Carolina Environmental Diversity Explorations
Elevations and forest types · By Dirk Frankenberg
A developing chestnut oak forest
Figure 3. Sourwoods grow in this young chestnut oak forest. (Photograph by the author. More about the photograph)
Figure 2 shows a younger forest at about 2200 feet, with smaller oaks, a relatively open canopy, and the dense shrub and small tree layer (called the understory by ecologists) that develops on the floor of open-canopied forests.
Note also the twisting trunks of the small sourwood trees that grow up into the best light available under the forest canopy at all stages of their development. As a result, when light conditions change with canopy openings and closings, the sourwoods grow in different directions creating the crooked trunks you see here.
