112 PLANT LIFE OF ALABAMA. 



The Tolling pine uplands or d/ry pine barrens. 



Xer ophite 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 (Comus florida) and the glandular summer haw (Crataegm 

 elliptica). 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. 1 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 



Vacdnium stamineum. Gaylussacia dumosa. 



Vaccinium myrsinites. Asimina parviflora. 



Vacdnium myrsinites glaucum. 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 

 can be considered a typical district. 2 



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 



1 The specific character of this tree does not fully agree with the rather obscure 

 type and it may on nearer investigation prove distinct. 



2 Bulletin 16, Division of Forestry, U. S. Department of Agriculture, 1896, p. 33. 



