One of the details I noticed about Bancroft Bay City Park when I visited this place as part of my research for the Lifestyles article in the Oct. 19 issue was a phenomenon called an oak savanna.

The simplest way to explain an oak savanna is to say its a woodland with very little underbrush. In the olden days the underbrush was controlled by wildfires, hungry deer and later by cattle. Thus, these prairie grasslands with their wildflowers and somewhat scattered trees, mostly oaks, became a part of the landscape in this part of the nation.

Some time during the past decade I wrote an article about this particular part of the scenery and environment for a now nearly forgotten Tribune publication called Southern Minnesota Ag Monthly.

What inspired my original article was the search for an appropriate topic. As a result, I came across a pamphlet about oak savannas. This was certainly a rural topic. From this pamphlet I found out the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources had an Oak Savanna Landscape Project Community Coordinator based in an office on Rose Street in Owatonna.

This pamphlet listed the following places where folks could see an oak savanna:

Myre-Big Island State Park, Albert Lea; Hormel Nature Center, Austin; Quarry Hill Nature Center, Rochester; Carleton College Arboretum, Northfield; Chester Woods, Olmsted County; and what was listed as Highway 56 Wildflower Route and Scenic Byway in Mower County.

The Owatonna office a decade ago concentrated on the area from Waseca to Rochester south to Le Roy and west to Albert Lea. The office’s goal was to help landowners to participate in resource management to enhance the preservation or restoration of oak savannas. This would improve water quality, protect and restore a more natural setting and increased biodiversity.

What has to be the most interesting quotation in this 1998 pamphlet has a direct connection with Albert Lea. This quotation was written by a member of the U.S. Army’s First Dragoons exploring party, which went across the north part of the area in late July 1835:

“The men are taking their rest in the shade, their horses grazing beside them … The land here is good, grass and herbage of all kinds in the highest natural state. Grass is eight feet high. Signs of beaver, muskrat and otter … saw several handsome lakes and some of the most beautiful small prairies I have seen since I have been in the West. … This far surpasses any country I have ever seen for both beauty and fertility.”

After writing this article for the Southern Minnesota Ag Monthly, I made it a special point to watch for oak savannas during my wanderings around the countryside. One of the best examples I found a short time later was in a large cow pasture to the east of Lerdal just off County Road 25.

However, there’s a serious problem for the oak savannas in this part of the nation. Invasive foreign species like European buckthorn, Tartarian honeysuckle and amur or ginnala maple have really caused problems in the area’s woodlands.

A good example of what’s partly an oak savanna and partly a sad mess of woodland is on the east side of North Bridge Avenue between Riverland Drive and Hershey Street and to the south of J.M. Snyder Fields.

As I stressed in the first part of this column, my interest in oak savannas was revived by my recent visits to Bancroft Bay City Park. Years ago I had several telephone conversations with the young lady up in Owatonna who was in charge of this state program in this area. It was my intention to update information about the oak savanna topic for this column.

I called the Rochester office of the DNR and they advised me to call the DNR Information Center in St. Paul. The person who answered my call said the area oak savanna program was no longer active. Then, as a favor, she found a copy of the 1998 pamphlet, which helped to supply some of the information used for this column.

Incidentally, I think the oak savanna concept should be firmly advocated and buckthorn should be wiped out.

Ed Shannon’s column has been appearing in the Tribune every Friday since December 1984.