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Spring in Missouri

Hello everyone,

I've been lurking for quite a while, mainly because the Mid Western
winter hasn't been overly good for Mediterranean plants. The climate here
seems highly unsuitable for growing Med stuff outside: some species might
tolerate the hot and very humid summers, but the freezing spells in 
winter, and especially early spring, are bad news indeed. Anyway, I've 
been enjoying the Mediterranean displays in the Temperate House here at 
the Missouri Botanical Garden. Some drifts of 'wild' Cyclamen persicum 
were particularly splendid a couple of weeks ago, and the shrubby 
euphorbias have been striking too: E. dendroides and E. characias, both of 
which I know from Greece and Crete. It is also nice that we have a few of 
the showy annual 'weeds', e.g. the honeywort, Cerinthe major (borage 
family), with its white-spotted leaves and yellow, tubular flowers.

Now, I've also been enjoying the totally non-Mediterranean burst of spring 
flowers out in the woods of the Missouri Ozarks. I know this isn't really 
relevant to the theme of Medit-plants, but if you're interested, read 
on....!

Nick.

---------------------------

Just over two weeks ago, winter suddenly become summer here in Missouri
with temperatures in the high 70s/low 80s. It has since cooled down, and
is now more like spring should be. The weekend before last (March 28-29),
my girlfriend Chris and I went south into the Missouri Ozarks to a place
called the Rockpile Mountain Wilderness. We headed down this dead-end
road to the west of the wilderness area. It evaporated into a gravel
track, crossing various low-water bridges over swiftly flowing creeks.
Eventually we came to the end of the track, where a small stream came
down through moist, deciduous woodland to the main creek. Here was a good
mix of white flowered spring flora: Erythronium albidum (white trout
lily), Cardamine concatenata (toothwort), Claytonia virginica (spring
beauty), Erigenia bulbosa (harbinger of spring), Sanguinaria canadensis
(bloodroot) and, to relieve the white theme, deep red Trillium sessile
(wake robin, toadshade), and a blue Viola species, probably V. sorbaria.

Then we drove back a bit and headed east up a gravel road to the Little
Grass Mountain (a 'hill' anywhere outside the Midwest, it's only 1306 ft
high), which is at the north end of the Rockpile Mountain Wilderness.
(Rockpile Mountain, 1270 ft, is a few miles to the south, named after a
circle of granite stones thought to have been arranged there in
pre-settlement times). This whole upland area is granite, and is drier and
not so diverse as the moist, limestone bottomlands. However, we did see
some excellent plants of pale violet Viola pedata on the stony roadside
bank on the way up to Little Grass Mountain

In the forest on top of Little Grass Mountain (dominated by oaks and
hickories, with a few pines) was more Cardamine concatenata, and between
there and Rockpile Mountain occasional trees of Amelanchier arborea (downy
serviceberry) in full flower: about 20 ft high, with very attractive
white, fragrant flowers.  We also found a few plants of what was probably
Anemonella thalictroides (rue anemone), but which might instead have been 
Isopyrum biternatum (false rue anemone). We also found a small snake,
which turned out to be a northern redbelly snake (Storeria
occipitomaculata occipitomaculata), and numerous frogs loudly croaking in
two ponds.

On Sunday we checked out a small reserve west of St. Louis, called the
Hilda J. Young Memorial Forest. It is deciduous woodland over limestone in
the valley of a large creek. The limestone conditions gave a good, rich
mix of species, especially on the north-facing slope of the valley, where
we found most of the previous day's plants, plus white or pale pink
Dicentra cucullaria (Dutchman's breeches) and budding Mertensia virginica
(bluebells). One of the reasons for our visit was to look out for Hepatica
nobilis (liverleaf), which was said to grow there on a rocky
northwest-facing slope. After a fair bit of searching we did find it: some
really splendid plants, with many flowers, at their best; a sort of pale
pink color.

This last weekend (April 4-5), we returned to the Rockpile Mountain
Wilderness to explore some remote valleys at the western edge of the
wilderness. These valleys run from the central granite ridge, at about
1100 ft, down to rich limestone and bottomland woods at 600 ft, right by
the St. Francis River, the only whitewater river in Missouri. Close to the
bank were many, many spring plants in flower, with Hepatica nobilis (white
flowered this time), yellow Stylophorum diphyllum (celandine poppy), three
trilliums: the white T. flexipes (in bud) and dark red T. recurvatum and
T. sessile, the pendulous, yellow Uvularia grandiflora (bellwort), drifts
of white or pale pink Claytonia virginica and sky blue Mertensia virginica
on the floodplain, dotted with yellow Viola pubescens, plus Erythronium
albidum and a very showy yellow-flowered trout lily (either E. americanum
or E. rostratum). By a steep and rushing, granite bedded creek in the
middle of nowhere, in rock crevices, were a white Saxifraga species (S.
virginiensis?) and brilliant red Silene virginica (fire pink, red
catchfly). 

You might like to check out the MO Conservation Dept's web site:
http://www.state.mo.us/conservation/

Or, linked to within the MoBot Web address below, the Flora of North 
America Project's pages:
http://www.fna.org/

Nick Turland
Flora of China Project, Missouri Botanical Garden, 
P.O. Box 299, St. Louis, MO 63166-0299, U.S.A.
Email: nturland@lehmann.mobot.org
Tel.: (314) 577-0269  Fax: (314) 577-9438
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