Oak-hickory forest

The oak-hickory forest is a general type of North American forest ecosystem with a range extending from southern New England and New York, west to Iowa, and south to Northern Georgia. Smaller, isolated Oak-Hickory communities can also be found as far west as North Dakota, south to Florida and northeast Texas, and north to southern Maine and Ontario. Dominated by nut-bearing oak and hickory species of trees, it has the largest range of any deciduous forest ecosystem in eastern and central North America.

The current oak-hickory forest includes the former range of the Oak-Chestnut Forest region, which encompassed the northeast portion of the current oak-hickory range. When the American Chestnut population succumbed to invasive fungal blight in the early 20th century, those forests shifted to an oak and hickory dominated ecosystem.

Key indicator tree and shrub species of the oak-hickory forest include red oak, black oak, scarlet oak, white oak, chestnut oak, pignut hickory, bitternut hickory, shagbark hickory, flowering dogwood, blueberry, mountain laurel, and hawthorn. Bird and animal species include the gray squirrel, flying squirrel, chipmunk, blue jay, and wild turkey.

References

• Cronin, William. Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England. Hill and Wang, New York, 2003.
• Kricher, John. A Field Guide to Eastern Forests. Houghton-Mifflin, Boston, 1998.
• "Percent of Forests in Oak-Hickory Groups, 1992." Map, United States Department of Agriculture, 1992.