The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1885-05-30
why Certain Kinds OfTimber Pre-.
vail in Certain Localities.

why Certain Kinds OfTimb err Pre-.
vail in Certain Localities.
By John T. Campbell, an the American Naturalist.
It has often been observed that in
certain localities certain species of
timber will prevail, or be more numer-
Gus than any, and sometimes than every,
other kind. 1t has been further OBJ
served that when any prevailing timber
has been cleared away, and the land al
lowed to grow up again in timber, some
other species will prevail. This, I
think, has often been enormously at
tributed to the inability or indisposi-
ton of the soil to reproduce the former
prevailing timber. l have observed
much on this subject, and l never could
see any important difference in the abil-
ity or disposition of the soil to nourish
any of the different kinds of native
trees, and also no important difference
in the success in planting and starting
them.
My observations convince me that it
all, or mainly, lies in the favorable con-
dition of the ground to receive the
seeds of the various species of timber
when it happens to fall thereon. A
sycamore in the Wabash region will
grow as large and rapidly on the up
lands, where they are seldom found, as
in the sandy bottoms along the margins
of the streams, where they seem to best
thrive. A white oak when planted will
grow as we'll in the low river bottoms,
where they are never or seldom found,
as on the hills and ridges near by,
where they seem to be the spontaneous
product of the ground.
But if an acorn should be blown from
a white oak on the hills into the low
bottoms beneath, it would fall on
ground very unfavorable to the sprout-
ing of such acorns, and it would rot
where it fell. So, on the other hand,
if a sycamore ball (Which contains one
thousand or two thousand seeds) should,
in the spring time, be blown to pieces
after the winters freeze, and the needle
like seeds be blown upon the adjacent
hills, very few of them would light on
ground favorable to sprouting them.
Occasionally we find lone sycamore
on the uplands, standing among the
oak, beech, poplar, and other upland
timber, and every year bearing its quota
of seeds and shedding them on the ad
jacent ground by the million, none, or
very few of which ever take effect, and
for reasons before limited at, but which
will be more fully explained further on.
The sycamore seed must fall on
ground warm, very moist, but not ab-
solutely wet, and sufficiently bare for
the sun to shine on it the greater part
of the day. Otherwise it may not
sprout. The acorn, on the other hand,
falls little while before the leaves fall.
If it falls on very moist ground, it rots.
If it falls on the leaves of the former
year, and is shaded enough to prevent
drying or baking from the sun, and is
covered lightly by the fall of the cur
rent years leaves, or by chance wind
has the old leaves drifted on top of it,
a slow rain with subsequent sunshine
will sprout it. 1t will send out little
rootlets, which bore through the under
lying old leaves and penetrate the
ground, and once started, no weather
or climatic conditions will kill it. The
same is true of the seed of the hickory,
beech, sugar maple, and other upland
trees.
During the past two years my work
has been on and about the Wabash
River banks and its bottoms (food
plains), and I have discovered why it
is that in some parts of these bottoms
one kind of timber, as sycamore, will
take complete possession of few acres,
while at or near by the cottonwood will
prevail almost to the exclusion of every
thing else, and at other places the soft
or water maple will do likewise, and
still at another the water elm monopo-
lize all the space on which grown tree
can stand for several acres.
1t comes about in this way: The
balls of the sycamore, after undergoing
the winters freeze, are dissolved SO
that the separate needle-like or more
properly pin-like seeds Gas the outer end
has the germ of the root, and swells
into a bulb like pin head) are blown
by the wind, the little "fuzz" they
hold enabling them to float great way
both in wind and on water. They be-
gin falling early in the spring months,
and if a flood is receding at the time,
they stick to the soft, moist banks
wherever they touch them, and particu-
larly along the highest part of the sand
bars. Were it not for the subsequent
floods the same spring, there could no
other trees grow, as the sycamore, being
the first to shed, would seed all the
tree-growing space (each large tree
bearing one hundred and fifty million
seeds), and their broad leaves would
shade the ground till nothing else could
sprout. But during their early infancy
they are easily killed by an overflow.
and this ill fortune happens to the
greater portion of them.
The cottonwood is the next in order
of shedding seed. If another food i:
receding while the cottonwood is shed
ding, this flood will have killed all the
sycamores, which it covered for only q
few days, and will sprout all the cotton
wood seed that may fall on and along
the banks and bars. AS the earliel
floods are generally the highest, there
will be some sycamores not reached By
the following floods, and they will hole
sway along that margin. If, when tht
cottonwoods are few inches high
another flood follows, they too will b.
killed to the extent that they are KEEP
under water for a few days.
Next to the cottonwood the soft, o.
bottom, maple sheds its seed. If ;
flood is receding, this seed will occupy