MARYLAND WEATHER SERVICE 127 



STREAM SWAMPS. 



Stream Swamps are found throughout the Talbot terrace along 

 non-tidal fresh streams, along the headwaters of the longer rivers, 

 around millponds and in the zone between Fresh Marshes and the 

 Upland. Their place is taken on the Wicomico terrace by the Flood 

 Plain forest, to which they bear some resemblances as well as to the 

 River Swamps. They are widely distributed in Dorchester County 

 along Transquaking, Little Blackwater and Chicacomico rivers and 

 elsewhere. The most northerly point at which a typical Stream 

 Swamp has been seen is at Howell Point, in Kent County, where 

 there is a small area lying back of a Fresh Marsh. 



The trees of the Stream Swamps are a mixed stand of deciduous 

 species of small and irregular stature, the shrubs are numerous, and 

 the herbaceous vegetation richer than in any other type of swamp 

 in the state. The Loblolly Pine and the White Cedar are present 

 in certain of the swamps, but never become so abundant as to destroy 

 the characteristic physiognomy, and neither does their presence cor- 

 respond with differences in the accompanying vegetation. It ap- 

 pears, in other words, that the River Swamps of the Pocomoke 

 occupy an area in which the physical conditions are not sufficiently 

 different from those in the Stream Swamps to explain the differ- 

 ences in flora between the two, and neither does the abundant pres- 

 ence of the White Cedar in the River Swamps modify the plant 

 assemblage away from the character of the purely deciduous swamps, 

 or toward the character of the River Swamps. 



The most common deciduous species of the Stream Swamp are 

 the Red Maple, the Winterberry and the Green Ash. In most of 

 the swamps of Dorchester and Talbot counties, and in that at 

 Howells Point, the first of these is dominant; in several swamps 

 at the head of short tributaries of the Choptank the second is most 

 abundant; while along the headwaters of the Choptank River the 

 last-named is far more abundant than both the others. The Loblolly 

 is conspicuous as an associate of these trees only on the upper 

 waters of the Choptank and Nanticoke, where it occupies isolated 

 elevated situations and does not occur along the margin of the river. 

 The White Cedar is infrequent in the swamps of the Wicomico; on 



