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Brent Baker, President  btb2001@hotmail.com 479-970-9143

Laura Villejas, Vice President, laurajkv@yahoo.com

Mary Reuter, Treasurer, fmreuter@gmail.com 870-423-2498

Burnetta Hinterthuer, Secretary and Newsletter Editor, burhint@sbcglobal.net

479-582-0317

 *FALL MEETING, 2007 *

 At the annual Fall Meeting held November 4^th, we held our business meeting and elected new officers (see above).   Attending the meeting were Mary Ann King, Gene Ford, Vernon Human, Virginia Harrington, Brent Baker, Laura Villejas, Steve Holst, Burnetta Hinterthuer, Margot Lavoie, Tom Lavoie, Ginny Masullo, Jim Dudley, Amy Wilson, Matt Gerhart, Cat Donnelly and Ronnie Stephens.  We discussed hikes for the coming year (see below).  The annual spring state ANPS meeting will be held the first weekend in April.  The Missouri Native Plant Society will participate in this joint meeting; next year, we plan to have a joint meeting with the MNPS in Missouri.  We hope that OCANPS members will be able to attend the state meeting.  We voted to donate $100 to the Arkansas Envirothon and $100 to the Arkansas Flora Project for the coming year.  In addition, we also scheduled our annual fall meeting in advance in order to secure Harmony Mountain Lodge.  We have planned this for October 31st-November 2^nd.  For those who didn’t attend in 2006, Harmony Mountain provides a great meeting place with comfortable beds and lots of space.  It is on Smith Mountain, south of Jasper about 12 miles off Hwy. 7, and has great views of the night sky.  We hope that you can attend the hikes and activities we have planned for the coming spring.

 * SPRING HIKES & EVENTS *

April 4-6^th      Spring Annual meeting of Arkansas Native Plant Society, Harrison, Arkansas.  The Comfort Inn, 870-741-7676.  Contact Mary Greenhaw for room information.  They are holding 25 rooms at 71.99 + tax until March 25^th.  More information will be in the spring Claytonia. 

April 26^th       Field trip to Roaring River area in Missouri.  We will meet at the Emory Center at Roaring River State Park at 10:00 a.m. and go to Butler Hollow from there.  We will see lots of unusually spring woodland species like Valerianella ozarkana.  Be sure to bring binoculars as the birding in this area is outstanding.  There is a restaurant at the center where we can have lunch and afterward, we will visit the Forest Service glade just south of the park for a completely different habitat.  Roaring River is located 5 miles south of Cassville, Mo and can be reached by taking Highway 221 north from Berryville to Mo Hwy. 86, turning west on F and on to the park.  From the west, take Mo Hwy 37 north from Gateway to 112 and on into the park.  Those coming from Fayetteville/Rogers will take Hwy. 62 to Gateway.  Please contact Linda Ellis at 417-272-3890 to let her know you are planning to attend and for further directions or e-mail at lindaellis@hughes.net. 

Saturday, May 17^th, 2008, 10 a.m. Lake Leatherwood Hike, Eureka Springs.   For the past two years, we have made plans to hike the trail at Lake Leatherwood. Rain has prevented us from doing so. This year, we are planning to visit Leatherwood Creek in mid-May and are hoping for great weather. Turn north off Hwy. 62 onto the Lake Leatherwood road.  Meet at the Leatherwood Lake parking lot.  The turn is ca. 2 miles west of Eureka Springs. The hike is moderately strenuous. For more information, contact Brent Baker, hike leader, at btb2001@yahoo.com.

May 31^st,  9:30 a.m. Parking Lot, Arvest Bank, Hwy. 412, Siloam Springs.  Oklahoma Tall Grass Prairie Field Trip.  Joe Neal and J. Woolbright will lead a hike to the tall grass prairie on May 31st.  We will meet at 9:30 a.m. on Saturday the 31st of May at the Bank Parking Lot where we met the last time.  Arvest parking lot is across from Wal-Mart at the 2^nd stoplight on Hwy. 412.  Those who don't want to carpool can caravan or get directions from Joe Woolbright (479-427-4277) if coming on one's own.  Those who wish might come prepared to stay in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, overnight.  We can carpool depending on who is staying and who isn’t, etc.

 *Summer Activities *

 Right now we are considering two additional events for the summer.  We are hoping to schedule a hike and float the middle portion of Buffalo River in June, depending on the rainfall and water levels.  In addition, we are hoping to have either a summer or fall hike to Williams Woods in St. Paul.  OCANPS member Brenda Embry suggested this hike and is going to try to hike it in advance.  Brenda said that the area may yield some botanical discoveries .  The land was donated to the Ozark Highlands Trail Association in 1993 and you can read about it at: http://www.hikearkansas.com/williams_woods.html

I will send out notices when we finalize plans for these outings.  If you have any good ideas for hikes or activities, please contact one of the officers.

      BELLY BOTANY IN THE OZARKS

Vernon Human

When I first moved to Arkansas, I was struck by the absence of “belly botanists.”  A belly botanist is anyone who specializes in the study of “belly flowers,” plants with adult heights of three or four inches, or, often one or two.  In order to see eye to eye with such entities, you have to descend to their level, literally “get down and dirty,” at first to your knees and finally to your stomach.  California has a wealth of belly plants because it has a lot of arid habitats.  A single shower might be as much rainfall as a given can expect, so its floral inhabitants must pass through their life cycles in a hurry.  They save both time and scarce resources by omitting lengthy growth periods.  The “middle man” they cut out is the middle of their own stems.  Roots and flowers are the important things.

A wetter climate prevails in the Ozarks, and terrestrial belly flowers are hard to come by.  Or so I thought…until I found five species of them on a short span (a mere 20’ to 30’) of rocky, much trampled, concrete-hard red clay trail on an east-facing and sparsely wooded Gaither Mountain slope.  They are true belly flowers, too, despite that some or all of them might reach greater size in more generous habitats.  Not a paucity of water, but impoverished and indurated soil is unable to store available water probably is responsible for their occurrence.

The five species that somehow survive on this short and narrow strip of “virtual” concrete don’t all bloom at the same time.  Bulbous Wood Rush (Luzula bulbosa) erupts into flower as early as mid-March.  I am not sure how tall it gets when conditions are ideal, but the plants I have found on the trail were only about 4” high at best.  They were so small that after Virginia discovered the little colony I had the devil of a time re-locating it despite knowing exactly where it was!

I annually find a sparse scatter of a small composite called Dwarf Dandelion (Krigia cespitosa) in latest April or earliest May.  Its golden-tan blossoms of about one quarter-inch diameter are on the top of plants ranging in height from two to four inches.  I am never much good at picking favorites, but this little charmer is my choice among the local belly flowers.

Pencil Flower (Stylosanthes biflora) has much the same color.  It comes into bloom during the first week of June.  Although this picturesque pea family pixie is sparingly strewn along the limited length of narrow trail, it nevertheless is the most numerous and reliably-occurring of the five species.  Pencil flower might stretch to three inches in height.  I doubt that the length of its sweet little blossom ever exceeds a quarter-inch.

Whorled Milkwort (Polygala verticillata) starts blooming shortly after pencil flower, so the two are largely contemporaneous.  Milkwort thrusts up a small and narrow spike of white blossoms from a plant so bereft of foliage when blooming that it is almost impossible to see even when you’re hovering over it.  Were I naming these plants, this is the one that I would call “pencil flower,” for it is loosely pencil-shaped, which true pencil flower is not.

Lacerate Ladies’ Tresses (Spiranthes lacera v. gracilis), an orchid, is the last to appear (mid- to late August).  Although it has a long blooming season as a species, the individual plants do not.  The plentiful little white blossoms spiral around an up-thrust axis.  The plant has much the same size and general form as the preceding entity.  Nor is it any easier to see, especially as the leaves usually have withered away by antithesis.  This is one species that I have found to be rather taller elsewhere; poor soil or absence of soil, probably stunts its growth.

If I can find five species of belly flower on our three acres, how many others might there be in the Ozarks?  Probably quite a few, even if I exclude the glades and other exposed expanses of more or less bare rock, which limit available water every bit as efficiently as much of California.

Membership Information for Chapter:

Ozarks Chapter ANPS dues of $5 should be remitted to:

Mary Reuter, Treasurer OCANPS, 121 CR 432, Berryville, AR 72616