142 
Ohio Biological Survey 
Certain areas of the upland which are known to have been cleared of 
their forest cover at least twenty-five years ago, are still meadow. Such 
an area is shown in fig. i6. It is true, a few scattered trees (Quercus bi¬ 
color, Q. paliistris, and Acer rttbnnn) occur, but not enough to be con¬ 
sidered as the beginnings of a forest cover. That conditions are still suit¬ 
able to the growth of hydrophytic trees, even though the water table may 
have been somewhat depressed and conditions of light and exposure made 
severe by the removal of the forest cover, is proven by the red maples 
which have been planted along the roadsides. It is possible, that during 
the interval, the succession may have been set back by burning, or by 
cutting. Grassy meadows, however, are common upon the Little Miami- 
Mill creek divide. Few of the flattest parts of this upland show any ten¬ 
dency toward reforestization. Woodlots retain their straight edges, and 
do not encroach upon the meadows. Cleared areas reach, in a few years, 
a meadow stage which is much more persistent than elsewhere in the 
region. 
The causes which produce this condition are not understood. Cer¬ 
tainly the meadow can be but temporary, and must in time give way to 
forest. Meadows, not now reforesting, are in all cases covered with a 
thick and dense turf of grass and a few other low herbaceous plants. 
Where this is occasionally broken, as at the edges of plowed fields or 
along roadsides, a few trees are found. It may be that as the turf be¬ 
comes thinner in the shade of the few trees which do appear, seedlings 
will be able to get a foothold, and a new forest will start. Conditions 
which appear to be similar to these of our cleared uplands, have been 
noted by Shimek (1912) as occurring near Amana, Iowa, in the heart of 
a forest region. 
2. Reforesting areas. 
The usual clearing succession reaches the meadow stage either direct¬ 
ly, by the rapid spreading of meadow plants growing in natural openings, 
or through the earlier hydrophytic stages. Early in the succession, sap¬ 
lings usually begin to appear: xerophytes (Sassafras, red elm, and locust) 
in the dry meadows, and mostly hydrophytes (pin oak, red maple, shell- 
bark hickory, and white ash) in the wet meadows. 
If the clearing is large, or the meadow distant from areas of original 
forest cover, the saplings are apt to be somewhat scattered. The suc¬ 
cession, however, definitely shows its forest trend; and this meadow differs 
from the more permanent ones in that grass is a less important constitu- 
