are dark
Plains;
Comes visit me. No need to go all the way youpper. I’ll show you the most southern extent of the boreal forests, Indiana! yes, we have protected forests protected by sheer cliffs where ancient hemlocks still make a living as trees in our wild and woolly forest. In shades and turkey run state park, there are tons of hemlocks for you to enjoy while floating down sugar creek. Pine hills nature preserve is filled with hemlocks protected by backbone ridges that are 100’s of feet high!
You’ll love it here
There are nooks and crannies that were just too much for the flatlander loggers that I love to crawl into.
Wow, your right about it sounding like the NW. You might as well of just described our land. I’m so in love with it, the darkness, the freedom of movement, the constant drip. I can’t wait till I can move out there for good.
All I can say is you’re right about the broadleaves only staying on the river banks, or riparian (sp?) zones in general. Unfortunately that’s all I can tell you.
I don’t know why conifers rock the NW so intensely. I have heard that after the glaciers retreated the conifers range has been growing steadily. Perhaps becuase they are better adapted, or because they create top soil faster? Gee, I sure pulled that out of my ass. Sorry for the B.S. reply.
The scandinavian woods I saw were coniferous, siberia’s coniferous. maybe what Trollsplinter ment was after the glaciers scraped away the topsoil only coniferous trees could find the means to grow.
Maybe I also really was just pulling it outta my ass, but Grimkin, I’m smelling what your pushing out.
elevation.
also by moisture and average temperate
This is a question I have wondered about for a long time. Tony Z. posted some info. There is also more to it than what Tony Z. posted.
Latitude makes a difference. In Southern Utah you have ponderosa pine forests at 10,000 ft. Here in B.C. you have nothing but rock and ice at that elevation.
There are also other climatic variables such as warm ocean currents.
I think that glaciation has something to do with it as well. Also if you look at the Appalachian Mts. and other eastern ranges, they are much older than the Rockies or the other western mountains, and there has been much more recent volcanic activity in western N. America.
The west is definitely a whole different scenario than the east. I did timber cruising in Idaho and Montana and the even between there and B.C. things are really different. Species that you would rarely if ever see in the same place in Idaho can be found growing side by side in B.C. without too much searching.
By the way I also love hemlock forests.
if only google could fetch me graphs to understand all existence, how splendid! How erroneous! Thanks for mentioning ocean currents, considering man’s impact on this, it’s troubling to think we could extinguish such a large flame with such a small shift in the wind.
Yeah I’ve only been in central and south Sweden, a little north also. There are broad leafed trees there that were awesome. Rook colonies would pick one tree out of a hundred (always leafy) and build around a hundred nests in it, the same type of trees the vikings would use as gallows. I would not be suprised that big leafs grow on the coast, isn’t there warmer currents? I guesse I shouldn’t generalize scandinavian woods based on what I saw. It’s hard to say anything about the forests of southern sweden and denmark because those countries so rural. I went to an old growth forest in stolkholm the trees looked about 30 years old to me but they were hundreds of years old! I guess it’s the same latitude as Alaska so that kinda makes sense.