8 THE FOREST FLORA AND CONDITIONS OF 



dance of this class of trees lies in the eastern division of 

 the state. The specially fertile character of the soil in 

 the blue-grass region has resulted, through clearing, in. 

 the practical disappearance of all large bodies of hard- 

 wood trees wherever the farms are of uniformly good 

 land. The often almost total lack of farm wood-lots is a 

 feature that strikes the stranger. The courses of large 

 and small streams usually have fringes of hard woods, 

 areas which broaden out wherever the land becomes un- 

 agricultural, that is, composed of surface lime and 

 other rock. The remnant old forest-trees in rich, moist 

 bottoms are usually large, and consist principally of 

 tulip-tree, white, red, green, and blue ashes, white oak, 

 chestnut oak, bur oak, cow oak, overcup oak, chinqua- 

 pin oak, red, yellow, and Texas oaks, together with red, 

 black, sugar, and ash-leaved maples. The white linden, or 

 basswood, which is the peculiar Tilia of Southern for- 

 ests, is a large timber tree throughout Middle Tennessee, 

 scattered in single or groups of a few individuals along 

 the streams or here and there over the dry, rocky hills. 

 One sees an occasional silver-leaf maple, black willow, 

 water and honey locust, box-elder, winged and American 

 elms, and also the adaptive Southern hackberry, occupy- 

 ing the low, clayey spots. The upland wooded areas are 

 further characterized by several distinct soil conditions, 

 three of which are very common. Poor, dry, gravelly, 

 and clayey hills and knobs have beech, white oak, red 

 oak, pignut, mockernut, and shellbark hickory, and 

 sometimes here and there a red cedar. Then, again, one 

 meets a richer, clayey loam with frequent outcroppings 

 of shaly limestone, in places running out into large areas 

 of exposed, deeply fissured lime rock, where the charac- 

 teristic forest-trees are sugar maples, beech, white bass- 

 wood, red and yellow oaks, white and chinquapin oaks, 

 bitternut, shagbark and shellbark hickory, red mulberry, 

 Southern hackberry, white and blue ashes, honey locust, 

 hop hornbeam, and many smaller, unimportant trees. 



The extensive areas of exposed lime rock, with numer- 

 ous deep fissures, is in spots often strangely well clad 



