Friday in the St. Francois Mountains

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

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


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





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




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

USACE liable for flooding the 7th and 9th Wards

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CNN's Dave Alsup contributed to this report.

Autumn's Grape Fern

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

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

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

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

Fall harvest

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

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

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

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

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

Until March

As late fall moves in, the fall blooming asters and goldenrods have all gone to seed, leaving dolomite glades and woodlands in a dormant state, one we'll be seeing for the next five months or so until the first flush of violets pop up. One lone flower remained on a woodland edge last week, a blaze of color in an otherwise khaki world. Yellow grasses and bare trees have their own stark beauty, with long shadows, mushrooms, lichens, mosses and exposed geology offering dynamism on the landscape.

Turkey food

Sitting in my Adirondack chair with a book has been a hazardous undertaking in recent weeks. Falling with the velocity of meteors from my stately pin oak and chinquapin oak, acorns continue to rain down today just as they have for the past three weeks.

Last weekend, three successive pin oak acorns nailed my shoulder and arm, causing me to move my heavy chair to a safe location under a cedar ten yards from the oak canopy. Intermittently, after I had moved the chair, acorns continued to fall next to the chair, acorns casually hurled out the window at me while I read. Naturally, it took a while before I caught on.

According to the 2009 Mast Report issued by the Missouri Department of Conservation, acorn production is down from last year in the Ozarks. Irrespective of the report, the woodlands I frequent are loaded with white oak and post oak acorns this year. Evidently, the turkeys these days are full of them. No, I haven't killed a turkey this season (nor do I plan to), but my local hunter cum colleague continues to bring in acorns fresh from the crops of birds he's killed. He's asked for my sketchy acorn identification skills so he can collect these species to plant in his own hunting grounds. The most common acorn found in turkeys killed in Boone Co.? Quercus imbricaria, shingle oak, a ubiquitous tree in these parts.

Squirrels should be well fed this winter, and their preference of acorns for storing and eating will impact the composition of our woodlands for years to come. Squirrels distinguish between white and red oak acorns; red oak acorns are higher in fat, but also high in the distasteful tannins. White oak acorns have less fat and also fewer tannins.

While squirrels prefer fatty red oak acorns, if white oak acorns are more abundant, they will eat more of them just after acorn drop. White oaks send out taproots days and weeks after they fall, while red oaks sprout the following spring. Since the tannins in white oak acorns are concentrated in the taproot, squirrels tend to eat them first, and store red oak acorns for the winter. Recent research has shown that squirrels will only eat the top part of the red oak acorn (about 60% of it) to avoid the concentrated tannins at the embyronic end. Even though squirrels eat the bulk of an acorn, the remaining part can still produce a tree. Estimates suggest that 74% of all buried acorns are never found again.

The thriving squirrel population in my yard has altogether ignored the bird feeders and suet this fall. With all the nutritious acorns and walnuts visible in my backyard after Thursday's fire, they have a veritable buffet that surely sustains them better than safflower seed.

Hold your fire!

To employ fire as an effective management tool, it must be applied judiciously and responsibly. With red flag warnings popping up all over southwest Missouri and 40 mph gusts predicted for tonight in the Niangua Basin, we decided to cancel today's prescribed fire event. The burn unit in question borders private lands on three sides, all grassy, flammable woodlands. To prevent being the cause of a raging wildfire through continuous fuels, we blew out our torches as soon as we lit them. Sorry kids, no pictures of woodlands in flames today.