Cross Timbers, Missouri

Transcription

Kansas state parks are known for their camping. But trails are often an added benefit of these public lands, and walking them opens a door of discovery to the natural world. A great example is the Ancient Trees Trail at Crosstimbers State Park near Toronto, where some of the state’s oldest trees reside. On a recent hike there, my wife and I learned much about this intriguing region. Post and blackjack oaks make up much of the forest type, and the rocky soil is full of interesting surprises. Dendrologists from the University of Arkansas studied this area in 1982, taking core samples that showed some trees to be nearly 300 years old. A self-guided tour explains, but we found many other interesting things as well. “You know, when you get under the forest cover in these parks, you see a lot of things you don’t normally see in the city parks, like all these lichens all over this rock here. “ “ A lot of interesting rock formations here on the Ancient Trees Trail, actually a place you could use as shelter if you needed to in the winter. If you got caught in a big rainstorm or something here in the summertime you could get underneath this overhanging rock, plenty of room to get back in there, kind of like a little cave. And this old spider right here, an orb web weaver – he’s got him a home right here and he’s just found him something to eat.” “ We don’t have a lot of ferns in Kansas. This is pretty neat when you can walk along a trail like this and find a plant that you rarely see in the state, but here we’ve got a couple of these ferns. Pretty neat.” “OK, so we’re off trail now. We actually came over here to an interesting plant called common prickly ash. You don’t see too much of it in Kansas. It has a real strong citrus-y smell if you find it. And look how the leaves have been eaten away. That’s what drew my attention. Giant swallowtail larvae like to feed on this stuff. Right here you can see how the leaves have been eaten away, something’s been feeding on them. And I thought we might have a giant swallowtail feeding over here and we didn’t find that. But you always find something, and that’s when we saw this gray tree frog. “The twisted grain on these old gnarly trees kind of attests to the hard life they had out here on these rocky hillsides here in this crosstimbers region of Kansas. Shallow soil, a lot of bluffs, a lot of rocks, and it would have been pretty tough to eke out an existence here for 250 or 300 years, and that’s what these old trees did here on the ancient trees trail. But they’re about gone now. It’ll be, who knows, maybe another 15 years before these logs actually fall over, and then they’ll just melt into the ground finally. One day they’ll be replaced by other trees and somebody will come along here and never even know they were there.” That’s a good reason to walk our trails now. To see it the way it is today, because things never stay the same. And in doing so, you’ll get to know a Kansas you may never have seen before. Walk our Kansas trails. You can learn where by searching the word “trails” on our department website. I’m Mike Blair for Kansas Wildlife and Parks.