Glades: Sunlit Islands in the Hills
Story and photos by Phyllis Rossiter
(reprinted from Branson Living April/May 1995: 12-16+)
From Dewey Bald and Bald Jess to Snapp's Bald where the Bald Knobbers met, "balds"--or glades--are intrinsic to the captivating milieu that is the Ozarks. They play a fascinating and colorful role in both ancient and recent history. More importantly, glades are key to the survival of the biodiversity of the Ozarks environment.
The word glade comes from the Old English "glad," meaning a shining place. In the Ozarks, glades are truly "sunlit islands" in the forest. A parklike bench on a hillside where the bedrock is exposed or nearly so, a glade resembles a miniature prairie perched among the hills. The old-timers referred to a hilltop glade, or "knob," as a bald, a word that describes the glade's most recognizable characteristic: treeless and brushless.
Once there were vast acreage of glades in the White River region, rank with grass. In presettlement times they sustained small herds of bison, elk, and deer. In 1818 explorer Henry Rowe Schoolcraft described them as "patches of ground. . . without trees or brush of any kind. Frequently [they] occupied the tops of conical hills, or extended ridges, while the intervening valleys were covered with oaks."
Although at first glance a glade seems a barren, hostile environment where little could survive, it is actually a distinct ecosystem producing abundant life. Glades vary greatly in size, amount and kind of vegetation, and direction and steepness of the slope. In Missouri glades are classified according to the six different rock types on which they occur--limestone, dolomite, chert, sandstone, granite, or shale. In this area the glades are dolomite; their soils are high in calcium, magnesium and potassium, and they support plants adapted to alkalinity. The dolomite itself originated in the sediment of ancient seas that covered the Ozarks more than 300 million years ago.
Although their foundations vary, all types of glades have extremely shallow soil--a maximum of 15 inches and usually much less--frequently disrupted by frost upheavals. Often the bedrock itself is exposed. Dry conditions prevail throughout much of the growing season, although the ground may be saturated in spring, winter, and fall. Some glades even boast seasonal or permanent spring seeps.
Glades are far more complex than they appear--and more fragile. Since they are so different from the surrounding forests, the atmosphere of a glade feels almost eerie. Glades are Nature's scrapbook. Here she keeps relicts of different climates and different species, souvenirs and mementoes from other climes and other times. Some of them are rare and some endemic to the glades of the White River area. Many glade inhabitants, both plants and animals, are dependent on this special habitat, totally adapted to life here. For others, glades provide food or shelter when they need it most. For example, the green sedges that grow near seeps around glades provide early greens for wildlife. The inherent southern exposure results in more rapid snowmelt and makes food available to wildlife during critical winter periods.
White River glade plants include buckbrush, Ashe's juniper, centaury, Barbara's buttons, palafoxia, 
purple beard-tongue and soapweed. Missouri's only smoke trees are here, as well as typical prairie grasses--baldgrass, sideoats grama, switchgrass and little bluestem. Wildflowers are abundant, and the species in bloom change constantly throughout the growing season so that they fill the "glad place" with color almost the year around--prairie clover, indigo, coneflower, black-eyed Susan and the Missouri evening primrose, also called the glade lily, to name only a few. Some plants, such as sumac, persimmon and red cedar, are "invaders" in the glades.
Glade life sometimes seems almost incongruous. Lichens are abundant, including reindeer moss, the same plant upon which the tundra caribou depend. Yet thriving nearby is prickly pear cactus, a settler from the Southwest. Here also is the brush mouse, a desert mouse normally inhabiting southwestern deserts and plains. The eastern collared lizard is increasingly rare. Other glade reptiles include the six-lined racerunner, eastern coachwhip snake, flathead snake, rough earth snake, western worm snake, Osage copperhead, and western pigmy rattlesnake. A characteristic amphibian is the eastern narrowmouthed toad.
Turkey vultures seem to fly almost constantly overhead. In winter, there is often a golden eagle; in summer, broad-winged hawks. The open place is a favorite location of the strutting wild turkey tom. At dusk the glade is treated to the calls of the whip-poor-will, the chuck-will's-widow and the barred owl. Evening also sees the astonishing sky-dance of the woodcock. The painted bunting occurs near Branson, and Bachman's sparrow and roadrunner are two birds that are largely restricted to dolomite glades. Typical insects are the tarantula, black widow spider, plains scorpion, and Missouri woodland swallowtail.
Unfortunately glades have suffered greatly at the hands of man; few healthy glades survive except on public land. Obviously subdivisions, roadbeds, and parking lots have swallowed many glade areas, but most are at risk to other dangers. All types of glades continue to slowly decrease in coverage because of grazing and the invasion of woody vegetation, mostly red cedar.
Although cedar often is associated with glades (sometimes they are even called "cedar glades"), it is not found on all glades, nor does it really belong there. Its seed is probably conveyed to the glade by birds such as the robin, which winter-feeds on cedar berries in huge flocks. The seeds can germinate even in the dry, hot glade environment; the roots can penetrate rocky cracks and fissures. Further, cedar's ability to conserve moisture enables it to overcome the droughty defenses of the glade.
Ironcially, cedar's encroachment onto the glades results from man's activities. Many early explorers in the Ozarks noted cedars growing on river bluffs, but apparently only there. Studies by the U.S. Forest Service show that in presettlement times 70 percent of the Hercules Glades Wilderness in eastern Taney County was either in glade or savanna. But in comparing 1938 and 1975 aerial photographs of numerous Taney County glades, the Missouri Department of Conservation found an alarming number of them covered with cedar rather than a grassy carpet. The original glade plants are gradually shaded out. For most glade species, biotic diversity and quality of habitat is subsequently lowered.
How did the shining sunlit islands come to be choked with cedars "as thick as the hair on a dog's back," as one disapproving local resident says? Since the alteration has occurred slowly over the past century, the answers are only now being realized.
In presettlement times, glades were maintained by periodic fires and by the browsing of woody vegetation by white-tail deer and elk. But by the 1890s, the elk and most deer had been killed. From the late 1800s until the 1960s, any area not fenced in southwest Missouri was considered "open range," and the glades were heavily grazed by the stock of settlers. For a time steers were brought up from Texas and Arkansas to fatten on "the lush pasture of the bald hills" before being herded to railheads at Chadwick and Springfield. Cattle, hogs, sheep, horses and goats roamed all over the glade region eating and trampling the prairielike grasses and wildflowers. By the 1930s, the glades were barren; only the most graze-resistant plants remained.
Another key factor contributing to the degradation of the glades entered into the picture about the same time: fire suppression. Overwhelming evidence indicates that glades evolved under the influence of fire. For thousands of years prior to settlement, the glades were frequently burned either by Indians or lightning. We have numerous historical accounts of periodic fires in the written records of man, both explorers and settlers, and in the records of the glades themselves. Studies of cedar tree rings have shown that a radical change in fire frequency occurred about 1870.
Richard Guyette, "Missouri's expert on the invasion of easter red cedar" into the glades, has published a paper, "Fire History of an Ozark Glade" in the Proceedings of the Missouri Academy of Science. After collecting tree-ring evidence on the age of cedar trees and fire scar history, he has proven that the glades burned frequently in historic times until about a century ago. At the same time, he discovered that the age of most red cedar trees on the glades did not exceed roughly a hundred years, which corresponds with the period of settlement and heavy open grazing throughout the Ozarks.
"Prior to settlement, eastern red cedar was restricted to primarily bluffs and rock outcrops," says Paul Nelson, director of the Natural History Program for the Missouri Department of Natural Resources (DNR). "Even in the early 1800s, land surveyors did not mention cedar in theri survey notes to any great extent, except on bluffs. Further, eastern red cedar is extremely susceptible to fire. Unlike oaks, shortleaf pine and other woody species, eastern red cedar does not resprout if killed back by fire. Thus, it stands to reason that eastern red cedar would not occur on glades as most glades burned in historic times.
"Another important point about cedar is that it does not readily invade or move into healthy ecosystems. By healthy, I mean either those glades, prairies, or savannas in which the complement of grasses and wildflowers is left intact and not overgrazed. Easter red cedar generally is a pioneer species. Its seeds (eaten and dropped by birds) propagate in areas of open or disturbed soils."
Stephen J. Pyne, Ph.D., author of "Fire in America," writes: "Wildfire is among the oldest of natural phenomena . . . Hardly any plant community in the temperate zone has escaped fire's selective action. Many biotas have consequently so adapted themselves to fire that, as with biotas frequented by floods and hurricanes, adaptation has become symbiosis."
Indeed, the glade dwellers themselves bear witness that they have adapted to frequent fires. Most plants are either deep-rooted perennils with a large part of their mass underground, or ephemeral annuals that complete their life cycles in the early spring when moisture is available. While animals avoid the intense solar radiation on the glades by burrowing under rocks, plants are adapted by being lighter or more silvery in color, with narrowed leaves to reduce dessication. The seasonal growth of glade plants, except woody species, dies back yearly and has the next year's growing point at or below the soil surface. While this annual die back provides a feul highly suitable for ignition and spread of flames, a plant having its growing point near the soil surface also avoids the most intense heat of the fire. Since the growing points of woody species are exposed above the ground, they are more likely to be killed or damaged by a fire.
But the old-time practice of burning the glades annually was halted some 60 years ago when two government agencies, the Missouri Department of Conservation and the U.S. Forest Service, instituted a well-intentioned program of fire "protection" in the Ozarks. Gradually the natural openness of the glades began to disappear as woody vegetation invaded.
Because of our past disruptive activities, most glades cannot return to "normal" without our help. Fortunately, glades can be restored, and the effort is now underway on public glade lands.
When open range ended in the early 1960s, the Forest Service began a rest-rotation grazing program on national forest glades. The grazeland user was confined to an allotment with a determined number of stock for a specified time. Still, the benefits of range management were not fully realized until prescribed burning was added to the program in the late 1970s. Mimicking the conditions under which the glades evolved, carefully prescribed and controlled burns are conducted under very tightly monitored conditions. Enough time has now elapsed to yield dramatic positive results.
Once fire became part of the ecosystem again, documentary "before-and-after" photos yielded reassuring evidence of successful glade restoration. Research indicates that the practice "doubles the herbaceous vegetation." Desirable plants increase and less-desirable plants decrease.
Conversely, when a glade starts to exceed more than one third cedar cover, herbaceous plant production rapidly declines. Says Paul Martin, district ranger, "To keep the thousand of 'sunlit islands' requires them to be 'fire lit' islands too."
Unfortunately, this glade restoration program is implemented only on public lands in the national and state forests, wildlife refuges, and state parks and natural areas. Little is being done to restore and protect the glades in private ownership. Nevertheless, the DNR strongly warns against do-it-yourself efforts. "Applying prescribed fire is a highly technical matter. It is as complex as neurosurgery," says Ken McCarty, DNR manager. "Any slight miscalculation could result in disaster."
A unique community extremely vulnerable to disturbance by man, the glade is an integral part of the Ozark ecosystem. It illustrates perfectly the need to understand and respect the environment. Since the stability of any ecosystem is dependent upon its diversity, the glades must be preserved to safeguard the biodiversity of the Ozarks.
"Biodiversity may sound like a fancy word," says Douglas Ladd, director of Science and Stewardship for The Nature Conservancy in Missouri, "but it just means the totality of life forms, including plants, animals, and less known organisms."
Photographs of dogwood, red bud, and forest scene taken by Phyllis Rossiter, courtesy of Gaye Lisby, Branson Living Magazine
Photograph of shooting star taken by Gene Kletchka, courtesy of Gaye Lisby, Branson Living Magazine
