Border lands

Natural History, May, 1998 by Robert H. Mohlenbrock

The pointy southeastern corner of Oklahoma, a triangle of land squeezed between Arkansas and Texas, is bounded on the south by the meandering Red River, on the east by a surveyor's straight border, and on the north by the Little River (a tributary of the Red). This region offers a number of wetlands of a kind one might not expect to encounter here. Some have been incorporated into the relatively new Little River National Wildlife Refuge.

Others are found in the Tiak Ranger District, an isolated portion of the Ouachita National Forest, which lies mainly in Arkansas. I recently toured the area, after first receiving an orientation from ranger Robert Bastarache, of the Tiak Ranger Station, which is housed in the post office in the town of Idabel.

Heading southeast from town along State Highway 3, I parked beside the road between the tiny villages of Bokhoma and Tom and made my way along a small tributary of Parker Creek. After walking a short distance through a forest of loblolly pine, oaks, and hickories, I entered rather marshy terrain. False nettle, with its tight spheres of tiny green flowers, began to appear, and soon there were several other marsh species--a beggar's tick with three-lobed leaves; two smartweeds, one with pink flowers and one with white; and mock bishop's-weed, a plant that resembles a delicate Queen Anne's lace. Wetter areas provided excellent habitat for lizard's-tail.

Suddenly the ground was spongy; sphagnum moss was underfoot. I had come to the edge of McKinney Bog, a peat bog in southeastern Oklahoma-unexpected here because these habitats are rare this far south. Since peat bogs are not good places for hiking (and hikers are not good for the fragile plant community), I poked around the edge of this one. I was rewarded by seeing yellow fringed orchid, small green wood orchid, and grass-leaved ladies' tresses (this is also an orchid, with small white flowers in a spiral spike).

Returning to my van, I headed north, at first retracing part of my route along Highway 3. I noticed several scissor-tailed flycatchers--an Oklahoma trademark--perched on overhead wires. I then turned off the highway and followed smaller roads to a dead end at the edge of a forest. From there I hiked a short distance through an upland woods to Goodwater Glade, the largest pristine limestone glade in Oklahoma. Glades are rocky, open areas within otherwise forested terrain. In this case, the rocky ground and the dry, northwest- and west-facing exposures discourage the growth of woody plants. The glade lies about seventy-five feet above Little River to the north and Goodwater Creek to the west. A mesic, or moist, forest grows down along the creek, while the upland woods adjacent to the glide are dominated by white oak, chinquapin oak, and mockernut hickory.

While lacking trees, Goodwater Glade hosts a diversity of wildflowers, including a tiny, endangered one called golden glade cress. This is the only place in the world where this little member of the mustard family lives., (For a long time, a very similar plant found near the east Texas community of San Augustine was thought to be the same species, but botanists now regard them as distinct.) Golden glade cress is a dwarf annual with all its leaves clustered in a ring, or rosette, at the base of the plant. From the center rise flower stalks up to four inches tall, each bearing several lemon yellow flowers. The plant blooms in early March. By late April the seed pods have formed their nearly spherical seeds, and by early May the plant withers and is gone. Thus, by the time the heat of summer is drying up the glade, the golden glade cress has completed its life cycle. In the fall, some of the seeds germinate into new plants, forming new rosettes that he dormant over the winter months.

I left Goodwater Glade early in the afternoon, heading back toward Idabel and then north on US. Highway 70 to the other side of the Little River. This route took me through a section of the Little River National Wildlife Refuge. To explore the refuge more thoroughly, however, I had to double back and reenter it on smaller roads. The refuge does not yet have visitor facilities and formal trails, but ten miles of unpaved roads wind through several wetland habitats. With care, one can walk off the roads into some of these areas, which are much more typical of wetlands farther south and southeast. There are bald cypress swamps and even alligators, which are found nowhere else in Oklahoma. The alligator snapper and the four-toed salamander also live in the refuge.

Wet sloughs--narrow bodies of open water--often lead into the cypress swamps. One of the wildlife refuge roads crosses a slough, providing an opportunity to view its plant life. Growing in the standing water is southern wild rice--a six-foot-tall grass that towers over clumps of soft rush--and several kinds of sedges. The refuge also contains extensive bottomland forests of loblolly pine and broad-leaved deciduous trees. The flora is diverse, but since these forests are subjected to spring floods, they have relatively few spring wildflowers. One of several ponds is easily accessible along US. Highway 70. Spatterdock, an aquatic plant related to the water lily, is common; it has two-inch-wide, yellow club-shaped flowers. In summer, the large, cream-colored flowers of water lotus, rare for this part of the country, stand on stout stalks above the water.