13 



The bottomland associations in the Cache River basin are cypress and 

 tnpelo gum near the channels and sloughs, with some willow, elm. soft 

 maple, sycamore, Carolina poplar. Mississippi Cottonwood, ash, and red 

 and black gums. Between the sloughs and the better drained parts red 

 gum, ash, and pin oak form the bulk of the stand and water hickory may 

 be found. On the better drained parts of the flood lands, the stands show 

 a greater variety of species such as white, swamp white, Spanish, cow, 

 overcup, bur and willow oaks ; ash ; hackberry ; shagbark, big shellbark, 

 mocker-nut. and bitternut hickories ; honey and water locust ; and even 

 beech and hard maple. Approximately 43% of the Cache bottomland 

 is still timbered. 



These forests along the course of the Cache River are rather con- 

 tinuously wooded areas averaging two miles in width. (See Map III D. ) 

 The cutting practice has been to harvest the so-called "soft-woods" 

 and to leave such species as oak and hickory. Consequently, these 

 forests are composed of groups of young trees filling in between the 

 old trees which remain. There remain but very few forties which 

 have not been cut over from one to four times for "softwoods". In spite 

 of this practice the growth is very fast and the yields per acre high. 



The few virgin stands remaining show yields from ID to 15M. B. F. 

 per acre. ( See Plate VI. Fig. 1.) The average for the entire SO, 199 acres 

 of Cache bottomland is 1,95G B. F. per acre as contrasted with 1.393 

 B. F. per acre average for all bottomlands of the state. The representa- 

 tion by species as given in the tabulation (page 10) shows that 23 com- 

 mercial species were found on the 15.5 acres measured, and that the oaks 

 and hickories make up but 17 per cent of the stand, while cypress and 

 tupelo, unimportant or entirely absent from all other bottomlands, form 

 in the Cache bottoms 43 per cent of the stand. Representation of species 

 by per cents based on 15. -iG acres (as shown on p. 10) is as follows: 

 cypress, 23.5; tupelo gum, 19.8; red gum, 10.5; elm, 9.8; ash. 6.0; white 

 oak, 5.1 ; soft maple, 4.5 ; black oak, 4.2 ; cottonwood, 4.0 ; pin oak, 3.3 ; 

 hickory, 2.5; black gum, 1.6; swamp white oak, 1.5; willow, 1.3; hack- 

 berry, .6; Mississippi cottonwood, .5; sycamore, .5; swamp Spanish oak, 

 .3; honey locust. .1 ; Schneck's oak, .1 ; cow oak, .1 ; and bur oak, .1. 



Thus the Cache bottomland forests are characterized by rather con- 

 tinuous uneven-aged stands, by the greatest variety of species found on 

 the bottomlands of any river system of the state, by a high representa- 

 tion of "softwoods" with such unusual species as cypress and tupelo gum 

 commonly occurring, and by a relatively high yield per acre. 



