16 FOREST RESOURCES OF TEXAS. 



Hardwood forests of alluvial bottoms. 



The mixed loblolly and hardwood forest of the interior of the Coast 



Plain. 



The longleaf forests of the Fayette Prairie. 

 The hardwood and shortleaf forests of the Lignitic Belt. . 



SWA MI' AND J>AYOU FoKESTS. 



These forests are of the same character as the weirdly picturesque 

 water forests of the Coast Plain in Louisiana. Along the lower Neches 

 and Sabine rivers, at Beaumont and Orange for example, the type is 

 as fully developed as on the bayous of the lower Mississippi or on the 

 Calcasieu, at Lake Charles, Louisiana. Along all of the streams of 

 the coast lowlands east of the Trinity the forests show to a greater or 

 less degree the characteristics of this type, which follows them into 

 the interior wherever they are sluggish and accompanied by swamps 

 and bayous, as in the case of the big cypress, in Marion County. On 

 the east these forests extend northward into Arkansas and as far as 

 southeastern Missouri. 



MAKE-UP OF THE SWAMP AND BAYOU FOKEST. 



The more important trees which compose this type of forest are 

 bald cypress, swamp tupelo, water oak, swamp hickory , sweet gum, 

 water ash, swamp maple, sweet magnolia, and black gum. Under these 

 flourishes an undergrowth of many species of small trees and shrubs. 



While all of the trees of these water-loving species ascend in places to 

 higher ground to contend in mixture with other species for possession, 

 the forest type which is produced by the exclusive association of these 

 trees is confined to swamp land and the low borders of sluggish streams, 

 where the water level in the soil is practically at the surface the } r ear 

 round, and where, for at least a part of the time, the ground is actually 

 inundated, so that the lower parts of the trunks are submerged. 

 Certain peculiarities of structure, as the expansion of the base of the 

 trunk, and in the case of the cypress, the characteristic knees, mark 

 their adaptation to such an environment. The compact, impervious 

 clay and silt soil of the flat coast lowlands combines with the lack of 

 drainage to produce conditions favorable to this forest type. 



The relative representation of species varies greatly on different 

 areas. In one place tupelo gum is dominant, in another cypress, 

 elsewhere again swamp hickory. Such differences, however, due to 

 local conditions which happen to have been especially favorable to 

 some one kind of tree, do not alter the general type of swamp and bayou 

 forest, which within its own territory retains undisturbed possession, 

 no matter what may be the result of the competition for place among 

 its individual members. 



