pine barrens

Pine barrens, pine plains, sand plains, or pineland areas occur throughout the U.S. from Florida to Maine (see Atlantic coastal pine barrens) as well as the Midwest, West, and Canada and parts of Eurasia. Perhaps the most well known pine-barrens area to North Americans is the New Jersey Pine Barrens. Pine barrens are generally pine forests in otherwise "barren" and agriculturally challenging areas. Such pine forests often occur on dry, acidic, infertile soils, and also include grasses, forbs, and low shrubs. The most extensive pine barrens occur in large areas of sandy glacial deposits (including outwash plains), lakebeds, and outwash terraces along rivers. Description Botany The most common trees are the jack pine, red pine, pitch pine, blackjack oak, and scrub oak; a scattering of larger oaks is not unusual. The understory includes grasses, sedges, and forbs, many of them common in dry prairies, and rare plants such as the sand-plain gerardia (Agalinis acuta). Plants of the heath family, such as blueberries and bearberry, and shrubs, such as prairie willow and hazel, are common. These species have adaptations that permit them to survive or regenerate well after fire. Fauna Pine barrens support a number of rare species, including Lepidoptera such as the Karner blue butterfly (Plebejus melissa samuelis) and the barrens buck moth (Hemileuca maia).