Northern Lush

In the last post we looked at a rather handsome trees and shrubs from the American South.  It felt wrong not to also give something of a shout out to the greenery farther north, specifically that in the Pennsylvania Appalachians, or Alleghenies.  Northern forests can be very thick and have fun, acid-loving, evergreen foliage too!

This particular scene is representative of the Laurel Highlands in Pennsylvania, and is actually on the site of Fallingwater.

There we have Rosebay Rhododendron (Rhododendron Maximum) in the lower foreground and shooting up on the right.  The darker green spruce looking trees on the right and left sides further back are Eastern Hemlock (Tsuga Canadensis).  There is a huge variety of hardwoods at various stages of growth here, including oaks, beeches, maples, etc.  This is a very dense forest, albeit a healthy one with various levels of canopy.  The Hemlocks here have not yet been assaulted by the Wooly Adelgid (Adleges Tsugae), an invasive insect which has otherwise been murder on the majestic Hemlocks.  In former times, before the bug and logging had seen that many Appalachian forests looked nothing like their former glory, the above scene would have been typical of the deep woods that at once both encouraged European exploration and kept colonials back on the cultivated lower ground.  They also would have had less mosquitoes in these parts; they do not seem to swarm that much around the Hemlocks.

Like the plants in the last post, these fellows are also the in-between crowd.  They don't like to keep their feet soaked, but they don't do well with hot and dry either.  This is a forest of comfortable heat in the summer, despite the lack of breezes in the dense growth.  Things are moist, but not wet, even though the region receives plenty of rainfall like the southern one previously seen.  The soils help in that regard, holding on to what they need to with their thick layer of organic matter, while also draining relatively well.  All in all, a rather pleasant environment to live in, but still relatively unsettled.