Photo galleries from the South Fork Nature Center
June 11, 2015: Clinton mayor Richard McCormac joined representatives of the Nature Conservancy of Arkansas, SWN, and numerous agencies instrumental in completing Phase 2 of the Upper Little Red River restoration.
Read more about the outstanding conservation project at the team blog: Restoring the Upper Little Red
Tuesday, May 19, was the day for 26 of Margaret Moon’s high school students from Rose Bud to visit South Fork. And Wednesday, May 20, Jenni Martsolf brought 24 of her Mayflower sophomore students for the experience in the out-of-doors that SFNC provides. And it was “nature extraordinaire”!!
Skills in writing and art with nature, as well as walks along the trails for a look at plants and any animal signs or noises led to active give-and-take discussions with students and docents on ecology (ecosystem structure, sexuality of plants, plant and animal identification, and uses of certain plants by various peoples)…what a fun day we all had!
And the Wednesday class sessions began as rain was falling, already having dropped two inches of “liquid sunshine” in four hours, a bit more than the hillsides could easily handle. But lanterns in the Riddle cabin brought light upon insect collections and as well as the bright shining faces of a room full of students, students who before long hit the trails as the sun began to peak through the clouds.
Applying all that text book/classroom learning from back in the school classrooms to living plants and animals in the forest and glades of South Fork…it happened…and ecology of the ecosystems on the spot fascinated students as it sparked the application of facts that had been presented and learned earlier.
Insects were collected in tiny boxes, birds were heard singing, rain drops could be heard falling on the tin roof and through the tree canopy (on Wednesday), and a very small box turtle, barely an inch and a half long, was found on the forest floor crawling still surrounded (back and belly) in its cream colored egg shell laid by its mother only weeks before.
These AP biologists had a swell time applying their biology and gaining new knowledge!
by Don Culwell
Tuesday, May 12, found Julie Nelson’s 5th graders from Southside Bee Branch at South Fork…8:45-2:15. The day began with a walk from the front kiosk along the trail to the cabin…stops along the way pointed out the opportunity to “read nature” by listening to sounds of the forest (birds, wind, insects, mammals, lizards, etc.) as well as keeping a keen eye out for any animal life or interesting plants.
Further along at the cabin was an orientation for the day’s activities before groups of 10 or so led by docents headed out on the trails or began their study at tables beside the cabin. Students were challenged to use math in some application in the out-of-doors, such as calculating the average height of forest trees of an area, calculating the leaf area needed for a butterfly larval population, or the use of floral formulas to identify flower families. Noon found students diving into their lunches…the whole class anxiously hiked to the water fall, all-be-it a short one due to the increasing rise of the lake, running to the end of the slab rock bottomed creek flowing with a rushing current alongside a glade of vegetation that grows in the shallow, glade soil.
With the day’s outing over, it was time to board the bus for return to campus, but not before a wrap-up of the day’s activities noting points of interest, and an invitation to return.
by Don Culwell
Fifteen folks gathered for peach cobbler on Saturday, March 21, around the coffee pot at the Riddle cabin. The sun peeked out from under the clouds a time or two. We made some new friends and caught up with others. Visiting got us going even before Don Culwell passed out jonquils from the roadside for use in checking out the life cycle of flowering plants. A hand lens helped identify the parts and note their functions: attraction of pollinators enabling sperm cells to reach egg cells (fertilization), embryo development, and seed maturation. Each individual species can grow from seeds and spread so that the population increases in size.
Out on the trail, we checked out all the growth activities of spring. Some of the red buckeye shrubs (Aesculus pavia) still had tight buds and larger ones at the tips of the branches that house the flower buds that will soon produce large Christmas tree-like inflorescences of long red flowers. After breaking open a bud we could see the tight cluster of miniature buds that were yet to begin their spring growth. But many red buckeye buds had already burst, hence throwing off their enlarged colorful bud scales revealing small green palmately compound leaves on a short stem below a cluster of the tight flower buds. Each of these flower buds will have flower parts much like the jonquil that we dissected.
Wow! Here we see coming up through the fallen oak leaves, the maroon and green mottled leaves of the trout lily (Erythronium albidum) poking their plants through the leaf litter of winter. A single white nodding flower nearly two inches long arose above those mottled leaves. The buds are now visible nearby on leafy toothwort stems (Dentaria laciniata) and will soon burst into their clusters of white flowers.
Lifting pieces of rotting wood along the trail, one could see fungal threads of hyphae, the mycelium of several species of fungi with yellow and some white threads. These threads are the “roots” of the fungus that are already producing enzymes that digest cellulose of the fallen, woody limbs bringing about wood decay and thus nourishment for the fungus. This fungus will push up through the soil producing a mushroom that will make spores later in the spring or summer. Bob Hartmann noted the large variety of fungi which have many colors such as blue, red, orange, yellow, white, and brown. Why do you suppose there are no green ones?
The pileated woodpeckers of South Fork had been busy throwing out large chunks of wood off the dead oak leaving quarter inch holes where they may have found some insect larval stage of development in some grub-like form.
Jim Solomon picked up several two inch hickory branches all neatly chiseled off from some hickory limb above. He noted how the hickory twig girdler (Oncideres cingulata) had neatly chewed the half inch branch all the way around until it fell. Tiny breaks in the stem beyond the cut revealed where the hickory borer had lain eggs. These eggs will now hatch in the twig on the ground and adults will emerge and mate in the summer. They will then begin to cut more hickory twigs where more eggs will be put into the twig, and the population grows.
Eager hikers continued on the trail, but noon soon arrived. The hand lenses and books were returned to the cabin along with the Coleman stove and coffee pot. good byes were said. The season of South Fork activity had begun and a Saturday morning had been well spent!
by Don Culwell
Beautiful, OH, YES! Certainly for my eye to behold. But food? Not in MY salad, but for a butterfly they are quite the meal…yes!
South Fork habitat restored? Yes, the nearly 10 acres of glade on the South Fork grounds are close to having many of the trees removed, removed to enable light to reach the shallow glade soils where there lies a myriad of seeds ready to germinate under the right environmental conditions. Light on the soil will allow these seeds to break dormancy sending up the young plants of flowers and grasses that usually grow in such areas, areas that are often quite wet from spring rains but tend to dry out during the summer months…what a flower garden we can observe then! Since cedar trees are a species that also grows well in this habitat, many cedar saplings, and a few large, old ones of considerable age, have developed into a forest on this ground that has not recently experienced the low light requirement for typical glade development.
Restoration of the South Fork glades has been possible due to a grant from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. This restoration, or clearing of some of the forest from glade areas, began in November of 2012 and is being completed now in 2015…open soils of our glades will be able to grow the flower and grass flora that we are seeking. Glade flowers are attractive to butterflies which we may see in larger numbers. Other grant monies from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have been granted South Fork to plant several species of milkweeds that will enhance the glade habitat for monarch butterflies (which have a special attraction to milkweeds)…in fact, 500 or more live plants of several milkweed species are on order, and are now being grown, for planting either this spring or early in the fall.
Drawn to milkweed flowers, monarchs will lay their eggs on the plants. Eggs will hatch, larvae will grow into mature caterpillars, produce their pupal stage, and in due time of development, each will hatch out of its chrysalis as a mature adult capable of laying more eggs…so goes the life cycle of the monarch. And it can all occur in the glades of South Fork!
South Fork Nature Center 
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