NOTE: This is part two of this article. You can read part one, which gives part two context, here.
When I returned from my first trip to Izard County I was pretty excited by what I’d found – about the plants themselves, sure, but even more so about the botanical evidence that there had been some kind of grassland habitat there historically. I pressed the specimens I collected and spent some time studying the soils, topography, and geology maps of all the parallel valleys that drain southern Izard County into the White River. That first property I had visited was on Hidden Creek, which is known to support populations of the pocket gophers, but mostly further downstream from where I was, where the valley is wider and there is more open habitat. If I wanted to find a remnant of the original grassland, I should probably be looking in a wider valley. The next creek to the east of Hidden Creek is Rocky Bayou, which is a bigger stream with a larger watershed and more open ground along it. That seemed like a good place to start.
The soils in both valleys include units mapped as Portia sandy loam, either as a stand-alone unit or as part of a soil complex. This got my attention immediately because I knew this soil type from Buck Ridge, an incredible site on the Gene Rush Wildlife Management Area in Newton County. Buck Ridge, a modest 40-acre savanna and woodland restoration, is one of the best botanical areas in the Arkansas Ozarks, due in part to its sandy, sometimes lime-rich soils and in part to the excellent management of the site by the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission (AGFC), who has thinned the trees and conducted regular prescribed burns. This soil type includes areas with a lot of loose sand, something that is central to the distribution of both sand grasslands and the rare pocket gophers.
I gave a brief report on my trip at our staff meeting and Dustin Lynch, ANHC’s Aquatic Ecologist, told me about a landowner on Rocky Bayou that had pocket gophers on his land and had granted permission for him and partners from the AGFC to survey for fish on his property. They were planning a follow-up trip in July and invited me along. My main hope for the trip was to find some intact scrap of original sand grassland that would help unlock this ecological mystery.
I also had a second, unspoken hope though – to discover a second Arkansas population of a very rare sand-loving plant called Cleland’s evening-primrose (Oenothera clelandii). This species was known in Arkansas only from two historical herbarium specimens, collected in 1968 and 1969 from the same site, in sandy open habitat along Poke Bayou in adjacent Independence County. The main range of this species is in the Upper Midwest, with the closest known site to the Arkansas occurrence near Cape Girardeau, Missouri, but not documented since the 1800s. Back in 2008 I traveled to central Illinois to study some rare sand prairies and found it there. I collected a specimen for the ANHC Herbarium, which I pulled out and spent a few minutes studying. I’ve learned over time not to get my hopes up too high for these long-shot discoveries, but it never hurts to be prepared and have a good search image.
When we got to the property, I explained to the landowner the sort of habitat I was looking for and after a few minutes thinking about it he said he had a couple of places to show me. On the way to the first site, we drove across a gently sloping sandy field that had been planted with a native tallgrass prairie seed mix a few years earlier to improve habitat for wildlife. The planted species weren’t the kind of grassland plants I was looking for but as we crossed the field, I saw several other species that were. The first plants that caught my eye were several kinds of flatsedge in the genus Cyperus, and I shouted for him to stop the truck. There are at least 34 species in this genus in Arkansas. More than 20 are wetland species, but most of the others like dry sandy soil. Three of these were growing in mixed populations in this sandy field: Baldwin’s flatsedge (Cyperus croceus), globe flatsedge (Cyperus echinatus), and oneflower flatsedge (Cyperus retroflexus). They were also growing with thin paspalum (Paspalum setaceum), another species of sandy grasslands. These had my interest because none would be in a seed mix and they were likely remnants of the “old flora” present on the site before the wildlife prairie planting, and no doubt before the improved cattle pasture that preceded it.
But this wasn’t what I was being taken to see, just a quick stop along the road to get there. We crossed through a little wooded drainage and emerged into another field, lower on the terrace of the creek. Part of it had been planted as a food plot, and it had been a crop field at one time before that. But at the bottom edge of the field was a 2- or 3-acre area that had not been plowed. I could tell from a distance that this was what I had come to see. We drove up to the edge of it and I could see gopher mounds here and there. I grabbed a collection bag, started the voice memo app on my phone, and started tallying all the plants I was seeing. The three sand-loving flatsedges I had seen on the way in were all present here as well but were joined by three others: slender sand sedge (Cyperus lupulinus), reflexed flatsedge (Cyperus refractus), and pine barren flatsedge (Cyperus retrorsus). Six species of dry sand flatsedges is an impressive haul from one small spot, but things were about to get A LOT more interesting.
There are several things that characterize a good quality remnant sand grassland in addition to the species present and I was also looking for these. One of the most obvious is a certain amount of natural sparseness to the vegetation. The best and most diverse examples have some gaps between the individual plants, where a little bare ground is visible. One term often used for these sand grasslands is “barrens,” and when you see a good, healthy example you can understand where that name comes from. These sandy soils don’t have a lot of organic matter in them, and these ecosystems run on a relatively tight nutrient budget. The least disturbed examples often also have a living biological soil crust in the more barren areas. This protective layer, sometimes called a cryptogamic crust, helps stabilize the soil and is made of communities of cyanobacteria (blue-green algae), algae, fungi, bacteria, and lichens. These are common in deserts and desert-like habitats around the world, but are generally poorly known and understood, at least in Arkansas. The cryptogamic crust was present in this site.
Remnant sand grasslands also have considerable variation to the vegetation – some clumps of grass here, a scattering of broadleaf wildflowers there, some thickets of shrubs over there, and a little room in between for animals to move around. Sand grassland vegetation is also an interesting mix of somewhat weedy annual and biennial species and longer-lived perennial species that are less tolerant of disturbance. The weedy annuals and biennials are a common component of even the best sand grasslands, and they were well represented here. There was abundant poor-Joe (Diodia teres), camphor-weed (Heterotheca subaxillaris), soft golden-aster (Bradburia pilosa), and a good representation of drought-adapted annual spurges including Lindheimer’s croton (Croton lindheimeri), sand croton (Croton glandulosus var. septentrionalis), wild poinsettia (Euphorbia cyathophora), summer poinsettia (Euphorbia dentata), and nodding spurge (Euphorbia nutans). There was the native wild carrot (Daucus pusillus) and wild sorrel (Rumex hastatulus), both of which might be described as the somewhat reserved American cousins of their more widespread and aggressive relatives from Europe: Queen Anne’s-lace (Daucus carota), and the perennial sheep sorrel (Rumex acetosella), which are common pasture weeds in the area and indicators of past disturbance.
Indicator plants of sand grasslands abounded, including dotted beebalm (Monarda punctata), erect dayflower (Commelina erecta), and Florida cotton-grass (Froelichia floridana), typically found in Arkansas in the sand barrens of the West Gulf Coastal Plain. There were tall, showy specimens of the well-armed and somewhat intimidating white prickly-poppy (Argemone albiflora subsp. texana), with its showy white and orange flowers, dark yellow-orange sap, and spiny, bluish-green foliage. The field margin had Texas green-eyes (Berlandiera betonicifolia), a handsome sunflower relative with distinctive scalloped triangular leaves, a woolly stem, and widely spaced yellow ray petals surrounding a green central disc with rings of tiny dark red disc flowers. Scattered throughout was the rare Elliott’s fanpetals (Sida elliottii). This species of state conservation concern, tracked by the ANHC, has distinctive golden yellow flowers with asymmetrical petals that resemble the blades of a fan or propeller.
A diversity of grasses was present including little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium), fall witchgrass (Digitaria cognata), a dropseed (Sporobolus sp.) that couldn’t be positively identified that early in the season, and the menacing sand-bur (Cenchrus spinifex), which requires careful navigating to keep the barbed spines of the mature fruit from getting into your pant cuffs, socks, boot laces, and especially skin. A close encounter with a fruiting specimen of this species is memorable and you don’t have to encounter it more than once to learn it. There were scattered specimens of prickly-pear cactus (Opuntia sp.) and thickets of the colony-forming Chickasaw plum (Prunus angustifolia).
Based on my positive reaction to the first site, I was shown a second site that the landowner thought might be of interest. It was! Like the first site, this second one was at the lower edge of a sandy field, in an area of nearly pure sand that didn’t support much agriculture or even improved pasture plants. This site was of even better quality and there were even more interesting species, several of which were solid indicators of natural grasslands. Tall bush-clover (Lespedeza stuevei), with its characteristic hairy stems and three-parted leaves, stood above the shorter vegetation. The more barren areas were dotted with forked blue-curls (Trichostema dichotomum) and scaleseed (Spermolepis sp.). The rare Elliott’s fanpetals was common at the site. There were large clumps of the impressive Texas bull-nettle (Cnidoscolus texanus), another hallmark of our classic Coastal Plain sand barrens, with which these Ozark sand grasslands share so many species. Bull-nettle is an interesting looking species with deeply lobed leaves, stems covered with sharp, white, chemically armed prickles, and perhaps the brightest-white flowers of any species in the state. It also has the distinction of having by far the most painful sting of any of the 10 so-called “stinging nettles” found in Arkansas (I may be one of the few people in the world to have been stung by all of them, so you can take my word for it).
Jointweed (Polygonella americana), one of the least common and most interesting shrubs in the state, with its blue-green scale-like leaves, peeling bark, and clusters of white to pink flowers, was scattered here and there in clumps. I don’t think I have ever seen that species in a site that wasn’t highly interesting and that didn’t have other uncommon or intriguing species. And then, there it was! Mostly already gone to fruit, but with a few yellow flowers still hanging on -- Dr. Cleland’s evening-primrose! I got down on my knees (careful to avoid the bull-nettle and prickly-pear) for a close inspection. I had seen it only once, more than a decade before, in rare sand prairies in central Illinois, but there was no question about it. I counted several dozen plants scattered across the remnant grassland. It isn’t every day that you find the one thing you were secretly hoping to find, and it sure makes a hot afternoon in the blazing sun of an open grassland worth it!
I met back up with Dustin and his colleagues, who were wrapping up some fish sampling, bid goodbye to our host, and climbed back into the truck with a full collection bag and a lot more knowledge about a forgotten and nearly lost component of Arkansas’s natural heritage. There is still a lot more to learn of course, and I look forward to studying these sand grassland remnants more next year. As usual, we have just barely scratched the surface of learning all there is to know.
Photos:
Photo 1 — Ozark Pocket Gopher (Geomys bursarius ozarkensis) mound in remnant sand grassland in southern Izard county. Photo by Theo Witsell.
Photo 2 — Remnant sand grassland in southern Izard County. Note the naturally sparse vegetation with some areas of bare soil. Photo by Theo Witsell.
Photo 3 — Oneflower flatsedge (Cyperus retroflexus) is one of six species of dry sand grassland flatsedges found in remnant sand grasslands in southern Izard County. Photo by Theo Witsell.
Photo 4 — Living biological soil crust, or cryptogamic crust, is found in deserts and desert-like grasslands, including remnant sand grasslands in southern Izard County. Photo by Theo Witsell.
Photo 5 — The uncommon and well-armed white prickly-poppy (Argemone albiflora subsp. texana) is locally common in remnant sand grasslands in southern Izard County. Photo by Theo Witsell.
Photo 6 — The rare Elliott's fanpetals (Sida elliottii), a species of state conservation concern. Photo by Theo Witsell.
Photo 7 — Texas bull-nettle (Cnidoscolus texanus) has the most painful sting of any of the 10 species of "stinging nettle" found in Arkansas. Photo by Theo Witsell.
Photo 8 — Close-up of Texas bull-nettle (Cnidoscolus texanus), which has the most painful sting of any of the 10 species of "stinging nettle" found in Arkansas. Photo by Eric Hunt.
Photo 9 — Jointweed (Polygonella americana), a drought-tolerant shrub that serves as an indicator of remnant grasslands. Photo by Theo Witsell.
Photo 10 (and main photo) — The rare Cleland's evening-primrose (Oenothera clelandii), rediscovered in Arkansas in remnant sand grasslands in southern Izard County. Photo by Theo Witsell.
When I returned from my first trip to Izard County I was pretty excited by what I’d found – about the plants themselves, sure, but even more so about the botanical evidence that there had been some kind of grassland habitat there historically. I pressed the specimens I collected and spent some time studying the soils, topography, and geology maps of all the parallel valleys that drain southern Izard County into the White River. That first property I had visited was on Hidden Creek, which is known to support populations of the pocket gophers, but mostly further downstream from where I was, where the valley is wider and there is more open habitat. If I wanted to find a remnant of the original grassland, I should probably be looking in a wider valley. The next creek to the east of Hidden Creek is Rocky Bayou, which is a bigger stream with a larger watershed and more open ground along it. That seemed like a good place to start.The soils in both valleys include units mapped as Portia sandy loam, either as a stand-alone unit or as part of a soil complex. This got my attention immediately because I knew this soil type from Buck Ridge, an incredible site on the Gene Rush Wildlife Management Area in Newton County. Buck Ridge, a modest 40-acre savanna and woodland restoration, is one of the best botanical areas in the Arkansas Ozarks, due in part to its sandy, sometimes lime-rich soils and in part to the excellent management of the site by the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission (AGFC), who has thinned the trees and conducted regular prescribed burns. This soil type includes areas with a lot of loose sand, something that is central to the distribution of both sand grasslands and the rare pocket gophers.
I gave a brief report on my trip at our staff meeting and Dustin Lynch, ANHC’s Aquatic Ecologist, told me about a landowner on Rocky Bayou that had pocket gophers on his land and had granted permission for him and partners from the AGFC to survey for fish on his property. They were planning a follow-up trip in July and invited me along. My main hope for the trip was to find some intact scrap of original sand grassland that would help unlock this ecological mystery. I also had a second, unspoken hope though – to discover a second Arkansas population of a very rare sand-loving plant called Cleland’s evening-primrose (Oenothera clelandii). This species was known in Arkansas only from two historical herbarium specimens, collected in 1968 and 1969 from the same site, in sandy open habitat along Poke Bayou in adjacent Independence County. The main range of this species is in the Upper Midwest, with the closest known site to the Arkansas occurrence near Cape Girardeau, Missouri, but not documented since the 1800s. Back in 2008 I traveled to central Illinois to study some rare sand prairies and found it there. I collected a specimen for the ANHC Herbarium, which I pulled out and spent a few minutes studying. I’ve learned over time not to get my hopes up too high for these long-shot discoveries, but it never hurts to be prepared and have a good search image.
When we got to the property, I explained to the landowner the sort of habitat I was looking for and after a few minutes thinking about it he said he had a couple of places to show me. On the way to the first site, we drove across a gently sloping sandy field that had been planted with a native tallgrass prairie seed mix a few years earlier to improve habitat for wildlife. The planted species weren’t the kind of grassland plants I was looking for but as we crossed the field, I saw several other species that were. The first plants that caught my eye were several kinds of flatsedge in the genus Cyperus, and I shouted for him to stop the truck. There are at least 34 species in this genus in Arkansas. More than 20 are wetland species, but most of the others like dry sandy soil. Three of these were growing in mixed populations in this sandy field: Baldwin’s flatsedge (Cyperus croceus), globe flatsedge (Cyperus echinatus), and oneflower flatsedge (Cyperus retroflexus). They were also growing with thin paspalum (Paspalum setaceum), another species of sandy grasslands. These had my interest because none would be in a seed mix and they were likely remnants of the “old flora” present on the site before the wildlife prairie planting, and no doubt before the improved cattle pasture that preceded it.But this wasn’t what I was being taken to see, just a quick stop along the road to get there. We crossed through a little wooded drainage and emerged into another field, lower on the terrace of the creek. Part of it had been planted as a food plot, and it had been a crop field at one time before that. But at the bottom edge of the field was a 2- or 3-acre area that had not been plowed. I could tell from a distance that this was what I had come to see. We drove up to the edge of it and I could see gopher mounds here and there. I grabbed a collection bag, started the voice memo app on my phone, and started tallying all the plants I was seeing. The three sand-loving flatsedges I had seen on the way in were all present here as well but were joined by three others: slender sand sedge (Cyperus lupulinus), reflexed flatsedge (Cyperus refractus), and pine barren flatsedge (Cyperus retrorsus). Six species of dry sand flatsedges is an impressive haul from one small spot, but things were about to get A LOT more interesting.
There are several things that characterize a good quality remnant sand grassland in addition to the species present and I was also looking for these. One of the most obvious is a certain amount of natural sparseness to the vegetation. The best and most diverse examples have some gaps between the individual plants, where a little bare ground is visible. One term often used for these sand grasslands is “barrens,” and when you see a good, healthy example you can understand where that name comes from. These sandy soils don’t have a lot of organic matter in them, and these ecosystems run on a relatively tight nutrient budget. The least disturbed examples often also have a living biological soil crust in the more barren areas. This protective layer, sometimes called a cryptogamic crust, helps stabilize the soil and is made of communities of cyanobacteria (blue-green algae), algae, fungi, bacteria, and lichens. These are common in deserts and desert-like habitats around the world, but are generally poorly known and understood, at least in Arkansas. The cryptogamic crust was present in this site.
Remnant sand grasslands also have considerable variation to the vegetation – some clumps of grass here, a scattering of broadleaf wildflowers there, some thickets of shrubs over there, and a little room in between for animals to move around. Sand grassland vegetation is also an interesting mix of somewhat weedy annual and biennial species and longer-lived perennial species that are less tolerant of disturbance. The weedy annuals and biennials are a common component of even the best sand grasslands, and they were well represented here. There was abundant poor-Joe (Diodia teres), camphor-weed (Heterotheca subaxillaris), soft golden-aster (Bradburia pilosa), and a good representation of drought-adapted annual spurges including Lindheimer’s croton (Croton lindheimeri), sand croton (Croton glandulosus var. septentrionalis), wild poinsettia (Euphorbia cyathophora), summer poinsettia (Euphorbia dentata), and nodding spurge (Euphorbia nutans). There was the native wild carrot (Daucus pusillus) and wild sorrel (Rumex hastatulus), both of which might be described as the somewhat reserved American cousins of their more widespread and aggressive relatives from Europe: Queen Anne’s-lace (Daucus carota), and the perennial sheep sorrel (Rumex acetosella), which are common pasture weeds in the area and indicators of past disturbance.
Indicator plants of sand grasslands abounded, including dotted beebalm (Monarda punctata), erect dayflower (Commelina erecta), and Florida cotton-grass (Froelichia floridana), typically found in Arkansas in the sand barrens of the West Gulf Coastal Plain. There were tall, showy specimens of the well-armed and somewhat intimidating white prickly-poppy (Argemone albiflora subsp. texana), with its showy white and orange flowers, dark yellow-orange sap, and spiny, bluish-green foliage. The field margin had Texas green-eyes (Berlandiera betonicifolia), a handsome sunflower relative with distinctive scalloped triangular leaves, a woolly stem, and widely spaced yellow ray petals surrounding a green central disc with rings of tiny dark red disc flowers. Scattered throughout was the rare Elliott’s fanpetals (Sida elliottii). This species of state conservation concern, tracked by the ANHC, has distinctive golden yellow flowers with asymmetrical petals that resemble the blades of a fan or propeller.
A diversity of grasses was present including little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium), fall witchgrass (Digitaria cognata), a dropseed (Sporobolus sp.) that couldn’t be positively identified that early in the season, and the menacing sand-bur (Cenchrus spinifex), which requires careful navigating to keep the barbed spines of the mature fruit from getting into your pant cuffs, socks, boot laces, and especially skin. A close encounter with a fruiting specimen of this species is memorable and you don’t have to encounter it more than once to learn it. There were scattered specimens of prickly-pear cactus (Opuntia sp.) and thickets of the colony-forming Chickasaw plum (Prunus angustifolia). 
Based on my positive reaction to the first site, I was shown a second site that the landowner thought might be of interest. It was! Like the first site, this second one was at the lower edge of a sandy field, in an area of nearly pure sand that didn’t support much agriculture or even improved pasture plants. This site was of even better quality and there were even more interesting species, several of which were solid indicators of natural grasslands. Tall bush-clover (Lespedeza stuevei), with its characteristic hairy stems and three-parted leaves, stood above the shorter vegetation. The more barren areas were dotted with forked blue-curls (Trichostema dichotomum) and scaleseed (Spermolepis sp.). The rare Elliott’s fanpetals was common at the site. There were large clumps of the impressive Texas bull-nettle (Cnidoscolus texanus), another hallmark of our classic Coastal Plain sand barrens, with which these Ozark sand grasslands share so many species. Bull-nettle is an interesting looking species with deeply lobed leaves, stems covered with sharp, white, chemically armed prickles, and perhaps the brightest-white flowers of any species in the state. It also has the distinction of having by far the most painful sting of any of the 10 so-called “stinging nettles” found in Arkansas (I may be one of the few people in the world to have been stung by all of them, so you can take my word for it). 
Jointweed (Polygonella americana), one of the least common and most interesting shrubs in the state, with its blue-green scale-like leaves, peeling bark, and clusters of white to pink flowers, was scattered here and there in clumps. I don’t think I have ever seen that species in a site that wasn’t highly interesting and that didn’t have other uncommon or intriguing species. And then, there it was! Mostly already gone to fruit, but with a few yellow flowers still hanging on -- Dr. Cleland’s evening-primrose! I got down on my knees (careful to avoid the bull-nettle and prickly-pear) for a close inspection. I had seen it only once, more than a decade before, in rare sand prairies in central Illinois, but there was no question about it. I counted several dozen plants scattered across the remnant grassland. It isn’t every day that you find the one thing you were secretly hoping to find, and it sure makes a hot afternoon in the blazing sun of an open grassland worth it!
I met back up with Dustin and his colleagues, who were wrapping up some fish sampling, bid goodbye to our host, and climbed back into the truck with a full collection bag and a lot more knowledge about a forgotten and nearly lost component of Arkansas’s natural heritage. There is still a lot more to learn of course, and I look forward to studying these sand grassland remnants more next year. As usual, we have just barely scratched the surface of learning all there is to know.Photos:
Photo 1 — Ozark Pocket Gopher (Geomys bursarius ozarkensis) mound in remnant sand grassland in southern Izard county. Photo by Theo Witsell.
Photo 2 — Remnant sand grassland in southern Izard County. Note the naturally sparse vegetation with some areas of bare soil. Photo by Theo Witsell.
Photo 3 — Oneflower flatsedge (Cyperus retroflexus) is one of six species of dry sand grassland flatsedges found in remnant sand grasslands in southern Izard County. Photo by Theo Witsell.
Photo 4 — Living biological soil crust, or cryptogamic crust, is found in deserts and desert-like grasslands, including remnant sand grasslands in southern Izard County. Photo by Theo Witsell.
Photo 5 — The uncommon and well-armed white prickly-poppy (Argemone albiflora subsp. texana) is locally common in remnant sand grasslands in southern Izard County. Photo by Theo Witsell.
Photo 6 — The rare Elliott's fanpetals (Sida elliottii), a species of state conservation concern. Photo by Theo Witsell.
Photo 7 — Texas bull-nettle (Cnidoscolus texanus) has the most painful sting of any of the 10 species of "stinging nettle" found in Arkansas. Photo by Theo Witsell.
Photo 8 — Close-up of Texas bull-nettle (Cnidoscolus texanus), which has the most painful sting of any of the 10 species of "stinging nettle" found in Arkansas. Photo by Eric Hunt.
Photo 9 — Jointweed (Polygonella americana), a drought-tolerant shrub that serves as an indicator of remnant grasslands. Photo by Theo Witsell.
Photo 10 (and main photo) — The rare Cleland's evening-primrose (Oenothera clelandii), rediscovered in Arkansas in remnant sand grasslands in southern Izard County. Photo by Theo Witsell.