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THIS region comprises a strip of sand hills some 10 to 15 miles wide stretching across the northern portions of Kennedy, Brooks and Jim Hogg counties. They are characterized by scrub liveoak of varying height, either in mottes or in more or less continuous thickets. Interspersed with the scrubby oaks are a few much larger trees, while on more level stretches of somewhat finer soil texture mesquite is quite common.

Grasses are largely sages or bluestems, together with species of triple-awn, Chloris, bur-grass, dropseed, Triodia, and others of bunch habit. Except on level areas of decidedly tightish soils, curly mesquite and buffalo are not to be found. Both may be counted as essentially missing in the region.

Flowering herbs include milkweeds, mustards, Phlox, Coreopsis, cottony sunflower, Gaillardia, white, yellow and purple asters, daisies, evening primroses, poppies, four o'clocks, chickweeds, and others.

The various chaparral species characteristic of Region 4 are scantily present, but lend no character to the vegetational landscape. On the contrary they give one the impression of being, in effect, conspicuously absent.

Vegetation has stabilized the sand in most places, but here and there are localities in which the bare sand, freely blown by the wind, stands in characteristic dunes whose surfaces are beautifully ripple-marked. These occur abundantly along the coast and intermittently inland as far as Hebbronville.

Motte, French, clod, clump, hill or knoll. In the United States the term has long been applied to a clump of trees on a prairie. Such clumps commonly, but not exclusively, grow on knolls, and themselves resemble hills.