112 PLANT LIFE OF ALABAMA, 
The rolling pine uplands or dry pine barrens. 
Nerophile forests. —On the hills and broad swells of the table-lands 
the long-leaf pine reigns supreme. The high forest is almost bare 
of undergrowth and its monotony is frequently unbroken for long 
distances, no other trees or shrubs appearing among the tall trunks of 
the pine, which spread their gnarled limbs at a height of from 40 to 
65 feet above the ground. It is only in the accidental openings of the 
forest that a second growth of the predominating species takes posses- 
sion of the ground, which, if interfered with by human agency, is 
replaced by black jack and Spanish oaks, not rarely accompanied by the 
dogwood (Cornus florida) and the glandular summer haw ( Crataegus 
Aliptica). This last, which is a pretty tree from 20 to 25 feet high, 
ranges from South Carolina to Mississippi, and in Alabama appears to 
be confined to this region.'| On the sterile ridges deeply covered with 
the mantle of loose white sands, which hide the sandy loams of the 
La Fayette strata, the long-leaf pine becomes stunted and is more or 
less replaced by the barren or turkey oak and blue jack, trees rather 
below medium size, often dwarfed and scrubby; and among the latter 
are dispersed— 
Vaccinium stamineum, Gaylussacia dumosa, 
Vaccinium myrsinites. Asimina parviflora, 
Vaccinium myrsinites glaueum. Ceratiola ericoides. 
The last of these shrubs, representing the Empetraceae, which gener- 
ally inhabit the boreal zone, resembles in its foliage and habit a large 
heather (Erica). It is truly characteristic of the arid pine barrens 
from Florida and adjacent parts of Georgia to Mississippi, and in 
Alabama it reaches its northern limit of vegetation near the northern 
border of the Maritime Pine belt. The pine forests are open, the 
crowns of the trees scarcely touching one another. Owing to the 
poorly timbered ridges of scrubby oaks and the extensive swampy or 
boggy flats equally unfavorable to the development of a heavy timber 
growth, the timber standing in the lower division of the Coast Pine 
belt is considerably less in proportion to area than that found in the 
upper division. 
On the better class of pine lands the quality of the timber is scarcely 
surpassed, as evinced by a close investigation of the timber resources 
of the rolling pine uplands near Wallace, Escambia County, which 
‘an be considered a typical district.’ 
The forests of long-leaf pine of this Lower Pine region furnish prin- 
cipally the enormous supplies of timber used by the sawmills situated 
in the tide-water region of Alabama and western Florida, with Mobile 
'The specific character of this tree does not fully agree with the rather obscure 
type and it may on nearer investigation prove distinct. 
* Bulletin 16, Division of Forestry, U. 8S. Department of Agriculture, 1896, p. 33, 
