

FiguRE 14.— The lowlands bordering the Coastal Plain streams 
are the natural home of sweetgum, white oak, ash, water oak, 
and other moisture-loving hardwoods. 
those of today. Cypress, blackgum, and tupelo gum 
grew abundantly in the poorly drained swamps of the 
Coastal Plain, while the broad alluvial river bottoms 
were the natural habitat for magnificent stands of sweet- 
gum, white cak, water oak, ash, and yellow-poplar 
(fig. 14). Poorer-quality trees of these same species 
often occurred on the poorly drained flatwoods of the 
interstream areas lying close to the coast. On these lands 
they were often in competition with loblolly pine. On 
the drier ridges between the streams, and certainly upon 
the dry sands of the Sandhills area, pure stands of 
longleaf were the rule. According to the accounts of 
the earliest travelers, the Piedmont forests were chiefly 
hardwoods with the oaks, hickories, and chestnut com- 
mon species on the higher lands. Undoubtedly, scattered 
stands of pine were also present. Along the Piedmont 
streams the characteristic growth was willow, beech, 
birch, black walnut, ash, yellow-poplar, and sweetgum. 
As soon as settlement started, the activities of man 
began to change the character of the forest. Land clear- 
ing and subsequent land abandonment had the first and 
probably the most widespread effect. Encouraged by 
British colonial and mercantile policy, indigo and rice 
were grown in the coastal swamps bounding the Cooper 
and Ashley Rivers prior to 1700. These areas were 
essentially treeless, but soon the drive began to clear 
the hardwoods from the fresh-water swamps farther 
inland. Indigo production reached a peak by 1775 (3). 
After the Revolution, indigo cultivation practically 
ceased, but rice production flourished and thousands of 
acres of fields were carved from the virgin stands of 
hardwood and cypress. With the changed conditions 
following the Civil War, rice culture was abandoned and 
forests again occupied the land. At present, excellent 
stands of sweetgum and other hardwoods may be seen 
in the river swamps behind the levees of the old rice 
plantations. On the better-drained lands, pure stands of 
loblolly pine came in, but they are gradually being 
replaced by hardwoods, which are very aggressive on 
these natural hardwood sites (fig. 15). 
The pattern of clearing, cropping, and abandonment 
occurred to a lesser extent on the flatwoods of the lower 
Coastal Plain, but at the height of the tidewater aris- 
tocracy in 1770, active land clearing, based at first upon 
corn and later upon cotton, was well under way in 
the upper Coastal Plain and Piedmont. Here family-size 
farms were common. They were usually on the better 
soils where hardwoods grew naturally. When crop yields 
fell off, the farmer cleared more good land nearby if 
it was available or moved on farther “up country.” 
Scattered pines growing on the poorer soils reseeded 
the abandoned clearings. 
This cycle of clearing and abandonment was usually 
repeated several times. It was intensified by a land- 
clearing boom around 1800 (3) following the invention 
of the cotton gin, and by land abandonment in the 
Civil War reconstruction period and again in 1921 
following the appearance of the boll weevil. The effect 
was to convert large areas of forest, both in the Coastal 
Plain and Piedmont, from hardwood to pine. These 
pine forests have subsequently been modified toward 
more hardwoods by heavy cuttings of the pine, better 
fire protection which has favored the establishment of 
young aggressive hardwoods, and the tendency for hard- 
woods to invade the pine stands on the natural hard- 
wood sites (fig. 16). 
Early agricultural development bypassed large areas 
of longleaf pine in the Coastal Plain and Sandhills. In 
12 Forest Resource Report No. 3, U. S. Department of Agriculture 

