Yes, There are Trees in Kansas and Nebraska

People sometimes ask how anyone can stomach driving across the plains through boring "fly-over" states such as Kansas or Nebraska.  They envision long, straight, flat stretches of land with nothing but corn extending into the horizon, perhaps at sometime replaced by open grass range.  While I could humorously make the claim that they are missing the forest for the trees and ignoring the majesty of the open grasslands and incredibly huge sky, such places are often better defended by stating that trees actually do exist in nearly all of non-tundra North America.  No, they might not be towering cathedral pillars as they can get to be in the northwestern or eastern forests, but they are hardly shrubs either.
 

This and below were taken at Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve near Council Grove, Kansas.

Each of the plains states and provinces, in fact, have arboreal symbols, some of which tend to surprise people.  Oklahoma's state tree is the Eastern Redbud (Cercis Canadensis), while chilly, open North Dakota's is the American Elm (Ulmus Americana), a tree of great size and commonly a beloved landscape plant throughout eastern North America.  Kansas and Nebraska offer the more common Eastern Cottonwood (Populus Deltoides) which can be found anywhere on the Great Plains that enough water has been provided for the plant to get its start.  Many historic routes and modern highways, in fact, are never far from the reassuring marching line of cottonwoods rising above the grasses and willows as signs of readily available water running along with them.

While the Trans-Canada highway, I-90, 70, and 40 make a clear shot across the grasslands, I-80 stays with the cottonwoods in much of Nebraska as it strikes west along the Platte River.  (See: "Green Is My Platte Valley").  Most towns spring up on the horizon with more trees than buildings in site, even on the high plains.  The truth is that there is enough groundwater and precipitation here that a planted tree can thrive quite well.  Nebraska, in fact, has quite national forests enough to green up the map as much as the eastern states can get painted over.  Grasses are the reason such trees can usually thrive in the first place, their roots being excellent retention agents for water and responsible for making the soil of the plains so workable to begin with.

While the trees do diminish naturally the farther west one goes, to the point of almost negligible forest cover in the rain-shadow of the Rockies, river courses and even slight sharp rises (such as bluffs) will feature some sort of tree cover.  In something of a parley of the trees, east and west invisibly meet in this great division point of North American botany.  Cottonwoods, willows, elms, and cedars follow river courses while they are seemingly watched by western pines and junipers atop river bluffs.