The largest tract of this type can be found just northwest of Deans Lake in Shakopee. Leadplant, prairie willow, and prairie rose are common shrubs. Typically contain an open canopy composed of bur oak and northern pin oak. These occur on excessively drained soils on wind-blown sand dunes on terraces along the Minnesota River. These types of woodlands can be found in Cleary Lake Regional Park, Louisville Swamp area, and Street Lawrence township in Scott County. The shrub layer is often found dense and dominated by American hazel, chokecherry, prickly ash, smooth sumac, and gray dogwood. The canopy is dominated by northern pin oak, bur oak, and/or white oak, with some paper birch, eastern red cedar, quaking aspen, basswood, and big-toothed aspen. Oak woodland-brushland are dry woodlands on well-drained, dry to mesic soils formed on glacial till or glacial river outwash, often on south- to west-facing slopes. The largest tract of Maple-Basswood Forest in Scott County can be found in Louisville township. Remnants of Maple-Basswood Forest are scattered throughout Scott County and can be found in the Blakely bluffs, Belle Plaine, Sand Creek, and Helena townships, as well as, Spring Lake Regional Park, and the Savage Fen Scientific and Natural Area. Maple-Basswood Forest occurs only on protected sites, where catastrophic forest crown fires were rare historically. Maple-Basswood Forests, often referred to as “Big Woods” by early Minnesotans, are dominated by dense, continuous canopies of basswoods, sugar maples, and American elms. The shrub layer in mesic stands is sparser than in dry stands of oak forest. The mesic type oak forests can be found in Scott County in Murphy Hanrehan Park, which is the largest community of oak forest in the county, and in the bluffs of Blakely township. Commonly, basswood, green ash, bitternut hickory, big-toothed aspen, and butternut are present in the understory. They have tall (less than 20 meters), trees that lack lower spreading branches. These stands most likely were always forest, rather than woodland or savanna.
These stands occur on sites that had fewer severe fires before European settlement than the sites on which dry mixed oak forest occurs. Mesic oak forests in Scott County are dominated by red oak, white oak, and bur oak.
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