FORESTKEEPERS Winter 2020

Prescribed burn at Shaw . In This Issue Winter Frost to Spring Fire By Rebecca Landewe, The Nature Conservancy 2 Early Bloomers With winter days growing longer, spring will be around the corner soon. This late-winter window is a time when many landowners are preparing for the new 3 Winter Frost to spring growth through the use of an increasingly popular management tool – Spring Fire prescribed fire, also known as controlled burning. Fire is an important component of natural community management in , as it was a regular 4 Featured Species part of the landscape before European settlement. Many plants and plant communities are dependent on fire to thrive. Open woodlands, which are 5 Bulletin: characterized by widely spaced trees and an abundance of native grasses and Ice Melters wildflowers in the understory, require fire to maintain their character. These woodlands, as well as glades, prairies, and other grasslands benefit from the 6 Stop the Spread nutrient cycling and reduced leaf litter that a controlled burn can provide. Turkey, quail, and other grassland birds respond well to the food and habitat 8 Tree Farmer of fostered by the use of fire. the Year Controlled burns also reduce the risk and severity of wildfires, improve pasture 9 Take a Hike! condition, and can be helpful for treating certain invasive species. Talking with a professional forester and wildlife biologist from the Missouri Department of 10 Events Conservation (MDC) can help you determine if fire is a good tool for you. Fire is New Members not a panacea and also comes with some risk. Early Bloomers Silver Maple There’s one particularly wonderful thing about silver maples: their flowers are one of the earliest of any native plant. Their branches are fringed in bright red and fuzzy cream right after the snow melts, before the ground is warm enough for the spring ephemerals.

Early settlers in the Ohio Valley found the sap from the silver maple to be superior to other maples, but production was too slow for commercial use. The trees were a staple in many new towns on the frontier because of their rapid growth (for shade) and ability to adapt to soil conditions.

Rue Anemone Rue Anemone is an early-flowering, delicate plant, usually growing singly. Flowers grow in small umbels (round clusters, with flower stalks arising from the same point) subtended by a whorl of nearly round, stalkless leaf bracts. Flowers are variable, with 5–10 sepals that range from white to magenta-pink; sepals may be pointed or rounded. Blooms are present from March until June. The basal leaves appear after flowering has begun.

Dicentra The generic name of this delicate spring ephemeral flower derives from the Greek for two-spurred. The flowers are pollinated by early bumblebees, whose proboscis is long enough to tap the nectar. Honeybees, with a shorter proboscis, can gather only the pollen with their front feet.

Trout Lily These native plants do not transplant well and should be left alone in the wild. This is a spring ephemeral whose foliage disappears by late spring as the plant goes dormant.These native plants do not transplant well and should be left alone in the wild. This is a spring ephemeral whose foliage disappears by late spring as the plant goes dormant. Erythronium americanum, commonly called yellow adder’s tongue, yellow trout lily, yellow fawn lily and yellow dog-tooth

The Leaflet . Winter 2020 2 Winter Frost to Spring Fire (continued) Here are a few things to keep in mind:

1. Attend a training – MDC occasionally offers a class for landowners to learn more about prescribed fire.

2. Prepare a burn plan – Work with a professional to have a burn plan prepared for your property. It is important to prepare a burn plan that outlines the best conditions for conducting the controlled burn. Humidity, tempera- ture, and wind speed are all critical factors to consider and ensure your burn is safe and meets your manage- ment goals.

3. Prepare your fire lines (i.e., firebreaks) – Wellprepared fire lines are crucial for minimizing the potential for an escape.

4. Assemble your crew – Having a trained, qualified burn boss to supervise the burn is important (see NRCS guide). There are a few contractors available that can implement a controlled burn on your property. In some areas, neighbors are helping neighbors with controlled burning through local Prescribed Burn Associations. Talk with your local MDC representatives to see if there is one near you.

5. Wait for the weather conditions outlined in your burn plan – Be ready to cancel your plans if the conditions are not correct or unsafe. 6. Notify authorities – The day before or morning of the burn, notify neighbors, local fire departments and local authorities about your controlled burn. Prescribed burns require careful planning, photo copyright TNC (Tom Fielden) Resources: • Missouri Prescribed Fire Council – The Council is a group dedicated to promoting and protecting the use of safe and responsible use o fire as a management tool.

These standards were established to ensure that every qualifying community would have a viable tree- management plan and program. These standards were also designed so that no community would be excluded because of size. In Missouri, cities with Tree City USA certification range in population from 159 to 441,000 people. Tree City USA is a national recognition program sponsored by the Arbor Day Foundation and administered in the state by the Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC). It provides a framework to help communities establish a healthy, sustainable urban forestry program. “We are thrilled to see 104 communities in the program this year,” said Russell Hinnah, MDC forestry program supervisor. “Trees bring so much value, and this program helps communities increase that value and keep trees healthy through good tree stewardship.”

According to the Arbor Day Foundation, trees yield three to five times their cost in overall benefits to the cities that manage them. Trees can lower costs for storm water management and help reduce energy consumption. Research also has shown the positive impact trees have on people, from improving their health to boosting their property values. “The Tree City USA program is flexible enough that communities of any size can participate, and we encourage city leaders to contact us to learn more about it,” said Hinnah. “Our foresters are ready to assist any municipality interested in joining the program.”

Kansas City is the biggest Missouri community in the Tree City USA program, with a population of 441,000 people. Glen Echo Park is the smallest, with 159 people. Several communities have participated for more than 30 years, including: Brentwood, Des Peres, Ellisville, Fenton, Kansas City, Mexico, Rock Hill Springfield, St. Louis, University City, and Webster Groves. Communities who joined Tree City USA this year include: Paris, Frontenac, Pineville, Pleasant Hill, Farmington, Bel-Nor, Pine Lawn, Bel-Ridge, and Glen Echo Park. Get more information about the Tree City USA program, including a list of all participating Missouri communities, at mdc.mo.gov and search “Tree City USA,” or at short.mdc.mo.gov/ZZh.

In addition to Tree City USA there are also designations for Tree Campus, Tree Campus K-12, Tree Campus Healthcare, and Tree Line USA. These recognition programs encourage schools, healthcare facilities, and utility companies to plan for trees, use best practices, educate others about the benefits of trees, create care plans, participate in tree planting or service learning opportunities, and much more. For more information about any of these programs, check out arborday.org. The Leaflet . Winter 2020 3 Serviceberry Jam Recipe

Ingredients • 3.5 cups serviceberry juice • 2 tbsp lemon juice • 6 tbsp pectin • 5 cups granulated sugar

Directions: Pour the serviceberry juice and lemon juice in a large stainless steel pan and stir to combine.

Add the pectin to the pan and stir until dissolved.

Bring the pan to a rolling boil over high heat. Featured Species Add the sugar, then return to a rolling boil, Serviceberry stirring constantly for Amelanchier arborea 1 minute until sugar dissolves. Amelanchier arborea, commonly called downy serviceberry, is a deciduous, early-flowering, large shurb or early tree which typically grow between 15 and 25 Remove from the heat feet tall in cultivation, but can reach 40 feet tall in the wild. Serviceberry blooms and skim off any foam from early March until May annually. A Missouri native, serviceberry is found from the top. most often in open rocky woods, wooded slopes, and bluffs. Pour the jam into The tree features 5-petaled, showy, slightly fragrant white flowers in dropping sterilised jars, leaving clusters which appear before leaves emerge in early spring. The finely-toothed, 1/4 inch of headspace obovate leaves exhibit good fall color. Flowers give and then process in a way to small, round green berries which turn red boiling water bath and finally mature to a dark purplish-black in canner for 15 minutes. early summer. Edible berries resemble blueberries in size and color and are often used in jams, jellies and pies. Amelanchiers are commonly called Juneberries.

The Leaflet . Winter 2020 4 THIS INFORMATION IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE MISSOURI DEPARTMENT OF CONSERVATION FOREST BULLETIN ICE MELTERS DAMAGE TREES AND SOILS Popular ice-melting salts—common table salt, calcium chloride, ammonium nitrate and urea—can damage plants, making them grow slowly, become deformed, succumb to disease, or die.

TREATING FOR SALT DAMAGE TO PLANTS After exposure to salt spray, evergreens may show immediate effects, while deciduous plants (trees that drop their leaves in fall) may not show damage until the next growing season. Symptoms include yellowing or dwarfing of foliage, or dieback and “witches broom” of twigs. Damage is usually more noticeable on the side facing the drift.

If possible, treat by pruning dead or deformed branches and by washing away any surface salt residues. Treat for soil contamination if exposure has been long and heavy.

To alleviate the adverse effects of salt in the soil, apply gypsum as a corrective or preventive measure. Rate of application will depend on the severity of salt contamination. For moderately contaminated soil, or where it is an- ticipated, apply 100 to 200 pounds of gypsum per thousand square feet over the affected area. This treatment can be made every three years. For heavily contaminated soil, apply up to 700 pounds of gypsum per thousand square feet, or 150 to 200 pounds per year for up to three years.

Powdered gypsum should be used to promote its solubility and movement into the soil. Gypsum is a naturally occurring substance that will not pollute the environment. It is frequently used as a soil conditioner or for clearing muddy water in ponds and is available at garden centers in 50 pound bags.

Plants that have been weakened by heavy or chronic exposure to salt may not respond to gypsum treatment.

PROTECT AT-RISK PLANTS AND APPLY ICE MELTERS SPARINGLY • Remove ice by mechanical means if practical. • Create drainage channels or barriers around plants where ice melters are used. • Use only the amount of ice melting chemical needed to do the job. Practice moderation. • Use dark-colored abrasives as an alternate or supplement to chemicals. • Use calcium chloride rather than sodium chloride when fertilizers are not practical. • Apply gypsum if sodium chloride contamination is anticipated. • Be especially careful in applying salts in late winter or early spring, or when the ground is not frozen. Stop the Spread of the Invasive Callery Pear By Adrian Higgins, Washington Post

Carole Bergmann pulls her small parks department SUV into an aging 1980s subdivision in St. Louis, MO, and takes me to the edge of an expansive meadow. A dense screen of charcoal-gray trees stands between the open ground and the backyards of several houses. The trees are callery pears, the escaped offspring of landscape specimens and street trees from the neighborhood. With no gardener to guide them, the spindly wildlings form an impenetrable thicket of dark twigs with three-inch thorns. Bergmann, a field botanist for St. Louis County Parks, extricates herself from the thicket and in the meadow shows me that what I take to be blades of grass are actually shoots of trees, mowed to a few inches high. There are countless thousands, hiding in plain sight in Creve Couer Park. If it were not cut back once a year, the meadow would become like the adjacent screen, wall upon wall, acre upon acre of black-limbed, armored trees worthy of Sleeping Beauty’s castle.

“You can’t mow this once and walk away,” said Bergmann, who began her 25-year career as a forest ecologist but has been consumed by an ever-pressing need to address the escape of the Bradford pear and other variants of callery pear, a species that originated in China, along with other invasive exotics. The U.S. Agriculture Department scientists who gave us the Bradford pear thought they were improving our world. Instead, they left an environmental time bomb that has now exploded. From the 1960s to the 1990s, the callery pear was the urban planner’s gift from above. A seedling selection named Bradford was cloned by the gazillion to become the ubiquitous street tree of America’s postwar suburban expansion.

The Bradford pear seemed to leap from an architect’s idealized rendering. But in this case, reality outshone the artist’s vision. It was upright and symmetric in silhouette. It exploded with white flowers when we most needed it, in early spring. Its glossy green leaves shimmered coolly in the summer heat, and in the fall, its foliage turned crimson, maroon and orange — a perfect Midwest study in autumnal color. And it grew everywhere. It flourished in poor soil, wet or dry, acidic or alkaline. It shrugged off pests and diseases, it didn’t drop messy fruit. Millions of Bradford pears would be planted from California to Massachusetts and would come to signal the dream and The Leaflet . Winter 2020 5 aspirations of postwar suburbia. Like the cookie-cutter suburbs themselves, the Bradford pear would embody that quintessentially American idea of the goodness of mass-produced uniformity. But like a comic book supervillain who had started off good, the Bradford pear crossed over to something darker. It turned from thornless to spiky, limber to brittle. Most of all, it became invasive. It is now an ecological marauder destined to continue its spread for decades, long after those suburban tract houses have faded away.

It is at its most conspicuous in early spring, when it bursts into flower. Suddenly whole rural landscapes are lit up by its blossoms. You can now track the progression of spring not as amber waves of grain but as a frothing tide of Bradford pear. You might even enjoy its beauty, until you realize that it is squeezing out native flora and reducing biodiversity. As eye-catching as the flowers are, they are simply the start of the seasonal march of this invader. Six months after the blooms appear, clusters of seedy berries invite birds. In the bird’s droppings, the seeds will germinate, becoming ever more genetically diverse and making the pear ever more adapted to its own spread. Its invasive tendencies became widely noticed by the late 1990s, and by the mid-2000s, it had become a weed in 19 states. “While callery pear was introduced with the best of intentions, it now seems that a plague is truly upon us,” botanist Michael Vincent wrote. It has now spread to 29 states. The roots of the Bradford pear fiasco go back more than a century, and had nothing to do with decorating suburbia. By the turn of the 20th century, Northern California and southern Oregon had become the centers of pear production. The common or European pear was a high-val- ue fruit; in one Oregon county alone, the pear industry in 1916 was worth a mind-boggling $10 million. But the orchards were threatened by a new disease called fire blight. George Roeding, a nurseryman in Fresno, CA, wrote in 1916 that “in the San Joaquin Valley, which was one of the great pear producing sections of California, the pear has been absolutely wiped out of existence.” In Talent, OR, a plant scientist named Frank Reimer was using a test orchard to work on fire-blight control and found that the callery pear, first brought to the States in 1908, was highly resistant to fire blight and might be used as a rootstock onto which varieties of the European pear could be grafted.

But to take his research further, Reimer needed lots of genetically rich wild seed from China. He turned to David Fairchild, a young botanist in Washington. Fairchild is best remembered as the guy who helped bring the Japanese cherry blossoms to the capital. Fairchild headed the Agriculture Department’s Office of Foreign Seed and Plant Introduction. He traveled far in search of new plants, but he relied on another explorer, Frank Meyer, in the quest for a super-pear. Meyer, an emigre from the Netherlands, had already explored extensively in China when Fairchild tapped him to go to southern China. In an age before passenger jets and digital communication, the quest for the callery pear would be no quick excursion. A century ago, plant explorers needed an extraordinary set of skills to complete their missions and survive a range of perils. A haunting image of Meyer is captured in a 1908 photo. With a big black beard, sheepskin leggings and a staff, he is seen gazing into the distance from a mountainous, arid landscape. All about him, burlapped cuttings rest like tablets brought down from Mount Sinai. Meyer left Washington 1916, traveling west to see Reimer’s pear trials in Oregon and finally departing for Japan on the last day of summer. Within a couple of months, he had sent six large shipments of seed from Beijing containing pine nuts, walnuts and chestnuts, but no callery pear. Fairchild urged him to make his way up the Yangtze River to look for the callery. “You must not leave any stone unturned to secure it,” he wrote.

Meyer eventually made his way to Yichang and soon found wild-growing callery pears, if not in the extravagant amounts Reimer was seeking. “Altho’ not rare in the hills, the trees are very widely scattered, they are often quite small and as such produce individually but little fruit,” he wrote. Many of the trees were stunted in dry, poor sites, but one remarkable aspect of this species soon became apparent. It could grow virtually anywhere. Meyer record- ed pear trees on sterile mountain slopes, on the edge of a pond in wet soil, on screes, in bamboo stands and even in running water. Having made arrangements to collect and process the seed the following fall, he set out to south- ern China in search of other plants but got only as far as Hankou (now Wuhan), where he took to his bed with “ner- vous prostration.” After weeks of rest he was back on his feet, and by late summer, he had made his way to Jing- men, today a large city in Hubei province. He sent his first shipment of callery pear seed to Fairchild in September, and the following month he gathered another 25 pounds of seed — enough to grow a small forest. Another calamity was about to overtake Meyer, however, as China had become gripped by spreading internal strife. Factional war- lords fought for dominance. This kept him confined to Yichang while seeds and notes were isolated in Jingmen. “As I am writing,” he wrote in 1918, “we hear the rickety noise of rifle fire.”That spring, he made his way to Jingmen to retrieve his pear seeds and baggage, and then took a steamer down the Yangtze back to Hankou. On the evening of May 31, 1918, Meyer boarded another ship sailing downriver to Shanghai, where he planned to stay a month to The Leaflet . Winter 2020 6 escape the heat of Hankou and to ship his pear seeds to Fairchild. Meyer had been suffering from a stomach ailment but appeared to be getting better. His mental state may have been getting worse. Meyer told his servant Yao Feng T’ing that his father and friends had come to him in a dream, and that he considered this an omen. Meyer was seen by a cabin boy making for the deck and thought Meyer was going to the toilet, but he was never seen alive again. His body was fished out of the Yangtze four days later. Samuel Sokobin, the American vice consul in Shanghai, conducted an investigation and reported that although it seemed Meyer had not been killed, it was “impossible to state” whether Meyer’s death was an accident or suicide. Signs point to the latter. After talking to the explorer’s servant and fellow passengers, Sokobin wrote: “It appears certain that Mr. Meyer had been depressed for some time.” He was 42.

Reimer, in his time with Meyer, had come to see just how low he was. “He told me of his life’s struggles,” he later wrote. “Few people ever realized the tremendous battle that was raging in his soul.” The seed that Meyer would collect ended up in Reimer’s test orchard in Oregon and the U.S. Plant Introduction Station in Glenn Dale. In the early 1950s, a horticul- turist at Glenn Dale named John L. Creech began to see the callery pears as a handsome and tough street tree. He latched on to a single specimen that had been grown from seed that was not part of Meyer’s shipment Frank Meyer in China in 1908 but acquired soon afterward in Nanjing. The tree was 30 years old when Creech first evaluated it. He was struck by its vigor, its handsome, mature spread and ornamental qualities. It was free of diseases and pests and held together in storms. In selecting this individual to mass-produce, Creech named it Bradford after the station’s former head, F.C. Bradford. This specimen’s resilience in storms belied what would become a major problem with its mass-produced Bradford clones: Tight branch-to-trunk angles and congested branching invited the limbs to break apart. Before releasing the Bradford pear to the nursery trade, Creech de- cided to trial it in the nearby Washington suburb of University Park, which was then treeless and had difficult soil — perfect for putting this wondertree to the test. He planted 180 saplings in 1954. He pruned them to keep lower branches out of the way of pedestrians and cars, but also to give each tree a handsome profile. This undoubtedly produced more attractive trees but further hid the Bradford’s weak-wooded Achilles’ heel.

Happy with its performance in University Park — some of the original Bradfords are still there — he officially released the Bradford pear to the nursery trade in 1960 and invited growers to obtain shoots for grafting onto callery pear seedlings. Each Bradford scion would be genetically identical, but the rootstocks each had their own DNA. For a few years, the only thing working against the Bradford was its ubiquity. It was so golden that every nursery grower wanted to propagate it and every home builder and highway department wanted to plant it. In 1966, Creech and his colleague William Ackerman wrote that the University Park plantings had displayed very little fruit, in contrast to Glenn Dale, where 2,500 seedlings had produced “abundant fruit development” on similarly aged Bradfords. Their point was that if you kept Bradfords away from other pears, messy fruiting wouldn’t be a problem. But they clearly missed the ecological repercussions. And in the University Park planting, they noticed something else that should have raised alarms. On a few grafted trees where the scion had failed, the rootstock had produced suckers that then bloomed. These flowers, with the help of bees, caused the “sterile” street trees to set viable fruit. Creech and Ackerman minimized the problem, saying it was highly localized.

Clues to the callery pear’s invasiveness are buried in a journal paper written by Ackerman in 1977, when he announced the introduction of another variety named Whitehouse, chosen because it was more upright than Bradford. But this selection was a fugitive from Glenn Dale, growing as a seed deposited by a bird; Bradford was one of its parents. The callery pear had escaped the reservation. Meanwhile, commercial plant breeders were bringing to market other varieties - many of which were introduced to get around the Bradford’s poor branch structure. Sterile by themselves, any two of these varieties together would produce a heavy fruit set for winter bird dispersal. The stage was set for the callery pear’s quiet occupation of the countryside.

The Leaflet . Winter 2020 7 Art Suchland Named 2019 Outstanding Missouri Tree Farmer of the Year

Annually, the Outstanding Tree Farmer of the Year award recognizes private landowners that have done an exceptional job of forest management on their property and are also actively promoting sustainable forestry. Through this award program, these individuals are honored as leaders in good forestry while their land demonstrates the benefits of good forest management.

The recipient of the Outstanding Tree Farmer of the Year for 2019 is Hannibal resident Art Suchland. The Suchland’s purchased their property in 1987. The Suchland family enjoys time spent together discovering the outdoors. Common activities include hiking and ATV riding along forest trails, camping, bird watching, playing in the rocky creek bottom of Hippo Branch, and hunting deer and turkey.

Over the past few decades the property has received many conservation minded practices. Within the forested areas there have been timber stand improvement projects, invasive species control, regulated forest harvest, tree planting and tree pruning. Today most of the stands have a good amount of oak and walnut trees that are relatively young. In some locations there are mature red oak group species having tree decline issues. There are older, mature white oak and swamp white oak trees that have been producing acorns for wildlife and tree regeneration. Today, much of the forest is at the tipping point of becoming very robust and productive. Art will be recognized at the Missouri Tree Farm Conference banquet on Friday, May 29 at the Best Western on the River in Hannibal. This event is open to Missouri landowners and others who are interested in learning more about the benefits of managing woodland areas on their properties. The focus will be on participation in the Tree Farm System, a national program for woodland owners who are committed to sustainably managing their forested property for wood, water, wildlife and recreation.

Contact Forest and Woodland Association of Missouri Executive Director Laurie Coleman at [email protected] for questions.

The Leaflet . Winter 2020 8 Take a Hike!

Mingo Area In 1976, through the Wilderness Act of 1964, Congress designated 7,730 acres of swamp, riparian areas, and Ozark Plateau uplands as the Area. Mingo Wilderness is an area with numerous tributaries forming a Quick Information: storage watershed in the Monopoly Marsh and Mingo River basin. Natural Wildlife Refuge: 1944 A series of ditches and levees adjacent to the Wilderness Area help Acreage: 21,676 approximate hydrologic conditions that once occurred naturally. A County: Stoddard & Wayne County large diversity of flora and fauna exists within this system which Owner: U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service is home to indigenous species, such as river otter, bowfin, hairy-lip Region: Southeast fern, and nesting bald eagles. The Wilderness Area also serves as Address: 24279 State Highway 51 an important wintering area for migratory waterfowl and critical Puxico, MO 63960 habitat for swamp rabbits, wood ducks, migrating monarch butterflies, and other species.

As the largest remaining tract of bottomland hardwood forest in Missouri, the Mingo Wilderness depends on the safeguards of the Wilderness Act of 1964, the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990, Public Law 94-557, and the Draft Wilderness Stewardship Policy of 2001. These laws are important to protect against a loss of wilderness character leading to a loss of biological integrity and degradation of air and water quality, as well as adverse impacts of invasive species such as feral hogs, nutria, Sericea lespedeza, etc.

While motorized recreational activities are prohibited inside the Mingo Wilderness Area, motorized traffic does occur along non- wilderness corridor roads alongside a network of waterways. Hiking, fishing, wildlife observation, environmental education and interpretation are allowed, as well as biological research as approved through refuge management. The Leaflet . Winter 2020 9 Take a Hike! Featured Events Welcome Maple Syrup Tapping New Members! Date: Saturday, February 22, 2020 - 9:30am to 11:00am, Register by February 14 Location: | 2751 Glencoe Rd. Wildwood, MO | 636-458-2236 Keith Jones Maple sugaring is here and it’s time to tap the trees! Make maple syrup fun for your Rachel Jurina family, even with just one or two trees at home. Learn about sugar maple trees, how Avery Martin to tap trees, and turn sap into syrup. The entire program will be outdoors, so please Haley Petersen dress for the weather. Nathan Rupp

Hike Pickle Springs Ignacio Santa Cruz Date: Saturday, February 22, 2020 - 8:30am to 1:00pm Anna Schonwald Location: Cape Girardeau Nature Center | 2289 County Park Dr. Cape Girardeau, MO Anne Westrich (573) 290-5218 Jennifer Winters This hike loops through a beautiful wooded area. Even in the winter forested areas have a silent grace. This hike is rated easy but does have uneven terrain and hills. Please wear good hiking shoes and weather appropriate clothing. Bring a refillable The Leaflet is produced water bottle and lunch if you wish. Minimum age 12. by the Forest and Woodland Association of Missouri and the Missouri Prescribed Burn Workshop Forestkeepers Network Date: Thursday, March 19, 2020 - 6:00pm to 9:00pm in partnership with the Missouri Department of Location: Mark Twain National Forest | 4 Confederate Ridge Rd. Doniphan, MO Conservation and Prescribed burning can be a valuable tool for managing native plant diversity and Forest ReLeaf. controlling undesirable vegetation, but it can be dangerous and ineffective when not used properly. This workshop will provide basic information about how to plan and EDITORS Corey Knoblauch execute a prescribed burn for grassland management. Laurie Coleman

Drinks and snacks will be provided. To register contact Devin Wood: 573-996-7116 x3 CONTRIBUTORS Russell Hinnah [email protected] Brian Schweiss

DESIGN Amy Klein

Trees Now Available through Forest ReLeaf’s CONTACT 314-533-5323 Project CommuniTree. [email protected] www.forestandwoodland.org Each Spring and Fall, Forest ReLeaf of Missouri distributes trees at no cost for planting projects on nonprofit and public owned land. Trees can be planted at schools, churches, community centers, on public right of way and more!

To reserve your trees, visit moreleaf.org/plant Trees are available on a first come, first serve basis and must be picked up at CommuniTree Gardens Nursery in Creve Coeur Park in Maryland Heights, MO.

The Leaflet . Winter 2020 10 c/o Forest ReLeaf of Missouri 4168 Juniata St. Suite 1 St. Louis, MO 63116

Save the Date! Missouri Forestry Summit August 11-12, 2020 | Capitol Plaza Hotel | Jefferson City

The Forest and Woodland Association of Missouri in conjunction with the Missouri Department of Conservation and partner organizations will host a two-day Forestry Summit on August 11-12 at the Capitol Plaza Hotel in Jefferson City designed to raise awareness of Missouri forest issues. Goals of this effort are to raise awareness, develop needed tools for legislative outreach, and explore new ways to reach landowners and the public.

The conference will consist of presentations for the first day ranging from the current forest structure and concerns, industry concerns, climate change, landowner motivations, and awareness of the newly revised Forest Action Plan.

The second day will focus on current initiatives that promote management including forest certification, the White Oak Initiative, Real American Hardwood Promotion Coalition, priority landscape outreach efforts, and Missouri carbon credit examples. Facilitated sessions will be offered to discuss additional opportunities. The day will conclude with a panel discussion of industry experts regarding key findings from the facilitated sessions.