The south slopes that were originally prairie, were evidently only sparsely clothed with trees up until the thirties when livestock were fenced out. Then the abundant growth of shrubs and young trees formed thickets. Honey locust, growing rapidly tended to dominate. The younger locust saplings that were shaded beneath the leaf canopy died in large numbers.
Honey locust plays an important part in the over-all ecology of the area, providing both food and shelter for many kinds of animals. The foliage is well liked by livestock; consequently young trees have little chance of surviving in heavily grazed pastures. Rabbits like both the foliage, and the bark. Often they girdle or injure young trees, and eat the beans. Both the prairie vole and the pine vole often feed upon the inner bark and root crowns of small saplings, sometimes completely undermining them. These voles also store and eat the seeds. Beneath large mature locusts, runway systems and burrow sof the pine vole are sometimes much in evidence. As ground vegetation is scanty in these places it seems that the voles are attracted by the abundant supply of locust seeds.
The spiny branches of locusts provide well protected nesting sites that are utilized by various kinds of birds; mourning dove, horned owl, yellow-billed cuckoo, gnatcatcher, cardinal and goldfinch have been recorded nesting in locusts. The wood is relatively soft. The hairy woodpecker has been recorded nesting in a cavity which it had dug in a living honey locust, while the black-capped chickadee and red-bellied woodpecker have been recorded nesting in cavities in dead limbs. The summer tanager prefers large locusts near the edge of woodland as singing stations.
Fox squirrels also often exploit the spiny protection provided by locust trunks, and build their stick nests in these trees, usually in a fork of the main trunk eight to twelve feet above the ground. Such nest trees often are either isolated or are in groves of other locusts. Presumably the squirrels are attracted to them by the supply of locust seeds.
Acer Negundo.—Boxelder probably was not a part of the original flora of the Reservation. The trees present now are few and scattered, and most are not more than eight inches in trunk diameter. The species seems intolerant of shade and does not grow in the denser woodlands. A few are present along the banks of the intermittent streams, and there are others in open woodlands of south slopes. The small patch of bluestem prairie remaining at the northwest corner of the Reservation is being invaded by a variety of shrubs and saplings, and boxelder is by far the most prominent of these invaders, with two hundred seedlings and saplings per acre.
Ailanthus altissima.—Tree-of-heaven is an Asiatic species that was introduced early into northeastern Kansas, and has become established locally in the woodland. Most of those on the Reservation are near the central part of the southwestern one-fourth. Concentrated about the site of an old homestead, occupied in the eighteen-seventies, within a few acres, there are dozens of mature trees, up to 22 inches in trunk diameter, and hundreds of saplings. Elsewhere on the Reservation the species is scarce and is represented by isolated trees and scattered clumps at a few places.
EXPLANATION OF PLATE 7
Upper figure shows gully in southeastern part of Reservation, which has enlarged and deepened greatly in the past 40 years. Heavy precipitation in the summer of 1951 resulted in the undermining and collapse of many large and medium sized trees, as shown in this photograph taken in March, 1956, by H. S. Fitch.