Folks:
Here is a great natural description of the Pine Barrens from 1908:
Extracted from the PROCEEDINGS of the Delaware County Institute of Science, Vol. III, No. 3, April 1908, page 114-123.
THE PINE LANDS—THEIR FLORA AND FAUNA.
BY SARAH C. HILLMAN.
(Of the Haddonfield Natural Science Club.)
The expression, “Down in the Pines,” to many simply implies far-off, desolate regions, insignificant, unproductive — except for discomfort, and hence unworthy of a second thought. What a pitiable misconception! The innocent ignorance of such a conclusion challenges one's sympathy. Admitting the variety of tastes, certainly, among the pines, the most fastidious person would not lack objects of interest, both numerous and instructive, far more than enough to remunerate him for a journey of a few miles to their habitation.
One need go no further than Clementon to be in the edge of the great pine belt of southeastern New Jersey, which, in Camden County, includes Winslow, Atco, Jackson, Blue Anchor, etc.
In the pine belt are the uplands, the light, dry, sandy soil of which is adapted to the growth of the pine; the savannas, which will not produce timber; and the swamps. Most of the streams of the pine belt are fringed with cedar swamp, varying from a few feet to miles in width. There are also thousands of acres of mixed pine and deciduous swamp.
The pine family belongs to the order Coniferæ, and comprises some of the most important timber trees, and the principal evergreen trees of northern climates.
Surprises constantly await the traveller among the pines. The variety, the abundance, and the négligé arrangement, as it were, charm by their harmony and naturalness. Here are brooks, pools of uncertain depth, and great lagoons of inky water. Here, too, is the delicious spring, to animate the sight-seer’s drooping aspirations. Half-hidden by the tangled undergrowth, and silently wending its secluded path, is the quiet stream. Fed and expanded by springs and tricklings from the porous sand and gravel, the streamlet finally emerges from its solitude, and to the wonderment of the observer presents a broad and beautiful river.
Scattered throughout the pines are the remains of a once famous industry, the manufacture of iron from bog ore, or limonite. These ruins are seen in the vicinity of streams and bogs. Much charcoal was consumed by these forges. With their failure the manufacture of charcoal faded, and with it the value of coal wood. But coal pits in active operation are still in the pine belt. At Florence, in Camden County, a large tract has recently been cleared, and the wood is being used for charcoal purposes.
Among the pines, then, we have not only swamps and cranberry bogs, but villages, towns and farms. Cedar Brook is a clearing among the pines; so are Hammonton and Vineland. In Chemung [Shamong] Township, Burlington County, there is a tract of a thousand acres, cleared and cultivated, right among the pines. The soil is as noted for its fine agricultural products, as the surrounding forests are for the abundance and variety of first class game.
The genus Pinus belongs to the gymnospermous, or naked seeded family, the less abundant class of the exogens. The true pines are readily distinguished by their leaves and their cones. Their branches are whorled at regular intervals, and bear needle-like leaves, united in groups of two, three or five by a short sheath enclosing their base. The leaves remain on the stem two or three years before falling. The flowers of the pine are monæcious: that is, male and female flowers are found in separate catkins, but on the same tree. The males occur in spikes at the base of the new shoots of the season, and the females are solitary or in clusters at the ends of the boughs. The fruit is not matured until the second year after the flowers. The cone takes a year to ripen; it is composed of woody scales, thickening toward the top. Each scale of a pine cone is an open pistil, bearing, on the inner side of its base, two naked seeds, furnished with membranous wings, which aid in their dissemination. The wind is the agent by which fertilization is effected, for it conveys the pollen directly from the stamen-bearing flowers to the ovules. The new annual shoots of the pine continue to grow for a second year, if not longer, to contribute to the growths in length as well as thickness. The leaves, being evergreen, absorb throughout the year the carbonic acid from the atmosphere and assimilating the carbon, return to the air pure oxygen.
The pines are found mainly in cold and temperate regions, and mostly make compact forest growths. In size they range from a few feet to three hundred feet in height. The pines of New Jersey, however, range from low bushes to about seventy feet in height. Owing to deterioration by forest fires, the pine timber in New Jersey is often small and stunted, as in the Jersey or scrub pine, Pinus virginiana or inops.
Southeastern New Jersey was originally covered with pine, the inferior soil being occupied by pitch pine, Pinus rigida. The leaves of this species are dark green and grouped in threes. The resinous wood is reddish yellow, covered with rough, blackish bark, and the cones have stout, prickly points. During the Civil War the North was unable to obtain the necessary naval stores, for which ship chandlers were willing to pay immense sums. The natives of Southern New Jersey took advantage of this and collected great quantities of fat pine knots, from which they made tar. This was quite a profitable industry in the vicinity of Tuckerton. An old timer from that section recently described the modus operandi: — A large basin was constructed, from which a small trough or channel led into another receptacle, and the whole affair was carefully cemented with a composition of sand, loam and clay. The pine knots were piled in the large basin in a cone-shaped stack and covered with soil, sod, etc., similar to the preparation of a charcoal pit, and then lighted at the top. The tar oozing out passed into the bottom of the basin, thence through the channel into the receiver, from which it was collected.
The short leaf, or yellow pine, Pinus eehinata, occupies the better soil, in partnership with various hardwood species. Owing to the prevalence of destructive fires in the pines, but few original forests remain. The most noted of these in Camden County is at Winslow, where the pine is in patches and scattered over the tract. Trees here reach the height of 85 feet, and are from 120 to 200 years old.
There is also another tract of 18 acres at Blue Anchor, belonging to Mr. Duble, of Cedar Brook, who owns several hundred acres of swamp and clearings in this section. This is a forest of dense growth, “a silent sea of pines,” the trees varying from 50 to 70 feet in height. There is considerable of pitch pine, but the yellow variety predominates. Here are also the red, black, white, chestnut and pin oaks.
The large timber is being cut and hauled to Cedar Brook, where the owner’s saw mill is kept busy with orders more numerous than can be filled. Here, as by magic, the tall, straight cedars and pines, one by one, are transformed into bundles of smooth shingles and enviable piles of charming, golden lumber. In New Jersey there are 2.424,931 acres of cleared upland, 2,069,819 acres of which are in forest. In Camden County there are 66,588 acres of forest, which is about 48 per cent. of the upland area of the county, the coniferous occupying the eastern and the deciduous the western part.
Pausing to think, the question arises, Why are the pines where they are? The science of paleobotany helps to solve the problem. The paleobotanists draw their conclusions from fragments of wood, impressions of leaves, flowers and fruits imbedded in rocks, and beds of coal. Ernest Bruncken, in “North American Forests,” remarks that, during Tertiary times, vast forests composed of trees similar to those now growing in the United States, existed in high northern latitudes where now nearly everything is covered with ice and snow. The warm climate of the Tertiary age was succeeded by the Glacial period of the Quaternary epoch. The great glacier, joined by those flowing down from the mountains of the West, moved southward till it reached the latitude of Cincinnati, and beyond was covered with an immense thickness of ice. Before the ice and the cold temperature the forests succumbed, and many species were either extinguished or restricted to more northern latitudes. After thousands of years the ice melted, and as the land was laid bare, vegetation recovered the lost territory. On the barren ground left by the ice, at first only mosses and sedges appeared, and gradually these were supplanted by the forest spruce and poplar, slowly coming up from the South. Then followed the pines, and these were succeeded by maples, oaks and others. While the forests were advancing northward, the different species struggled with each other for particular localities.
Certain conditions are necessary for the life and growth of all trees alike. They must have moisture and they must have light. Light is essential to enable the leaves to elaborate the inorganic substances brought by the roots from the subsoil, which are deposited on the surface in the leaves or twigs.
The fact that a certain species is always found in one locality does not prove that it will not nourish elsewhere. If given a chance, the magnolia, golden rod and others, are only too glad to adorn one’s garden.
In every pine wood are suppressed trees of some kind, whose presence is due to birds or squirrels. Just as soon as the pines are cut, and they receive more light and room, they grow rapidly. Trees are driven into environments by their competitors; they compete, not only with their own kind, but with different species. Interesting instances of this were seen at Blue Anchor. In one case, four pitch pines about 40 feet high had come up from sprouts around the huge stump of the parent tree. Each seemed to claim the place of the old landmark, and we left them all standing straight up for their rights. In another place a mammoth black oak and a pine were in close proximity. Evidences of a prolonged strife were here visible. By more rapid growth, doubtless, the broad leaves of the oak had sheltered the seedling pine till it became established, when the latter, claiming absolute ownership, had spread its lateral branches in the endeavor to crowd out this early friend. Failing in this, it had divested itself of all unnecessary covering, and shot upward, till towering many feet above its rival, it spread out waving branches far and wide from the summit.
One meets many eccentricities in the pine forest. The conifers are generally contented among themselves, and never seem too thick to thrive. Like a well-regulated family, their aspirations-are high, and each one seems disposed to make the best of its opportunity. But the pines are exclusive, and they have a music of their own. “The soft and soul-like sounds,” of which Coleridge loved to sing, render their groves enchanting, and naturally, any element foreign to their own, disturbs the melody.
In the northwestern part of New Jersey is what is known as the deciduous zone; in the southeastern, the coniferous; while in an irregular line between them, extending from Long Branch to Salem, is the tension zone. In the tension zone the flora of the other two meet and overlap, and a constant strife is waging for the ascendency. Although favorably situated by environment, the deciduous species show a tendency to travel southward, while the coniferous, equally well situated, tend to move northward.
Where a hardwood forest has been cleared, pines and cedars have been known immediately to occupy the ground. Under the changed condition of a heavier soil and freedom from competition, they flourish, until driven out by the reestablished angiosperms, whose numbers far exceed their own. For the same reason, when the pine lands are cut off or burned, deciduous trees spring up, regardless of the sandy soil, which, however, is never too barren for the scrub oak.
The area of the pine is constantly decreasing, while that of the deciduous tree is increasing. Away back in the closing scenes of the Triassic period, when the vegetation included immense forests of ferns, conifers and palms, great physical changes occurred along the eastern coast of North America. There was a slow subsidence of the southeastern area of New Jersey, during which large quantities of land vegetation disappeared, of which the pines constituted the greater part. A changed condition of the soil of later formations seemed favorable to the growth of the angiosperms which, at the present day, exist in the ratio of five to one, as compared with the gymnosperms. This subsidence seems to have been the first great set-back to the pines in New Jersey.
The pine has a lower position in the biologic scale than the deciduous trees, and not only has been crowded out by them, but, by more aggressive varieties, has been driven into environments unsuited to its proper development. There are many reasons for the disappearance of the pine. Fifty years ago it was largely used in the iron industry of New Jersey, over 6000 acres being cut annually for this alone; then the amount used for sawed lumber, as well as for charcoal, was equally great. In more recent years, repeated forest fires have well-nigh completed the work of destruction among the pines. According to the Annual Report of the State Geologist, between April and September of 1902, sixty-five fires occurred in fourteen counties, in which 98,850 acres of timber land were burned over, with a total damage estimated at $ 168,323. But one of these fires was, however, in Camden County, and that was near Winslow Junction in April of the above year. Locomotive sparks set fire to 400 acres of pine timber, 50 years old, the average loss being $15 per acre — total, $6000.
Throughout the pines there are German, Italian, Russian and other foreign colonies, and many of the most destructive fires have been caused by these people in clearing their farms. Where fire frequently burns the surface litter and hinders the growth of forests, the soil finally becomes sterile and lifeless, from the fact that the organisms in the soil, causing decomposition of humus and the preservation of nitrogen, are killed.
Fires also destroy the game and its food supply as well as cause an increase of insects and produce general unhealthfulness, aside from the loss of wood and the crippling of industries depending on it. Pitch pine can resist fire to a great extent and recover after severe injury. The short leaf pine is also able to resist fires, but recovers less readily. It is the thick, corky bark that protects these trees; it may be burned till fairly charred, and yet the living part of the tree will not be injured. Young trees suffer most, however, on account of their thinner bark.
The chestnut oak flourishes luxuriantly in the shade of the pine.
The white oak, Quercus alba, so common among the pines, is known by its light-colored bark. The leaves are deeply divided, the straight veins extending from the midrib to the margin. Like the pine, the oak puts forth two kinds of flowers, the pistillate and the staminate. In the pistillate flowers, each ovary has three stigmas and three cells, with two ovules in each; but in ripening only one of the six ovules becomes a seed. The fruit of the oak is the acorn, a one-seeded nut, fixed in a woody cup or involucre. Under the oak at the time of flowering are found acorns of the preceding year in different stages of germination. The two cotyledons, to extricate themselves, burst the shell, thrust forth their petioles, with the plumule to grow upward and the radicle to grow downward. The acorn ripens the autumn following its flower; the seed is well-flavored and eaten by both man and beast. They are abundant, always yielding a fair crop, and sometimes an immense one. The wood of the oak, when split into thin slivers, is an excellent basket material. Baskets made of oak are noted for their strength and durability.
Nut galls are produced on the leaves and twigs of oaks, by the puncture of insects depositing their eggs. On the leaves they are usually spherical or marble-like, but they differ in size and texture; sometimes they are quite solid, with thick walls, and again they have paper-like coverings, and are filled with loose tissue. Through the outer covering, in time a series of pointed processes appears, each of which is a larval cell, and from fifty to a hundred larvae sometimes form a large gall. Galls also occur on the roots. Most of the orders of insects contain gall makers. The Hymenoptera, or wasp family, do a great deal of injury.
One theory for the growth of the gall is that there may be some virus deposited with the egg, or that the irritation caused by the larva, which lives in the gall till it is developed into an insect, causes it.
Leaving the bitter galls, let us turn to the sweet flora of the pines. On the edges of the uplands, we find almost the same variety prevails as in the swamp; the hickory, sassafras, gum, birch, maple, wild cherry, cedar, magnolia, spruce, poplar and others are seen. But in the interior, where the trees are all pine, the flora is more limited. In the Blue Anchor tract, the writer saw four varieties of the huckleberry, the blueberry, the blue and black seedy berries and the dainty sugar clusters, all at home among the pines. The teaberry and the arbutus were half hidden by the pine chats, while the pipsissewa, both green and striped, was more obvious.
Chicken grapes were numerous; one vine had clambered to the top of the highest pine, at whose base, in a bed of velvety moss, close by a famous mushroom, was a whip-poorwill’s shoe. Sweet fern lost its charm, when, too late, alas! it was discovered to be the habitat of a species of the acaridan arachnids, which to us, in simpler language, meant legions of seed ticks.
Everywhere the cow wheat seemed to welcome us; it is a low branching plant, with small, greenish-yellow, solitary flowers in the axils of the upper leaves. The calyx is bellshaped and the corolla is two-lipped. It is exceedingly common among the pines, seeming as much at home there as the trees themselves. In the mixed portions of this forest was the kill-calf, noted for its fantastic roots; also the laurel, holly and wild plum.
In a small, cleared area were lichens, sedges, Indian grass, wood violets and daisies of every size and hue.
Among the birds of the pines are the pheasant, flicker, woodpecker, jays, warblers, finches, quail, owls and crows. The chewink was abundant. The blue heron and other water birds are in the vicinity of streams, where the angler enjoys a chance at the famous pickerel. The raccoon, squirrel, mink, opossum, weasel, toad, turtle and mice are here; also lizards and snakes without number, especially the water snake and the pine snake, well known tenants of the pine lands.
Among the insects is the moth, which kills the growing twigs; the scale insect, that sucks the plants’ juices; the weevil, whose larvae bore into the wood of pine trees, and others far too numerous to mention.
Since pines are more easily affected by these enemies than hardwoods, mixed forests have been found an advantage.
In considering the pines, it might, perhaps, appear like an oversight to omit the mosquito. Conscientiously unable to say anything in its favor, we think it best to add nothing to increase the prejudice already existing against this truly impressive creature.
Best regards,
Jerseyman
Here is a great natural description of the Pine Barrens from 1908:
Extracted from the PROCEEDINGS of the Delaware County Institute of Science, Vol. III, No. 3, April 1908, page 114-123.
THE PINE LANDS—THEIR FLORA AND FAUNA.
BY SARAH C. HILLMAN.
(Of the Haddonfield Natural Science Club.)
The expression, “Down in the Pines,” to many simply implies far-off, desolate regions, insignificant, unproductive — except for discomfort, and hence unworthy of a second thought. What a pitiable misconception! The innocent ignorance of such a conclusion challenges one's sympathy. Admitting the variety of tastes, certainly, among the pines, the most fastidious person would not lack objects of interest, both numerous and instructive, far more than enough to remunerate him for a journey of a few miles to their habitation.
One need go no further than Clementon to be in the edge of the great pine belt of southeastern New Jersey, which, in Camden County, includes Winslow, Atco, Jackson, Blue Anchor, etc.
In the pine belt are the uplands, the light, dry, sandy soil of which is adapted to the growth of the pine; the savannas, which will not produce timber; and the swamps. Most of the streams of the pine belt are fringed with cedar swamp, varying from a few feet to miles in width. There are also thousands of acres of mixed pine and deciduous swamp.
The pine family belongs to the order Coniferæ, and comprises some of the most important timber trees, and the principal evergreen trees of northern climates.
Surprises constantly await the traveller among the pines. The variety, the abundance, and the négligé arrangement, as it were, charm by their harmony and naturalness. Here are brooks, pools of uncertain depth, and great lagoons of inky water. Here, too, is the delicious spring, to animate the sight-seer’s drooping aspirations. Half-hidden by the tangled undergrowth, and silently wending its secluded path, is the quiet stream. Fed and expanded by springs and tricklings from the porous sand and gravel, the streamlet finally emerges from its solitude, and to the wonderment of the observer presents a broad and beautiful river.
Scattered throughout the pines are the remains of a once famous industry, the manufacture of iron from bog ore, or limonite. These ruins are seen in the vicinity of streams and bogs. Much charcoal was consumed by these forges. With their failure the manufacture of charcoal faded, and with it the value of coal wood. But coal pits in active operation are still in the pine belt. At Florence, in Camden County, a large tract has recently been cleared, and the wood is being used for charcoal purposes.
Among the pines, then, we have not only swamps and cranberry bogs, but villages, towns and farms. Cedar Brook is a clearing among the pines; so are Hammonton and Vineland. In Chemung [Shamong] Township, Burlington County, there is a tract of a thousand acres, cleared and cultivated, right among the pines. The soil is as noted for its fine agricultural products, as the surrounding forests are for the abundance and variety of first class game.
The genus Pinus belongs to the gymnospermous, or naked seeded family, the less abundant class of the exogens. The true pines are readily distinguished by their leaves and their cones. Their branches are whorled at regular intervals, and bear needle-like leaves, united in groups of two, three or five by a short sheath enclosing their base. The leaves remain on the stem two or three years before falling. The flowers of the pine are monæcious: that is, male and female flowers are found in separate catkins, but on the same tree. The males occur in spikes at the base of the new shoots of the season, and the females are solitary or in clusters at the ends of the boughs. The fruit is not matured until the second year after the flowers. The cone takes a year to ripen; it is composed of woody scales, thickening toward the top. Each scale of a pine cone is an open pistil, bearing, on the inner side of its base, two naked seeds, furnished with membranous wings, which aid in their dissemination. The wind is the agent by which fertilization is effected, for it conveys the pollen directly from the stamen-bearing flowers to the ovules. The new annual shoots of the pine continue to grow for a second year, if not longer, to contribute to the growths in length as well as thickness. The leaves, being evergreen, absorb throughout the year the carbonic acid from the atmosphere and assimilating the carbon, return to the air pure oxygen.
The pines are found mainly in cold and temperate regions, and mostly make compact forest growths. In size they range from a few feet to three hundred feet in height. The pines of New Jersey, however, range from low bushes to about seventy feet in height. Owing to deterioration by forest fires, the pine timber in New Jersey is often small and stunted, as in the Jersey or scrub pine, Pinus virginiana or inops.
Southeastern New Jersey was originally covered with pine, the inferior soil being occupied by pitch pine, Pinus rigida. The leaves of this species are dark green and grouped in threes. The resinous wood is reddish yellow, covered with rough, blackish bark, and the cones have stout, prickly points. During the Civil War the North was unable to obtain the necessary naval stores, for which ship chandlers were willing to pay immense sums. The natives of Southern New Jersey took advantage of this and collected great quantities of fat pine knots, from which they made tar. This was quite a profitable industry in the vicinity of Tuckerton. An old timer from that section recently described the modus operandi: — A large basin was constructed, from which a small trough or channel led into another receptacle, and the whole affair was carefully cemented with a composition of sand, loam and clay. The pine knots were piled in the large basin in a cone-shaped stack and covered with soil, sod, etc., similar to the preparation of a charcoal pit, and then lighted at the top. The tar oozing out passed into the bottom of the basin, thence through the channel into the receiver, from which it was collected.
The short leaf, or yellow pine, Pinus eehinata, occupies the better soil, in partnership with various hardwood species. Owing to the prevalence of destructive fires in the pines, but few original forests remain. The most noted of these in Camden County is at Winslow, where the pine is in patches and scattered over the tract. Trees here reach the height of 85 feet, and are from 120 to 200 years old.
There is also another tract of 18 acres at Blue Anchor, belonging to Mr. Duble, of Cedar Brook, who owns several hundred acres of swamp and clearings in this section. This is a forest of dense growth, “a silent sea of pines,” the trees varying from 50 to 70 feet in height. There is considerable of pitch pine, but the yellow variety predominates. Here are also the red, black, white, chestnut and pin oaks.
The large timber is being cut and hauled to Cedar Brook, where the owner’s saw mill is kept busy with orders more numerous than can be filled. Here, as by magic, the tall, straight cedars and pines, one by one, are transformed into bundles of smooth shingles and enviable piles of charming, golden lumber. In New Jersey there are 2.424,931 acres of cleared upland, 2,069,819 acres of which are in forest. In Camden County there are 66,588 acres of forest, which is about 48 per cent. of the upland area of the county, the coniferous occupying the eastern and the deciduous the western part.
Pausing to think, the question arises, Why are the pines where they are? The science of paleobotany helps to solve the problem. The paleobotanists draw their conclusions from fragments of wood, impressions of leaves, flowers and fruits imbedded in rocks, and beds of coal. Ernest Bruncken, in “North American Forests,” remarks that, during Tertiary times, vast forests composed of trees similar to those now growing in the United States, existed in high northern latitudes where now nearly everything is covered with ice and snow. The warm climate of the Tertiary age was succeeded by the Glacial period of the Quaternary epoch. The great glacier, joined by those flowing down from the mountains of the West, moved southward till it reached the latitude of Cincinnati, and beyond was covered with an immense thickness of ice. Before the ice and the cold temperature the forests succumbed, and many species were either extinguished or restricted to more northern latitudes. After thousands of years the ice melted, and as the land was laid bare, vegetation recovered the lost territory. On the barren ground left by the ice, at first only mosses and sedges appeared, and gradually these were supplanted by the forest spruce and poplar, slowly coming up from the South. Then followed the pines, and these were succeeded by maples, oaks and others. While the forests were advancing northward, the different species struggled with each other for particular localities.
Certain conditions are necessary for the life and growth of all trees alike. They must have moisture and they must have light. Light is essential to enable the leaves to elaborate the inorganic substances brought by the roots from the subsoil, which are deposited on the surface in the leaves or twigs.
The fact that a certain species is always found in one locality does not prove that it will not nourish elsewhere. If given a chance, the magnolia, golden rod and others, are only too glad to adorn one’s garden.
In every pine wood are suppressed trees of some kind, whose presence is due to birds or squirrels. Just as soon as the pines are cut, and they receive more light and room, they grow rapidly. Trees are driven into environments by their competitors; they compete, not only with their own kind, but with different species. Interesting instances of this were seen at Blue Anchor. In one case, four pitch pines about 40 feet high had come up from sprouts around the huge stump of the parent tree. Each seemed to claim the place of the old landmark, and we left them all standing straight up for their rights. In another place a mammoth black oak and a pine were in close proximity. Evidences of a prolonged strife were here visible. By more rapid growth, doubtless, the broad leaves of the oak had sheltered the seedling pine till it became established, when the latter, claiming absolute ownership, had spread its lateral branches in the endeavor to crowd out this early friend. Failing in this, it had divested itself of all unnecessary covering, and shot upward, till towering many feet above its rival, it spread out waving branches far and wide from the summit.
One meets many eccentricities in the pine forest. The conifers are generally contented among themselves, and never seem too thick to thrive. Like a well-regulated family, their aspirations-are high, and each one seems disposed to make the best of its opportunity. But the pines are exclusive, and they have a music of their own. “The soft and soul-like sounds,” of which Coleridge loved to sing, render their groves enchanting, and naturally, any element foreign to their own, disturbs the melody.
In the northwestern part of New Jersey is what is known as the deciduous zone; in the southeastern, the coniferous; while in an irregular line between them, extending from Long Branch to Salem, is the tension zone. In the tension zone the flora of the other two meet and overlap, and a constant strife is waging for the ascendency. Although favorably situated by environment, the deciduous species show a tendency to travel southward, while the coniferous, equally well situated, tend to move northward.
Where a hardwood forest has been cleared, pines and cedars have been known immediately to occupy the ground. Under the changed condition of a heavier soil and freedom from competition, they flourish, until driven out by the reestablished angiosperms, whose numbers far exceed their own. For the same reason, when the pine lands are cut off or burned, deciduous trees spring up, regardless of the sandy soil, which, however, is never too barren for the scrub oak.
The area of the pine is constantly decreasing, while that of the deciduous tree is increasing. Away back in the closing scenes of the Triassic period, when the vegetation included immense forests of ferns, conifers and palms, great physical changes occurred along the eastern coast of North America. There was a slow subsidence of the southeastern area of New Jersey, during which large quantities of land vegetation disappeared, of which the pines constituted the greater part. A changed condition of the soil of later formations seemed favorable to the growth of the angiosperms which, at the present day, exist in the ratio of five to one, as compared with the gymnosperms. This subsidence seems to have been the first great set-back to the pines in New Jersey.
The pine has a lower position in the biologic scale than the deciduous trees, and not only has been crowded out by them, but, by more aggressive varieties, has been driven into environments unsuited to its proper development. There are many reasons for the disappearance of the pine. Fifty years ago it was largely used in the iron industry of New Jersey, over 6000 acres being cut annually for this alone; then the amount used for sawed lumber, as well as for charcoal, was equally great. In more recent years, repeated forest fires have well-nigh completed the work of destruction among the pines. According to the Annual Report of the State Geologist, between April and September of 1902, sixty-five fires occurred in fourteen counties, in which 98,850 acres of timber land were burned over, with a total damage estimated at $ 168,323. But one of these fires was, however, in Camden County, and that was near Winslow Junction in April of the above year. Locomotive sparks set fire to 400 acres of pine timber, 50 years old, the average loss being $15 per acre — total, $6000.
Throughout the pines there are German, Italian, Russian and other foreign colonies, and many of the most destructive fires have been caused by these people in clearing their farms. Where fire frequently burns the surface litter and hinders the growth of forests, the soil finally becomes sterile and lifeless, from the fact that the organisms in the soil, causing decomposition of humus and the preservation of nitrogen, are killed.
Fires also destroy the game and its food supply as well as cause an increase of insects and produce general unhealthfulness, aside from the loss of wood and the crippling of industries depending on it. Pitch pine can resist fire to a great extent and recover after severe injury. The short leaf pine is also able to resist fires, but recovers less readily. It is the thick, corky bark that protects these trees; it may be burned till fairly charred, and yet the living part of the tree will not be injured. Young trees suffer most, however, on account of their thinner bark.
The chestnut oak flourishes luxuriantly in the shade of the pine.
The white oak, Quercus alba, so common among the pines, is known by its light-colored bark. The leaves are deeply divided, the straight veins extending from the midrib to the margin. Like the pine, the oak puts forth two kinds of flowers, the pistillate and the staminate. In the pistillate flowers, each ovary has three stigmas and three cells, with two ovules in each; but in ripening only one of the six ovules becomes a seed. The fruit of the oak is the acorn, a one-seeded nut, fixed in a woody cup or involucre. Under the oak at the time of flowering are found acorns of the preceding year in different stages of germination. The two cotyledons, to extricate themselves, burst the shell, thrust forth their petioles, with the plumule to grow upward and the radicle to grow downward. The acorn ripens the autumn following its flower; the seed is well-flavored and eaten by both man and beast. They are abundant, always yielding a fair crop, and sometimes an immense one. The wood of the oak, when split into thin slivers, is an excellent basket material. Baskets made of oak are noted for their strength and durability.
Nut galls are produced on the leaves and twigs of oaks, by the puncture of insects depositing their eggs. On the leaves they are usually spherical or marble-like, but they differ in size and texture; sometimes they are quite solid, with thick walls, and again they have paper-like coverings, and are filled with loose tissue. Through the outer covering, in time a series of pointed processes appears, each of which is a larval cell, and from fifty to a hundred larvae sometimes form a large gall. Galls also occur on the roots. Most of the orders of insects contain gall makers. The Hymenoptera, or wasp family, do a great deal of injury.
One theory for the growth of the gall is that there may be some virus deposited with the egg, or that the irritation caused by the larva, which lives in the gall till it is developed into an insect, causes it.
Leaving the bitter galls, let us turn to the sweet flora of the pines. On the edges of the uplands, we find almost the same variety prevails as in the swamp; the hickory, sassafras, gum, birch, maple, wild cherry, cedar, magnolia, spruce, poplar and others are seen. But in the interior, where the trees are all pine, the flora is more limited. In the Blue Anchor tract, the writer saw four varieties of the huckleberry, the blueberry, the blue and black seedy berries and the dainty sugar clusters, all at home among the pines. The teaberry and the arbutus were half hidden by the pine chats, while the pipsissewa, both green and striped, was more obvious.
Chicken grapes were numerous; one vine had clambered to the top of the highest pine, at whose base, in a bed of velvety moss, close by a famous mushroom, was a whip-poorwill’s shoe. Sweet fern lost its charm, when, too late, alas! it was discovered to be the habitat of a species of the acaridan arachnids, which to us, in simpler language, meant legions of seed ticks.
Everywhere the cow wheat seemed to welcome us; it is a low branching plant, with small, greenish-yellow, solitary flowers in the axils of the upper leaves. The calyx is bellshaped and the corolla is two-lipped. It is exceedingly common among the pines, seeming as much at home there as the trees themselves. In the mixed portions of this forest was the kill-calf, noted for its fantastic roots; also the laurel, holly and wild plum.
In a small, cleared area were lichens, sedges, Indian grass, wood violets and daisies of every size and hue.
Among the birds of the pines are the pheasant, flicker, woodpecker, jays, warblers, finches, quail, owls and crows. The chewink was abundant. The blue heron and other water birds are in the vicinity of streams, where the angler enjoys a chance at the famous pickerel. The raccoon, squirrel, mink, opossum, weasel, toad, turtle and mice are here; also lizards and snakes without number, especially the water snake and the pine snake, well known tenants of the pine lands.
Among the insects is the moth, which kills the growing twigs; the scale insect, that sucks the plants’ juices; the weevil, whose larvae bore into the wood of pine trees, and others far too numerous to mention.
Since pines are more easily affected by these enemies than hardwoods, mixed forests have been found an advantage.
In considering the pines, it might, perhaps, appear like an oversight to omit the mosquito. Conscientiously unable to say anything in its favor, we think it best to add nothing to increase the prejudice already existing against this truly impressive creature.
Best regards,
Jerseyman
