County: Red River

Acres: 77

Year Acquired: 2008

We talk a lot about partnerships here at TLC, and the 2008 conservation easement on the Lennox Woods Preserve is a perfect example. The Nature Conservancy owns the total preserve (375 acres), and through another Natural Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA) project, TLC now holds a conservation easement on 77 acres. The preserve was dedicated in 1990 in honor of the Lennox family, who originally acquired the property in 1863, saved it from loggers for four generations, and donated it to TNC in the late 1980s. Lennox Woods is now our northeastern-most conservation easement and is our first in Red River County.

Vegetation at the Lennox Woods represents the westernmost extent of an Austroriparian biotic province, which extends eastward to the Atlantic Coast and southward to the Gulf of Mexico.  This biotic province is characterized by extensive forests of pines and hardwoods, with the hardwood component being dominant at Lennox Woods.  The vegetation community on the property is a "museum piece" of old-growth bottomland hardwood forest.  Overstory trees, including water oak, sweetgum (up to 100' in height), willow oak, shagbark hickory, and shellbark hickory tower over a sub-canopy of ironwood, hornbeam, winged elm, and red maple.

A substantial aquatic habitat component is associated with Pecan Bayou.  The bayou averages 20-25' in width and includes a multitude of associated stream channels.  Common plants species in riparian areas include rushes, sedges, and willow.  We are also excited about several species now under protection at Lennox Woods.  The Arkansas meadow-rue (Thalictrum arkansanum), a rare forest wildflower known from fewer than 20 populations worldwide, is frequent to locally abundant in bottomland hardwood forests on the floodplain of Pecan Bayou.  The hooked buttercup (Ranunculus recurvatus) and Wildenow's sedge (Carex wildenovii) are very rare in Texas, but both can be found beneath the towering trees. Southern lady's slipper orchids (Cypripedium kentuckiense) are another gem of a flower found on the preserve. This orchid is a critically imperiled species in Texas due to habitat destruction.

Even more surprising is the presence of the American burying beetle (Nicrophorus americanus), a federally listed endangered species. Only about 2,500 individuals are thought to still exist.  These black, shiny beetles with large orange spots on their backs are easy to identify if you're lucky enough to see one and are vital components to the decomposition system.