Oklahoma Native Plant Record  3 
Volume 10, December 2010 
 

   

Foreword 
 

This year, our 10
th
 year of publication, is marked by our entry into the World Wide Web. 

We‟ve been working with Digital Services at Oklahoma State University‟s Edmon Low Library 
to make the Oklahoma Native Plant Record available to everyone, globally. We are ready for the 
new age of botanists who have grown up in the digital age and expect to be able to submit 
articles without picking up a pencil or putting a stamp on an envelope. Some of us will be 
challenged to think and communicate differently, as we re-tool our offices and struggle to learn 
electronic text, graphics, and statistics programs. We ask for your patience as we make the 
transition and offer our help as you continue to submit, review, and read our articles. 

 

We have a very useful historical article this year, “The Identification of Some of the More 
Common Native Oklahoma Grasses by Vegetative Characters”. It is the Master‟s thesis of 
William Franklin Harris, who graduated from Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanical College 
(now OSU) in 1949. He submitted this as his Master‟s thesis the following year. Though a 
commonly used key to the grasses of Oklahoma, it is overdue for publication. Hopefully this 
version, updated by Dr. Ronald J. Tyrl, recently retired botanist from OSU, will inspire new 
taxonomists. 

 

Dr. Bruce Hoagland and Ms. Amy Buthod, from the Oklahoma Biological Survey, have 
given us a new checklist for one of the most popular regions of the state, Ouachita National 
Forest. Since Thomas Nuttall‟s visit in 1819 the area has been inventoried numerous times, but 
only three floristic lists have been published for this vast and diverse area. This list of species 
collected at the Camp Tom Hale Scout Reservation is an extension of their 2009 study in the 
Cucumber Creek area, which is 66 km SE of this site. It is intended to enhance the knowledge of 
plant distributions in the Ouachita Mountains in LeFlore County and to be used as an 
educational tool by the Boy Scouts of America. 

 

Ms. Mary Gard is a graduate of Oklahoma State University. Her preliminary research on the 
toxicity of Tephrosia virginiana plants in Oklahoma provides insight to their historic use by Native 
Americans to stun fish to facilitate their capture. While some of the findings of previous studies 
were similar, this new study also raises questions that she intends to address in future research. 

 

Dr. Bruce Smith, our local native fern expert, has provided us another educational and 
enjoyable article. This year it is on ferns found in the more arid regions of Western Oklahoma. 
Again, he has detailed photos which illustrate Oklahoma species of this important, but often 
overlooked, taxon. 

 

Because the purpose of the Society is to encourage the study of native plants, the Record has 
an obligation to its readers to be a resource for study. To that end, our “Critic‟s Choice” essay 
this year is written by Dr. Ron Tyrl. His stories are proverbially erudite, holding our attention 
and giving us an intriguing piece of his knowledge that keeps us wanting more. Acknowledging 
the importance of taxonomic identification tools, like Patricia Folley‟s field guide for Oklahoma 
wildflowers (forthcoming from Iowa Press), he underscores the importance of keys for learning 
those species that aren‟t often photographed. He provides us with an historic perspective on the 
format styles and use of keys like those of Harris and Linnaeus.  
 

Sheila Strawn 
Managing Editor