Sandhill scrub

Figure 4. This sandhill scrub forest is permanently dry. (Photograph by the author. More about the photograph)

The field trip continues with a visit to one of the few permanently dry habitats on the coastal plain. The home of the desert-like sandhill scrub community shown in Figure 4. These communities are found on the crest of old shoreline ridges. To reach them we must more up whatever slope we can find and look for fine white sands like those we find on coastal sand dunes. When we find such an area, we will find a few longleaf pines, two species of scrub oak, and not much else, as this is the lowest-diversity habitat on the coastal plain. It is also somewhat misplaced in a wetlands tour, because any water that falls here rapidly sinks through the porous sands and moves as groundwater to the neighboring wetland soils.

The plants that live in these habitats include some that live in wetlands — the longleaf pine, for example — as well as others that have many of the same adaptations that desert plants do. There are several variants of this very dry (xeric) community, but Figure 4 shows the driest of these from a spot in the Holly Shelter Gamelands. As you can see, there are longleaf pines in the system, but few other woody plants other than the two species of oak. The fine sand floor of these areas is often bare but is sometimes covered by lichens and other plants with very low moisture and nutrient requirements.

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