Characteristic tree species include:
overcup oak, water oak, laurel oak, willow oak, sweetgum, blackgum, water tupelo, and baldcypress.

Associated tree species include:
cherrybark oak, swamp white oak, white oak, hickory, red maple, black willow, cottonwood, green ash, white ash, yellow-poplar, sugarberry, river birch, elm, boxelder, Amercian holly, American sycamore, slash pine, loblolly pine, sweetbay, and redbay.

Understory plants include:
buttonbush, Virginia sweetspire, cyrilla, buckwheat, dogwood, leucothoes, yaupon, southern bayberry, possumhaw, swamp rose, poison-sumac, green brier, supple-jack, decumaria, cross-vine, pepper-vine, and poison-ivy.

Herbaceous plants include:
moss and lichen on exposed portions of tree trunks.

The Atlantic oak-gum-cypress forest association seems to maintain dominance with or without disturbance. Slight changes in species composition may occur following natural disturbance or planned treatments depending on seed sources and the height of the water table. Prolonged periods of deep flooding generally prohibit most other forest associations from becoming established.

Forest Health Report Contents