The Most Diverse Forest
     A rare natural treasure. Along the unglaciated Appalachian Plateau in West Virginia stands a mixed mesophytic forest. It thrives on West Virginia's deep, well-drained, nutrient-rich soil which allows rapid decomposition of organic matter. Typically a representative forest community contains twenty or more species including both deciduous and evergreen trees.

     In West Virginia indicators of mixed mesophytic forest canopies are basswood, sugar maple, tulip tree, eastern hemlock, American beech, mountain magnolia, cucumber magnolia, umbrella magnolia, and red oak. Additional companion trees include white oak, white ash, black birch, yellow birch, pignut hickory, shag bark hickory, bitternut hickory, black cherry, black maple, black locust, and big-tooth aspen, among others.

     Familiar subcanopy tree species and shrubs arrest our eye-level attention during hikes through these woods. At understory ground level are herb communities invigorated by light penetrating gaps in tree canopies.

     All three levels - overstory canopy, subcanopy, and understory - are interdependent. Only one other temperate zone forest in the world possesses the diversity of the mixed-mesophytic and that is in east-central China. A fine web site explaining mixed mesophytic forest is http://wvnvm.wvnet.edu/...

     Variability. There is a good deal of variability in the types of trees and vegetation in West Virginia, depending upon their location within the state. The unusual panhandles of the state extend boundaries into latitudes and longitudes remote from each other.  Altitudes range from the 4,860-feet-high summit of Spruce Knob to the lowest point at Harper's Ferry of 240 feet above sea level.  Temperature and rainfall vary too.  Deep Pocahontas County snows  support a dynamic snow skiing industry when Charleston streets are dry.  A student at West Virginia University who departs chilly Morgantown in early spring and goes home to Huntington finds flowers blooming two weeks sooner than where he left a few hours before.
Last updated on Tuesday, July 24, 2001