Photo by C.C. Lockwood.
Purple coneflowers growing at Copenhagen Hills.
I met C.C. Lockwood five years ago, over a kayak sale.
I had been searching for a new boat, when I came across his post online, requesting the craft to be picked up at his tiny cottage of an office in downtown St. Francisville.
The friendship was sealed, though, over coneflowers. The vintage touring kayak turned out to have several additional pieces to it, which C.C. kept finding and dropping off on the porch of my Baton Rouge Garden District home. There were pieces of narrow old styrofoam for balance, and skirts to keep out water (which, I, far less bold and experienced of a kayaker than C.C., would never use). One day, I was home when he came by. It was midsummer and my front yard was blooming, en masse, with stands of purple coneflower, Echinacea purpurea.
C.C., struck by the wildflowers, remarked that they reminded him of the echinacea he encountered at Copenhagen Hills, a preserve in North Louisiana. He had spent time there five years prior, working on his book, Louisiana Wild, which highlights Nature Conservancy preserves across the state.
I had never heard of this place, but began to study it with gusto—vowing to myself that I would convince this new friend of mine to bring me to Copenhagen Hills. Fast forward another five years, and we are now living in the same town, and finally, this much-anticipated trip was to come to fruition. C.C. suggested we wait till the end of July for the best purple coneflower display.
Copenhagen Hills could perhaps be considered the most important ecological site within our state; to say it's a botanical gem is an understatement. Because it was historically unsuitable for mass monoculture crops such as soybeans or cotton, its steep hills have been left largely untouched. The preserve is located just outside of Columbia, Louisiana above the Ouachita River—two and a half hours northeast of St. Francisville and forty minutes directly south of Monroe.
These hills are home to calcareous soils with high clay content, which foster twenty-six rare plant species, twelve of which have never been documented anywhere else in Louisiana. The site is exceptionally concentrated in native woody plants. It is believed that, likely, there are more native woody species here per square mile than anywhere else in the United States, outside of Florida.
"It is a forever joy to witness a native plant within one of its naturally occurring ecological systems. The experience offers an opportunity to survey why and how this plant has come to call this space home."
Will Degravelles, land steward and restoration ecologist for the Louisiana chapter of The Nature Conservancy (TNC), met us at Copenhagen Hills to guide us through some of the prairies. He was there partially for a weekend adventure and partially on the clock. A knowledgeable botanist and forester, Degravelles has been visiting the prairies often as of late, filled with gratitude at the chance to spend more time in the woods than behind a computer. In preparation for a much-anticipated land restoration process, he and a fellow comrade have been marking significant woody species and pockets of woody specimens he deems worthy to remain within the prairie space and not be selectively removed.
Though this year's coneflower display did not match C.C.'s expectations based on his previous visits, we did encounter the flowers dotted throughout the prairies, some of the only herbaceous blooms still standing before the fall display to come. I realized for the first time that I had never before now encountered naturally occurring Echinacea purpurea, a bizarre revelation of a perennial so easy to grow within the cultivated landscape. I scan over hundreds of echinacea blooms each summer day within my perennial gardens. It is a forever joy to witness a native plant within one of its naturally occurring ecological systems. The experience offers an opportunity to survey why and how this plant has come to call this space home. The sporadic echinacea and silphium blooms were dispersed among acres of faded bee balm (Monarda fistulosa), prairie coneflower (Ratibida pinnata), and expanses of warm season grasses.
I had come for the flowers, but DeGravelles gave us a lagniappe education on some extraordinarily rare native woody species. I was especially impacted by the oaks unique to the space—particularly the rare and endangered Oglethorpe Oak (Quercus oglethorpensis), thus far only found in extremely isolated pockets in the southeast. The various hawthornes held my attention, as well. Altogether, these trees create a near unbelievable and thriving ecosystem from a perfect composite of earth elements. It causes me to daydream of the infinite other complex ecological communities that humans have erased with no comprehension or regret.
Both DeGravelles and C.C. are unsure of why the echinacea display at Copenhagen Hill seems to be diminished this year. There could be various factors related to climate change that have altered the space or timeline in the past decade, but, more likely, fire—or rather, the lack of it—is the culprit. Fire has a deep symbiotic relationship with various ecosystems and especially that of the prairie—which historically has been sustained by routine burns, keeping the grasslands open and thriving. The fires came from both natural happenstance and intentional burning by Native peoples. It is, of course, hard to know how often these fires impacted the land, but many find it safe to assume that historically, the burns averaged a biennial occurrence. But the preserve has not seen a burn since 2006, a decade even before C.C. began studying it.
Today, TNC has finally gotten the funding needed to begin restoring the Copenhagen Hill prairie, which depends on regular burns and selective management of the encroaching woody species.
"Copenhagen Hills is a reminder that all is not lost, that we humans and our deep, innate, seemingly biological need to control the natural world can actually coexist symbiotically."
At a time when our lands are nationally facing the threat of losing protection, it was invigorating to visit a natural space more protected than any other I have set foot upon. It was encouraging to observe it in the good hands of TNC and a deeply passionate land steward such as DeGravelles. Louisiana is perhaps one of the most biodiverse states in America, yet nearly ninety percent of the land is still privately held. Copenhagen Hills is a reminder that all is not lost, that we humans and our deep, innate, seemingly biological need to control the natural world can actually coexist symbiotically.
Toward the end of the day, as magnificent storm clouds began to roll in, C.C. and I left DeGravelles alone in R. Dales Prairie (named after the late R. Dale Thomas, professor of botany at the University of Louisiana-Monroe) to continue his woody species marking on a serene prairie remnant, on a slope surrounded by a great undulation of land . . . an oddly divine view the average Louisianan is not blessed to experience.
CC had plans for us to get to the bottomland hardwood area of the preserve, but rain the day prior wouldn’t allow us past the hunting camp headquarters. We jumped out of the truck to knock on the door of the old camp he and his wife Sue had slept in for a week while working on Louisiana Wild, with the blessing of the town mayor/hunting club president of course. Knocking at the door, we found two hunters relaxing mid-day, glasses of bourbon nearby and swisher sweets in hand. I noticed Trump adornment tacked to the walls and hanging from deer antlers. Confused by CC and I, the gentlemen graciously welcomed us into their sacred space. One gentleman called the preserve his weekend getaway from his one-bedroom apartment in Monroe. The other has spent his entire life here, his grandfather once owning partial acreage of the preserve before it was acquired by former governor John Mckeithen.
On their back porch, looking over a now very woody steep hill (view of the Ouachita river recently lost) we discussed chronic wasting disease, the best week in December to shoot a buck, rare plants, acorns, and marine fossils. In those moments I was reminded and touched at the effortless way Louisiana and her natural world seems to connect humans of all sorts: age, color, politics, creed and pocketbook fall to the wayside over discussion of deer, shark teeth, and coneflowers.
To support the work of TNC, visit preserve.nature.org.
