1.
Borderland State Park
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Borderland is a Massachusetts state park located in the towns of Easton and Sharon. The 1, 782-acre park is operated by the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation, an appointed Advisory Council participates in policy decision-making. The area was listed on the National Register of Historic Places as Borderland Historic District in 1997, in 1906, Oakes Ames, a Harvard botanist, and his wife Blanche Ames Ames, an artist and feminist, purchased land on the border of Sharon and Easton. There they built a mansion still stands and created a nature preserve with woodland paths and roadways. After remaining in the family for years, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts acquired the Borderland estate in 1971. Mansion, The family’s home, a three-story, 20-room stone mansion constructed in 1910, was largely at the direction of Blanche Ames. Her paintings still hang on the walls and much of the furnishings are still intact. Tours are offered on the third Sunday of the month from April to November between 1 pm and 3 pm, visitors Center, The main entrance and visitor center are located in Easton. Trail maps and information are available, trails, The park has more than 20 miles of wooded trails for hiking, mountain biking, and horseback riding. Trails include a portion of the Bay Circuit Trail and the Quarry Loop to Moyles Quarry which supplied the stone for the Canton Viaduct in 1835. Photography, The mansion and other structures, ponds, woods, the park also offers fishing and canoeing in the ponds, winter ice skating and sledding, and a disc golf course. Park hours are 8am to posted closing time, in recent years, Borderland has served as the home for Oliver Ames High School cross country running, representing the schools home course. It is also utilized by the Old Colony League for its cross country meet. The park also hosts the Hockomock League Championship meet and various invitational meets on the 3. 1-mile-loop course, in 1996, the World Masters Flying Disc Championships were held at Borderland. Scenes from the Martin Scorsese movie Shutter Island were shot at the stone next to Leach Pond in 2008. The park has also seen filming for a commercial, a documentary, the Artistic and Scientific Collaboration of Blanche Ames Ames and Adelbert Ames II, Leonardo Journal 31.1, 47-54. Borderland State Park Department of Conservation and Recreation Friends of Borderland State Park
2.
Massachusetts
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It is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the east, the states of Connecticut and Rhode Island to the south, New Hampshire and Vermont to the north, and New York to the west. The state is named for the Massachusett tribe, which inhabited the area. The capital of Massachusetts and the most populous city in New England is Boston, over 80% of Massachusetts population lives in the Greater Boston metropolitan area, a region influential upon American history, academia, and industry. Originally dependent on agriculture, fishing and trade, Massachusetts was transformed into a manufacturing center during the Industrial Revolution, during the 20th century, Massachusetts economy shifted from manufacturing to services. Modern Massachusetts is a leader in biotechnology, engineering, higher education, finance. Plymouth was the site of the first colony in New England, founded in 1620 by the Pilgrims, in 1692, the town of Salem and surrounding areas experienced one of Americas most infamous cases of mass hysteria, the Salem witch trials. In 1777, General Henry Knox founded the Springfield Armory, which during the Industrial Revolution catalyzed numerous important technological advances, in 1786, Shays Rebellion, a populist revolt led by disaffected American Revolutionary War veterans, influenced the United States Constitutional Convention. In the 18th century, the Protestant First Great Awakening, which swept the Atlantic World, in the late 18th century, Boston became known as the Cradle of Liberty for the agitation there that led to the American Revolution. The entire Commonwealth of Massachusetts has played a commercial and cultural role in the history of the United States. Before the American Civil War, Massachusetts was a center for the abolitionist, temperance, in the late 19th century, the sports of basketball and volleyball were invented in the western Massachusetts cities of Springfield and Holyoke, respectively. Many prominent American political dynasties have hailed from the state, including the Adams, both Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, also in Cambridge, have been ranked among the most highly regarded academic institutions in the world. Massachusetts public school students place among the top nations in the world in academic performance, the official name of the state is the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. While this designation is part of the official name, it has no practical implications. Massachusetts has the position and powers within the United States as other states. Massachusetts was originally inhabited by tribes of the Algonquian language family such as the Wampanoag, Narragansett, Nipmuc, Pocomtuc, Mahican, and Massachusett. While cultivation of crops like squash and corn supplemented their diets, villages consisted of lodges called wigwams as well as longhouses, and tribes were led by male or female elders known as sachems. Between 1617 and 1619, smallpox killed approximately 90% of the Massachusetts Bay Native Americans, the first English settlers in Massachusetts, the Pilgrims, arrived via the Mayflower at Plymouth in 1620, and developed friendly relations with the native Wampanoag people. This was the second successful permanent English colony in the part of North America that later became the United States, the event known as the First Thanksgiving was celebrated by the Pilgrims after their first harvest in the New World which lasted for three days
3.
Biome
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A biome /ˈbaɪoʊm/ is a community of plants and animals that have common characteristics for the environment they exist in, and can be found over a range of continents. Spanning continents, biomes are distinct biological communities that have formed in response to a shared physical climate, biome is a broader term than habitat, any biome can comprise a variety of habitats. While a biome can cover large ares, a microbiome is a mix of organisms that coexist in a space as well. For example, the microbiome is the collection of bacteria, viruses. The biotas of the Earth make up the biosphere, the term was suggested in 1916 by Clements, originally as a synonym for biotic community of Möbius. In 1935, Tansley added the climatic and soil aspects to the idea, the International Biological Program projects popularized the concept of biome. However, in contexts, the term biome is used in a different manner. Both includes many biomes in fact and their boundaries must therefore be drawn arbitrarily and their characterization made according to the average conditions that predominate in them. A1978 study on North American grasslands found a positive correlation between evapotranspiration in mm/yr and above-ground net primary production in g/m2/yr. These findings help explain the categories used in Holdridge’s bioclassification scheme, Holdridge uses the four axes to define 30 so-called humidity provinces, which are clearly visible in his diagram. While this scheme largely ignores soil and sun exposure, Holdridge acknowledged that these were important and his scheme can be seen as a simplification of Holdridges, more readily accessible, but missing Holdridges greater specificity. Whittaker based his approach on theoretical assertions and empirical sampling and he was in a unique position to make such a holistic assertion because he had previously compiled a review of biome classifications. Physiognomy, the apparent characteristics, outward features, or appearance of communities or species. Biome, a grouping of terrestrial ecosystems on a continent that are similar in vegetation structure, physiognomy, features of the environment. Formation, a kind of community of plants on a given continent. Biome-type, grouping of convergent biomes or formations of different continents, whittakers distinction between biome and formation can be simplified, formation is used when applied to plant communities only, while biome is used when concerned with both plants and animals. Whittakers convention of biome-type or formation-type is simply a method to categorize similar communities. Whittaker considered four main ecoclines in the terrestrial realm, changes in physiognomic complexity vary with how favorable of an environment exists
4.
Temperate broadleaf and mixed forest
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Temperate broadleaf and mixed forest is a temperate climate terrestrial biome, with broadleaf tree ecoregions, and with conifer and broadleaf tree mixed coniferous forest ecoregions. The term Temperate broadleaf and mixed forest is used by the World Wildlife Fund in global biogeography as one of the biome designations under which to organize ecoregions, the typical structure of these forests includes four layers. The uppermost layer is the canopy composed of mature trees ranging from 30 to 61 m high. Below the canopy is the three-layered, shade-tolerant understory that is roughly 9 to 15 m shorter than the canopy, the top layer of the understory is the sub-canopy composed of smaller mature trees, saplings, and suppressed juvenile canopy layer trees awaiting an opening in the canopy. Below the sub-canopy is the layer, composed of low growing woody plants. Typically the lowest growing layer is the cover or herbaceous layer. In the Northern hemisphere, characteristic dominant broadleaf trees in this biome include oaks, beeches, maples, the term mixed forest comes from the inclusion of coniferous trees as a canopy component of some of these forests. Typical coniferous trees include, Pines, firs, and spruces, in some areas of this biome the conifers may be a more important canopy species than the broadleaf species. In the Southern hemisphere, endemic genera such as Nothofagus and Eucalyptus occupy this biome, Temperate broadleaf and mixed forests occur in areas with distinct warm and cool season, which give it a moderate annual average temperature —3 to 15.6 °C. These forests occur in warm and rainy climates, sometimes also with a distinct dry season. A dry season occurs in the winter in East Asia and in summer on the wet fringe of the Mediterranean climate zones. Other areas, as in the central and upper eastern United States and southeastern Canada, have an even distribution of rainfall, annual rainfall is typically over 600 mm
5.
New England/Acadian forests
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This ecoregion has a humid continental climate with warm summers and cold winters. There is also a patch of forest-boreal transition on the Adirondack Mountains. This entire area is referred to as the Atlantic Northeast. The climate consists of warm summers and cold winters with the Atlantic Ocean bringing rain all year round. The seaboard lowlands of this region, which extends to mid-coastal Maine, the forests of this area were radically cleared for agricultural land by the 19th century and then renewed as many of these farms were abandoned following the migration westward. Today the area is largely a mosaic of habitats influenced locally by micro-climatic differences, essentially, there are four important community types which show considerable diversity and blending across this physiographic province. These communities are, alpine communities on the highest mountains, coniferous forests, northern hardwood forests, there are no clear boundaries between the coniferous forests and the hardwood forests in the New England-Acadian ecoregion. The prevalence in the canopy of red pine and red spruce distinguish the transition forests of New England from those in the Great Lakes region to the west, some of western Vermont is in the Adirondack province, but generally exhibits similar vegetation. Areas of particular interest include areas of rocks, peat bog. Alpine communities are essentially regions of Arctic tundra, or treeless tundra-like communities and these are restricted to the tops of mountains that reach above the tree line, about 1300 metres. Mountaintops of Nova Scotias Cape Breton Island may have minor alpine biota, krumholtz and other aspects, full-blown alpine communities are found on Washington and the other White Mountains of New Hampshire and on Mount Katahdin in Maine. Quebecs Gaspé Peninsula, vegetatively similar to Maine and New Brunswick and these tall mountains serve as refugia for arctic plants left over from the retreat of the Laurentide glacier at the end of the last ice age. The truest alpine tundra communities are located on the western and northwestern slopes of tall mountains. The western slopes are typically heath dominated communities composed of plant of the family Ericaceae, common dominant components of the heaths are alpine bilberry and mountain cranberry. It is also found on parts of the Fundy coast in Maine and the Maritimes, the coniferous forest goes by many names, including, Boreal forest, fir-spruce forest, the North Woods, and the taiga. It is noted in New England for its harsh conditions such as cold, subarctic temperatures, a growing period, sandy-gravely acidic soil. It is also noted for a rate of precipitation, year round, as rain and snow. The dominant canopy species of this area include red pine, balsam fir, paper birch, red spruce, also present are jack pine, and white pine which is found in areas of richer soil in the lower elevations of this forest
6.
Eastern Great Lakes lowland forests
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The Eastern Great Lakes lowland forests is a temperate broadleaf and mixed forest ecoregion of North America, mostly in eastern Canada. This area includes much of northern New York state, western Vermont, the region includes the Frontenac Axis, the Niagara Escarpment up to Manitoulin Island on Lake Huron, and Lake Simcoe. This region has warm summers and cold, snowy winters, trees of the woodland include eastern hemlock, pines, maple, and oaks. Particular areas include the oak/pine mix of the Albany Pine Bush, areas of dry rocky alvar plain, the Eastern Great Lakes lowland forests are very rich in wildlife. Birds include cardinals, downy woodpecker, wood duck and eastern screech owl, less than 5% of natural forest remains intact. List of ecoregions in the United States Eastern Great Lakes Lowland Forests, archived from the original on 2010-03-08. Central U. S. hardwood forests images at bioimages. vanderbilt. edu
7.
Allegheny Highlands forests
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The Allegheny Highlands forests are a temperate broadleaf and mixed forests ecoregion of North America, as defined by the World Wildlife Fund. The ecoregion has a continental climate with warm to hot summers. Most of this forest was cleared in the late-19th and early-20th centuries, although all individual trees species still remain, their quantities and distribution are radically different from the forests original state. The Finger Lakes area has a rich mixture of woodland. Upland hardwood forests include red maple, American beech, black cherry, Allegheny hardwood forests consist of black cherry, white ash, and tulip poplar. Mixed-oak forests of red oak, white oak, eastern black oak. Northern hardwood forests include sugar maple and American beech, also common are yellow birch, eastern hemlock, red maple, black cherry, and eastern white pine. Hemlock tends to follow stream drainages, while white pine prefers drier ridgetops, white ash, American elm, basswood, and hop hornbeam can occur locally. Boreal forests occur at high elevations, particularly on the peaks of the Catskill Mountains and these forests include balsam fir, paper birch, mountain ash, and red cherry. Wild raisin and mountain holly are shrubs that grow in high elevation swamps, bogs, Wildlife of the forest includes bobcat, American black bear, coyote, and flying squirrel
8.
Appalachian-Blue Ridge forests
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The Appalachian-Blue Ridge forests is an ecoregion in the Temperate broadleaf and mixed forests Biome, in the Eastern United States. The ecoregion is located in the central and southern Appalachian Mountains, including the Ridge-and-Valley Appalachians, the mountains also contain a large variety of diverse landscapes, microclimates and soils all constituting microhabitats allowing many refugia areas and relict species to survive and thrive. The climate varies from humid continental in the north to subtropical in the south. Summers are hot at lower elevations, warm at higher elevations, winters are cold at higher elevations and cool at lower elevations. In terms of biodiversity, the only comparable temperate deciduous forest regions in the world are in central China, Japan, both the Appalachians and central China contain relict habitats of an ancient forest that was once widespread over the Northern Hemisphere. There are species, genera, and families of plants that only in these two locations. The Great Smoky Mountains are particularly rich in biodiversity, the Appalachians are home to 158 different species of tree, more than anywhere else in North America. There are two types of forest, deciduous oak forest at low elevations, and coniferous spruce-fir forest above that. Until 1890 the oaks were mixed with American chestnut but these were wiped out by the chestnut blight fungus in the early 1900s. Cove forests occur in coves and on low north- and east-facing slopes in the southern Blue Ridge and they are among the most biologically diverse ecosystems in the country. Typical trees of these forests are sugar maple, American beech, eastern hemlock, Carolina silverbell, tulip poplar, red maple, white oak, northern red oak, yellow birch, yellow buckeye, oaks gain numbers on drier sites. These forests dominated by pine and Virginia pine. Pitch pine may sometimes be present. Hardwoods are sometimes abundant, especially dry-site oaks such as red oak, chestnut oak, and scarlet oak, but also pignut hickory, red maple. The shrub layer may be well-developed, with blueberry, black huckleberry. Herbs are usually sparse but may include narrowleaf silkgrass and goat-rue, Southern Appalachian oak forests, widespread in the southeastern United States, occur on dry, upland sites on southern and western aspects and ridgetops. The composition of forests varies throughout their range but often includes chestnut oak, northern red oak, eastern black oak, white oak. Hickories such as bitternut, shagbark, and mockernut, are here, as are black tupelo, red maple, white pine. The Southern Ridge and Valley/Cumberland dry calcareous forests occur on dry to dry-mesic calcareous habitats in the southern Ridge-and-Valley Appalachians and they are often found on deep soils in a variety landscapes within their range
9.
Southeastern mixed forests
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The Southeastern mixed forests are an ecoregion of the temperate broadleaf and mixed forest biome, in the lower portion of the Eastern United States. This ecoregion covers the Piedmont region of the eastern United States and it is distinguished from neighboring ecoregions by elevation and vegetation. At lower elevations to the east are the Middle Atlantic coastal forests on the Atlantic coastal plain, similarly, the Southeastern conifer forests occupy the Gulf coastal plain to the south. Higher, and to the north and west, are the Appalachian-Blue Ridge forests, both oaks and hickories are abundant in this ecoregion. Additionally, some 3,635 species of herbaceous and shrub species have been recorded here. American chestnut was formerly an important tree in this ecoregion, and it still persists as an understory tree, but is often killed by the blight before it matures. The most common oaks of this ecoregion are white oak, northern red oak, black oak, black and scarlet grow in open forests. Black oak grows in nearly single-species stands on dry, exposed sites, scarlet oak grows in various habitats. Chestnut oak is found on ridgetops, the hickories of this ecoregion are identifiable by their pinnately compound leaves. They include pignut and mockernut hickory, both of which grow on a variety of sites from dry ridges to mesic habitats, understory trees include sassafras, hophornbeam, and green hawthorn. Flowering dogwood blooms in early spring, shrubs include highbush blueberry, lowbush blueberry, mapleleaf viburnum, huckleberry, mountain laurel. Common pine species are pine and loblolly pine. The pine forests are regenerated by fire, without fire, hardwood species grow in below the pines. Sugar maple, a tolerant tree, grows amid the oaks. Mesic forests occur in fertile, mesic, low-elevation habitats such as deep ravines, dominant trees include American beech, tulip tree, northern red oak, white ash, black maple, sugar maple, basswood, and bitternut hickory. Understory trees include pawpaw and painted buckeye, mesic mixed hardwood forests grow on mesic uplands, ravines, lower slopes, and well-drained flatwoods. Typical trees are American beech, tulip tree, various oaks and hickories, understory trees include American hornbeam, flowering dogwood, and American strawberry-bush. Successional forests include eastern juniper, black locust, and quaking, lee Memorial, Virginia Duke Forest William B
10.
Middle Atlantic coastal forests
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The Middle Atlantic coastal forests are a temperate coniferous forest mixed with patches of evergreen broadleaved forests along the coast of the southeastern United States. The Middle Atlantic coastal forests stretch along the Atlantic coast of the United States from the Delmarva Peninsula south to the Georgia coast and they cover the lower Atlantic coastal plain and are bordered on the west by the Southeastern mixed forests. The habitats of the ecoregion are constantly modified by natural processes, the bottomlands, coastal plains, and maritime areas are vulnerable to tropical cyclones and floods. The drier areas with sandy soils are susceptible to fires. Fire return intervals of 1 to 3 years favor herbaceous plants, longer intervals favor dense shrubs and this ecoregion has a humid subtropical climate with hot summers and mild winters, and with the heaviest precipitation concentrated in the warmest months. The mixed pine-oak forests occur on dry or sandy soils or in areas exposed to occasional fires, longleaf pine, superbly adapted to fire-prone environments, is the principal tree of these forests. Loblolly pine and shortleaf pine grow in sandy soils, on moist soils or where fires are infrequent, hardwoods overtake the pines. These hardwoods include turkey oak, post oak, myrtle oak, Spanish oak, evergreen broadleaved forests occur close to the coast in localized areas as either evergreen Maritime oak forests or as more localized evergreen Hammock. In the open areas near sandy beaches and coastal areas, large populations of Yucca and cactus thrive in the hot sun. The Middle Atlantic coastal forests contain the most diverse assemblage of freshwater wetland communities in North America and these include freshwater marshes, shrub bogs, white cedar swamps, bayheads, and wet hammocks. The bottomland hardwood forests for which the ecoregion is famous are dominated by bald cypress, bald cypress swamps are often dominated by their namesake tree, and are too wet for foot travel. Many uncommon orchids grow among the baldcypress branches, swamp tupelo, along with water tupelo, dominate mixed-hardwood swamp forests. These grow aside water-adapted oaks that include oak, swamp chestnut oak, cherrybark oak, willow oak. Swamp hickory and water hickory are also found here, Atlantic white cedar swamps occur along blackwater rivers. Pocosins are flat and damp, sandy, or peaty areas far from streams and they have scattered pond pine and a dense growth of mostly evergreen shrubs including gallberry. Barrier islands along the coast protect extensive estuaries, lagoons, carolina bays are a unique habitat of the ecoregion. The nine-banded armadillo is an animal that lives in this ecoregion. In the mixed forests, the brown-headed nuthatch feeds on pine seeds
11.
Atlantic coastal pine barrens
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The pine barrens are underlain by sandy, nutrient-poor soils, which typically support stunted forests dominated by pines. This ecoregion has a subtropical climate in some sections. The composition of the flora of the pine barrens is largely determined by fire frequency, pine-dominated forests are the characteristic forests of this ecoregion, but where fires occur at intervals of 10 years or less, dwarf pine forests develop. Where fires are infrequent, oak-dominated forest develop, in wetland areas grow cedar swamp forests and hardwood swamp forests. Pitch pine is the most abundant tree here, shortleaf pine is also present, but not as abundant. In the southern regions of the New Jersey Pine Barrens, loblolly pine and pond pine are present, a variety of oaks grow among the pines, including black, white, post, chestnut, scarlet, and blackjack. These forests tend to be open with widely spaced trees and plenty of sunlight reaching the forest floor, the understory is thick with shrubs, including black huckleberry and early lowbush blueberry. Staggerbrush, dangleberry, mountain laurel, and sheep laurel also occur, the only trees that can recover from frequent fires are pitch pine and blackjack oak, which are abundant here. Deprived of the opportunity to grow tall, these grow as shrubs that may only be 4 feet tall. Black huckleberry and early lowbush blueberry are again common here, mountain laurel, sheep laurel, and bearberry are also common. Without fires, leaf litter accumulates, creating an environment that favors the establishment of oak seedlings instead of pine seedlings, in time, the pines grow old, die, and are replaced by oaks. The most common are black, scarlet, chestnut, white, pitch and shortleaf pines are scattered among the oaks. The forest canopy tends to be closed, the understory vegetation is similar to that of the pine-dominated forest, with black huckleberry, early lowbush blueberry, and dangleberry common. Swamp forests dominated by Atlantic white cedar occur along the waterways of the pine barrens, the white cedars often grow from pools of standing water and, in contrast to the surrounding pine forests, considerably darken the understory. Amid the white cedars are red maple, sour gum, pitch pine, in openings and edges grow highbush blueberry, dangleberry, swamp azalea, fetterbush, and leatherleaf. Sweet pepperbush, inkberry, and winterberry are also present, sweet gum and red maple are the most abundant trees in the hardwood swamp forests. American holly, an evergreen tree, is common. Pin oak, swamp oak, willow oak, tulip tree, sour gum
12.
Ecoregion
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An ecoregion is an ecologically and geographically defined area that is smaller than a bioregion, which in turn is smaller than an ecozone. All three of these are less or greater than an ecosystem. Ecoregions cover relatively large areas of land or water, and contain characteristic, the biodiversity of flora, fauna and ecosystems that characterise an ecoregion tends to be distinct from that of other ecoregions. Three caveats are appropriate for all bio-geographic mapping approaches, firstly, no single bio-geographic framework is optimal for all taxa. Ecoregions reflect the best compromise for as many taxa as possible, secondly, ecoregion boundaries rarely form abrupt edges, rather, ecotones and mosaic habitats bound them. Thirdly, most ecoregions contain habitats that differ from their assigned biome, biogeographic provinces may originate due to various barriers. Some physical, some climatic and some ocean chemical related, the history of the term is somewhat vague as it was used in many contexts, forest classifications, biome classifications, biogeographic classifications, etc. The concept of ecoregion of Bailey gives more importance to ecological criteria, while the WWF concept gives more importance to biogeography, there is significant, but not absolute, spatial correlation among these characteristics, making the delineation of ecoregions an imperfect science. Such transition zones are called ecotones, Ecoregions can be categorized using an algorithmic approach or a holistic, “weight-of-evidence” approach where the importance of various factors may vary. An example of the approach is Robert Bailey’s work for the U. S. The intended purpose of ecoregion delineation may affect the method used, according to WWF, the boundaries of an ecoregion approximate the original extent of the natural communities prior to any major recent disruptions or changes. WWF has identified 867 terrestrial ecoregions, and approximately 450 freshwater ecoregions across the Earth, the use of the term ecoregion is an outgrowth of a surge of interest in ecosystems and their functioning. In particular, there is awareness of issues relating to spatial scale in the study and it is widely recognized that interlinked ecosystems combine to form a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. The Global 200 is the list of ecoregions identified by WWF as priorities for conservation, Terrestrial ecoregions are land ecoregions, as distinct from freshwater and marine ecoregions. In this context, terrestrial is used to mean of land, WWF ecologists currently divide the land surface of the Earth into 8 major ecozones containing 867 smaller terrestrial ecoregions. The WWF effort is a synthesis of previous efforts to define. Many consider this classification to be decisive, and some propose these as stable borders for bioregional democracy initiatives. The eight terrestrial ecozones follow the major floral and faunal boundaries, identified by botanists and zoologists, ecozone boundaries generally follow continental boundaries, or major barriers to plant and animal distribution, like the Himalayas and the Sahara
13.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
14.
Piedmont (United States)
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The Piedmont is a plateau region located in the eastern United States. It sits between the Atlantic Coastal Plain and the main Appalachian Mountains, stretching from New Jersey in the north to central Alabama in the south, the Piedmont Province is a physiographic province of the larger Appalachian division which consists of the Piedmont Upland and the Piedmont Lowlands sections. The Atlantic Seaboard fall line marks the Piedmonts eastern boundary with the Coastal Plain, to the west, it is mostly bounded by the Blue Ridge Mountains, the easternmost range of the main Appalachians. The width of the Piedmont varies, being quite narrow above the Delaware River, the Piedmonts area is approximately 80,000 square miles. The name Piedmont comes from the French term for the physical region, literally meaning foothill, ultimately from Latin pedemontium. The region is named after the Italian region of Piedmont, the lowlands which abut the Alps, the surface relief of the Piedmont is characterized by relatively low, rolling hills with heights above sea level between 200 feet and 800 feet to 1,000 feet. Its geology is complex, with rock formations of different materials. Essentially, the Piedmont is the remnant of ancient mountain chains that have since been eroded away. Geologists have identified at least five events which have led to sediment deposition, including the Grenville orogeny. The last major event in the history of the Piedmont was the break-up of Pangaea, large basins formed from the rifting and were subsequently filled by the sediments shed from the surrounding higher ground. The series of Mesozoic basins is almost entirely located inside the Piedmont region, Piedmont soils are generally clay-like and moderately fertile. In some areas they have suffered from erosion and over-cropping, particularly in the South where cotton was historically the chief crop. In the central Piedmont region of North Carolina and Virginia, corn is the crop, while in the north region there is more diversity, including orchards, dairying. The Piedmont region is associated with the Piedmont blues, a style of blues music that originated there in the late 19th century. According to the Piedmont Blues Preservation Society, most Piedmont blues musicians came from Virginia, the Carolinas, during the Great Migration, Black Americans migrated to the Piedmont. Thus, Piedmont blues was influenced by many types of such as ragtime, country. Many major cities are located on the line, the eastern boundary of the Piedmont. The fall line, where the land rises abruptly from the plain, marks the limit of navigability on many major rivers
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Maine
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Maine is the northernmost state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. Maine is the 39th most extensive and the 41st most populous of the U. S. states and territories and it is bordered by New Hampshire to the west, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Quebec to the north. Maine is the easternmost state in the contiguous United States, and it is known for its jagged, rocky coastline, low, rolling mountains, heavily forested interior, and picturesque waterways, and also its seafood cuisine, especially clams and lobster. There is a continental climate throughout the state, even in areas such as its most populous city of Portland. For thousands of years, indigenous peoples were the inhabitants of the territory that is now Maine. At the time of European arrival in what is now Maine, the first European settlement in the area was by the French in 1604 on Saint Croix Island, by Pierre Dugua, Sieur de Mons. The first English settlement was the short-lived Popham Colony, established by the Plymouth Company in 1607, as Maine entered the 18th century, only a half dozen European settlements had survived. Loyalist and Patriot forces contended for Maines territory during the American Revolution, Maine was part of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts until 1820, when it voted to secede from Massachusetts to become an independent state. On March 15,1820, it was admitted to the Union as the 23rd state under the Missouri Compromise, there is no definitive explanation for the origin of the name Maine, but the most likely origin is the name given by early explorers after a province in France. Whatever the origin, the name was fixed for English settlers in 1665 when the English Kings Commissioners ordered that the Province of Maine be entered from then on in official records. The state legislature in 2001 adopted a resolution establishing Franco-American Day, other theories mention earlier places with similar names, or claim it is a nautical reference to the mainland. Attempts to uncover the history of the name of Maine began with James Sullivans 1795 History of the District of Maine. He made the allegation that the Province of Maine was a compliment to the queen of Charles I, Henrietta Maria. MAINE appears in the Domesday Book of 1086 in reference to the county of Dorset, the view generally held among British place name scholars is that Mayne in Dorset is Brythonic, corresponding to modern Welsh maen, plural main or meini. Some early spellings are, MAINE1086, MEINE1200, MEINES1204, mason had served with the Royal Navy in the Orkney Islands where the chief island is called Mainland, a possible name derivation for these English sailors. Initially, several tracts along the coast of New England were referred to as Main or Maine, Maine is the only state whose name has exactly one syllable. The original inhabitants of the territory that is now Maine were Algonquian-speaking Wabanaki peoples, including the Abenaki, Passamaquoddy, Maliseet and Penobscot, who had a loose confederacy. European contact with what is now called Maine started around 1200 CE when Norwegians interacted with the native Penobscot in present-day Hancock County, most likely through trade
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New Hampshire
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New Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Atlantic Ocean to the east, New Hampshire is the 5th smallest by land area and the 9th least populous of the 50 United States. Concord is the capital, while Manchester is the largest city in the state and in northern New England, including Vermont. It has no sales tax, nor is personal income taxed at either the state or local level. The New Hampshire primary is the first primary in the U. S. presidential election cycle and its license plates carry the state motto, Live Free or Die. The states nickname, The Granite State, refers to its extensive granite formations, the state was named after the southern English county of Hampshire by Captain John Mason. New Hampshire is part of the New England region and it is bounded by Quebec, Canada, to the north and northwest, Maine and the Atlantic Ocean to the east, Massachusetts to the south, and Vermont to the west. New Hampshires major regions are the Great North Woods, the White Mountains, the Lakes Region, the Seacoast, the Merrimack Valley, the Monadnock Region, and the Dartmouth-Lake Sunapee area. New Hampshire has the shortest ocean coastline of any U. S. coastal state, New Hampshire was home to the rock formation called the Old Man of the Mountain, a face-like profile in Franconia Notch, until the formation disintegrated in May 2003. Major rivers include the 110-mile Merrimack River, which bisects the lower half of the state north–south and ends up in Newburyport and its tributaries include the Contoocook River, Pemigewasset River, and Winnipesaukee River. The 410-mile Connecticut River, which starts at New Hampshires Connecticut Lakes and flows south to Connecticut, only one town – Pittsburg – shares a land border with the state of Vermont. The northwesternmost headwaters of the Connecticut also define the Canada–U. S, the Piscataqua River and its several tributaries form the states only significant ocean port where they flow into the Atlantic at Portsmouth. The Salmon Falls River and the Piscataqua define the southern portion of the border with Maine, the U. S. Supreme Court dismissed the case in 2002, leaving ownership of the island with Maine. New Hampshire still claims sovereignty of the base, however, the largest of New Hampshires lakes is Lake Winnipesaukee, which covers 71 square miles in the east-central part of New Hampshire. Umbagog Lake along the Maine border, approximately 12.3 square miles, is a distant second, Squam Lake is the second largest lake entirely in New Hampshire. New Hampshire has the shortest ocean coastline of any state in the United States, Hampton Beach is a popular local summer destination. It is the state with the highest percentage of area in the country. New Hampshire is in the temperate broadleaf and mixed forests biome, much of the state, in particular the White Mountains, is covered by the conifers and northern hardwoods of the New England-Acadian forests
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Rhode Island
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Rhode Island, officially the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. Rhode Island is the smallest in area, the eighth least populous, and its official name is also the longest of any state in the Union. Rhode Island is bordered by Connecticut to the west, Massachusetts to the north and east, the state also shares a short maritime border with New York. It boycotted the 1787 convention that drew up the United States Constitution, on May 29,1790, Rhode Island became the 13th and last state to ratify the Constitution. Rhode Islands official nickname is The Ocean State, a reference to the fact that the state has several large bays, Rhode Island covers 1,214 square miles, of which 1,045 square miles are land. Despite its name, most of Rhode Island is located on the mainland of the United States, the official name of the state is State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, which is derived from the merger of four settlements. Rhode Island is now commonly called Aquidneck Island, the largest of several islands in Narragansett Bay, Providence Plantation was the name of the colony founded by Roger Williams in the area now known as the city of Providence. This was adjoined by the settlement of Warwick, hence the plural Providence Plantations and it is unclear how Aquidneck Island came to be known as Rhode Island, although there are two popular theories. Explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano noted the presence of an island near the mouth of Narragansett Bay in 1524, subsequent European explorers were unable to precisely identify the island that Verrazzano had named, but the Pilgrims who later colonized the area assumed that it was Aquidneck. A second theory concerns the fact that Adriaen Block passed by Aquidneck during his expeditions in the 1610s, historians have theorized that this reddish appearance resulted from either red autumn foliage or red clay on portions of the shore. The earliest documented use of the name Rhode Island for Aquidneck was in 1637 by Roger Williams, the name was officially applied to the island in 1644 with these words, Aquethneck shall be henceforth called the Isle of Rodes or Rhode-Island. The name Isle of Rodes is used in a document as late as 1646. Dutch maps as early as 1659 call the island Red Island, Williams was a theologian forced out of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Seeking religious and political tolerance, he and others founded Providence Plantation as a proprietary colony. Providence referred to the concept of providence, and plantation was an English term for a colony. State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations is the longest official name of any state in the Union, advocates for excising plantation asserted that the word specifically referred to the British colonial practice of establishing settlements which disenfranchised native people. Advocates for retaining the name argued that plantation was simply an archaic English synonym for colony, the referendum election was held on November 2,2010, and the people voted overwhelmingly to retain the entire original name. It shares a maritime border with New York State between Block Island and Long Island
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Connecticut
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Connecticut is the southernmost state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. Connecticut is also often grouped along with New York and New Jersey as the Tri-State Area and it is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. Its capital city is Hartford, and its most populous city is Bridgeport, the state is named for the Connecticut River, a major U. S. river that approximately bisects the state. The word Connecticut is derived from various anglicized spellings of an Algonquian word for long tidal river, Connecticut is the third smallest state by area, the 29th most populous, and the fourth most densely populated of the 50 United States. It is known as the Constitution State, the Nutmeg State, the Provisions State, and it was influential in the development of the federal government of the United States. Connecticuts center of population is in Cheshire, New Haven County, Connecticuts first European settlers were Dutch. They established a small, short-lived settlement in present-day Hartford at the confluence of the Park, initially, half of Connecticut was a part of the Dutch colony New Netherland, which included much of the land between the Connecticut and Delaware rivers. The first major settlements were established in the 1630s by England, the Connecticut and New Haven Colonies established documents of Fundamental Orders, considered the first constitutions in North America. In 1662, the three colonies were merged under a charter, making Connecticut a crown colony. This colony was one of the Thirteen Colonies that revolted against British rule in the American Revolution, the Connecticut River, Thames River, and ports along the Long Island Sound have given Connecticut a strong maritime tradition which continues today. The state also has a history of hosting the financial services industry, including insurance companies in Hartford. As of the 2010 Census, Connecticut features the highest per-capita income, Human Development Index, and median household income in the United States. Landmarks and Cities of Connecticut Connecticut is bordered on the south by Long Island Sound, on the west by New York, on the north by Massachusetts, and on the east by Rhode Island. The state capital and third largest city is Hartford, and other cities and towns include Bridgeport, New Haven, Stamford, Waterbury, Norwalk, Danbury, New Britain, Greenwich. Connecticut is slightly larger than the country of Montenegro, there are 169 incorporated towns in Connecticut. The highest peak in Connecticut is Bear Mountain in Salisbury in the northwest corner of the state, the highest point is just east of where Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New York meet, on the southern slope of Mount Frissell, whose peak lies nearby in Massachusetts. At the opposite extreme, many of the towns have areas that are less than 20 feet above sea level. Connecticut has a maritime history and a reputation based on that history—yet the state has no direct oceanfront
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New York (state)
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New York is a state in the northeastern United States, and is the 27th-most extensive, fourth-most populous, and seventh-most densely populated U. S. state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south and Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Vermont to the east. With an estimated population of 8.55 million in 2015, New York City is the most populous city in the United States, the New York Metropolitan Area is one of the most populous urban agglomerations in the world. New York City makes up over 40% of the population of New York State, two-thirds of the states population lives in the New York City Metropolitan Area, and nearly 40% lives on Long Island. Both the state and New York City were named for the 17th-century Duke of York, the next four most populous cities in the state are Buffalo, Rochester, Yonkers, and Syracuse, while the state capital is Albany. New York has a diverse geography and these more mountainous regions are bisected by two major river valleys—the north-south Hudson River Valley and the east-west Mohawk River Valley, which forms the core of the Erie Canal. Western New York is considered part of the Great Lakes Region and straddles Lake Ontario, between the two lakes lies Niagara Falls. The central part of the state is dominated by the Finger Lakes, New York had been inhabited by tribes of Algonquian and Iroquoian-speaking Native Americans for several hundred years by the time the earliest Europeans came to New York. The first Europeans to arrive were French colonists and Jesuit missionaries who arrived southward from settlements at Montreal for trade, the British annexed the colony from the Dutch in 1664. The borders of the British colony, the Province of New York, were similar to those of the present-day state, New York is home to the Statue of Liberty, a symbol of the United States and its ideals of freedom, democracy, and opportunity. In the 21st century, New York has emerged as a node of creativity and entrepreneurship, social tolerance. On April 17,1524 Verrazanno entered New York Bay, by way of the now called the Narrows into the northern bay which he named Santa Margherita. Verrazzano described it as a vast coastline with a delta in which every kind of ship could pass and he adds. This vast sheet of water swarmed with native boats and he landed on the tip of Manhattan and possibly on the furthest point of Long Island. Verrazannos stay was interrupted by a storm which pushed him north towards Marthas Vineyard, in 1540 French traders from New France built a chateau on Castle Island, within present-day Albany, due to flooding, it was abandoned the next year. In 1614, the Dutch under the command of Hendrick Corstiaensen, rebuilt the French chateau, Fort Nassau was the first Dutch settlement in North America, and was located along the Hudson River, also within present-day Albany. The small fort served as a trading post and warehouse, located on the Hudson River flood plain, the rudimentary fort was washed away by flooding in 1617, and abandoned for good after Fort Orange was built nearby in 1623. Henry Hudsons 1609 voyage marked the beginning of European involvement with the area, sailing for the Dutch East India Company and looking for a passage to Asia, he entered the Upper New York Bay on September 11 of that year
20.
New Jersey
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New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania, New Jersey is the fourth-smallest state but the 11th-most populous and the most densely populated of the 50 United States. New Jersey lies entirely within the statistical areas of New York City. New Jersey was inhabited by Native Americans for more than 2,800 years, in the early 17th century, the Dutch and the Swedes made the first European settlements. New Jersey was the site of decisive battles during the American Revolutionary War in the 18th century. In the 19th century, factories in cities such as Camden, Paterson, Newark, Trenton, around 180 million years ago, during the Jurassic Period, New Jersey bordered North Africa. The pressure of the collision between North America and Africa gave rise to the Appalachian Mountains, around 18,000 years ago, the Ice Age resulted in glaciers that reached New Jersey. As the glaciers retreated, they left behind Lake Passaic, as well as rivers, swamps. New Jersey was originally settled by Native Americans, with the Lenni-Lenape being dominant at the time of contact, scheyichbi is the Lenape name for the land that is now New Jersey. The Lenape society was divided into clans that were based upon common female ancestors. These clans were organized into three distinct phratries identified by their animal sign, Turtle, Turkey, and Wolf and they first encountered the Dutch in the early 17th century, and their primary relationship with the Europeans was through fur trade. The Dutch became the first Europeans to lay claim to lands in New Jersey, the Dutch colony of New Netherland consisted of parts of modern Middle Atlantic states. Although the European principle of ownership was not recognized by the Lenape. The first to do so was Michiel Pauw who established a patronship called Pavonia in 1630 along the North River which eventually became the Bergen, peter Minuits purchase of lands along the Delaware River established the colony of New Sweden. During the English Civil War, the Channel Island of Jersey remained loyal to the British Crown and it was from the Royal Square in St. Helier that Charles II of England was proclaimed King in 1649, following the execution of his father, Charles I. The North American lands were divided by Charles II, who gave his brother, the Duke of York, the region between New England and Maryland as a proprietary colony. James then granted the land between the Hudson River and the Delaware River to two friends who had remained loyal through the English Civil War, Sir George Carteret and Lord Berkeley of Stratton, the area was named the Province of New Jersey. Since the states inception, New Jersey has been characterized by ethnic, New England Congregationalists settled alongside Scots Presbyterians and Dutch Reformed migrants
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Pennsylvania
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Pennsylvania /ˌpɛnsᵻlˈveɪnjə/, officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state located in the northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The Appalachian Mountains run through its middle, Pennsylvania is the 33rd largest, the 5th most populous, and the 9th most densely populated of the 50 United States. The states five most populous cities are Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Allentown, Erie, the state capital, and its ninth-largest city, is Harrisburg. Pennsylvania has 140 miles of shoreline along Lake Erie and the Delaware Estuary. The state is one of the 13 original founding states of the United States, it came into being in 1681 as a result of a land grant to William Penn. Part of Pennsylvania, together with the present State of Delaware, had earlier been organized as the Colony of New Sweden and it was the second state to ratify the United States Constitution, on December 12,1787. Independence Hall, where the United States Declaration of Independence and United States Constitution were drafted, is located in the states largest city of Philadelphia, during the American Civil War, the Battle of Gettysburg, was fought in the south central region of the state. Valley Forge near Philadelphia was General Washingtons headquarters during the winter of 1777–78. Pennsylvania is 170 miles north to south and 283 miles east to west, of a total 46,055 square miles,44,817 square miles are land,490 square miles are inland waters, and 749 square miles are waters in Lake Erie. It is the 33rd largest state in the United States, Pennsylvania has 51 miles of coastline along Lake Erie and 57 miles of shoreline along the Delaware Estuary. Cities include Philadelphia, Reading, Lebanon and Lancaster in the southeast, Pittsburgh in the southwest, the tri-cities of Allentown, Bethlehem, the northeast includes the former anthracite coal mining communities of Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, Pittston City, and Hazleton. Erie is located in the northwest, the state has 5 regions, namely the Allegheny Plateau, Ridge and Valley, Atlantic Coastal Plain, Piedmont, and the Erie Plain. Straddling two major zones, the majority of the state, with the exception of the corner, has a humid continental climate. The largest city, Philadelphia, has characteristics of the humid subtropical climate that covers much of Delaware. Moving toward the interior of the state, the winter climate becomes colder, the number of cloudy days increase. Western areas of the state, particularly locations near Lake Erie, can receive over 100 inches of snowfall annually, the state may be subject to severe weather from spring through summer into fall. Tornadoes occur annually in the state, sometimes in large numbers, the Tuscarora Nation took up temporary residence in the central portion of Pennsylvania ca. Both the Dutch and the English claimed both sides of the Delaware River as part of their lands in America
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Delaware
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Delaware is a state located in the Mid-Atlantic and/or Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered to the south and west by Maryland, to the northeast by New Jersey, the state takes its name from Thomas West, 3rd Baron De La Warr, an English nobleman and Virginias first colonial governor. Delaware occupies the portion of the Delmarva Peninsula and is the second smallest, the sixth least populous. Delaware is divided into three counties, the lowest number of counties of any state, from north to south, the three counties are New Castle, Kent, and Sussex. While the southern two counties have historically been agricultural, New Castle County has been more industrialized. Before its coastline was explored by Europeans in the 16th century, Delaware was inhabited by groups of Native Americans, including the Lenape in the north. It was initially colonized by Dutch traders at Zwaanendael, near the present town of Lewes, Delaware was one of the 13 colonies participating in the American Revolution. On December 7,1787, Delaware became the first state to ratify the Constitution of the United States, the Delaware Indians, a name used by Europeans for Lenape people indigenous to the Delaware Valley, also derive their name from the same source. The surname de La Warr comes from Sussex and is of Anglo-Norman origin and it came probably from a Norman lieu-dit La Guerre. This toponymic could derive from the Latin word ager, from the Breton gwern or from the Late Latin varectum, the toponyms Gara, Gare, Gaire also appear in old texts cited by Lucien Musset, where the word gara means gore. It could also be linked with a patronymic from the Old Norse verr, Delaware is 96 miles long and ranges from 9 miles to 35 miles across, totaling 1,954 square miles, making it the second-smallest state in the United States after Rhode Island. Delaware is bounded to the north by Pennsylvania, to the east by the Delaware River, Delaware Bay, New Jersey and the Atlantic Ocean, small portions of Delaware are also situated on the eastern side of the Delaware River sharing land boundaries with New Jersey. The state of Delaware, together with the Eastern Shore counties of Maryland, the definition of the northern boundary of the state is unusual. Most of the boundary between Delaware and Pennsylvania was originally defined by an arc extending 12 miles from the cupola of the courthouse in the city of New Castle and this boundary is often referred to as the Twelve-Mile Circle. This is the only nominally circular state boundary in the United States, to the west, a portion of the arc extends past the easternmost edge of Maryland. The remaining western border runs slightly east of due south from its intersection with the arc, the Wedge of land between the northwest part of the arc and the Maryland border was claimed by both Delaware and Pennsylvania until 1921, when Delawares claim was confirmed. Delaware is on a plain, with the lowest mean elevation of any state in the nation. Its highest elevation, located at Ebright Azimuth, near Concord High School, the northernmost part of the state is part of the Piedmont Plateau with hills and rolling surfaces
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Maryland
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The states largest city is Baltimore, and its capital is Annapolis. Among its occasional nicknames are Old Line State, the Free State, the state is named after Henrietta Maria of France, the wife of Charles I of England. George Calvert was the first Lord of Baltimore and the first English proprietor of the colonial grant. Maryland was the state to ratify the United States Constitution. Maryland is one of the smallest U. S. states in terms of area, as well as one of the most densely populated, Maryland has an area of 12,406.68 square miles and is comparable in overall area with Belgium. It is the 42nd largest and 9th smallest state and is closest in size to the state of Hawaii, the next largest state, its neighbor West Virginia, is almost twice the size of Maryland. Maryland possesses a variety of topography within its borders, contributing to its nickname America in Miniature. The mid-portion of this border is interrupted by Washington, D. C. which sits on land that was part of Montgomery and Prince Georges counties and including the town of Georgetown. This land was ceded to the United States Federal Government in 1790 to form the District of Columbia, the Chesapeake Bay nearly bisects the state and the counties east of the bay are known collectively as the Eastern Shore. Close to the town of Hancock, in western Maryland, about two-thirds of the way across the state. This geographical curiosity makes Maryland the narrowest state, bordered by the Mason–Dixon line to the north, portions of Maryland are included in various official and unofficial geographic regions. Much of the Baltimore–Washington corridor lies just south of the Piedmont in the Coastal Plain, earthquakes in Maryland are infrequent and small due to the states distance from seismic/earthquake zones. The M5.8 Virginia earthquake in 2011 was felt moderately throughout Maryland, buildings in the state are not well-designed for earthquakes and can suffer damage easily. The lack of any glacial history accounts for the scarcity of Marylands natural lakes, laurel Oxbow Lake is an over one-hundred-year-old 55-acre natural lake two miles north of Maryland City and adjacent to Russett. Chews Lake is a natural lake two miles south-southeast of Upper Marlboro. There are numerous lakes, the largest of them being the Deep Creek Lake. Maryland has shale formations containing natural gas, where fracking is theoretically possible, as is typical of states on the East Coast, Marylands plant life is abundant and healthy. Middle Atlantic coastal forests, typical of the southeastern Atlantic coastal plain, grow around Chesapeake Bay, moving west, a mixture of Northeastern coastal forests and Southeastern mixed forests cover the central part of the state
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Atlantic Ocean
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The Atlantic Ocean is the second largest of the worlds oceans with a total area of about 106,460,000 square kilometres. It covers approximately 20 percent of the Earths surface and about 29 percent of its surface area. It separates the Old World from the New World, the Atlantic Ocean occupies an elongated, S-shaped basin extending longitudinally between Eurasia and Africa to the east, and the Americas to the west. The Equatorial Counter Current subdivides it into the North Atlantic Ocean, in contrast, the term Atlantic originally referred specifically to the Atlas Mountains in Morocco and the sea off the Strait of Gibraltar and the North African coast. The Greek word thalassa has been reused by scientists for the huge Panthalassa ocean that surrounded the supercontinent Pangaea hundreds of years ago. The term Aethiopian Ocean, derived from Ancient Ethiopia, was applied to the Southern Atlantic as late as the mid-19th century, many Irish or British people refer to the United States and Canada as across the pond, and vice versa. The Black Atlantic refers to the role of ocean in shaping black peoples history. Irish migration to the US is meant when the term The Green Atlantic is used, the term Red Atlantic has been used in reference to the Marxian concept of an Atlantic working class, as well as to the Atlantic experience of indigenous Americans. Correspondingly, the extent and number of oceans and seas varies, the Atlantic Ocean is bounded on the west by North and South America. It connects to the Arctic Ocean through the Denmark Strait, Greenland Sea, Norwegian Sea, to the east, the boundaries of the ocean proper are Europe, the Strait of Gibraltar and Africa. In the southeast, the Atlantic merges into the Indian Ocean, the 20° East meridian, running south from Cape Agulhas to Antarctica defines its border. In the 1953 definition it extends south to Antarctica, while in later maps it is bounded at the 60° parallel by the Southern Ocean, the Atlantic has irregular coasts indented by numerous bays, gulfs, and seas. Including these marginal seas the coast line of the Atlantic measures 111,866 km compared to 135,663 km for the Pacific. Including its marginal seas, the Atlantic covers an area of 106,460,000 km2 or 23. 5% of the ocean and has a volume of 310,410,900 km3 or 23. 3%. Excluding its marginal seas, the Atlantic covers 81,760,000 km2 and has a volume of 305,811,900 km3, the North Atlantic covers 41,490,000 km2 and the South Atlantic 40,270,000 km2. The average depth is 3,646 m and the maximum depth, the bathymetry of the Atlantic is dominated by a submarine mountain range called the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. It runs from 87°N or 300 km south of the North Pole to the subantarctic Bouvet Island at 42°S, the MAR divides the Atlantic longitudinally into two halves, in each of which a series of basins are delimited by secondary, transverse ridges. The MAR reaches above 2000 m along most of its length, the MAR is a barrier for bottom water, but at these two transform faults deep water currents can pass from one side to the other
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New England
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New England is a geographical region comprising six states of the northeast United States, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York to the west and south, the Atlantic Ocean is to the east and southeast, and Long Island Sound is to the south. Its largest metropolitan area is Greater Boston, which also includes Worcester, Manchester, ten years later, more Puritans settled north of Plymouth Colony in Boston, thus forming Massachusetts Bay Colony. Over the next 126 years, people in the region fought in four French and Indian Wars, until the British and their Iroquois allies defeated the French and their Algonquin allies in North America. In 1692, the town of Salem, Massachusetts and surrounding areas experienced one of the most infamous cases of hysteria in the history of the Western Hemisphere. The Boston Tea Party was a protest to which Britain responded with a series of punitive laws stripping Massachusetts of self-government, the confrontation led to the first battles of the American Revolutionary War in 1775, and the expulsion of the British authorities from the region in spring 1776. Each state is subdivided into small incorporated municipalities known as towns. The only unincorporated areas in the region exist in the populated northern regions of Vermont, New Hampshire. The region is one of the U. S. Census Bureaus nine regional divisions, the earliest known inhabitants of New England were American Indians who spoke a variety of the Eastern Algonquian languages. Prominent tribes included the Abenaki, Mikmaq, Penobscot, Pequot, Mohegans, Narragansett Indians, Pocumtuck, prior to the arrival of Europeans, the Western Abenakis inhabited New Hampshire, New York, and Vermont, as well as parts of Quebec and western Maine. Their principal town was Norridgewock in present-day Maine, the Penobscot lived along the Penobscot River in Maine. The Narragansett and smaller tribes under Narragansett sovereignty lived in most of modern-day Rhode Island, west of Narragansett Bay, the Wampanoag occupied southeastern Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and the islands of Marthas Vineyard and Nantucket. The Pocumtucks lived in Western Massachusetts, and the Mohegan and Pequot tribes in the Connecticut region, the Connecticut River Valley includes parts of Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Connecticut, and linked different indigenous communities culturally, linguistically, and politically. As early as 1600, French, Dutch, and English traders began exploring the New World, trading metal, glass, on April 10,1606, King James I of England issued a charter for each of the Virginia Companies, London and Plymouth. These were privately funded ventures, intended to land for England, conduct trade. In 1620, Plymouth in present-day Massachusetts was settled by Pilgrims from the Mayflower, in 1616, English explorer John Smith named the region New England. As the first colonists arrived in Plymouth, they wrote and signed the Mayflower Compact, the Massachusetts Bay Colony came to dominate the area and was established by royal charter in 1629 with its major town and port of Boston established in 1630. Massachusetts Puritans began to settle in Connecticut as early as 1633, roger Williams was banished from Massachusetts for heresy, led a group south, and founded Providence Plantation in the area that became the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations in 1636
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Appalachian Mountains
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The Appalachian Mountains, often called the Appalachians, are a system of mountains in eastern North America. The Appalachians first formed roughly 480 million years ago during the Ordovician Period and it once reached elevations similar to those of the Alps and the Rocky Mountains before naturally occurring erosion. The Appalachian chain is a barrier to east-west travel, as it forms a series of alternating ridgelines, definitions vary on the precise boundaries of the Appalachians. A common variant definition does not include the Adirondack Mountains, which belong to the Grenville Orogeny and have a different geological history from the rest of the Appalachians. The range covers parts of the islands of Saint Pierre and Miquelon, the system is divided into a series of ranges, with the individual mountains averaging around 3,000 ft. The highest of the group is Mount Mitchell in North Carolina at 6,684 feet, the term Appalachian refers to several different regions associated with the mountain range. Most broadly, it refers to the mountain range with its surrounding hills. The Ouachita Mountains in Arkansas and Oklahoma were originally part of the Appalachians as well, the name was soon altered by the Spanish to Apalachee and used as a name for the tribe and region spreading well inland to the north. Pánfilo de Narváezs expedition first entered Apalachee territory on June 15,1528, now spelled Appalachian, it is the fourth-oldest surviving European place-name in the US. After the de Soto expedition in 1540, Spanish cartographers began to apply the name of the tribe to the mountains themselves. The first cartographic appearance of Apalchen is on Diego Gutierrezs map of 1562, the name was not commonly used for the whole mountain range until the late 19th century. A competing and often more popular name was the Allegheny Mountains, Alleghenies, in the early 19th century, Washington Irving proposed renaming the United States either Appalachia or Alleghania. In U. S. dialects in the regions of the Appalachians. In northern parts of the range, it is pronounced /ˌæpəˈleɪtʃᵻnz/ or /ˌæpəˈleɪʃᵻnz/, the third syllable is like lay. There is often debate between the residents of the regions as to which pronunciation is the more correct one. Elsewhere, a commonly accepted pronunciation for the adjective Appalachian is /ˌæpəˈlætʃiən/, the whole system may be divided into three great sections, Northern, The northern section runs from the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador to the Hudson River. The Monteregian Hills, which cross the Green Mountains in Quebec, are also unassociated with the Appalachians, Central, The central section goes from the Hudson Valley to the New River running through Virginia and West Virginia. Southern, The southern section runs from the New River onwards and it consists of the prolongation of the Blue Ridge, which is divided into the Western Blue Ridge Front and the Eastern Blue Ridge Front, the Ridge-and-Valley Appalachians, and the Cumberland Plateau
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Long Island
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Long Island is an island located just off the northeast coast of the United States and a region within the U. S. state of New York. Stretching east-northeast from New York Harbor into the Atlantic Ocean, the island comprises four counties, Kings and Queens to the west, then Nassau, more generally, Long Island may also refer collectively both to the main Island as well as its nearby, surrounding outer barrier islands. North of the island is the Long Island Sound, across from which lie the states of Connecticut, across the Sound, to the northwest, lies Westchester County on mainland New York. To the west, Long Island is separated from the Bronx and the island of Manhattan by the East River. To the extreme southwest, it is separated from the New York City borough of Staten Island and the U. S. state of New Jersey by Upper New York Bay, the Narrows, to the east lie Block Island and numerous smaller islands. Its population density is 5,595.1 inhabitants per square mile, Long Island is culturally and ethnically diverse. Some of the wealthiest and most expensive neighborhoods in the Western Hemisphere are located on Long Island, nine bridges and 13 tunnels connect Brooklyn and Queens to the three other boroughs of New York City. Ferries connect Suffolk County northward across Long Island Sound to the state of Connecticut, the Long Island Rail Road is the busiest commuter railroad in North America and operates 24/7. At the time of European contact, the Lenape people inhabited the western end of Long Island, giovanni da Verrazzano was the first European to record an encounter with the Lenapes, after entering what is now New York Bay in 1524. In 1609, the English navigator Henry Hudson explored the harbor, adriaen Block followed in 1615 and is credited as the first European to determine that both Manhattan and Long Island are islands. Native American land deeds recorded by the Dutch from 1636 state that the Indians referred to Long Island as Sewanhaka, sewan was one of the terms for wampum, and is also translated as loose or scattered, which may refer either to the wampum or to Long Island. The name t Lange Eylandt alias Matouwacs appears in Dutch maps from the 1650s, later, the English referred to the land as Nassau Island, after the Dutch Prince William of Nassau, Prince of Orange. It is unclear when the name Nassau Island was discontinued, the very first settlements on Long Island were by settlers from England and its colonies in present-day New England. Lion Gardiner settled nearby Gardiners Island, the first settlement on the geographic Long Island itself was on October 21,1640, when Southold was established by the Rev. John Youngs and settlers from New Haven, Connecticut. Peter Hallock, one of the settlers, drew the long straw and was granted the honor to step ashore first and he is considered the first New World settler on Long Island. Southampton was settled in the same year, Hempstead followed in 1644, East Hampton in 1648, Huntington in 1653, and Brookhaven in 1655. While the eastern region of Long Island was first settled by the English, until 1664, the jurisdiction of Long Island was split, roughly at the present border between Nassau County and Suffolk County. The Dutch founded six towns in present-day Brooklyn beginning in 1645 and these included, Brooklyn, Gravesend, Flatlands, Flatbush, New Utrecht, and Bushwick
28.
Cape Cod
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Cape Cod is a geographic cape extending into the Atlantic Ocean from the southeastern corner of mainland Massachusetts, in the northeastern United States. Its historic, maritime character and ample beaches attract heavy tourism during the summer months, as defined by the Cape Cod Commissions enabling legislation, Cape Cod is conterminous with Barnstable County, Massachusetts. It extends from Provincetown in the northeast to Woods Hole in the southwest, since 1914, Cape Cod has been separated from the mainland by the Cape Cod Canal. The canal cuts 17.5 miles roughly across the base of the peninsula, though portions of the Cape Cod towns of Bourne. Two highway bridges cross the Cape Cod Canal, the Sagamore Bridge, in addition, the Cape Cod Canal Railroad Bridge carries railway freight and limited passenger services onto the Cape. Cape territory is divided into fifteen towns with many villages, like Cape Cod itself, the islands south of the Cape have evolved from whaling and trading areas to become resort destinations, attracting wealthy families, celebrities, and other tourists. Both islands are also famous summer tourist destinations, commonly accessed by ferry from several locations on the cape, the phrases Cape Cod and the Islands and the Cape and Islands are often used to describe the whole region of Barnstable County, Dukes County, and Nantucket County. Several small islands right off Cape Cod, including Monomoy Island, Monomoscoy Island, Popponesset Island, the Forbes family-owned Naushon Island was first purchased by John Murray Forbes. Naushon is one of the Elizabeth Islands, many of which are privately owned, one of the publicly accessible Elizabeths is the southernmost island in the chain, Cuttyhunk, with a year-round population of 52 people. Cape Cod in particular is a retirement area,27. 8% of the population of Barnstable County is 65 years old or older. And the average age of residents is the highest of any area in New England, by voter registration numbers, Democrats outnumber Republicans by less in the three counties than in the whole of Massachusetts, to varying degrees. The name Cape Cod, as it was first used in 1602 and it remained that way for 125 years, until the Precinct of Cape Cod was incorporated as the Town of Provincetown. No longer in use over the ensuing decades, the name came to mean all of the land east of the Manomet and Scusset rivers – essentially along the line that became the Cape Cod Canal. The creation of the canal separated the majority of the peninsula from the mainland, most agencies, including the Cape Cod Commission and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, treat the Cape as an island with regard to disaster preparedness, groundwater management, and the like. Cape Cod Bay lies in between Cape Cod and the mainland – bounded on the north by a line between Provincetown and Marshfield. North of Cape Cod Bay is Massachusetts Bay, which contains the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary, the Atlantic Ocean is to the east of Cape Cod, and to the southwest of the Cape is Buzzards Bay. The Cape Cod Canal, completed in 1916, connects Buzzards Bay to Cape Cod Bay, Cape Cod extends 65 miles into the Atlantic Ocean, with a breadth of between 1–20 miles, and covers more than 400 miles of shoreline. Its elevation ranges from 306 feet at its highest point, at the top of Pine Hill, in the Bourne portion of Joint Base Cape Cod, one of the biggest barrier islands in the world, Cape Cod shields much of the Massachusetts coastline from North Atlantic storm waves
29.
Humid continental climate
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Precipitation is usually well distributed through the year. Some climatologists prefer to use the 0 °C isotherm as it is commonly used. In addition, the location in question must not be semi-arid or arid, humid continental climates tend to be found between latitudes 40° N and 60° N, within the central and northeastern portions of North America, Europe, and Asia. They are much less commonly found in the Southern Hemisphere due to the ocean area at that latitude. More extreme humid continental climates found in southern Siberia and the American Midwest combine hotter summer maxima, climatological averages are used to determine which locations are within a certain climate regime. The World Meteorological Organization has defined this average as through a 30 year period, the version from 1936 utilized a mean temperature of the coldest month of below −3 °C and there must be at least four months whose mean temperatures are at or above 10 °C. In Europe, the −3 °C average temperature isotherm was near the extent of winter snowpack. Many climatologists in the U. S. prefer to use 0 °C as the standard because they feel it better reflects consistency in regional landscapes, the 10 °C average temperature was found to be the minimum temperature necessary for the tree growth. Large temperature ranges are common within this climate zone, in addition, the location in question must not be semi-arid or arid. This is from an update to the climate regime definition introduced by Trewartha & Horn in 1980, despite the 1980 update, climate regimes are essentially the same within the Southern Hemisphere. The largest changes are seen in North America, Europe, under Köppen, the following variants of this climate are possible. The climate regime uses a three letter code, beginning with the letter D. Otherwise, The second letter f , s , A dry summer — the driest summer month has at most 30 millimetres of rainfall and has at most 1⁄3 the precipitation of the wettest winter month. W , A dry winter — the driest winter month has at most one‑tenth of the found in the wettest summer month. The third letter a , Warmest month averages above 22 °C b , Does not meet the requirements for a, within North America, moisture within this climate regime is supplied by the Gulf of Mexico and adjacent western subtropical Atlantic. Snowfall occurs in all areas with a continental climate and in many such places is more common than rain during the height of winter. In places with sufficient wintertime precipitation, the cover is often deep. Most summer rainfall occurs during thunderstorms, and in North America, though humidity levels are often high in locations with humid continental climates, the humid designation means that the climate is not dry enough to be classified as semi-arid or arid. By definition, forests thrive within this climate, biomes within this climate regime include temperate woodlands, temperate grasslands, temperate deciduous, temperature evergreen forests, and coniferous forests
30.
Humid subtropical climate
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A humid subtropical climate is a zone of climate characterised by hot, usually humid summers and mild to cool winters. It normally lies on the southeast side of all continents, generally between latitudes 25° and 40° and it tends to be located at coastal or near coastal locations. However, in cases it extends inland, most notably in China. Under the Köppen climate classification, subtropical climates are found in the warmest parts of his Warm Temperate climates or Cfa and this climate features mean temperatures in the coldest month between 0 °C and 18 °C and mean temperatures in the warmest month 22 °C or higher. However, while some climatologists have opted to describe this type as a humid subtropical climate Köppen himself never used this term. The humid subtropical climate classification was created under the Trewartha Climate classification. The Trewartha system was a 1966 update of the Köppen climate classification and this was seen to effectively separate temperate climates like London or New York City from true subtropical locations like Brisbane or Savannah for example. Rainfall often shows a peak, especially where monsoons are well developed, as in Southeast Asia. Most summer rainfall occurs during thunderstorms that build up due to the surface heating and strong subtropical sun angle. Weak tropical lows that move in from adjacent warm tropical oceans, winter rainfall is often associated with large storms in the westerlies that have fronts that reach down into subtropical latitudes. However, many subtropical climates such as southeast Asia or Florida have very dry winters, with frequent brush fires, in Africa, the humid subtropical climates are found in two separate areas on the southern hemisphere of the continent. The Cwa climate is found over a portion of the interior of the Middle. Some lower portions of the Ethiopian Highlands also have this climate, the climate is also found in the narrow coastal sections of southern and eastern South Africa, primarily in KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape provinces. South Africas version of this climate features heavy oceanic influences resulting in milder temperatures. This is particularly evident in its winters when temperatures do not drop as low as in other regions within the humid subtropical category. Locations in Asia with a subtropical climate differ from those in other continents in that they often have marked seasonal differences in precipitation. Cities near the boundary of this zone include Hong Kong, Hanoi. At Hainan Island and in Taiwan, the transitions from subtropical into fully tropical
31.
Oak
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An oak is a tree or shrub in the genus Quercus of the beech family, Fagaceae. There are approximately 600 extant species of oaks, the common name oak also appears in the names of species in related genera, notably Lithocarpus, as well as in those of unrelated species such as Grevillea robusta and the Casuarinaceae. North America contains the largest number of oak species, with approximately 90 occurring in the United States, the second greatest center of oak diversity is China, which contains approximately 100 species. Oaks have spirally arranged leaves, with lobate margins in many species, also, the acorns contain tannic acid, as do the leaves, which helps to guard from fungi and insects. Many deciduous species are marcescent, not dropping dead leaves until spring, in spring, a single oak tree produces both male flowers and small female flowers. The fruit is a nut called an acorn, borne in a structure known as a cupule, each acorn contains one seed and takes 6–18 months to mature. The live oaks are distinguished for being evergreen, but are not actually a distinct group, the oak tree is a flowering plant. Oaks may be divided into two genera and a number of sections, The genus Quercus is divided into the following sections, Quercus, the white oaks of Europe, Asia and North America. Styles are short, acorns mature in 6 months and taste sweet or slightly bitter, the leaves mostly lack a bristle on their lobe tips, which are usually rounded. The type species is Quercus robur, Mesobalanus, Hungarian oak and its relatives of Europe and Asia. Styles long, acorns mature in about 6 months and taste bitter, the section Mesobalanus is closely related to section Quercus and sometimes included in it. Cerris, the Turkey oak and its relatives of Europe and Asia, styles long, acorn mature in 18 months and taste very bitter. The inside of the shell is hairless. Its leaves typically have sharp tips, with bristles at the lobe tip. Protobalanus, the live oak and its relatives, in southwest United States. Styles short, acorns mature in 18 months and taste very bitter, the inside of the acorn shell appears woolly. Leaves typically have sharp tips, with bristles at the lobe tip. Lobatae, the red oaks of North America, Central America, styles long, acorns mature in 18 months and taste very bitter
32.
American chestnut
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The American chestnut is a large, monoecious deciduous tree of the beech family native to eastern North America. It is estimated that between 3 and 4 billion American chestnut trees were destroyed in the first half of the 20th century by blight after its discovery in 1904. Very few mature specimens of the tree exist within its historical range, Castanea dentata is a rapidly growing deciduous hardwood tree, historically reaching up to 30 metres in height, and 3 metres in diameter. It ranged from Maine and southern Ontario to Mississippi, and from the Atlantic coast to the Appalachian Mountains, C. dentata was once one of the most common trees in the Northeastern United States. In Pennsylvania alone, it is estimated to have comprised 25–30% of all hardwoods, the trees huge population was due to a combination of rapid growth and a large annual seed crop in comparison to oaks which do not reliably produce sizable numbers of acorns every year. Nut production begins when C. dentata is 7–8 years old, C. dentata can be best identified by the larger and more widely spaced saw-teeth on the edges of its leaves, as indicated by the scientific name dentata, Latin for toothed. The leaves, which are 14–20 cm long and 7–10 cm broad, the blight-resistant Chinese chestnut is now the most commonly planted chestnut species in the US, while the European chestnut is the source of commercial nuts in recent decades. It can be distinguished from the American chestnut by its hairy twig tips which are in contrast to the twigs of the American chestnut. The chestnuts are in the family along with beech and oak, but are not closely related to the horse-chestnut. The chestnut is monoecious, producing small, pale green male flowers found tightly occurring along 6 to 8 inch long catkins. The female parts are found near base of the catkins and appear in spring to early summer. Like all members of the Fagaceae family, American chestnut is self-incompatible, the American chestnut is a prolific bearer of nuts, usually with three nuts enclosed in each spiny, green burr, and lined in tan velvet. The nuts develop through late summer, with the opening and falling to the ground near the first fall frost. The American chestnut was an important tree for wildlife, providing much of the fall mast for species such as white-tailed deer and wild turkey and, formerly. Black bears were known to eat the nuts to fatten up for the winter. The American chestnut also contains nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and magnesium in its leaves when compared to other trees that share its habitat. This means they return more nutrients to the soil which helps with the growth of plants, animals. The disease was first noticed on American chestnut trees in what was then the New York Zoological Park, now known as the Bronx Zoo, in 1904, Merkel estimated that by 1906 blight had infected 98 percent of the chestnut trees in the Bronx alone
33.
Chestnut blight
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The chestnut blight is a fungal infection affecting the American Chestnut tree that had a devastating economic and social impact on communities in the eastern United States. It later spread to parts of the world including Italy. The fungus is spread by wind-borne ascospores and, over a shorter distance, in the first half of the 20th Century it killed an estimated 4 billion trees. Infection is local in range, so some isolated American chestnuts survive where there is no other tree within 10 km, there are at least two viral pathogens that weaken the fungus through a mechanism termed hypovirulence that helps trees survive. However, these regrown shoots seldom reach the reproductive stage before being killed by the fungus. They only survive as living stumps, or stools, with only a few growing enough shoots to produce seeds. This is just enough to preserve the material necessary to engineer an American chestnut tree using genes from any of the disease-immune Asiatic species to confer resistance to the disease. American chinquapin is also susceptible to chestnut blight. The European chestnut and the West Asian species are also susceptible and its important to realize, though, that even Chinese chestnut trees vary considerably in blight resistance. Some individuals are quite susceptible while others are essentially immune to the disease, many kinds of environmental stress may break down a trees resistance to blight. Indeed, at elevations in areas exposed to severe climate, normally resistant. The fungus will infect other tree species such as oaks, red maples, staghorn sumacs. Once infected, these trees will also exhibit orange bark with cankers, however, they will not exhibit shoot die back and death of the main tree. Instead the pathogen will be able to persist in trees, causing the fungus to be able to attack new growth in American Chestnut trees, the chestnut blight was accidentally introduced to North America around 1904 when Endothia parasitica was introduced into the United States from Japanese nursery stock. Commonly known as the Chestnut blight, it was first found in the trees on the grounds of the New York Zoological Garden by Herman W. Merkel. In 1905, American mycologist William Murrill isolated and described the fungus responsible, by 1940, most mature American chestnut trees had been wiped out by the disease. Japanese and some Chinese chestnut trees have some resistance to infection by C. parasitica, because of the disease, American chestnut wood almost disappeared from the market for decades, although it can still be obtained as reclaimed lumber. It is estimated that in places, such as the Appalachian Mountains
34.
Quercus rubra
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Quercus rubra, commonly called northern red oak, or champion oak, is an oak in the red oak group. It is a native of North America, in the eastern and central United States and southeast and south-central Canada. It grows from the end of the Great Lakes, east to Nova Scotia, south as far as Georgia, Alabama, and Louisiana, and west to Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska. It has been introduced to areas in Western Europe, where it can frequently be seen cultivated in gardens. It prefers good soil that is slightly acidic, often simply called red oak, northern red oak is so named to distinguish it from southern red oak, also known as the Spanish oak. It is also the tree of New Jersey and the provincial tree of Prince Edward Island. In many forests, this tree grows straight and tall, to 28 m, exceptionally to 43 m tall. Open-grown trees do not get as tall, but can develop a stouter trunk and it has stout branches growing at right angles to the stem, forming a narrow round-topped head. It grows rapidly and is tolerant of soils and varied situations, although it prefers the glacial drift. It is frequently a part of the canopy in an oak-heath forest, under optimal conditions and full sun, northern red oak is fast growing and a 10-year-old tree can be 5–6 m tall. Trees may live up to 500 years according to the USDA, Northern red oak is easy to recognize by its bark, which feature bark ridges that appear to have shiny stripes down the center. A few other oaks have bark with this kind of appearance in the upper tree, bark, Dark reddish grey brown, with broad, thin, rounded ridges, scaly. On young trees and large stems, smooth and light gray, branchlets slender, at first bright green, shining, then dark red, finally dark brown. Bark is brownish gray, becoming brown on old trees. Wood, Pale reddish brown, sapwood darker, heavy, hard, strong, cracks in drying, but when carefully treated could be successfully used for furniture. Also used in construction and for interior finish of houses,0.6621, weight of cu. ft.41.25 lbs. Lobes are less deeply cut than most other oaks of the red oak group, leaves emerge from the bud convolute, pink, covered with soft silky down above, coated with thick white tomentum below. When full grown are dark green and smooth, sometimes shining above, yellow green, in autumn they turn a rich red, sometimes brown
35.
Quercus alba
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Quercus alba, the white oak, is one of the preeminent hardwoods of eastern and central North America. It is an oak, native to eastern and central North America and found from Minnesota, Ontario, Quebec. Specimens have been documented to be over 450 years old, although called a white oak, it is very unusual to find an individual specimen with white bark, the usual color is a light gray. In the forest it can reach a magnificent height and in the open it develops into a massive broad-topped tree with large branches striking out at wide angles. Q. alba typically reaches heights of 80 to 100 feet at maturity, trees growing in a forest will become much taller than ones in an open area which develop to be short and massive. The tallest known white oak is 144 feet tall and it is not unusual for a white oak tree to be as wide as it is tall, but specimens growing at high altitudes may only become small shrubs. White oak may live 200 to 300 years, with even older specimens known. The Wye Oak in Wye Mills, Maryland was estimated to be over 450 years old when it fell in a thunderstorm in 2002. Another noted white oak is the Great White Oak in Basking Ridge, New Jersey, the tree measures 25 feet in circumference at the base and 16 feet in circumference four feet above the ground. The tree is 75 feet tall, and its branches spread over 125 feet from tip to tip, the oak, claimed to be the oldest in the United States, began showing signs of poor health in the mid-2010s. The tree was declared dead in 2016 and was planned to be taken down in 2017, sexual maturity begins at around 20 years, but the tree does not produce large crops of acorns until its 50th year and the amount varies from year to year. Acorns deteriorate quickly after ripening, the rate being only 10% for six-month-old seeds. As the acorns are prime food for animals and insects, all may be lost in years of small crops, the bark is a light ash-gray and peels somewhat from the top, bottom and/or sides. In spring the young leaves are of a delicate, silvery pink and covered with a soft, blanket-like down. The petioles are short, and the leaves which cluster close to the ends of the shoots are pale green and this condition continues for several days, passing through the opalescent changes of soft pink, silvery white and finally yellow green. The leaves grow to be 5 to 8.5 inches long and 2.75 to 4.5 inches wide and have a glossy green upper surface. They usually turn red or brown in autumn, but depending on climate, site, some brown, dead leaves may remain on the tree throughout winter until very early spring. The lobes can be shallow, extending less than halfway to the midrib, or deep, the acorns are usually sessile, and grow to 0.5 to 1 inch in length, falling in early October
36.
Quercus velutina
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Quercus velutina, the eastern black oak or more commonly known as simply black oak, is a species in the red oak group of oaks. It is widespread in eastern and central North America, found in all the states from Maine to Texas, inland as far as Ontario, Minnesota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma. Quercus velutina was previously known as yellow oak due to the pigment in its inner bark. It is a relative of the western black oak found in western North America. Black oak is well known to hybridize with other members of the red oak group of oaks being one parent in at least a dozen different named hybrids. The leaves of the black oak are alternately arranged on the twig and are 10–20 cm long with 5–7 bristle tipped lobes separated by deep U-shaped notches, the upper surface of the leaf is a shiny deep green, the lower is yellowish-brown. There are also stellate hairs on the underside of the leaf that grow in clumps, the inner bark of the black oak contains a yellow pigment called quercitron, which was sold commercially in Europe until the 1940s. Key Characteristics, Sun leaves have very deep u-shaped sinuses, the buds are velvety and covered in white hair. The fruits or acorns of the black oak are medium-sized and broadly rounded, the cap is large and covers almost half of the nut. In southern New England, black oak grows on cool, moist soils, elsewhere it occurs on warm, moist soils. The most widespread soils on which black oak grows are the Udalfs and these soils are derived from glacial materials, sandstones, shales, and limestone and range from heavy clays to loamy sands with some having a high content of rock or chert fragments. Black oak grows best on well drained, silty clay to loam soils, black oak grows on all aspects and slope positions. It grows best in coves and on middle and lower slopes with northerly and easterly aspects and it is found at elevations up to 1,200 m in the southern Appalachians. The most important factors determining site quality for black oak are the thickness and texture of the A horizon, texture of the B horizon, aspect, other factors may be important in localized areas. For example, in northwestern West Virginia increasing precipitation to 1,120 mm resulted in increased site quality, in southern Indiana, decreasing site quality was associated with increasing slope steepness. Near the limits of black oaks range, topographic factors may restrict its distribution, at the western limits black oak is often found only on north and east aspects where moisture conditions are most favorable. In southern Minnesota and Wisconsin it is found only on ridge tops. Black oak is often a predominant species in the canopy of an oak–heath forest, black Oak is the forest cover type that designates pure stands of the species or those in which it makes up more than 50 percent of the stand basal area
37.
Hickory
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Hickory is a type of tree, comprising the genus Carya. The genus includes 17–19 species of trees with pinnately compound leaves. Five or six species are native to China, Indochina, and India, as many as 12 are native to the United States, four are found in Mexico, Hickory flowers are small, yellow-green catkins produced in spring. The fruit is a globose or oval nut, 2–5 cm long and 1. 5–3 cm diameter, enclosed in a four-valved husk, which splits open at maturity. The nut shell is thick and bony in most species, and thin in a few, notably the pecan, beaked hickory is a species formerly classified as Carya sinensis, but now adjudged in the monotypic genus Annamocarya. In the APG system, genus Carya has been moved to the Fagales order. Sinocarya – Asian hickories Carya dabieshanensis M. C, liu – Dabie Shan hickory Carya cathayensis Sarg. Carya – typical hickories Carya floridana Sarg, – Scrub hickory Carya glabra Sweet – Pignut hickory, pignut, sweet pignut, coast pignut hickory, smoothbark hickory, swamp hickory, broom hickory Carya myristiciformis Nutt. – Nutmeg hickory, swamp hickory, bitter water hickory Carya ovalis Sarg, – Sand hickory Carya texana Buckley – Black hickory Carya tomentosa Nutt. – Mockernut hickory †Carya washingtonensis - Manchester Extinct Miocene Carya sect, apocarya – pecans Carya aquatica Nutt. – Bitter pecan or water hickory Carya cordiformis K. Koch – Bitternut hickory Carya illinoinensis K. Koch – Pecan Carya palmeri W. E, manning – Mexican hickory Hickory is used as a food plant by the larvae of some Lepidoptera species. Phylloxeridae are related to aphids and have a complex life cycle. Eggs hatch in spring and the galls quickly form around the developing insects. Phylloxera galls may damage weakened or stressed hickories, but are generally harmless, the pecan gall curculio is a true weevil species also found feeding on galls of the hickory leaf stem gall phylloxera. The banded hickory borer is also found on hickories, some fruits are borderline and difficult to categorize. Hickory nuts and walnuts in the Juglandaceae family grow within an outer husk, tryma is a specialized term for such nut-like drupes. Hickory wood is hard, stiff, dense and shock resistant. Paddles are often made from hickory, Hickory is replacing ash as the wood of choice for Scottish shinty sticks
38.
Acer rubrum
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Acer rubrum is one of the most common and widespread deciduous trees of eastern and central North America. The U. S. Forest service recognizes it as the most abundant native tree in eastern North America. The red maple ranges from southeastern Manitoba around the Lake of the Woods on the border with Ontario and Minnesota, east to Newfoundland, south to Florida, many of its features, especially its leaves, are quite variable in form. At maturity it often attains a height of around 15 m and its flowers, petioles, twigs and seeds are all red to varying degrees. Among these features, however, it is best known for its brilliant deep scarlet foliage in autumn, over most of its range, red maple is adaptable to a very wide range of site conditions, perhaps more so than any other tree in eastern North America. It can be found growing in swamps, on dry soils. It grows well from sea level to about 900 m, due to its attractive fall foliage and pleasing form, it is often used as a shade tree for landscapes. It is used commercially on a scale for maple syrup production as well as for its medium to high quality lumber. It is also the State Tree of Rhode Island, the red maple can be considered weedy or invasive. It is taking over forests in the eastern US, replacing traditional mainstays like oaks, though A. rubrum is usually easy to identify, it is highly changeable in morphological characteristics. It is a medium to large sized tree, reaching heights of 18 to 27 metres, the leaves are usually 9 to 11 centimetres long on a full grown tree. The trunk diameter can range from 46 to 76 cm, depending on the growing conditions and its spread is about 12 m. A 10-year-old sapling will stand about 6 m tall, in forests, the bark will remain free of branches until some distance up the tree. Individuals grown in the open are shorter and thicker with a rounded crown. Generally speaking, however, the crown is irregularly ovoid with ascending whip-like curved shoots, the bark is a pale grey and smooth when the individual is young. As the tree grows the bark becomes darker and cracks into slightly raised long plates, the largest known living red maple is located near Armada, Michigan, at a height of 38.1 m and a bole circumference, at breast height, of 4.95 m. The leaves of the red maple offer the easiest way to distinguish it from its relatives, as with nearly all North American maple trees, they are deciduous and arranged oppositely on the twig. They are typically 5–10 cm long and wide with 3-5 palmate lobes with a serrated margin, the sinuses are typically narrow, but the leaves can exhibit considerable variation
39.
Acer saccharum
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Sugar maple is best known for its bright fall foliage and for being the primary source of maple syrup. Acer saccharum is a tree normally reaching heights of 25–35 m. A 10-year-old tree is typically about 5 m tall, when healthy, the sugar maple can live for over 400 years. The leaves are deciduous, up to 20 cm long and equally wide, the basal lobes are relatively small, while the upper lobes are larger and deeply notched. In contrast with the angular notching of the maple, however. The fall color is often spectacular, ranging from yellow through orange to fluorescent red-orange. Sugar maples also have a tendency to color unevenly in fall, in some trees, all colors above can be seen at the same time. They also share a tendency with red maples for certain parts of a tree to change color weeks ahead of or behind the remainder of the tree. The leaf buds are pointy and brown-colored, the recent years growth twigs are green, and turn dark brown. The flowers are in panicles of five to 10 together, yellow-green and without petals, the sugar maple will generally begin flowering when it is between 10 and 15 years old. The fruit is a pair of samaras, the seeds are globose, 7–10 mm in diameter, the wing 2–3 cm long. The seeds fall from the tree in autumn, where they must be exposed to 90 days of temperatures below −18 °C to break their coating down. Germination of A. saccharum is slow, not taking place until the spring when the soil has warmed. It is closely related to the maple, which is sometimes included in this species. The western American bigtooth maple is also treated as a variety or subspecies of sugar maple by some botanists, the sugar maple is also often confused with the Norway maple, though they are not closely related within the genus. The sugar maple is most easily identified by clear sap in the petiole, brown, sharp-tipped buds. Also, the lobes of the sugar maple have a more triangular shape. The sugar maple is an important species to the ecology of many forests in the northern United States
40.
Fraxinus americana
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Fraxinus americana is a species of ash tree native to eastern and central North America. It is found in hardwood forests from Nova Scotia west to Minnesota, south to northern Florida. Isolated populations have also found in western Texas, Wyoming and Colorado. The name White Ash derives from the undersides of the leaves. It is similar in appearance to the Green Ash, making identification difficult, the lower sides of the leaves of White Ash are lighter in color than their upper sides, and the outer surface of the twigs of White Ash may be flaky or peeling. Green Ash leaves are similar in color on upper and lower sides, White ash is one of the most used trees for everyday purposes and, to keep up with high demand, is cultivated almost everywhere it can be. The wood is white and quite dense, strong, and straight-grained and it is the timber of choice for production of baseball bats and tool handles. The wood is also favorable for furniture and flooring, woodworkers use the timber mainly for interior uses due to high perishability in contact with ground soil. It is also used to make lobster traps, since the 1950s, it has also become a popular choice for solid electric guitar bodies. It makes a very servicable longbow if properly worked, the wood was used in ceiling fan blades from the 1970s through the mid-1980s, though cane was sometimes simulated with plastic then. It is no used for ceiling fan blades in most countries. The tree has a mast crop every 11 years and is easy to plant. A related species, Biltmore Ash, is treated as a variety of White Ash. However, other taxonomists argue that Biltmore Ash is its own species, the emerald ash borer, also commonly known by the acronym EAB, is a green beetle native to Asia. In North America the emerald ash borer is an invasive species, the damage of this insect rivals that of Chestnut blight and Dutch Elm Disease. To put its damage in perspective, the number of killed by the Chestnut blight was around 3.5 billion chestnut trees while there are 3.5 billion ash trees in Ohio alone. Dutch Elm Disease killed only 200 million elm trees while EAB threatens 7.5 billion ash trees in the United States, the insect threatens the entire North American genus Fraxinus, while past invasive tree pests have only threatened a single species within a genus. Since its accidental introduction into the United States and Canada in the 1990s and it has killed at least 50 million ash trees so far and threatens to kill most of the ash trees throughout North America
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Liriodendron tulipifera
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It is native to eastern North America from Southern Ontario and Illinois eastward to southeastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island, and south to central Florida and Louisiana. It can grow to more than 50 m in virgin forests of the Appalachian Mountains, often with no limbs until it reaches 25–30 m in height. It is fast-growing, without the problems of weak wood strength. April marks the start of the period in the southern USA. The flowers are green or yellow, with an orange band on the tepals. The tulip tree is the tree of Indiana, Kentucky. The tulip tree is one of the largest of the trees of the eastern United States, known to reach the height of 60 m, with a trunk 3 m in diameter. It prefers deep, rich, and rather moist soil, it is common, though not abundant, growth is fairly rapid, and the typical form of its head is conical. The bark is brown, and furrowed, the branchlets are smooth, and lustrous, initially reddish, maturing to dark gray, and finally brown. The wood is yellow to brown, and the sapwood creamy white, light, soft, brittle, close. Specific gravity,0.4230, density,422 g/dm3, winter buds, Dark red, covered with a bloom, obtuse, scales becoming conspicuous stipules for the unfolding leaf, and persistent until the leaf is fully grown. Flower-bud enclosed in a two-valved, caducous bract, the alternate leaves are simple, pinnately veined, measuring five to six inches long and wide. In autumn they turn a clear, bright yellow, perfect, solitary, terminal, greenish yellow, borne on stout peduncles, an inch and a half to two inches long, cup-shaped, erect, conspicuous. The bud is enclosed in a sheath of two bracts which fall as the blossom opens. Calyx, Sepals three, imbricate in bud, reflexed or spreading, somewhat veined, early deciduous, corolla, Cup-shaped, petals six, two inches long, in two rows, imbricate, hypogynous, greenish yellow, marked toward the base with yellow. Stamens, Indefinite, imbricate in many ranks on the base of the receptacle, filaments thread-like, short, anthers extrorse, long, two-celled, adnate, pistils, Indefinite, imbricate on the long slender receptacle. Ovary one-celled, style acuminate, flattened, stigma short, one-sided, recurved, fruit, Narrow light brown cone, formed from many samaras which are dispersed by wind, leaving the axis persistent all winter. A description from Our native trees and how to identify them by Harriet Louise Keeler, The leaves are of unusual shape and develop in a most peculiar, the leaf-buds are composed of scales as is usual, and these scales grow with the growing shoot
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Fagus grandifolia
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Fagus grandifolia is the species of beech tree native to the eastern United States and extreme southeast Canada. The genus name Fagus is Latin for beech, and the species name comes from grandis large. Trees in the half of the range are sometimes distinguished as a variety, F. grandifolia var. caroliniana. The Mexican beech, native to the mountains of central Mexico, is related, and is sometimes treated as a subspecies of American beech. The only Fagus species found in the Western Hemisphere, F. grandifolia is believed to have spanned the width of the North American continent all the way to the Pacific coast before the last ice age. It is a tree growing to 20–35 m tall, with smooth. The leaves are green, simple and sparsely-toothed with small teeth that terminate each vein, 6–12 cm long. The winter twigs are distinctive among North American trees, being long, beech buds are distinctly thin and long, resembling cigars, this characteristic makes beech trees relatively easy to identify. The tree is monoecious, with flowers of both sexes on the same tree, the fruit is a small, sharply-angled nut, borne in pairs in a soft-spined, four-lobed husk. It has two means of reproduction, one is through the dispersal of seedlings, and the other is through root sprouts. The American beech is a shade-tolerant species, favoring shade more than other trees, ecological succession is essentially the process of forests changing their composition through time, it is a pattern of events often observed on disturbed sites. Although sometimes found in stands, it is more often associated with sugar maple, yellow birch. Near its southern limit, it often shares canopy dominance with Southern Magnolia, although it has a reputation for slow growth, rich soil and ample moisture will greatly speed the process up. American beech favors a well-watered, but also well-drained spot and is intolerant of pollution, salt. It also casts dense shade and has an network of shallow. Because American beech needs plenty of moisture and rich soil to thrive, early settlers often looked for beeches as a sign of a good potential place to clear the forest for farming. Beech bark disease has become a killer of beech trees in the Northeastern United States. This disease occurs when the scale insect, Cryptococcus fagisuga, attacks the bark
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Prunus serotina
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Prunus serotina, commonly called black cherry, wild black cherry, rum cherry, or mountain black cherry, is a deciduous woody plant species belonging to the genus Prunus. The species is widespread and common in North America and South America, Black cherry is closely related to the chokecherry, chokecherry, however, is classified as a shrub or small tree and has smaller, less glossy leaves. Subspecies and varieties Prunus serotina var. alabamensis Little -southeastern United States Prunus serotina subsp, capuli McVaugh – central + southern Mexico, Central America, South America as far south as Argentina Prunus serotina subsp. Eximia McVaugh – Texas Prunus serotina subsp, hirsuta McVaugh – Georgia Prunus serotina var. rufula McVaugh – southwestern United States, northern + central Mexico Prunus serotina subsp. Serotina – Canada, United States, Mexico, Guatemala Prunus serotina var. serotina – Canada, United States, Mexico, virens McVaugh Black cherry is a medium-sized, fast-growing forest tree growing to a height of 50-80 feet. Leaves are 2 to 5 in length, ovate-lanceolate in shape, fall leaf color is yellow to red. Flowers are small, white and 5-petalled, in racemes 4 to 6 long which contain several dozen flowers, the flowers give rise to edible reddish-black berries. A mature black cherry tree can easily be identified in a forest by its broken, dark grey to black bark. However, for about the first decade or so of its life, the bark is thin, smooth, and banded, resembling that of a birch. It can also quickly be identified by its long, shiny leaves resembling those of a sourwood, Prunus serotina is a pioneer species. In the Midwest, it is growing mostly in old fields with other sunlight-loving species, such as black walnut, black locust. Gleason and Cronquist describe P. serotina as ormerly a forest tree, now abundant as a weed-tree of roadsides, waste land, and forest-margins. It is a moderately long-lived tree, with ages of up to 258 years known, though it is prone to damage, with branches breaking easily, any decay resulting, however. Seed production begins around 10 years of age, but does not become heavy until 30 years, germination rates are high, and the seeds are widely dispersed by birds who eat the fruit and then excrete them. Some seeds however may remain in the bank and not germinate for as long as three years. All Prunus species have seeds that benefit from scarification to germinate. P. serotina is also a host of caterpillars of various Lepidoptera, the eastern tent caterpillar defoliates entire groves some springs. Prunus serotina was widely introduced into Western and Central Europe as a tree in the mid 20th century
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Betula lenta
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Betula lenta is a species of birch native to eastern North America, from southern Maine west to southernmost Ontario, and south in the Appalachian Mountains to northern Georgia. Betula lenta is a deciduous tree reaching 25 m tall with a trunk up to 60 cm diameter. In younger trees the bark is characteristic of most birches, with smooth bark and it is sometimes mistakenly identified as a cherry tree. In some older tree specimens the bark can develop vertical cracks into irregular scaly plates revealing rough darkish brown bark patterns and this, however, does not occur in all specimens. The twigs, when scraped, have a scent of wintergreen due to methyl salicylate. The leaves are alternate, ovate,5 to 10 cm long and 4 to 8 cm broad, the flowers are wind-pollinated catkins 3 to 6 cm long, the male catkins pendulous, the female catkins erect. The fruit, maturing in fall, is composed of numerous tiny winged seeds packed between the catkin bracts, seed production mainly occurs in trees that are between 40 and 70 years old, although light crops may occur as early as 20 years. The average lifespan of B. lenta is 100 years, with a maximum of 150, Betula lenta was used commercially in the past for production of oil of wintergreen before modern industrial synthesis of the oil, the trees name reflects the wintergreen scent of the shoots. The sap flows about a later than maple sap. The trees can be tapped in a fashion, but must be gathered about three times more often. Birch sap can be boiled the same as maple sap, the leaves of this species serve as food for some caterpillars and the solitary leaf-cutter bee Megachile rubi cuts pieces from the leaves to line the cells of its nest. Media related to Betula lenta at Wikimedia Commons Flora of North America, Betula lenta RangeMap, Betula lenta images at bioimages. vanderbilt. edu
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Nyssa sylvatica
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Nyssa sylvaticas genus name refers to a Greek water nymph, the species epithet sylvatica refers to its woodland habitat. Both of these names contrast it with a different tree species with an overlapping range, the sweet gum. Another common name used occasionally in the Northeast is pepperidge, on Marthas Vineyard, in Massachusetts, this species is called beetlebung, perhaps for its use in making the mallet known as a beetle, used for hammering bungs into barrels. Nyssa sylvatica grows to 20–25 metres tall, rarely to 35 metres, with a diameter of 50–100 centimetres. These trees typically have a trunk with the branches extending outward at right angles. The bark is gray and flaky when young, but it becomes furrowed with age. The twigs of this tree are reddish-brown, usually hidden by a greyish skin, the pith is chambered with greenish partitions. The leaves of species are variable in size and shape. They can be oval, elliptical, or obovate, and 5–12 cm long and they have lustrous upper surfaces, with entire, often wavy margins. The foliage turns purple in autumn, eventually becoming a bright scarlet. Deer are extremely fond of the leaves on seedlings and saplings, for comparison, mature trees are largely left alone. The flowers are small, in greenish-white in clusters at the top of a long stalk. The fruit is a black-blue, ovoid fruit, about 10 mm long with a thin, oily, bitter-to-sour tasting flesh. There are from one to three together on a long slender stalk. They are a valuable food for birds, especially the American robin. Nyssa sylvatica forms a deep taproot when young that makes transplanting difficult. Because of this, it is uncommon in cultivation and the nursery trade. Additional characteristics include, Bark, Light reddish brown, deeply furrowed, branchlets at first pale green to orange, sometimes smooth, often downy, later dark brown
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Ulmus americana
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The American elm is an extremely hardy tree that can withstand winter temperatures as low as −42 °C. Trees in areas unaffected by Dutch elm disease can live for several hundred years, for over 80 years, U. americana has been identified as a tetraploid, i. e. having double the usual number of chromosomes, making it unique within the genus. However, a study published in 2011 by the Agricultural Research Service of the USDA revealed that about 20% of wild American elms are diploid, and may even constitute another species. Moreover, several trees known only in cultivation, such as Jefferson, are possessed of a high degree of resistance to Dutch elm disease which ravaged American elms in the 20th century. This suggests that the parent trees, which have markedly smaller cells than the tetraploid. Ulmus americana was first described and named by Carl Linnaeus in his Species Plantarum, no subspecies or varieties are currently recognized within the species. The leaves are alternate, 7–20 cm long, with double-serrate margins, the perfect flowers are small, purple-brown and, being wind-pollinated, apetalous. The flowers are protogynous, the female parts maturing before the male, thus reducing, but not eliminating, self-fertilization. The fruit is a flat samara 2 cm long by 1.5 cm broad, as in the closely related European White Elm Ulmus laevis, the flowers and seeds are borne on 1–3 cm long stems. American Elm is wholly insensitive to daylight length, and will continue to grow well into autumn until injured by frost, on more elevated terrain, as in the Appalachian Mountains, it is most often found along rivers. The species wind-dispersed seeds enable it to spread rapidly as suitable areas of habitat become available, American elm produces its seed crop in late spring and the seeds usually germinate right away with no cold stratification needed. A sugar maple-ironwood-American elm cover type occurs on some hilltops near Témiscaming, the leaves of the American elm serve as food for the larvae of various lepidopterans. The American elm is susceptible to Dutch elm disease and elm yellows. In north America, there are three species of elm bark beetles, one native, Hylurgopinus rufipes, and two invasive, Scolytus multistriatus and Scolytus schevyrewi, although intensive feeding by elm bark beetles can kill weakened trees, their main impact is as vectors of DED. U. americana is also the most susceptible of all the elms to verticillium wilt, however, the condition is far less serious, and afflicted trees should recover the following year. Dutch elm disease is a disease which has ravaged the American elm. It has been estimated that only approximately 1 in 100,000 American elm trees is DED-tolerant, however, in some areas still not populated by Dutch elm disease, the American elm continues to thrive, notably in Florida, Alberta and British Columbia. Spores introduced outside of this period remain largely static within the xylem and are relatively ineffective
47.
Cornus florida
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Cornus florida is a species of flowering plant in the family Cornaceae native to eastern North America and northern Mexico. An endemic population once spanned from southernmost coastal Maine south to northern Florida, the tree is commonly planted as an ornamental in residential and public areas because of its showy bracts and interesting bark structure. The flowering dogwood is usually included in the dogwood genus Cornus as Cornus florida L. although it is treated in a separate genus as Benthamidia florida Spach. Two subspecies are recognized, Cornus florida subsp. Florida - eastern + south-central United States, flowering dogwood is a small deciduous tree growing to 10 m high, often wider than it is tall when mature, with a trunk diameter of up to 30 cm. A 10-year-old tree will stand about 5 m tall, the leaves are opposite, simple, ovate, 6–13 cm long and 4–6 cm broad, with an apparently entire margin, they turn a rich red-brown in fall. The flowers are small and inconspicuous, with four greenish-yellow bracts 4 mm long. Around 20 flowers are produced in a dense, rounded, umbel-shaped inflorescence, or flower-head, 1–2 cm in diameter. The flower-head is surrounded by four large white, pink or red petals, each bract 3 cm long and 2.5 cm broad, rounded. When in the wild they can typically be found at the forest edge, while most of the wild trees have white bracts, some selected cultivars of this tree also have pink bracts, some even almost a true red. They typically flower in early April in the part of their range, to late April or early May in northern. The similar Kousa dogwood, native to Asia, flowers about a month later and they are an important food source for dozens of species of birds, which then distribute the seeds. Flowering dogwood does best horticulturally in moist, acidic soil in a site with some afternoon shade and it does not do well when exposed to intense heat sources such as adjacent parking lots or air conditioning compressors. It also has a low salinity tolerance, the hardiness zone is 5–9 and the preferred pH is between 6. 0–7.0. In urban and suburban settings, care should be not to inflict mower damage on the trunk or roots, as this increases the tree’s susceptibility to disease. In regions where dogwood anthracnose is a problem, homeowners and public land managers are encouraged to know the symptoms, the selection of healthy, disease-free planting stock is essential and transplanting trees from the forest should be avoided. Sites should be selected for reasonably well-drained, fertile soils, full sun is recommended in high-hazard areas, new plantings should be mulched to a depth of 5 to 10 cm, avoiding the stem. Dead wood and leaves should be pruned and completely removed and destroyed yearly, plants should be watered weekly during droughts, with watering done in the morning, avoiding wetting the foliage
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Viburnum acerifolium
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It is a shrub growing to 1-2 m tall. The leaves are in pairs, 5-10 cm long and broad, three- to five-lobed, the lobes with a serrated margin. There is a manifestation of autumn color with this species from pale yellow to bright yellow to orange or pink, rose, or red-purple depending on the light exposure. The flowers are white with five petals, produced in terminal cymes 4-8 cm diameter. The fruit is a red to purple-black drupe 4-8 mm long. Viburnum acerifolium is a larval host to the Celastrina ladon butterfly and it grows in and around upland forest, able to do well in full shade and dry soils. It grows mostly in soil of pH5.0 to 6.5. The shrub often ground suckers some and can form a colony in time, jenkins Arboretum in southeast Pennsylvania has a very handsome large mass of this shrub in a partial shade location, so it can be a good looking ornamental. Germplasm Resources Information Network, Viburnum acerifolium USDA Plants Profile, Viburnum acerifolium Bioimages, Viburnum acerifolium
