Several of the land areas maintained by the Missouri Department of Conservation in Texas County got a little prettier last week.
Texas County resource forester Travis Mills and members of his crew planted 35 trees last Thursday (Oct. 8) at the Austin Lake Conservation Area (in the southwest corner of the county) and at four Big Piney River accesses: Simmons Ford, Baptist Camp, Dogs Bluff and Boiling Springs.
“We’re trying to beautify each area,” Mills said, “and there may be some benefits we don’t even know about right now.”
Mills said those range from potentially hindering snowdrifts at the wide-open Simmons Ford area to tending to the future of foliage in areas where trees are at or near the end of their healthy cycles, or already dying.
“A lot of the trees in these areas are really old – 100-plus years in some cases,” he said. “They’re well past their maturity and we’re losing them, so if we don’t plant now we’ll be way behind the curve.”
The trees used in the project were all two to three-years-old, and from species native to some part of Missouri (including bur oak, white oak, tulip poplar, bald cypress and redbud). They were obtained for free from Forest ReLeaf of Missouri, a non-profit organization based in St. Louis.
Fourteen trees – mostly bald cypress – were planted in the open grassy area along the west side of the paved strip at Simmons Ford (on U.S. 63 south of Houston).
“We try to match species to each site the best we can,” Mills said, “so they grow as well as possible.”
Forest ReLeaf was founded in 1993 and has to date assisted 1,850 projects and had 150,000 trees planted all over Missouri and Illinois. Mills said his crew of foresters is always on the lookout for a good tree-planting opportunity.
“We feel like we’re leaving another legacy,” he said. “We take trees for granted a lot of times, but people get a lot of benefits out of them, so we do this kind of thing whenever it’s feasible.”