases (Hitchcockand Chase, 1951, p. 638). The primary panicle of the vernal phase does not usually have fertile florets (does not produee caryopses) though these develop "occasionally" in the Lanuginosa group (Hitchcock and Chase, 1951, p. 638, 656).

Ottawa County, Oklahoma. Mid-June; soft-dough phenological stage.

88. Autumnal apparel trending into winter- Two specimens of wooly rosettegrass, hairy rosettegrass, hairy panicgrass, western rosettegrass, wooly panicgrass, or western panicgrass with their dead autumnal shoots bearing the characteristic fascicles of the autumn phase still standing above basal rosettes of new leaves.

The basal rosette is a key morphological feature that distinguishes the cool-season, C3 rosette grasses or rosette panicgrasses from the warm-season, C4 panicgrasses. The rosette Panicum species were interpreted by Hitchcock and Chase (1951, ps.638-680) as being in subgenus Dichanthelium in contrast to subgenus Eupanicum of the warm-season, C4 Panicum species (Hitchcock and Chase, 1951, ps.680- 706). More recent authorities elevated Dichanthelium to its own genus (Gould, 1975; Shaw, 2012), a convention that the current author as well as some others (Diggs et al., 1999) did not accept.

Ottawa County, Oklahomal Late December: dead autumnal shoots with fascicles and newly grown leaves of basal rosettes.

89. Getting ready for winter- Young basal leaves with their characteristic short, stubby form beneath dead autumnal shoots bearing fascicles in wooly rosettegrass, hairy panicgrass, western rosettegrass, hairy rosettegrass, wooly panicgrass, or western panicgrass at onset of winter. There were three separate plants in these three slides which, at progressively closer distance, presented details of this cool-season, Cs Panicum species which was traditionally interpreted as residing in subgenus Dichanthelium (Hitchcock and Chase, 1951, p. 638, 656).

These specimens were growing in the western edge of the Ozark Plateau (Springfiield Plateau portion) where, in transitioning from autumn to early winter, their leaves showed some freeze damage. (Low temperatures finally arrived after an unusually warm fall season.)

Winter rosettes of short, densely packed leaves at the soil surface along with vernal and autumnal shoots bearing fascicles of varying seasonal form mark Panicum lanuginosum var. fasciculatum as distinctive, even from most other members of the Dichanthelium subgenus. While all members of the Dichanthelium group have vernal and autumnal phases, differences between the two seasonal phases in Panicum lanuginosum are typically more pronounced. Also, the primary panicles (those not in fascicles) of vernal shoots sometimes bear caryopses (shown above).

Ottawa County, Oklahomal Late December (early winter): dead autumnal shoots with fascicles and newly grown leaves of basal rosettes.

Prairie succession delayed by tame pasture- Two views of a stand of broomsedge bluestem at peak standing crop still standing in late December. The old field show in these two slides had been in cultivation (for winter wheat) for about 20 years when it was seeeded to tall fescue (Festuca arundinacea). A poor to marginal stand of tall fescue eventually grew to become a good stand which, after 38 years, was wiped out in an Extreme Drought six years prior to these two photographs. Broosedge bluestem, which had invaded following cessation of winter wheat farmng and seeding to tall fescue, had persisted at modest cover with the tall fescue. Four years following Extreme Drought the old field became a single-species stand of broomsedge bluestem as seen here.

This vegetational development stood in stark contrast to the example of secondary plant succession pressented immediately above. Soils of both fields was basically the same and were only a mile and half apart. In the immediately preceding example, an old field that had been abandoned from farming for 23 years following a period of tillage that lasted over threee-quarters of a century, a former tallgrass prairie had returned to climax grasses of big bluestem, switchgrass, Indiangrass, and hairy rosettegrass, hairy panicgrass. It had gone back to climax tallgrass prairie in less than a quarter century (23 years) following a period of tillage.that was almost four times longer than the field that became a tall fescue hay field and then reverted to broomsedge bluestem

If the field that is now in broomsedge bluestem had just been abandoned, and had nothing done to it, it would now be in climax big bluestem, switchgrass, Indiangrass prairie. Seeding to tall fescue prevented (at least retarded) secondary plant succession. Then after Extreme Drought wiped out the tall fescue the broomsedge bluestem seral stage developed. Range vegettion is dynamic: stay tuned.

Ottawa County, Oklahoma. Late December.

90. The rocks of salvation- A local colony of big bluestem (foreground of first photograph and right fore-to mid-ground of second photograph) growing out a pile of rocks that had been removed from the innediately adjoining tallgrass prairie hay meadow. This meadow was in the western margin of the Springfield Plateau section of the Ozark Plateau physiographic province as part of the vegetation in a more southern part of the Prairie Peninsula, the region-wide mosaic of tallgrass prairie and oak-hickory forests. The potential natural (climax) vegetation of this grassland was dominance by big bluestem over most of the area with dominance by switchgrass in lower spots and on mima mounds and by Indiangrass on local habitats of thinner, drier soil. Other important grasses were purpletop and Virginia wildrye in more more moist microsites. Prairie dropseed was rare, but diagonostically present. There were numerous species of forbs including ashy sunflower (Helianthus mollis), the most abundant forb, prairie blazing star or prairie gayfeather (Liatris pycnostachya), rattlesnake master (Eryngium yucccifolium), and whole-leaf rosinweed (Silphium integrifolium).

Unfortunately this virgin grassland was not in pristine condition. For at least 45 years it had been mowed for prairie hay in late August to mid-September (to get maximum hay tonage) which at this latitude does not leave enough time before frost so that the potential (former) dominant, panicoid, tallgrass species can replinish reserves in roots and rootcrowns to survive through dormancy. Consequently much of this lovely meadow had become nothing but a population of tall or littlehead nut-sedge (Scleria oligantha).

The author worked in this meadow in his youth and followed the sad gradual decline in hay production for over four decades. Rocks are the bane of hay makers because even small stones can result in breakage of sections or even knives of mowing machines, especially sickle-bar mowers traditionally used on prairie hay meadows. On this hay meadow rocks of various sizes were picked up over the years and piled in the fenceline at the edge of the meadow. In this protected spot (a mowing machine exclosure) big bluestem had returned to its former dominance to hold vigil over the degraded virgin sod.

In this prairie hay meadow the most critical of the Four Cardinal Principles of Range Management was Proper season of Use. Late-mowing of warm-season tallgrasses is one of the most destructive forms of mismanagement. One good feature of this improper haying was that the hay had been mowed high (about six inches or more) so that some photosynthetic tissue had been spared. Otherwise, the tallgrass vegetation would be an even greater disaster than it was. Note the much greater density of forbs like prairie gayfeather in the vegetation that received the late-season mowing. By the way, greed and ignorance are the two words that most explain such short-sighted late harvest by hoping (in vain) for maximum tonage. The realized results of such poor stewardship are lower yields each consecutive year along with minimal forage quality/nutritive value due to harvest at plant maturity.

Ottawa County, Oklahoma. July, nearing peak standing crop. FRES No.39 (Prairie Grassland Ecosystem). K-66 (Bluestem Prairie). K-73 (Mosaic of K-66 [Bluestem Prairie] and K-91 [Oak-Hickory Forest]. SRM 710 (Bluestem Prairie). Plains Grassland 142.1, Bluestem "Tall-Grass" Series, 142.11 of Brown et al. (1998, p. 40). Ozark Highlands- Springfield Plateau Ecoregion, 39a (Woods et al. (2005).

91. It can come back- Recovery of a degraded tallgrass prairie hay meadow that for several decades had been mowed in late summer. This meadow was adjacent to the one described in the two immediately preceding photographs. Big bluestem was the overall potential dominant (Indiangrass and switchgrass the associates to local co-dominants) of this prairie vegetation. After years of hay harvest too late in the warm-growing season the three dominant tallgrass species (the decreasers; the climax dominants) had been all but extirpated from this meadow which had become mostly a patch of prairie gayfeather. Cutting late in the growing season of herbaceous species may not allow adequate time for replinishment and storage of reserve food in stem bases, root crowns, and roots to permit survival during dormancy. Consequently with late haying some plants of later-maturing species may die out so that over a period of years those species are lost from the plant community only to be replaced by species that have already completed their annual cycle prior to time of mowing. This is retrogression just the same as with overgrazing. In this case it is a form of overmowing or, more, precisely, improper timing of mowing (ie. more a case of imporper season of harvest than of imporper degree of harvest). Net result is the same: a degraded hay meadow.

Fortunately ownership of this hay meadow changed. The new landowner hayed this meadow in early summer instead of late summer or early autumn (at least six to eight weeks earlier than the previous landowner). After about six years or earlier mowing the decreaser tallgrasses, especially big bluestem, had made marvelous recovery and the forage resource was in an advanced state of restoration. The result of prairie recovery was shown in these two "photoplots". Note that some plants of the weedier forbs such as prairie gayfeather and Baldwin ironweed were still obvious in the recovering plant community, but they were much less abundant than under late hay harvest. At time of photographs (middle of July) big bluestem, the almost exclusive tallgrass species, had not commenced elongation of its tillers but leaves were pretty much at maximum size and development. This is the latest in the warm-growing season and the most advanced stage of phenological development at which species like big bluestem should be harvested for hay. In fact, mid-July at this latitude (the Oklahoma-Kansas stateline) was already too late in the growing season for proper hay harvest of long-shoot species (those that elongate tillers early in the annual plant growth cycle) such as Indiangrass and switchgrass, the climax associate tallgrass species on this meadow. This was undoubtedly a factor--in addition to big bluestem being slightly better adapted to this range site--why big bluestem showed greater recovery than the associate tallgrasses and dominated the meadow vegetation.

So where did all of the big bluestem come from? How did it get there so fast (six years from a population of almost nothing to dominance of the prairie vegetation)? Answer: it was probably there all along, but plants were kept at such a suppressed, stunted, depapurate, barely alive state that earlier-maturing (mostly weedy) plant species over-shadowed, outgrew, and generally overwhelmed the decreaser tallgrasses like big bluestem. When earlier haying resulted in mowing of the earlier-maturing weedy forbs and grasslike plants, like prairie gayfeather and tall nut-sedge (Scleria oligantha), when they were more vulnerable, and at phenological stages of the natural (climax) dominants when these species were more tolerant of defoliation, the competitive advantage shifted back to the decreasers and they regained dominance of the prairie plant community.

The decreaser tallgrasses had been so weakened and stunted that only special forms of sampling and range analysis would have shown their existence on the meadow. With almost any standard method of analysis taller, larger plants on the prairie would be recorded and found to have greater relative proportions (density, cover, frequency, biomass) than smaller, "runt" or "scrub" plants of species that under natural conditions would have dwarfed plants of smaller-growing (and low-seral stage) species. For example, with point sampling (as with point frame or step-point methods) based on "first hit" (the first plant species contacted with the dimensionless tip of a pin) and with subsequent species composition determined from recorded initial contact, the overtopped, depauperate tallgrasses would not have have been recorded. Recording basal "hits" (contact of pin point with plant tissue on the soil surface) would not have given results that were much different because, again, the plant bases of decreasers would have been smaller while those of invaders would have been larger. This would be more so for grasses and grasslike plants (eg. tall nut-sedge) than forbs, but here, too, remaining robust plants of graminoids were be increasers or invaders like broomsedge bluestem and tall nut-sedge.

The thing to remember by landowners, rangemen, and other students of natural vegetation is that vegetation can return through plant succession, the depleted forage crop can recover and be restored--to a point anyway--by proper management. A mowing machine can be just as selective a grazer as an animal because the animal that determines selectivity through timing (season), frequency, intensity, etc. of defoliation is the human manager. Understanding this fact is a cornerstone of husbandry. Given a chance it can come back.

Ottawa County, Oklahoma. Mid-July; nearing peak standing crop (big bluestem, a short shoot species, had not yet started to elongate tillers). FRES No.39 (Prairie Grassland Ecosystem). K-66 (Bluestem Prairie). K-73 (Mosaic of K-66 [Bluestem Prairie] and K-91 [Oak-Hickory Forest]. SRM 710 (Bluestem Prairie). Plains Grassland 142.1, Bluestem "Tall-Grass" Series, 142.11 of Brown et al. (1998, p. 40). Ozark Highlands- Springfield Plateau Ecoregion, 39a (Woods et al. (2005).

Recovery of an Ozark Plateau prairie- This is a portion of the prairie hay meadow presented and described in the two immediately preceding slide/caption units after three years of not making hay after haying for at least three/fourths of a century (probably longer). Most of the taller, larger grass shoots in this image were upland switchgrass. Big bluestem was also but at lower foliar cover. The main reason that big bluestem was not conspicuous in this image whereas switchgrass was is that big bluestem is a short-shoot tallgrass that does not elongate its sexual (flowering) shoots until late in the warm growing season while switchgrass is a long-shoot tallgrass that elongates shoots that development into sexual shoots comparatively early in the warm growing season.

Switchgrass and big bluestem had declined almost to the point of being absent from this meadow due largely to the practice--followed for over fifty years--of harvesting for hay in late summer or early fall. Mowing in the latter stage of the growing season--presumedly to get maximum yield of dry matter (as measured by the greatest number of hay bales--is about the worst possible time to harvest tallgrass species like big bluestem and switchgrass, the potential climax dominants on this range site. Tallgrass species mowed late in the growing season but just prior to the first killing freeze will produce some regowth at tremendous expense to root reserves of total available carbohydrate. Under these conditions late-mowed plants may winter kill because they will not have adequate root/rootcrown reserves to survive winter dormancy.

Three years of non-mowing had permitted switchgrass (and big bluestem) to recover to the extent shown here. An interesting aside fact was that the owners of this ancient hay meadow no longer neeeded the hay because they had sold their cattle (due to bad fences and no inclination to rebuild them). This is just one more example of how cultural factors, including family affairs, directly impact the land and its range vegetation.

In the short term, the dominant switchgrass and big bluestem had benefitted from cessation of late-season mowing. In the longer term, however, cessation of all mowing (and it was never burnt) of this tallgrass prairie resulted in other vegetational developments. Click for the nexty slide...

Ottawa County, Oklahoma. Mid-July; early estival aspect. FRES No. 39 (Prairie Grassland Ecosystem). K-66 (Bluestem Prairie). K-73 (Mosaic of K-66 [Bluestem Prairie] and K-91 [Oak-Hickory Forest]. SRM 710 (Bluestem Prairie). Plains Grassland 142.1, Bluestem "Tall-Grass" Series, 142.11 of Brown et al. (1998, p. 40). Ozark Highlands- Springfield Plateau Ecoregion, 39a (Woods et al. (2005).

An orphan and no parenting from fire- Three views of a virgin-sod tallgrass prairie in the western Ozark Plateau (Springfield Plateau) that had been used as a prairie hay meadow for 80 years up until seven (7) years ago. Since the last hay making operation there was no grazing other than by kocal rodents, rabbits, and white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus).There had been no fire on the meadow (sincde only God could remember). In the intervening decade since the last hay making the tallgrass species, which had been greatly reduced in both cover and density due to late summer haying over decades, had rebounded remarkably BUT so had the brush! Sexual (flowering and now grain-set) shoots of big bluestem was featured in the foreground of the second slide. Laarge clumps of switchgrass "strudded their stuff" in foreground and midground of the third slide. Indiangrass was also abundant. it was particularily obvious in the first slide.

In all tbree slides a horrid increase in cover and density of tree species "stole the show" away from the increases in climax grass cover. The first slide showed ivasion by comon persimmon (Diospyros virginiana) in left foreground, black cherry (Prunus serotina) as a young sapling in left midground and another in right midground, and eastern red cedar (Juniperus virginiana) right behind the left foreground persimmon. In the second and third slides roughlyseven-year-old trees of eastern red cedar were everywhere. Eastern red cedar does not sproutso a prescribed fire would take them out. Some of these junipers may have survived mowing for hay (up until ten years ago) if the sicklebar mower just cut their tops off and they survived and regrew from the living tissue below mower stubble height, but this rangman (who had hauled hay off this meadow as a kid and visited it frequ;ently since) only found one such cedar. Apparently all the estern red cedars had grown from fleshy seeds in the soil seedbank or were dropped by visiting birds.

Persimmon and black cherry are prolific sprouters with persmmon forming creeping rootstocks (rhizomes) that grow for considerable distances from the mother (original) shoot. Regularly occurring grassland surface fires, including prescribed burns, would keep woody tree shoots limited to the size and age of the fire interval. Annual hay harvest had kept tree shoots to one year of age.for over 80 years. When mowing for pririe hay ceased ten years ago any woody shoots kept at one year of age were released and shot up.

The many species of forbs visible in these slides (especially the second slide) included more commposites such as ashy sunflower, prairie gayfeather, and whole-leaf rosinweed, but there were numerous other forbs as well including umbels like rattlesnake master, members of the mint family (Labiatae) with mountain mint (Pycnanthemum virginianum), and members of the figwort family ((Scrphullariaceae) like Culver's root.z

These three slides showed the tallgrass prairie vegetation four (4) after the immediately preceding three slide-caption sets showed the prairie plant community at this same location three (3) years post hay making operations. After only three years rest from haying the prairie community had rebounded to the climax state (Excellent range condition class). Then after four (4) more years of non-haying (for a total of 7 years without haying, impactful grazing, or burning) the prairie community was becoming a brush patch.

Ottawa County, Oklahoma. Early August; mid-estival aspect. FRES No. 39 (Prairie Grassland Ecosystem). K-66 (Bluestem Prairie). K-73 (Mosaic of K-66 [Bluestem Prairie] and K-91 [Oak-Hickory Forest]. SRM 710 (Bluestem Prairie). Plains Grassland 142.1, Bluestem "Tall-Grass" Series, 142.11 of Brown et al. (1998, p. 40). Ozark Highlands- Springfield Plateau Ecoregion, 39a (Woods et al. (2005).

The rocks of salvation part II (and where no brush had invaded--yet)- Local colony of switchgrass behind a colony of big bluestem growing out a pile of rocks that had been removed from the innediately adjoining tallgrass prairie hay meadow. This was a slightly different view (little different angle) of the same rock pile that was introduced four slide-caption sets above. This "photoqudrant" was taken four (4) years after the two "photoquadrants" in that slide-caption set. In this current view switchgrass, a longshoot tallgrass species, appeared to have overwhelmed big bluestem, a shortshoot tallgrass species. Big bluestem was in the immediate foreground. Also in the current "photoplot" there was a plant of serecia lespedeza (Lespedeza cuneata) and shoots of tall fescue (Festuca arundinacea), both introduced (agronomic) species that had at least partly naturalized. Also present in this local mix of range plants was tall or littlehead nut-sedge (Scleria oligantha), a persistent native invader species, and black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta).

This local spot of tallgrass prairie vegetation had not been mowed for hay, grazed (other than by passing rodents, rabbits, and white-tailed deer), or, as best anyone alive could remember, burnt for roughly 80 years when the owners picked up the equipment-damaging rocks from the adjoining hay meadow and "throwed 'em har".

This meadow was in the western margin of the Springfield Plateau section of the Ozark Plateau physiographic province.

Return of the native prairie king- Re-invasion (re-establishment) of eastern gamagrass (Tripsacum dactyloides) into a stand of tall fescue. In southern and central parts of the North American tallgrass prairie (as far north as southern nebraska and Iowa) easerrn gamagrass reigns as the grand-daddy native forage grass. This monecious, close cousin of corn (Zea mays) boast the widest leaves and, probably, the largest clumps of any bunchgrass native to this area. Eastern gamagrass (sometimes known locally as "corn grass") is so palatable that it is is an "ice cream species". In these two views taken on the Osage Plains of southwest Missouri eastern gamagrass had overcome and ousted tall fescue the most important introduced pasture in the Show me State (as well as the entire planet for that matter). Agricultural history of this field undoubtedly included corn and, probably, other agronomic crops like soybeans, winter wheat and, maybe, grain sorghum. More recently this field had been seeded to tall fescue, a widespread practice in southern Missouri where land that became marginal for field crops in contemporary agriculture was converted to permanent pasture, especially endophyte-infected cultuvars of tall fescue (the standard being Kentucky 31). Tall fescue for pasture and/or hay production became the standard agricultural use of such economically marginal crop land. (The recently dead sexual shoots of tall fescue showed that the farmer's introduced crop was still present in some quantties of cover, density, frequency, but the outcome of plant life on this field was obvious--barring human intervention.)

Even here on relatively "good crop land" in the Osage Plains physiographic province, tall fescue forage was in its owner's view the "highest and best" economic use. Eastern gamagrass thought otherwise. This was not a Conservation Reserve Program seeding, but rather a pasture and/or hay field of tall fescue. For reasons known but to the Great Rangeman, eastern gamagrass had retaken land that had once been part of its domain in the great tallgrass prairie of the heartland.

Where had the propagules (grain or stout rhizomes) come from to reclaim land from which this "king" grass had once been expunged? Howeve--whatever physiological/ecological processes were at work-- eastern gamagrass managed to regain its kinddom.

One of the most gratifying, inspiring scenes ever photographed by this ole prairieman.

Barton County,Missouri. Late June-early spring; hard grain to grain-shatter phenological stage. FRES No. 39 (Prairie Grassland Ecosystem). K-66 (Bluestem Prairie). SRM 710 (Bluestem Prairie); SRM 802 (Missouri Prairie.. Plains Grassland 142.1, Bluestem "Tall-Grass" Series, 142.11 of Brown et al. (1998, p. 40). Central Irregular Plains 40, Cherokee Plains 40d Ecoregion (Chapman et al., 2002).

Natural revegetation from the start and at individal plant scale- The following set of slide-caption sets showed establishment of big bluestem seedlings on the berm of a section line road in northeast Oklahoma.

At the source- A remarkable group of two-year-old seedlings of big bluestem and established and were growing vigerously on the berm of a section line road in the western Ozark Mountains (Springfield Plateau) in northeastern Oklahoma. At the edge of the road berm a stand of adult big bluestem had provided the fluffy caryopses that had been carried on a breeze and fell no more than a yard from the parent plants. Seedlings had established and lived their first growing season (the previous year) unnoticed by this range-ranging rangeman. In the present year--and after the better part of two growing seasons some of the two-year-old seedlings had sent up sexual shoots that were at immediate pre-bloom stage of maturity. .

This provided an amazing example of the capacity of big bluestem to reproduce sexually. Most of the climax tallgrass prairie species such as big bluestem (Indiangrass, switchgrass, little bluestem) reproduce primarily asexually by producing tillers (upright or vertical shoots)--often from rhizomes as, in this instance, with the generally cespitose big bluestemin. Under growing conditions that are facorable for seedling germination, emergence and establish these tallgrass species do periodically have successful sexual reproduction. Sexual reproduction has obvious limitations including being less effective than asexual (vegetative) reproduction like producttion of new (daughter) tillers from well-established parent plants. Sexual reroduction also has distinct benefits including 1) creation of new genotypes and, thus increaased genetic diversity and, ultimately, increased species adaptability (opportnities for increased fitness) and 2) establishment of this new genetic progeny farther from parent plants. Invasion of "new land" farther from parent plants varies with the form of plant propagules (dissimules, diaspores). Some forms of asexual reproduction such as from stolons can actually travel farther from parents than certain seeds (perhaps this could be the case for big bluestem grains even though these light fluffy caryopses can be carried considerable distances from their parents by wind). Even in cases where this might be the situation, though, the new progeny are vegetative replicates, genetically identical daughter plants, and there is no potential for natral selection (increased genet fitness0.

Cut to the chase in the show shown here. Big bluestem would revegetate the available new land, invade the successional sere of this bare earth of this road much faster, sooner, etc. with seedlings than with tillers.The flexibility afforded by a combination of asexual and sexual regeneration has been a major factor in the domination of many range types and ecosystems by grass. Senator John James Ingalls had it right: "grass is the forgiveness of nature".

Seedlings under sun and cloud- Second-year seedlings of big bluesem growing on the berm of a section line road in northeastern Oklahoma. Seedlings were within a yard of parent plants which were growing on the upper barrow ditch. This spatial relatioship was presented in the two slides of the immediately preceding slide-caption set. The same view was shown in a full-sun sky in the first slide and under a cloudy sky in the second slide. These two slides were taken with two minutes of each other when a cumulus cloud moved between the sun and subject resulting in diminished sunlight. Both views had advantages and disadvantages. The "cloud-filtered" second slide allowed viewers to see that a two-year-old big bluestem seedling had sent up a sexual (floering) tiller. The non-cloud filtered view (first slide) showed natural colors, especially of the graded road material here in the western Ozark (Springfield) Platean.

In the context of plant succession in regards to plant species composition, sexual reproduction had permitted vegetation development to progress to the climax state even or bare ground with only a residu;e of soil.

Ottawa County, Oklahoma. Early August, mid-summer, immediate pre-anthesis phenological stage.

More babies big bluestem- seedlings- More two-year-old big bluestem seedlings that had established on a section line road berm in the western edge of the Ozark Mountains (Springfield Plateau) in northeastern Oklahoma. These tough little plants had established on the bare earth material (more rock and gravel than soil) in a 40 inch precipitation zone from parents than a yard away. These were new genotypes from sexual reproduction--big bluestem regeneration and gene recombination from the small caryposes of its species. Sexual reproduction also enabled big bluestem to spread to "new land" (invasion of the bare ground of this sere), plus it was invasion by a climax dominant species. The path of secondary plant succession had been "jump-started". From the plant perspective, this denuded land was already approaching the state of climax vegetation.

As was the situation in the preceding slide-caption set, this pair of slides also presented the scene under full sunlight (first slide) and under a cloudy sky with cloud- filtered light. The full-sun slide presented the true color of the earth material (rock and gravel more than soil) of the road and showed more distinctly a pre-bloom sexual shoot on the big bluestem seedling in the foreground. By contrast, leaves of big bluestem seedlings were shown more clearly in the partially shaded or clouded slide. Either way, the survival features of this climax dominant tallgrass species were presented to viewerrs, neophytes and greenhorns as well as seasoned prairiemen.

Ottawa County, Oklahoma. Early August, mid-summer, immediate pre-anthesis phenological stage.

Pollinators on Tallgrass Prairie

Grasses are wind-pollinated and seldom visited by pollen-feeding animals. Obviously grassses produce no--or same as no--nectar. While grasses dominate grasslands, often producing over 90% of plant biomass, forbs and nectar-bearing woody plants provide abundant quantities of nectar and nutrient-rich pollen for animals. In more recent times there has been a great interest in pollinators. This section shared some slides and comments with regard to pollinators observed by the author on tallgrass prairie and adjoiing prairie and oak-hickory forest savanas.

Have to look closely, but she's in there- Uppermost head or capitulum (composite inflorescence) of an ashy sunflower (Helianthus mollis) being visited by abrown-belted bumblebee (Bombus griseocollis) on a wet prairie in the western Springfield Plateau.

Ottawa County, Oklahoma. Late July.

Passonate about her work- Various views of brown-belted bumblebee workers getting nectar from a passionflower (Passiflora incarnata) on tallgrass prairie in the western Springfield Plateau.

Ottawa County, Oklahoma. Early August.

Beeebalm and bmblebees- Beebalm or wild bergamont (Monarda fistulosa) infloresences being visited by brown-belted bumblebee workers on a tallgrasssprairie-oak-hickory forest savanna in the western Springfield Plateau. Flowers were all at late-bloom stage with most of the flowers (at least flower petals) having fallen off. Yet obviously there was still nectar with bumblebees finding necctarius feed in them (though perhaps not as much as at earlier flowering stages).

Ottawa County, Oklahoma. Early August.

Sweet home for sweets- Entrance to a hive of brown-belted bumblebees. The entrance opening was in the upper level of of a section line road barrow ditch surrounded by plants of big bluestem and broomsedge bluestem (first slide). In the first and second slides two bees were in the entrance of their hive as they were exiting their nest. Upn seeing the macrolens one bee immediately returned to the subterranean hive while the other bee moved around in the hive entrance (next four slides) before flying off (last or sith slide).

Ottawa County, Oklahoma. Late July.

Note on technique and bee behavior: all of these photographs were taken with a manual single-lens reflex 35mm camera with a normal-macrolens. All photographs were at distances as the human eye would see them on the range (ie. images were not telephtographed). The camera was hand-held to be able to "move with" the insect or breeze-blown infloresecence. Shutter speeds were tyically 1/30 to 1/60 second. Photographs of bumblebees at the entrance to their hive were taken with the photographer in the squatted position for the first slide and the prone position in the ditch for the remaining six slides.

Bumblebees accepted presence of the photographer within a few minutes after photographing began. Nonetheless, bees were in nearly constant motion. For example, they would stay at a beebalm flower only three to six seconds while simultanesously moving over surfaces of flower clusters. Bees remained at a passionflower somewhat longer, usually eight to ten seconds.Typically only one bee would occupy a flower cluster. If a newly arriving bee saw the first visitor, this second visiting insect would fly off before landing, but sometimes the first arrival would leave her visit about finished anyway.

Artificial Revegetation of Tallgrass Prairie (Saga of a Range Reseeding Project)

Pics 2

Insert jpegs 06536 & 06537

Insert jpegs 06546 to 06567

At its zenith (a sadly, short-lived zenith)-

Hunewell Ranch, Tarleton State University. Early September; peak standing crop.

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