Recently I took a trip to the Bootheel of Missouri. The flatlands. An area that holds no visual charms for me. We traveled through vast stretches of soybean, rice, and cornfields, instead of the vast stretches of forested hills and hollows of the Ozarks. This is an area where the soil is fertile, and delicious watermelons can be had for a song, in season. Not rocky and thin, like Ozarks soil, where grass and trees are the main crops, and the soil is a challenge to gardeners. But these flatlands are also home to a very special Natural Area. A swamp. A place of great beauty and mystery where one feels like one has entered a world belonging to another time and place. This natural area is called Allred Lake.
Allred Lake Natural Area is one of the few remaining examples of lowland swamp and bottomland forest in Missouri. Before 1900, more than 2 million acres of these biologically rich swamp communities covered Missouri's bootheel. But these communities, with their variety of plants and animals they support, are a treasure that has almost been lost. Many years ago, these flatland swamps and sloughs and bottomland forests had great cypress lakes and bayous that stretched for hundreds of miles. Huge flocks of the extinct Carolina parakeet's swooped down on the cypress to feed on its seeds. Carolina parakeets were America's only native parrots. A member of the conure family, with their bright green bodies, and a yellow head splashed with brilliant orange; they must have been a beautiful sight to observe.
Passenger pigeons descended by the thousands to feed on the acorns of willow oaks and pin oaks. Bears, buffalo, deer and swamp rabbits sought cover and winter food in the evergreen canebrakes. Then the hunters came, and the European settlers, who cleared out the great trees and drained the swamps, and changed the ecosystem of the swamps to farmlands.
Fortunately, the Missouri Department of Conservation saved 160 acres, with its remaining Cypress, tupelo, overcup oak, water hickory, water locust, water oak, swamp cottonwood, swamp privet, sweet gum, willow oak and possum haw trees that surround the 70 acre tea colored lake. And here bald cypress and tupelo gum trees still raise their buttressed trunks and knobby knees above the water along the margins of the lake.
The lake itself still harbors rare fishes like the endangered taillight shiner and cypress darter, and some ancient fishes--bowfins and gars, and rare aquatic salamanders, like amphiumas and sirens, and they are what give the lake a primordial character.
 |
 |
 |
Go To Page: 1 2
| Here's the follow-up discussion on this article: | View all related messages |
For a complete listing of article comments, questions, and other discussions related to Renie Burghardt's Nature Sketches topic, please visit the Discussions page.