y 
ette counties, the lower half of Winston, the southern edge of Cull- 
man and much of Blount, all of Walker and Jefferson, a great part of 
Tuscaloosa, the northern border of Bibb, and portions of Shelby and 
St. Clair counties. The hills within this region rarely exceed 600 
feet above sea level. The soil resulting from the disintegration of 
FORESTS OF CAHABA VALLEY AND WARRIOR BASIN. 91 
coal-bearing shales, frequently rocky and shallow, is poor and dry. 
NXerophile forests. —The xerophile forests consist largely of decidu- 
ous trees of inferior size. These are upland oaks of the black and red 
oak group, with stunted post oak, more rarely chinquapin oak (Quercus 
acuminata) of a more or less arborescent habit; pignut hickory and 
pale-leaf hickory (///corza villosa), vtree of medium size, lately distin- 
guished, occurring from Missouri. Tennessee, and North Carolina to 
Alabama, being frequent on the rocky hills of the siliceous conglom- 
erates. White-bark maple (Acer levcoderme) and various hawthorns 
( Crataequs collina, C. coceined, C. spathulata, C. mohri, and CL tri- 
flora), all common to this and the mountain region, form the vegeta- 
tion of the dense copses and the undergrowth in these xerophile forests. 
On the outcrops of the subcarboniferous limestone the chestnut oak 
(Quercus aeuminata), here in its best development, is not infrequent, 
and Texas white oak (Quercus brer/loba), known commonly as pin oak, 
finds its northern limit on the calcareous hills near the Mulberry Fork 
of the Warrior River, in Blount County. 
On the cliffs of sandstone which form the eastern brink of the Black 
Warrior River, a short distance above the city of Tuscaloosa, a mono- 
typical shrub, Vertusia alabamensis, tinds its only home. The numer- 
ous slender wand-like stems bear abundant white apetalous flowers in 
the earliest days of spring, when the leaves hegin to appear. This 
unique shrub belongs to the Asiatic element of Alabama’s flora, and is 
strictly contined to the above locality. It was discovered by the Rey. 
R. A. Nevius and Professor Wyman in 1858. 
In Tuscaloosa County, between North River and the Black Warrior 
River, a tract of longleaf pine extends to the banks of Yellow Creek 
near Oregonia, and in the northern part of Walker County a dense 
forest of this pine covers an isolated area of sand and pebbles extend- 
ing over several townships, and is in its timber growth not surpassed 
by the best pine lands, further south. South Lowell, Walker County, 
450 fect above the sea, is near the center of this pine forest. The 
upland willow oak or blue jack, common in the lower Coast Pine belt, 
in this isolated pine forest reaches its most northern station. The 
herbaceous flora presents the same associations of xerophile grasses, 
Leguminosae, and Compositae, common in the maritime belts of long- 
leaf pine. Noteworthy is //elianthus mollis, a rare plant widely 
diffused from the prairies in southern Missouri and Arkansas to Ten- 
nessee and upper Georgia, and known in Alabama also from another 
locality, viz, the pine forests near Gadsden, Etowah County. 
