99 PLANT LIFE OF ALABAMA. 
Mesophite forests.—The forests of the fertile valleys and the inclosing’ 
hillsides of a somewhat fertile soil are heavily timbered. The South- 
ern hackberry (Celtis mississ’ppiensis), honey locust, and large, sweet 
or red gum (Laquidambar styracifua), become more frequent among 
the abundant cow oak, Southern red oak, Spanish oak, and the more 
scattered tulip trees, white ash, and hickories of the lowlands, and the 
scarce black walnut. The timber growth on the larger tributaries of 
the Warrior, particularly the Mulberry fork and its numerous branches 
(Cane, Lost, Wolf, and others) crossed by the writer, has been but 
slightly encroached upon. The loblolly pine is confined to the narrow 
bottoms along the banks of the streams. In the semiswampy bottom 
of the Luxapallila, of a cold, somewhat sandy, and compact soil, this pine 
is found of large dimensions, scattered among beech, sweet gum, willow 
oak, cow oak, water oak, and laurel oak, the last two now becoming 
more frequent than observed farther north. The hillsides with a fresh 
soil and the openings in these forests are in the spring and early sum- 
mer adorned by the flowers of the umbrella tree (Magnolia tripetala), 
Fraser magnolia (Jf. fraser?), and large-leaf magnolia (7. macrophylla), 
hy the bloom of the Carolina silverbell, and by the profusion of the 
delicate white-flowered spikes of the small-flowered buckeye (Aeseulus 
parviflora) and the dense clusters of //ydrangea quercifolia, known 
as sevenbark, both of these shrubs, strictly southern Appalachian, 
extending along the mountains to South Carolina and southwestern 
Virginia, respectively, and southward to the Tertiary hills. 
The importance of the forests of the ‘* Hill Country of Alabama,” 
the great mineral region of the State, in connection with the wealth 
hidden in the ground beneath them, can not be too highly appreciated. 
The mining of every ton of coal requires half a cubie foot of timber. 
To this demand of the miner must be added the large drafts upon 
these forests for charcoal and for lumber, which are augmenting with 
the rapid increase of the population at the centers of mining and other 
industries, 
Herbaceous plant associations.—The herbaceous flora of the Lower 
Hills, with its associations of species common on the table-lands and 
in the higher valleys of the mountain region, mingling with forms 
more or less frequent in the Louisianian area, differs but slightly in 
its general character from the similarly mixed flora of the southern 
edge of the metamorphie region. Characteristic, however, is the 
occurrence of a few endemic types confined to a single locality in this 
region and of others of a peculiarly local distribution rarely found 
elsewhere in the Carolinian and Louisianian areas.  Veriusia alabam- 
ensis has already been mentioned as a monotype endemic to this 
region. To this is to be added Croton alabamensis, presently to be 
further discussed.  Phacelia bipinnata brevistylis is known only from 
the banks of the Warrior River near Tuscaloosa, and Croomia puuct- 
