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pg 003: The vegetation of Texas Publication 1032906.

 
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Small trees are: flowering dogwood, fringe-tree, red haw, black haw, holly, yaupon and redbud. These together with Azaleas, trumpet creeper (Bignonia), yellow jessamine, Wistaria, erids, pitcher plants, buckeye, violets, orchids, Iris, Phlox, jack-in-the-pulpit, mustard and other such growth make the forest resplendent with bloom from February to May. Several sorts of evergreen smilax spread their beautiful green canopies high among the loftiest tree crowns.

In the summer and fall, huckleberry, both bush and tree, Callicarpa, wax myrtle, Virginia-willow, witch hazel, scrophs of various sorts, milkworts, composites, yellow eyed grass, lilies, spider-lily and legumes, all combine to render the open woodlands and shaded swamp florally attractive.

The upland sandy soil, allowing free percolation of the abundant rainfall, is thoroughly leached of its soluble plant nutrients, and is therefore quite sterile and unprofitable for cultivation. To decrease still further its adaptability to such use, it is a perfect haven for one of the worst pests a farmer ever had to face-crab-grass. This most pernicious of all native weeds has a seasonal growth that coincides exactly with that of field crops; and during wet years the best of farmers lose a part of their crops in their futile fight against it. Even in ordinary years, the difficulty is so great as to reduce strongly the "acreage per hand" in this region as compared with regions 7, 12, 13 and 18 (See map, Plate 1). With the application of fertilizer, however, an abundance of vegetable and truck crops can be raised locally. Also, numerous tracts of considerable acreage and great natural richness are found bordering creek and river bottoms.

When all is said, however, far the best use to which these millions of acres of cut-over lands can be put is to restore to them the forests of long-leaf pine with which they were originally clothed and to lumber the resulting forests by processes so controlled as to preserve them virtually intact. This would appear possible only under government ownership, since such methods as "


Nutrients, nourishing substances.

  

 

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