Drought, Apical dominance and Invasive shrubs

Mesonet this morning reports that this 30 day period just finished, is the driest period across these dates in the past 100 years. However one views the data, it is clear the Woods are in an unusually dry period. I entered the SW Gate at 10 AM to walk through the southern Woods and to see what may have changed. The canopy of the Woods is still green. Few leaves have fallen or begun to change color. Many box elder along the trail had stump sprouts or growth of green shoots and leaves from axillary buds along the stem. I wondered if this could be a response to inadequate auxin from poor growth at the top of the tree, resulting from the heat and summer drought. Need to check with tree physiologists.

As I was contemplating this, another form of 'dominance' erupted - mobbing. Five crows, sounding like 50, began raucous calling and harassment, likely of some hapless predator they'd found. A sleepy barred owl or young hawk. The uproar continued for several minutes until the whole flock of noise flew west.

I walked the South Boundary Trail of the SW loop. West of the Beaver dam, small lines and patches of light fine sand were accumulating on the bare dry cracked earth along the Main SW trail. I've seen this before in other dry, hot La Nina years. This looks like the result of the process OU professor Asa Weese described as the potential source of the sand dune in Oliver's Woods. Prevailing SW dry winds carrying sand from the South Canadian River and depositing it in Oliver's Woods. An extensive dry period five thousand years ago may have been the time of the growth of the dune. [Weese was a distinguished academic, President of the Ecological Society 1931, Ecologist of the Oklahoma Biological Survey, President of the Oklahoma Academy of Science 1931-1933. ]

https://www.esa.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/94/2022/02/Weese_AO.pdf

Walking along the NW side of the dune, I enjoyed seeing a monarch butterfly out in the sunshine. Their migration south is continuing. The sunny patch was an opening produced by die back of several large invasive Ligustrum privet shrubs. Privet all through the Woods was killed by extreme February cold 2021. Now dead stems of privet carry small patches of a white decay fungus, likely turkey tails, Trametes versicolor. 

Crossing the dune on the West Dune trail there are several invasive Amur honeysuckle Lonicera maackii that should be removed before they can start to take over the Woods as they have in other local preserves (e.g Riley Park Noble OK).