Conservation Department is giving cane a brake

Efforts are under way to learn how to encourage a plant that once helped define southern Missouri's landscape.

GAINESVILLE, Mo.--Viewed from the air in January, Bryant Creek is an emerald ribbon draped across the gray landscape from its headwaters in Douglas County to Norfork Lake 70 miles to the southeast. Look closely and you will see occasional areas where the fabled smallmouth bass stream has an irregular, olive-green border. The patches are all that remain of cane thickets that once cloaked stream banks in much of southern Missouri. In a way, they are windows on the past.

The Missouri Department of Conservation is opening that window a crack. It is a time-consuming effort but one that could pay substantial dividends for those who treasure the state's wild heritage.

When European settlers began pouring into southern Missouri, the region was a patchwork of bottomland and upland forest, glades, savannas and--along creeks and rivers--dense thickets of native bamboo. This plant, Arundinaria gigantea, grew in low-lying areas along streams from the huge Mississippi River to tiny headwater streams. Then, as now, it went by several names, the most common of which were giant cane and switch cane.

Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, one of Missouri's early explorers, traveled through the upper White River region spanning what is now the Missouri-Arkansas border in 1818 and 1819. He reported canebrakes that were, "the most extensive, rich, and beautiful, of any which I have ever seen west of the Mississippi River. They are covered by a coarse wild grass, which attains so great a height that it completely hides a man on horseback."

In the Bootheel region of extreme southeast Missouri, dense thickets, called canebrakes, blanketed thousands of acres. Today, you are lucky to find a cane patch of more than an acre. Where did Missouri's once vast expanses of cane go? Historic records provide clues.

Giant cane grew best in river bottoms, where the soil was covered with water in the winter and dried out in the summer. Indians farmed canebrakes, harvesting the plants' tender shoots for food and burning patches to clear crop fields. Ash residue fertilized the soil temporarily, and when fields played out the Indians moved their fields and let the cane reclaim and rejuvenate its old territory.

When European diseases decimated the area's Indian population, cane ran riot, forming dense brakes covering hundreds of acres. The same things that made the canebrakes attractive to Indians were equally appealing to the Europeans who moved in next. They grazed their livestock on cane, which stayed green year-round. Because they were easier to clear than forested acres, cane patches were among the first parts of the rich bottomland to be cultivated.

Unlike the Indians, Europeans plowed up the cane rhizomes and never let the cane reclaim fields. And because seasonal flooding hampered spring and fall plowing, they dug ditches to drain the entire Bootheel region. Before long, giant cane clung to life only along razor-thin margins of fields, forests and streams like Bryant Creek.

What seemed like progress to settlers was bad news for bears, deer, elk, cougars, swamp rabbits, songbirds and a host of other wildlife.

"Canebrakes are home to a unique assemblage of wildlife," said Natural History Biologist Bob Gillespie. "No doubt some plants and animals that once thrived in Missouri's canebrakes already have been lost, but they still support a number of imperiled species."

Among those imperiled animals are the Swainson's warbler, swamp rabbits, golden mice, the Southeastern shrew and more than 15 kinds of butterflies and moths whose caterpillars eat only cane.

This diverse and unique biological community is part of Missouri's natural heritage. Consequently, it is part of the Conservation Department's mission to preserve or recreate examples of it.

"By developing restoration techniques we can offset losses of additional cane stands," said Gillespie. "That will sustain populations of organisms that require cane in their life cycles. Then we can learn more about those organisms and possibly reassemble a once widespread, diverse and extremely biologically significant ecosystem."

Discovering how to accomplish that has been a decades-long process of trial and error. Resource Technician Fallis Frazier started working on cane restoration almost as soon as he came to work for the Conservation Department 23 years ago.

Frazier was born on land adjacent to the 7,919-acre Caney Mountain Conservation Area (CA) in Ozark County. As a youngster, he would grab a dry stalk of river cane for a fishing pole. He has read local histories that mention canebrakes so large and dense people got lost in them. But by the time he joined the Conservation Department, there was no cane to be found on the area. He attributes the disappearance to annual burning and nonstop livestock grazing.

Initial efforts to return cane to Caney Mountain and other conservation areas were hit-or-miss. Considering how widespread it once was, giant cane seems to be surprisingly difficult to get started. Compared to its vertical growth, which can be spectacular, the expansion of cane patches is surprisingly slow.

Cane produces seed only every 20 to 50 years. To spread, it sends out horizontal roots, called rhizomes. These lie dormant until something eliminates existing vegetation, and then they shoot up fast to shade out competing plants.

Although hardy when established, the plants' roots and rhizomes can not tolerate drying. Cane plants seldom survive when transplanted as bare-root stock, as commonly is done with trees.

One possible explanation for this is that cane is like orchids, which require particular fungi growing on their roots to survive. In general, the bigger the mass of roots and soil used in cane transplanting, the better the outcome. Frazier has had good luck plucking up big clumps of cane with a backhoe.

After transplanting, cane plants typically require a year to take root. The second year after transplanting, they send out rhizomes that can travel 15 feet underground before reemerging. In the third year, cane plants grow rapidly. Under ideal conditions, they can grow 15 feet tall in a single growing season. Mature plants can be 20 feet tall, with stalks an inch in diameter.

The Conservation Department is studying the effectiveness of removing nearby trees to provide more sunlight and speed the growth of cane patches.

The Conservation Department has cane restoration projects at Donaldson Point CA in New Madrid County, Apple Creek CA in Cape Girardeau County, Mudpuppy, Hemmenway and Little Black CAs in Ripley County and Peck Ranch CA in Carter County. Frazier says he and other workers at Caney Mountain CA reintroduce cane to new areas almost every year.

The National Park Service has extensive patches of restored cane on the Ozark National Scenic Riverways, and The Nature Conservancy is pursuing cane restoration on its Missouri landholdings. The Conservation Department also is restoring cane on lands leased from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers at Lake Wappapello.

"We are still learning about this remarkable plant," said A.J. Hendershott, the Conservation Department's outreach and education regional supervisor in Cape Girardeau. "What we do know is that it was an important part of the original landscape in southern Missouri, too important to lose. My hope is that one day people can push through a canebrake just like Teddy Roosevelt did years before them. This ongoing work is just one of the things Missouri is able to do thanks to a stable, adequate source of funding through the conservation sales tax."

- Jim Low -

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