Leighton Reid describes a field trip to a unique, natural community with Tom Wieboldt, retired curator of the Massey Herbarium at Virginia Tech.
From southwestern Virginia to central Pennsylvania, ancient shale formations jut out of the mountains at wonky angles. Loose and crumbly, the rocks bake in the sun. Surface temperatures can reach 60° C (140° F) – comparable to a desert. Rocks slip and tumble easily on the steep slopes. Few eastern plants are tough enough to hack it under these conditions. Among those that can, a few are globally unique.
On a warm day in August, I had the opportunity to botanize one such place – a central Appalachian shale barren in Craig County, Virginia – with Tom Wieboldt, retired curator of the Massey Herbarium at Virginia Tech (VPI), and a leading authority on shale barren flora. As we hiked and photographed plants, we talked about the conservation and potential for ecological restoration of these rare communities.
The gems of the shale barrens are the endemics. Amazingly, 22 species are found mostly or exclusively on central Appalachian shale barrens. Another seven species are rare or disjunct from the rest of their range – typically far to the west. For example, the closest population of chestnut lip fern (Cheilanthes castanea) outside of Virginia and West Virginia is in Oklahoma.
Shale barren plant communities exist in a dynamic equilibrium. The steep, brittle shale formations often are under-cut by rivers, which carry away rocks and cause further erosion. In essence, the entire slope is constantly slipping downwards. Successful plants find the most stable areas and send down deep roots to try to keep their place on the rocky conveyor belt.
Why do shale barrens occur only in the Central Appalachians and not also in the Southern Appalachians? Tom gave me two reasons. First, the shale deposits in the Central Appalachians get thinner south of Montgomery County, Virginia, where Virginia Tech is located. Second, the high Allegheny Mountains in West Virginia create a rain shadow over parts of the Central Appalachians, more so than the more southern and shorter Cumberland Mountains. Drier conditions in the Allegheny rain shadow contribute to the shale barrens’ uniquely western ambiance.
Inhospitable as they are, shale barrens are not immune from human pressures. They are sometimes crossed by roads or utilities, and shale banks are sometimes quarried for road-building material. Livestock and overpopulated white-tailed deer browse the plants and catalyze erosion, while also adding nitrogen and foreign seeds to the sparse soil.
Can disturbed shale barrens be restored?
When Reed Noss visited a Virginia shale barren for his book Forgotten Grasslands of the South, he found traversing the slippery slopes, lurching from one scattered red cedar to another, “close to suicidal”. I had similar thoughts following Tom up the mountainside. He climbed like a mountain goat, wandering out on thin ledges to collect interesting looking mosses.
As we walked, Tom wondered aloud whether it would even be possible to restore such a fragile plant community if it was destroyed. Wouldn’t it be better just to leave these places alone?
Undoubtedly leaving these places alone would be better. But I enjoyed thinking about how one might restore a shale barren that had already been destroyed – by quarrying, for instance. A first step might be to recontour the slope, aiming to reestablish a dynamic equilibrium with some areas eroding more actively than others. Perhaps this could be done by a skilled operator with some of the same quarrying equipment that had previously exploited the loose shale.
To revegetate such a place would require a source of propagules. I am teaching a course on Plant Materials for Environmental Restoration, so I put it to my students to find out whether shale barren plants were available from two major conservation seed suppliers. The results were not promising. Out of 86 native, non-woody angiosperms found in central Appalachian shale barrens*, less than a quarter (23.3%) could be purchased from any major seed supplier, and only 2.3% were available as seed collected from Virginia. None of the endemics were available.
As far as I can tell, few shale barren restorations have been undertaken, but I did read about one attempt in a shale barren in Green Ridge State Forest, Maryland. Whereas some shale barrens are actively threatened by acute pressures, like quarrying, this small (0.6 ha) barren was passively threatened by steady encroachment from the surrounding forest. Trees, especially pignut hickory (Carya glabra), were growing into a formerly open barren, stabilizing the soil and cutting off direct sunlight to plants closer to the ground. Managers restored the site in 2010-2011 by removing some of the pignut hickories and by burning the area during the winter. Together, these actions resulted in greater herbaceous vegetation cover and greater species diversity.
Thanks to Tom Wieboldt for a fun field day, an excellent guest lecture, and stimulating discussions about botany, conservation, and restoration. To learn more about this unique natural community, read Tom’s co-authored chapter about shale barren communities in Savannas, Barrens, and Rock Outcrop Communities of North America, or Reed Noss’s chapter on shale barrens in Forgotten Grasslands of the South.
*For the seed availability exercise, we used the list of plants recorded by the Virginia Natural Heritage Program in their description of Central Appalachian Shale Barren (Shale Ridge Bald / Prairie Type) CEGL008530. We excluded woody plants, non-native plants, and ferns.
Natural History of Ecological Restoration 