74 



and may be more characteristic of the marshes south of the 

 prairies. 



Outside of Louisiana and Texas these prairies probably have 

 their nearest counterpart in the Grand Prairie of Arkansas,* 

 which although considerably nearer to centers of ecological 

 activity is even less known botanically than the Gulf coast prairies. 



The Long-leaf Pine Region 



West of the prairies are the long-leaf pine forests, about fifty 

 miles wide on my northern route, but hardly extending south of 

 Lake Charles at all. The topography where I crossed is gently 

 rolling (doubtless a little more hilly farther north), with grayish 

 loamy soil and clayey subsoil, and very few streams (unlike most 

 of the pine-barrens of the Atlantic slope, where the sandy soil 

 holds considerable water which seeps out in the valleys gradually 

 throughout the year) . Mosquitoes were rather abundant, though, 

 strange to say. The region is very sparsely settled, and even yet 

 lumbering seems to be more important than farming. 



Pinus palustris outnumbers all other trees by a large majority, 

 and on uplands where the lumberman has not yet begun opera- 

 tions it makes a pure stand with no woody undergrowth of any 

 kind. These pine forests are denser than most of those east of 

 the Mississippi River, as observed long ago by Dr. Mohr,t who 

 found, probably in what is now Beauregard Parish, 35,000 board 

 feet on a single acre, — which is several times the average for the 

 southeastern pine forests. 



Just two weeks before my 1918 visit southwestern Louisiana 

 had been swept by a hurricane, and in some places as many as 10 

 per cent, of the pines had been blown down, and many leaves and 

 branches stripped from the deciduous trees. The commonest 

 trees besides the long-leaf pine seem to be Nyssa bi flora (?), 

 Liquidanibar, Pinus Taeda, Magnolia grandiflora, Qucrcus 

 Michauxii, Fagus, Nyssa uniflora, Quercus falcata, Q. alba, 

 Taxodium distichum, and Ilex opaca, in the order named. These 



* See Plant World 17: 40-44. 1914. 



t See page 45 of the revised edition of his " Timber pines of the southern 

 United States" (U. S. Forestry Bull. 13), 1897. 



