ABSTRACT
The evergreen forests of the South, stretching from central Texas to the New Jersey coast, have become the wood basket for the United States, and for nations beyond. This is especially so with the closing of the US forests of the Pacific Northwest — both public and industrial. Conifer forests of 11 pine species occur in the upper and lower Coastal Plain of both the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, the Ouachita and Ozark mountains of the Interior, and in the loessal Brown Loam Bluffs east of the Mississippi River in Mississippi and Tennessee where they were introduced following cotton abandonment. The New Jersey pine barrens and the plains within the barrens cover most of south Jersey. The origin of these stunted pitch pines is usually attributed to wildfires that scorched the soil over a long period of pre-settlement. The eleven species of southern pines, also called hard pines because of the denseness of wood, have many silvical characteristics in common.
