12 LOBLOLLY OK NORTH CABOLINA PINE. 



have been found on alluvial lands as far Avest as the eastern end of Surry 

 County and at an altitude of about 700 feet, although 500 feet is the 

 prevailing altitudinal limit in North Carolina. 



PRESENT FOREST. 



Accidental influences, largely circumstances incidental to the settling 

 and development of the country, and other influences which have fol- 

 lowed these, have enabled the tree, by means of its prolific and early seed- 

 ing and rapid growth, to become locally far more w^idely distributed and 

 much more abundant than in the original forest. The most important 

 of these influences which have facilitated the reproduction and distribu- 

 tion of this species have been the abandonment of farming lands, fires, 

 lumbering, and live stock, especially hogs. On account of its adaptabil- 

 ity, loblolly pine has increased in abundance in wet situations as well as 

 on dry sites. In swamps it has often followed cypress, when cypress was 

 cut, wherever standing water during the growing season did not prevent 

 the pine from establishing itself. Wlien hardwoods on the coastal 

 plain were culled, or severely burned, Icrblolly pine became more abun- 

 dant in the hardwood forests, until its young gro-^^h is now common, both 

 on the uplands and in the swamps. It has extensively replaced the long- 

 leaf pine, except on the dryest or sandiest soils. When the longleaf pine 

 died after being exhausted by turpentine or was broken down by the 

 wind, or where it was burned or thinned by lumbering, the loblolly pine 

 succeeded it on all moist, loamy, or clay soils. At the same time hogs 

 destroyed the seeds and seedlings of the longleaf pine, while both seed and 

 seedlings of loblolly were largely neglected, the former because of their 

 small size and the latter because the roots are tough and fibrous. The 

 loblolly pine now occupies in nearly pure forests, much of it more than 

 100 years old, practically all of the cutover .longleaf pine lands north of 

 the jSTeuse Eiver, and a great proportion of the longleaf pine lands south 

 of the !N'euse River and east of Fayetteville and Laurinburg, and i> 

 gradually invading the sandhills of Moore, Cumberland, and Richmond 

 counties. Worn-out farming lands exhausted of humus, which have been 

 turned to fallow, and lands which have been found too poor or often too 

 wet to cultivate, or which were abandoned on account of scarcity of 

 labor, have been stocked with loblolly pine by means of self-sown seed 

 whenever seed-bearing trees Avere near by. Thus this pine has become 

 extensively distributed, and while 100 years ago the longleaf pine was 

 the characteristic forest tree in the Coastal Plain Region of J^orth Caro- 

 lina, at present the loblolly pine is the prevailing tree; and its relative 

 abundance and importance are steadily increasing. 



The distribution of the loblolly pine has also been extended in the 

 Piedmont plateau, though not to the same extent as in the coastal plain. 

 In the eastern part of the Piedmont plateau it has established itself in 

 old fields, often in association wath shortleaf pine, and in stands of hard- 

 woods which have been culled. It is now abundant in the second growth 



