It was a thought provoking experience to stand in a 70+/- million year old sea bed, with the dust and fragments of fossilized shells underfoot, while I painted a remnant of the historic Wild Horse Prairie.
Where the prairie slopes toward drainages, as it does in this spot, fantastic gullies have eroded into the Selma Chalk, a geologic formation that underlies the entire Black Belt prairie region in Alabama and Mississippi. The rich black soil for which the region is named developed under the cover of ancient prairies that occupied the flatter lands, but on these mild slopes eons of erosion have left behind thin, nutrient poor soils. Unsuitable for agriculture and restrictive to tree growth, they are a refuge for prairie species.
Cedar trees do well in these calcareous soils and can tolerate the poor conditions along gullies like this one. Perhaps this is where they occurred historically, sheltered by the open soil of the eroded surface (and minimal build up of grassy fuel) from near-annual prairie fires that would have eliminated them from the prairies at large. Unfortunately, under today’s fire-suppressed conditions, cedars and other trees have shaded out many Black Belt prairie remnants. It’s a similar story for grasslands all over the southeast.
A portion of John La Tourrette’s 1856 Map of Alabama and Florida showing the Wild Horse Prairie straddling the Alabama/Mississippi line.
