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  1. The vegetation of Texas : being the first of a series of brochures purposed to present the scientific scene with accuracy and interest
    1. The Vegetation of Texas

    2. The Vegetation of Texas

    3. Contents

    4. Illustrations

    5. Foreword

    6. Introduction

    7. Texas Vegetation

    8. Vegetatoinal Regions

    9. Region 1: Long-Leaf Pine

    10. Region 2: The Coastal Prairie

    11. Region 3: The Fayette Prairie

    12. Region 4: Mesquite-Chaparral

    13. Region 5: Coastal Sand Dunes

    14. Region 6: Oak-Hickory-Mesquite of the Central Texas Crystallines

    15. Region 7: The Edwards Plateau: Oak-Cedar

    16. Region 8: The Mountains

    17. Region 9: Live Oak-Mesquite Savanna

    18. Region 10: Sotol-Lechuguilla

    19. Region 11: The Sandy South Plains

    20. Region 12: THe High Plains

    21. Region 13: The Mesquite-Grassland

    22. Region 14: The Western Cross Timbers

    23. Region 15: The Eastern Cross Timbers

    24. Region 16: Oak-Hickory

    25. Region 17: The Pine-Oak Forest

    26. Region 18: The Blackland Prairie

    27. A Distribution List of the Principal Ferns and Seed Plants Occurring Native in Texas

    28. Ferns

    29. Seed Plants

    30. The editors asked Doctor Tharp to define ECOLOGY for them in a few words. This is his answer:

  2. Illustrations
    1. Untitled

    2. Untitled

    3. Untitled

    4. Untitled

    5. Untitled

    6. Long-leaf pine tapped for turpentine, which is extracted over a period of two or three years before the timber is cut. Region 1.

    7. Seedling long-leaf on cut-over forest. Note the rejected relict trees which have furnished the seed. Region 1.

    8. Salt grass on the coastal prairie. Low shrubs of huisache appear in front and rear of the figure. Region 2.

    9. Huajillo, prickly pear, blackbrush, and yucca in a typical chaparral mixture. Region 4.

    10. Looking across Green Gulch to Lost Mine Peak in the background, Chisos Mountains. The steep slope below the cliffs is covered with oak; the bunch growth in the foreground valley floor is slender bear grass and sotol. Region 8.

    11. Taken in Palo Pinto County, this mesquite-prickly pear grouping might be substantially duplicated in parts of regions 4, 6, 7, 9, 13, and 18.

    12. Mountain live oak; Davis Mountains. Region 8.

    13. Western yellow pine; Davis Mountains. Region 8.

    14. White sage and mesquite in deep sand near Monahans. Region 11.

    15. Bald cypress in Caddo Lake. Region 17.

    16. A small specimen of Ocotillo, a striking plant of Region 10.

    17. Slender bear grass and Yucca growing on an overgrazed, grama-grass valley; Brewster County. Region 10.

    18. A crust of salt in a broad zone around a salt lake near Brownfield. Note the vegetation at the margin. The briny liquid at the center of the lake was out of range to the right and does not show. Region 11.

    19. A pygmy forest of Havard's oak on sandy land, Hockley County. Region 11

    20. The oak-hickory forest just west of Texarkana. Region 16.

    21. Post oak in open stand near Refugio. Note the long festoons of Spanish moss. Region 16.

    22. Where the Western cross timbers meet the prairie in Parker County Regions 14 and 18.

    23. Untitled

28

early days, he had seen Smith's Agropyron as thick and tall as wheat covering thousands of acres of basin soil, and that it was common practice in those days to cut it for hay to tide over the winter. The more pervious and water-conservative 14 of the soils of the uplands also supported good growths of the same grass—a perennial, stoloniferous, coarse, sod-forming species.

Below the caprock the steep slopes connecting with the lands below, whether with the canyon floor or with the surrounding eroded plain, are covered with scant timber, of which cedar is the most common dominant, growing in open stand upon grassland. Along permanent water courses cottonwoods are common on the wide, open canyon floors; while scrubby hackberry, elm, willow, wild china and plum increase in size and height in proportion as the narrowing canyon gives greater protection from the sweep of drying winds, and as soil water becomes more abundant. In places embody ing unusually favorable conditions, sizable trees are not uncommon.

Grasses are in the main the same as are found on the level up land; but the aspect is changed by the addition of other species, such as Stipa meo-mexicana, S. spartea, Muhlenbergias, triple-awn and other grasses. Colorful wild flowers are Astragalus and many other legumes, buckwheat allies, spiderworts, wild onions, docks, evening primroses of great variety and profusion, four o"1 clocks, mustards, borages, scrophs and a wealth of composites of every shade, hue and size.

Clinging to the ledge of caprock and about the precipitous sides of steepest canyon walls are shrubs of Condalia, Ephedra, Yucca, Nolina, Havard's oak, plum, Acacias, Mimosa, and mesquite. Grape, Smilax, Clematis, moonseed and perhaps Cissus and Ampelopsis are not uncommon vines in moist shaded situations.

The region as a whole is very fertile and rainfall is high enough in wet years to produce good crops of wheat, grain sorghums, and cotton; while the use of machinery in cultivation and harvesting greatly increases the acreage an individual can tend. The result is that the region has been transformed within the past quarter century from a cattle country to an agricultural region. Dry-land

14 Water-retaining.

The Vegetation of Texas