GEXERAL SURVEY OF TEXAS WOODLANDS. 15 



Great Plains the habitual direction and force of the wind must be taken 

 into consideration in the methods of planting and the choice of species. 



THE EAST TEXAS TIMBER BELT. 



The East Texas Timber Belt is the western extension of the great 

 yellow pine and hardwood forests of the Atlantic and Gulf Coastal 

 Plain, reaching from Virginia through the Carolinas to Florida and 

 westward through Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana to the eastern 

 counties of Texas.* Further extension of this vast forest belt is checked 

 by decreasing rainfall and other conditions unfavorable to the majority 

 of species composing it. The forest becomes broken into straggling 

 detachments within which only the hardier species push onward along 

 the *prairie streamways. Dr. Bray has described this phenomenon as 

 follows: "Like a vast wave that has rolled in upon a level beach, the 

 Atlantic forest breaks upon the dry plains halting, creeping forward, 

 thinning out. and finally disappearing, except where, along a river 

 course:, it pushes far inland. 7 ' 



The East Texas Timber Belt is composed of natural regions, or sub- 

 divisions, of which the most important are loblolly pine, longleaf pine, 

 shortleaf pine, bottomland forests, swamp and bayou forests, and the 

 post oak woodlands. (See Map 6.) 



Loblolly Pine Region. 



The loblolly pine region probably occupies 6000 to 7000 square miles 

 in the southeastern portion of the East Texas Timber Belt, between 

 the longleaf pine region and the treeless, grass-covered portion of the 

 coast prairie which extends inland from twenty to fifty miles or more 

 from the Gulf. East and west the loblolly pine extends from the Sabine 

 River nearly to the Brazos, occupying the interior portion of the coastal 

 prairie and changing on the north to longleaf and shortleaf pine, as 

 the coostal prairie passes into the drier, more porous soils of the 

 Fayette Prairie formation. The loblolly pine region embraces the 

 northern portions of Orange, Jefferson, and Harris Counties, the greater 

 part of Liberty and Hardin Counties, and all of Montgomery, San 

 Jacinto, and Walker Counties. Portions of Grimes, Waller, Newton, 

 Jasper, and Chambers Counties are properly within the region. Scat- 

 tered trees or groups of loblolly pines are found as far south and west 

 as Brazoria County and larger bodies of this species are located in 

 Colorado, Fayette, and Bastrop Counties, where they are growing under 

 quite different conditions. 



The southern portion of the loblolly pine region consists of alter- 

 nating belts of open prairie and timber land. Near the Gulf the timber 

 is entirely lacking and only an expanse of poorly drained sea marsh 

 and grass prairie exists. Farther inland patches of timber begin to 



*See Bulletin 13, Forestry Division. U. S. Department of Agriculture, Wash- 

 ington, D. C.. entitled "Timber Pines of the Southern United States." 



