Go on Your own Treasure Hunt

In your own yard, park or woods, see if you can find: the tallest tree the smallest leaf a large insect a tiny insect the tallest grass the biggest leaf the largest rock the biggest animal Can you find the lowest elevation? The highest? Draw and illustrate a map of natural treasures you find. Send it to: Outside In Missouri Department of Conservation P.O. Box 180 Jefferson City, MO 65102 Enclose your name and address, and we'll send you a set of six Critter Cards featuring some of Missouri's endangered species.

A Rare Plant

Tracking down one of Missouri's rarest plants, the small white lady-slipper, was a little like playing hide-and-seek. The plant had been missing since 1947, but a man told the Conservation Department in the early 1980s that he had discovered small white lady-slippers growing in Nodaway County. Sadly, the man died in a car accident before he could show conservation agents where he discovered the plants. Later, a roll of film found in the man's car revealed pictures of the rare flowers.

Finally, in 1991, orchid expert Bill Summers confirmed that a group of the small white lady-slippers were growing in Howell County. He found them by accident while looking for another type of orchid.

Small white lady-slippers are members of the orchid family. Mainly they grow in wet prairies, but much of their habitat has been destroyed by farming and development. Orchids are delicate and can't survive trampling by livestock or other changes in their environment. Since Missouri is the second largest cattle producing state after Texas, that means the small white lady-slipper doesn't have much quiet space to grow.

Lowest Point

Missouri's lowest point is also its southernmost point. In Dunklin County, the elevation drops to 205 feet above sea level where the St. Francis River flows into Arkansas.

Unlike Taum Sauk Mountain, the lowest spot in the state isn't marked or easy to get to. Instead, it is in the middle of the St. Francis River where it spreads out and joins the surrounding swampland filled with tupelo and cypress trees.

Highest Point

At 1,772 above sea level, Taum Sauk Mountain is Missouri's highest spot. Located in the Taum Sauk Mountain State Park in Iron County, Taum Sauk is a part of the St. Francois Mountains. From the lookout tower at the top, you can see 15 miles in all directions on a clear day, including 500 square miles of the surrounding forest.

Not only is Taum Sauk Mountain the highest point in the state, it's also the site of the highest waterfall. Mina Sauk Falls gushes in the spring and is only a trickle at other times of the year.

Biggest Fish

A paddlefish is the biggest fish ever caught in Missouri. It weighed 134 pounds, 12 ounces. Joseph C. Manley of Calhoun snagged it in the Lake of the Ozarks on April 10, 1992.

The paddlefish's long spoon or paddle-shaped bill makes it different from other fish, but adult paddlefish have no teeth. Instead, they cruise around the surface of the water or in shallows using special gills to filter out insect larvae and microscopic plants and animals.

Since paddlefish eat such tiny food, they won't go for a baited line. Instead, anglers like Manley use a heavy line with several large hooks attached to "snag" paddlefish or catch them in nets where many paddlefish are grouped together.

Best of the Rest

• The pink planarian is a tiny flatworm that only lives in Devil's Icebox in Rock Bridge Memorial State Park near Columbia.
• A group of white squirrels live in Marionville.
• The Lake of the Ozarks has more shoreline than Lake Michigan and the coast of California.
• Big Spring near Van Buren is the largest single-outlet spring in the United States. It supplies the Current River with 276 million gallons of water a day, more than twice what the population of Kansas City uses in one day.

Aidan Strickland lives in Jefferson City and Yonkers, New York, where she is a senior at Sarah Lawrence College.