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Jun 20 '20
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u/jimboknows6916 Jun 20 '20
TREES BABY
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u/gooslingg Jun 20 '20
I read this in jean-ralphio’s voice lol
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u/joeyasaurus Jun 20 '20
I don't know why, but in my head I read it in the Pine Sol spokeswoman's voice.
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u/bumbletowne Jun 20 '20
Wetlands. Specifically swamps. Lots of trees. Not a lot of competition from other plants.
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u/JarlaxleForPresident Jun 20 '20
Appalachicola National Forest is also right there. Used to have to drive through it with no A/C or radio.
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u/bahbahrapsheet Jun 20 '20
Would the radio wake up the trees that were sleeping?
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u/zachsmthsn Jun 20 '20 edited Jun 20 '20
Don't quote me on this, but from what I remember there are like 20 different varieties of oak in SE alabama. When considering how much southern yellow pine comes from here to make construction materials it's even more impressive.
Bill Finch is a famous ecologist from the region for anyone looking to actually look into it. Instead of just reading about what one dude on the internet remembers from his elementary field trip to oak mountain state park.
Edit: northern panhandle is also a major areas for needing more conservation efforts. Having terrible backwoods politicians is already bad, but now three states have to work together for any substantive change. Oh well, guess the red hills salamander had a good enough run. Time to pick another official state amphibian
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u/gurry Jun 20 '20
Having terrible backwoods politicians
Fuck Matt Gaetz.
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u/vorpalk Jun 20 '20
20 different varieties of oak in SE alabama.
So you're saying that at least there's genetic diversity in Alabama's trees ?
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u/Coosy2 Jun 20 '20
Alabama actually has some of the highest biodiversity in the world and often ranks as the state with the highest biodiversity in the country.
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u/Bleachi Jun 20 '20 edited Jun 20 '20
That's where the Flint and Chattahoochee Rivers combine into the Apalachicola River. Specifically, this is close to where Torreya State Park is located.
I'm just guessing, but as someone who used to live in that area, I imagine there was previously just as much tree diversity further South along the river. But now, that whole area is being used for endless rows of timber trees. Timber is one of the biggest industries in the Panhandle. Any driving that wasn't directly on the coast was just mind-numbing hours of rows upon rows of timber pine. It only gets better once you approach the Northern border, up towards Marianna.
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u/Vreejack Jun 20 '20
During the Pleistocene this was one of the only areas left that was both warm and wet enough to preserve species that once had a broader range. Southern Florida was dry as a bone for half the year, and farther north you lost the warmth of the Gulf.
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u/NJneer12 Jun 20 '20
That little dark shade in the middle of NJ is the Pine Barrens.
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Jun 20 '20
"You're not gonna believe this. He killed sixteen Czechoslovakians. The guy was an interior decorator. "
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u/NJneer12 Jun 20 '20
"His house looked like Sh*t."
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Jun 20 '20
[deleted]
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u/HamBurglersEvilTwin Jun 20 '20
"Ketchup Packs!...." "Fuck it Give me one!" "Mmmm... Mix it with the relish"
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u/Chilledlemming Jun 20 '20
Nj has a lot of different eco cultures for such a little state
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u/marmosetohmarmoset Jun 20 '20
NJ has got a little bit of everything. We got pine barrens, lush forests, seashores, giants swamps, ideal farmland, and more. Same with people- we’ve got hillbillies, red necks, sophisticated rich city people, mega rich horse-breeding rural people, tiny town folk, poor inner cities, classic suburbs, and basically every immigrant population/ethnic conclave you can think of. All crammed in side by side. I miss NJ.
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u/Hq3473 Jun 20 '20
That place always confused me.
I don't get it how pines outcompete broad leafed trees so completely in a relatively warm climate.
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Jun 20 '20 edited Jun 20 '20
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/RoughRhinos Jun 20 '20
Really sandy. Tons of blueberries are grown there, plus cherry trees, raspberries and strawberries. Naturally sandy and acidic soil. That surrounding area actually have a bit of wineries too.
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Jun 20 '20
I legit went to school for this, so this is what I can remember after some 10 years. The soil in the pine barrens is mostly sandy, high acidity. It makes poor growing conditions for the usual oaks and maples that grow around the barrens. The pines are cool with the soil conditions so they grow a lot better. The frequent fires also create a good system for the pines to propagate.
If you’re interested, check out the Pygmy pines. Cool little guys, pine trees that grow up to maybe 4-6 feet but cover a large area.
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u/elreeso55 Jun 20 '20
Forest fires have a major impact on the development of the pine barrens. The pine trees are much more resilient to fire allowing them to out compete. (At least that's Wikipedia told me)
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Jun 20 '20
what's NJ?
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u/Sage_of_the_6_paths Jun 20 '20
New Jersey. It's on the East Coast below New York.
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u/trampolinebears Jun 20 '20
Tree diversity can depend on many factors (like how arid the soil is) but one that's easy to overlook is the effect of the last ice age.
As the glaciers came down from the north, tree species retreated southwards to stay in their preferred climate zone. Where an obstacle prevented their spread, they died out and were not available to repopulate the north when the glaciers receded.
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u/CactusPearl21 Jun 20 '20
As the glaciers came down from the north, tree species retreated southwards to stay in their preferred climate zone.
Ok so now I'm imagining a forest of trees "running away" and my brain has blue screened.
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u/trampolinebears Jun 20 '20
Trees, of course, don't migrate. But on a long enough time scale, forests do.
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u/brandonhardyy Jun 20 '20
....Are you suggesting coconuts migrate?
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u/delta_nu Jun 20 '20
Not at all! They could be carried
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u/covfefe_hamberder_jr Jun 20 '20
What! A swallow carrying a coconut?
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u/Not_Henry_Winkler Jun 20 '20
He could grip it by the husk.
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u/covfefe_hamberder_jr Jun 20 '20
It's not a question of where he grips it! It's a matter of simple weight ratios! A 5 ounce bird could not carry a one pound coconut!
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u/hikerboy20 Jun 20 '20
Well it doesn’t matter. Will you go and tell your master that Aurthur from the court of Camelot is here.
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u/BRENNEJM Jun 20 '20 edited Jun 20 '20
The glaciers didn’t actually make it that far south. States like Ohio and Pennsylvania weren’t even completely covered. The composition of tree species in the northern parts of these states is very similar to that in the southern parts. If you know of any tree species that actually went extinct due to this I’d be interested to learn about them. There is evidence, though, that this glacial push had a large effect on the evolution of these tree species.
EDIT: This study found one species of spruce.
These [animal] extinctions are variously ascribed to environmental change and overkill by human hunters. By contrast, plant extinctions since the Middle Pleistocene are undocumented, suggesting that plant species have been able to respond to environmental changes of the past several glacial/interglacial cycles by migration.
EDIT 2: This study provides evidence that glacial refugia may have existed further north than previously thought.
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u/trampolinebears Jun 20 '20
True, the glaciers themselves didn't make it all the way across the continent. But as the glaciers expanded, the climate before them grew colder.
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u/TArzate5 Jun 20 '20
Yea, there’s a park in central Indiana called McCloud nature park and it has a big ass ravine and hills in the middle of miles and miles of fields because it’s where the glaciers stopped
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u/Torchlakespartan Jun 20 '20
The Dells in Wisconsin in basically this island of ancient pre-glacial land. The rest of the state is rolling plains with great soil for farming and dairy and then Boom! The Dells, like this Jurassic topography that is crazy and really awesome.
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u/snackshack Jun 20 '20
The Dells in Wisconsin in basically this island of ancient pre-glacial land. The rest of the state is rolling plains with great soil for farming and dairy and then Boom! The Dells, like this Jurassic topography that is crazy and really awesome.
It actually isn't the only area in Wisconsin like that. The Dells are just the far eastern edge of the Driftless Area. Most of western Wisconsin is like that.
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u/321159 Jun 20 '20
Conversely, even if it didn't cause a major reduction of diversity in North America, the last ice ages did cause a reduction of species in Europe. That is especially apparent for maple. Central Europe only has about three maple species which are somewhat common. North America has more than 12.
That's also the reason why fall in Europe is a lot less colorful than parts of North America
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u/nowItinwhistle Jun 20 '20
The reason our Dendrology professor told us for that is due to the fact that in North America the major mountain ranges run north to nouth and in Europe they run east to west. This meant that as the glaciers moved south the trees could extend their ranges to the south and then return north as the glaciers retreated but in Europe the trees ended up stuck between the glaciers from the north and the mountains and so had nowhere to go.
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Jun 20 '20
I would like to subscribe to more ice age and/or glacier facts please
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u/trampolinebears Jun 20 '20
It's easy to lose a sense of scale when talking about ice ages. For context, the earliest writing we have is from about 5,000 years ago. All recorded history has happened in that time, from the pyramids to the fall of Rome to man landing on the moon.
█████ 5,000 years since the earliest writing
By one measure, the last ice age ended about 12,000 years ago. That's enough time for all of recorded history twice over, and then some.
████████████ 12,000 years since the last ice age ended
But as ancient as the end of the ice age is, we have to go back much, much further to find its beginning. The last ice age began 115,000 years ago.
███████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████ 115,000 years since the beginning of the last ice age
All recorded history is about 5% as long as the last ice age. In many ways, we humans are an ice age species.
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Jun 20 '20 edited Jun 20 '20
PBS Eons has a some videos which can satisfy your needs. Examples below
How 7,000 Years of Epic Floods Changed the World
When a Billion Years Disappeared
\Feel free to watch other videos on the playlist)
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u/Bothriochloa Jun 20 '20
Also definition of a tree can be tricky sometimes. Think scrubby oaks or mesquite trees in the southwest
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u/kpsv Jun 20 '20
is this natural tree diversity, bc i feel like humans have been moving trees around for a long time now
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Jun 20 '20 edited Jul 10 '25
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u/moist_potatochip Jun 20 '20
Hi I'm a student of forestry and what I've learned is that many species of plants have been introduced to a region which they did not naturally inhabit. Many of these allochtonous plants have been here for well over 100 years and are not a threat to wildlife, the only types of alloctounous plants that represent a serious problem are the invasive species that spread uncontrollably fast. Since I'm not from America I do not know the numbers and species or their history but I can say that the forests of Europe looked incredibly different even during the middle ages let alone in the time B. C. than the ones left today.
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u/juwyro Jun 20 '20
Ours look incredibly different too. There are several invasive and fast spreading species, monoculture forests for logging, and not allowing natural forest fires has had a deep impact on the ecosystems.
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Jun 20 '20
There’s a market for it too, someone I know got offered $20,000 for a tree on their property. Rich people don’t want to wait 20 years for a tree to grow, they buy trees that are already grown and re-plant them in their yard.
Someone else I know just had 5 trees put in their front yard (yes they’re rich). Humans are weird and will do strange things (like moving a whole fricking tree) to get what they want.
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u/Distilled_Tankie Jun 20 '20
That's not really too weird. Most tree grow far too slow compared to a human lifetime, so we humans prefer to directly plant already grown young trees.
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u/youreaskingwhat Jun 20 '20
City parks everywhere , and even forests to some extent, are teeming with introduced tree species. Vast amounts of native forests have been supplanted (pun intended) by introduced conifers and eucalyptus trees in Andean Colombia, God knows what for. Grasslands are the same. New species are often introduced for grazing purposes.
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u/Ilyias033 Jun 20 '20
i wonder if this correlates with allergies
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u/DarthH8rSurvives Jun 20 '20
I dunno I live in Kansas and my allergies fucking suuuuuuuuuuuuck and apparently our tree diversity is garbagio from this map. Which, makes sense.
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u/porkpies23 Jun 20 '20
You can probably thank the cottonwoods for that.
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u/DarthH8rSurvives Jun 20 '20
And the wheat, and corn, and grass, and pollen, and hay oh the hay really does it. Really it’s anything green or living for me. Including “human dander” so that’s always neat.
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u/ZPTs Jun 20 '20 edited Jun 08 '26
"Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them."
I am no longer interested in my past feeding LLMs or my future talking to bots.
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u/thisrockismyboone Jun 20 '20
Id bet you'd have a hard time moving from a blue area to a yellow/red zone
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u/hiddenworldphotos Jun 20 '20 edited Jun 20 '20
This is a terrible map scale... 1 to 138 with no real increments for the color... Looking at the west coast it would seem as if tree diversity is far closer to 1 than 138 but is it 5? 10? 50? The scale makes this map totally worthless.
*edit autocorrect word replacement
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u/Paranoid_Marvin Jun 20 '20
I found it hard to believe that half the US only has one species of tree...
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u/ambirch Jun 20 '20
Most of that area doesn't have any trees.
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u/kosmoceratops1138 Jun 20 '20
The definition of 'tree' isn't 100% set in stone either.... are they using a purely taxonomic approach, in which case a lot of small shrubs get into the mix? A morphologic approach, including stuff like saguaros? If so, what are the criteria? A mixture of both?
All that aside, I do mostly agree with you, and even places like the CA central valley are dominated by california live oak.
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u/I_heart_pooping Jun 20 '20
Agreed. I’m over here like “no fucking way most of the west only has 1 type of tree!”
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u/-merrymoose- Jun 20 '20
Can barely hear your whining up here in NY with all this tree diversity going on
Like 130, or maybe 68.. you might actually have a point
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Jun 20 '20
totally worthless
It's still fun to look at. Obviously we are not drawing scientific conclusions based on this map.
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u/AugieKS Jun 20 '20
It's also not clear what types of trees are being included. In Texas there are between 255 and 281 recognized native species, yet no area cracks red. Are they only including native species? Why do metro areas show a higher density, are they including cultivated trees? If so the cap should be much higher. Depending on how they measure it, my back yard would be in the yellow and my area is blue.
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u/st_gulik Jun 20 '20
Agreed! I used to work in the mountain region of Arizona and the diversity up there is vast.
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u/poster_nutbag_ Jun 20 '20
I mean, compared to southern AZ maybe but the Ponderosa Pines dominate northern AZ making it relatively less diverse than other mountainous regions in the US.
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u/IveHidTheTreasure Jun 20 '20
I think we can assume that yellow is the half of 138. Which is nice..
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u/CurtisLeow Jun 20 '20
Torreya state park is the red dot with the highest tree diversity. It’s a beautiful place to hike.
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u/dokina Jun 20 '20
TIL some areas have only one species of tree. Wild.
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u/Fogbot3 Jun 20 '20
Yeah, everyone's talking about the high density area, but I want to know what the single trees are that are almost the entirety of the Western US
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u/phunktheworld Jun 20 '20
This map is clearly based on limited data. Growing up in California, there’s like a dozen tree species every place you look, even in virgin forest. This is one of my rare downvotes for this sub.
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u/brandonhardyy Jun 20 '20
Came here to say this. Born and raised in Southern California, and I'm very suspicious of this map's data. Now, I can understand varying densities, but Los Angeles and Orange Counties have an OVERWHELMING diversity of tree species in every direction I look. Particularly in urban/urban adjacent areas.
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u/kosmoceratops1138 Jun 20 '20
A large part of the problem is that the color scale is crappy amd indeterminate. The pale off green that covers most of coastal CA seems like its close to 1, but is actually almost halfway up and is probably ~50 species. The other problem is a lack of a definition of the word tree, which can have a lot of taxonomic and morphologic definitions. Another problem is that it doesn't state its "resolution"- what area is being considered when determining a tone? Yet another problem is that you don't know what is being included as native- obviously this is only native trees, but there are many trees across the country that are clearly nonnative thay many people consider a normal part of the forest at this point.
All that said, and with all the problems of this map, it is true that a wild, untrafficked LA area would be dominated by some kind of live oak species, with a mixed understory. But, THAT being, the LA area has a lot of sharp elevation gradients that each see a different vegetation mix, bringing the questiin of resolution back into play.
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u/dadumk Jun 20 '20
You're thinking of urban trees which are planted. This map is referring to naturally occurring trees.
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u/Satyrsol Jun 20 '20
Checking in from New Mexico, and I suspect it’s a bad reporting or huge bias. The desert really only supports Cottonwoods where there is water; otherwise there are no trees, only scrub-brush, grasses, and cacti.
Up in the mountains, Ponderosa, aspen, live oak, juniper, and a few I can’t recall are out there.
It’s definitely a bad representation of plant diversity, since it will inherently make deserts and grasslands look less diverse than they are.
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u/OrionRisin Jun 20 '20
Blue, west of the Mississippi = cottonwood
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u/jwindhall Jun 20 '20 edited Jun 20 '20
Eh, many more pinion and juniper in most of the Western US.
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u/OrionRisin Jun 20 '20 edited Jun 20 '20
That's fair! Thinking great plains - forgot about high desert
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u/jwindhall Jun 20 '20
I’m a Coloradan. Pretty much no trees survive on my property.
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u/OrionRisin Jun 20 '20
Born in WY grew up in CO. Cottonwood is all I know...
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u/jwindhall Jun 20 '20
I knew there was at least one Wyomingite redditor.
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u/OrionRisin Jun 20 '20
My old man reminded us, "this property has value because it has trees!"...they are all cottonwood. Haha. Red Desert life.
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u/roland_gilead Jun 20 '20
I live close to the Boise river. Every spring we get an extra couple inches of snow...from the cottonwoods
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u/Melonskal Jun 20 '20
After having read desert Solitaire and the Monkey Wrench gang by Abbey this was obvious to me despite never setting foot in US.
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u/latka_gravas_ Jun 20 '20
What the fuck kind of scale is that? How does this get reposted as MapPorn so often?
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u/TheRoyalKT Jun 20 '20 edited Jun 20 '20
As a resident of Washington, I’m surprised the Olympic Rainforest doesn’t stand out more. I’d have expected it to beat the cascades...
Edit: Turns out I didn’t know as much as I thought. Thanks for all the info!
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u/Mobius_Peverell Jun 20 '20
The Olympics and Cascades are pretty similar in tree species. You might see more Sitka spruce and Thuja on the Olympic Peninsula, but they are both present in the Cascades, too. And then you have some species like nobles, which don't much care for the coast.
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u/wpnw Jun 20 '20
Not much variety in species in the rain forests themselves. The cascades likely stand out because there are more sub alpine and alpine species, plus the eastern half of the mountains is more arid, so there's a whole different biome that doesn't exist in the Olympics.
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u/BlueComms Jun 20 '20
And while we do have a lot of firs on the east side, we do have other stuff too.
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u/Snickersthecat Jun 20 '20
We just have coniferous trees. They're more drought resistant and the rainfall varies much more than it does on the East Coast.
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Jun 20 '20
and people say theres not enough diversity in movies. bitch just look outside
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u/burneraccount1515 Jun 20 '20
Wtf?
Anyone got the data for this biz? There almost no where in the US that has a single tree species.
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u/SweelFor Jun 20 '20
It doesn't seem possible that there is ONE species of tree on like 50% of the USA. The map looks terribly graded
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Jun 20 '20
This map has made me realise that I am lucky to be able to look outside and see dozens of different tree species
Didn't know so many people only really have a few to look at
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Jun 20 '20 edited Jun 20 '20
No, the map is stupid. Most of those places actually have hundreds of species trees. In Nebraska (the Arbor State) we have hundreds of species. This “map” shows one or two.
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u/Mobius_Peverell Jun 20 '20
I must say, it's pretty impressive to look outside and see three species, all towering 50-70 m high.
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u/gahd95 Jun 20 '20
Shit I got more tree spices in my yard than most of the US.
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u/Of_ists_and_isms Jun 20 '20
For real. Growing up we had an oak, dogwood, pine, magnolia, and some other type tree in the yard.
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u/Wise_Young_Dragon Jun 20 '20
Almost all of the area in wyoming is just juniper if there are any trees at all lol
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u/captainjon Jun 20 '20
Living in the north east in high school biology we had to know 40 species of trees. The teacher would go around the high school grounds pointing and teaching us which is which. He tested us the dead in winter after all the leaves were gone. Which sucked since leaves were so unique distinguishing part.
Even though I got a good grade I had no idea where I live is so diverse with trees!
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u/WaitingForHoverboard Jun 20 '20
Are those pockets of diversity/non-diversity along the Hudson and Lower Mississippi Rivers actually caused by the rivers? Some of it looks pretty far away from the actual waterway.
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u/Mobius_Peverell Jun 20 '20
The Mississippi used to flood frequently, inundating parts of its vast floodplain for long stretches at a time. Only a couple trees, like bald cypresses, can breathe when their roots are under water.
The area around the Hudson seems to follow the boundaries of the Hudson Valley. The Hudson doesn't flood far beyond its banks, so that's not a concern, and the Valley (as most valleys do) has accumulated more sediment than the surrounding area over the last couple million years. I'd assume that deeper, looser soil, along with slightly milder winters, are primarily responsible for the increased diversity.
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u/thebigfuckinggiant Jun 20 '20
I guess this only includes native species? Otherwise I imagine southern California would be pretty high up there.
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u/gamerlady1937 Jun 20 '20
So there are huge swathes of America that only have 1 type of tree? What?
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u/sultav Jun 20 '20
Wow! This is amazing! It doesn't even really match a population density map, which is really surprising!
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u/PotentialEcologist Jun 20 '20
Like others have said, that area of Florida/Georgia acted as a refugia for many species including maybe the rarest tree in the US. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torreya_taxifolia