A Most Unlikely Ancient Treasure - ages of trees in Crosstimbers woodland
March 22, 2001 by Gary Lantz
Two hundred years ago explorers entering the dreaded Crosstimbers faced a formidable barrier to men on horseback: the trees. Later, sodbusters would curse the tenacity of the area's gnarled trees and search for arable land elsewhere, leaving the timber to deer and squirrels.
This belt of woodland, which separates the eastern prairies from the western plains of Texas, Oklahoma, and a portion of southern Kansas, grows on a band of sandy soil, forming in places an almost impenetrable chain of twisted oak and hickory. The Crosstimbers survived with little disturbance because the wood makes inferior lumber; people left it alone when they couldn't clear the trees for farming or firewood.
University of Arkansas researchers recently initiated tree ring analysis in a pristine portion of Crosstimbers woodland on rugged bluffs bordering Keystone Reservoir a few miles west of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Field surveys identified an ancient tree believed to be the world's oldest known post oak. University teams also discovered a 500-year-old red cedar on a site believed to contain the largest concentration of ancient cedars in the United States.
Landsat imagery reveals that some 210 square miles of ancient Crosstimbers forest may remain in eastern Oklahoma alone, most of it protected by steep, rocky slopes. To date, 77 percent of woodland surveyed on these rugged sites has contained trees of tremendous antiquity.
Biologists exploring one sheltered Crosstimbers cove collected about 268 plant species. The ecological significance of this site and similar ones prompted state officials and The Nature Conservancy to purchase land for an Ancient Crosstimbers Preserve near Tulsa. The four-square-mile area contains undisturbed forest, oak/prairie savannah, and prairie glades--plus trees that predate the pilgrims.
COPYRIGHT 2001 American Forests
COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group
http://www.uark.edu/misc/xtimber/
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