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Virginia's Plant Life Resources

The state of Virginia's plant-life resources are rich and varied. With an elevational gradient dropping from Blue Ridge crests of 5,000-plus feet to sea-level estuaries on the Atlantic coast, the state's vegetation communities can roughly be understood as marching eastward from mountaintop to ocean shore. Indigenous and Euro-American cultures have long modified these landscapes. Today, there are such human-dominated ecosystems as pine plantations on the Atlantic-Gulf Coastal Plain and, of course, extensive urban, suburban and agricultural development. These exist alongside wilder botanical extremes still persisting on remote Appalachian summits and deep blackwater swamps.

Highland Forests
- Virginia's portions of the Blue Ridge and other Appalachian provinces support rich mountain forests.
  
  Virginia's highest country lies in its western regions, where a number of physiographic regions associated with the Appalachian Mountains dominate. From west to east these regions are the Appalachian Plateaus, Ridge and Valley, Blue Ridge and Piedmont Plateau. The forests historically blanketing these highlands feature species common to both the Appalachians themselves and the northern latitudes of North America. For example, trees such as red spruce and Fraser fir persist in the boreal-type climate of Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains. More extensive were mixed oak-chestnut forests, since changed substantially because of the decline of the American chestnut in the face of a severe blight. Today's forests, dominated by various kinds of oak, also feature constituent trees such as hickories, maples and eastern redbud.
Lowland Forests
- East of the Appalachian highlands lie lowland forests of the Atlantic-Gulf Coastal Plain. On higher ground, these often consist of mixed hardwood and pine communities, showcasing species such as loblolly pine, American beech and chestnut oak. Lacing through these woods are big rivers, which on their shoulders support bottomland forests and swamps. The Great Dismal Swamp is an extensive example, a great mosaic of swamps, marshes, bogs and woods. As the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation notes in its "Overview of the Physiology and Vegetation of Virginia," these half-waterlogged bottoms have proven more resilient than Coastal Plain upland forests in the face of Euro-American development of Virginia's landscape. Water tupelo, bald cypress, black gum, red maple and -- in a few untouched peatlands -- Atlantic white-cedar are some of the historically prevalent trees of the Coastal Plain bottoms.
Other Habitats
- Along with the scattered non-timbered wetlands of the inland Coastal Plain, estuarine communities exist along Virginia's coast. Tidal wetlands are a diverse and increasingly rare collection of habitats such as salt scrub, with its hardy grasses and shrubs, and freshwater marshes, supporting species like dotted smartweed and wild rice. Coastal dune ecosystems also support varied plant life, from beachgrass flats to scrub broken with thickets of black cherry and live oak to veritable woodlands of pine and hardwoods in sheltered areas.

Nature