Carole and I spent a little more than a week in southern Missouri.
Technically, it's part of the Ozarks. But we saw very little in the
way of anything that could remotely be called a "mountain". Some
rolling topography and a few hills and some gorges. I had to bypass a
placed called Big Tree State Park where they have some state champion
bottomland forest--stuff similar to Congaree National Park. We just
didn't have the time to go there, unfortunately.

What I did notice during our time on and around the Current and Jacks
Fork Rivers (we went there specifically to go canoeing and to explore
the huge fresh water karst springs) was how the forest is so totally
dominated by oaks! Well over half the trees are oaks! I've never been
in a forest so overwhelmingly composed of oak trees. We did see some
pines--mainly shortleaf pines--but by and large all we encountered
were oak forests.

We went to view what was touted as the "last virgin shortleaf pine"
stand in the state. I hiked on a very short trail called "The Hall of
Giants". I was completely unimpressed. Maybe they were "giants" by
shortleaf standards, but hardly worth mentioning. In addition, it
looks as if they stand has been groomed because of ice storm damage to
the understory, so it wasn't like hiking through an untouched forest
at all. In addition, the stand is split in half by a highway.

I Iposted a couple of composite photos of the shortleaf pine forest I
visited in the files section:

As you can see in one photo, a highway cuts the grove in half. Why it
was spared the woodsman's axe I can't say. The most impressive trees
were actually on the other side of the road where there weren't any
trails. Also, I don't know why the understory had been cleared out.
Maybe the Forest Service folk wanted the observers to better be able
to view the pines. Or maybe there was ice storm damage from last year.
I don't know.