Chinquapin oak forest and limestone.

I bought this book recently, finally. I wanted it for a long time. It is a book with lists of all the vascular plants in John Bryan State Park, Glen Helen Nature Preserve, and Clifton Gorge State Nature Preserve. All three are on Limestone gorges on the Little Miami River in Greene County, Ohio.

I wanted this book because I am thinking more now about limestone edaphic plant communities. There are many this kind around me, calcareous prairie-fens, limestone and dolomite gorges, old quarries, and limestone talus slopes.

The picture above is part from a bedrock map of Ohio. The black box is center on Greene county. You can see. most the bedrock in the county is Silurian dolomite (Green and Gray) with Silurian limestone under (Tan). The bedrock under the Silurian layer is a mixed Ordovician dolomite-shale (Purple). In most areas the bedrock is not exposed, because there are many feet of Wisconsonian age sediment and soil over the top. But rivers cut down through both the glacial terrain and the bedrock, so happen around rivers many times the bedrock is exposed. This is what happens in Clifton Gorge, Massie Creek gorge in Cedarville, and around other streams and rivers in the area. Many times when the soil is deep the bedrock under will push the groundwater up through calcareous gravel and make marl flats on the surface. This is where you can find fens. But this post it is really not about low areas but about the ridges and more dry areas one kind tree I many times find there, Chinquapin Oak (Quercus muhlenbergii).

Bark from large old Chinquapin Oak in Clifton Gorge.

In Clifton Gorge and other limestone ridges in Greene County, the most common large canopy tree is chinquapin oak. Sture Anliot, the author of the Clifton Gorge plant list book, wrote that he thought these chinquapin oak dominant forests were an intermediate forest type between Oak-Hickory forests you can see all around the Dayton area here and East, and Beech-Sugar Maple forests you can see more in far West Ohio. Or maybe they were a kind of Oak-Sugar Maple forest everywhere in Southwest Ohio.

Pink=Oak-Hickory and Thickets; Yellow=Prairie; Orange=Oak-Sugar Maple; Green=Beech-Sugar Maple; Purple=Ash-cottonwood swamp

The map above shows four forest types for the original vegetation in Greene County. For the Oak-Hickory forest, a close good example site is the woods around the fen in Gallagher Fen State Nature Preserve in south Clark County. For Beech-Maple forest, Davey Woods State Nature Preserve in Champaign County or Hueston Woods State Nature Preserve in Preble County are the best examples in Southwest Ohio. For Red Oak-Sugar Maple forest, I really like the Wright State University Woods.

Chinquapin Oak Leaf

When I see chinquapin oak in these habitats, most times I see the leaves first and then happen I realize they come from the biggest tree trunks second. The dead leaves are really distinct in these areas because they are the only leaf with wave tooth margins. The other trees are mixed but most times I see sugar maples and other oaks. There are chinquapin oaks in Clifton Gorge, in John Bryan, and in Glen Helen, but they are also in the Wright State University Woods on ridges, and on the Brassfield Limestone remnant at Oakes Quarry in Fairborn. They are probably in Indian Mound Reserve, but I not yet look for them there.

The weird thing about these really big trees is happen, they not really grow best in these kind dry closed forests. They like open areas, savannahs, prairies, where they can grow and grow and grow with no competition.  It is the same habitat where happen you can see Bur Oak (Quercus macrocarpus). We see these big oaks on limestone ridges and slopes many times, in Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, and other states. But also happen we never really see seedlings or young trees. This is because Chinquapin Oak is not shade tolerant. It only really grows in disturbed areas. When the canopy opens it grows really fast and when it matures it lives a really long time. When the understory is shaded there are no more new trees until the next big disturbance, maybe a windstorm or a fire. So happen, they are not really climax species in this habitat, and this is not really a special forest type, it is Oak-Sugar Maple or Mixed Oak forest with co-dominant Chinquapin Oak. And maybe in 100 years if the canopy is stable enough happen all the Chinquapin Oaks they will die from old age and these habitats will be only other oaks and Sugar Maple. When I compare other species in these habitats, I find they are really normal Oak-Maple forests with maybe some calcium loving elements.

People not really learn this until after Anliot wrote his book. I think it is interesting how if we look at ecosystems in only one time we can judge them wrong, we can think a relic from more early disturbance is a climax species. And it really is common tree for see on these ridges and slopes in Greene County, so happen maybe it is still important in the right times.