your name mystifies me.. i have never been to NJ ... so all i have to go on.. is all the cliches... but one thing i never think of it as .. is an oasis .. lol ...

when i was a kid.. we would go hiking in Wixom MI ... the first half of the hike.. was thru CCC plantings of pine.. perfectly on center ... maybe 10 to 20 feet apart... and it seemed like they were 100 feet tall.. but i was smaller then.. lol ...

half way thru ... we crossed the huron river ... and there was a big sign.. that explained.. that we were now entering a CLIMAX FOREST .... check out the link below ... and google CLIMAX forest.. and flip to the images side ...

it is my recollection. . that the hardwoods are the climax ... over the centuries ....

BUT.. your observation may be lacking.. since you live in ... trying hard not to make a NJ joke... where the settlers.. for the last 200 years.. harvested all the hardwoods ... so the fauna has regressed... to the soft woods.. ..

and that is all i am willing to type on this absolutely glorious MI day ... at 2 in the afternoon ...

in summation.. given a century or two.. the pines will not dominate [paragraph 4, i think] .. according to theory .... as i think the article alludes to [but i have to be honest.. i didnt read it all] ...

ken

Here is a link that might be useful: link

What mystifies me is is your snide, condescending tone.

wow ....

forgive me .. i was in a stellar mood from the weather .. i intended nothing amiss ...

i will try to remember to not bother you any more ...

ken

The Pine Barrens are in New Jersey.
New Jersey is the garden State. Not ornamental gardens, but veggie gardens. They supply a lot of New York City's vegetables.
Also the worst airport I've ever been in. Newark.
Mike

Nj, forest succession is a complicated and, IMO, fascinating subject. Soils, climate, individual weather events, and the hand of man have all led to what we see before us. I myself have wondered just exactly why the western mountains of this country are so very dominated by conifers, including, as you said, both wet, maritime regions, and the drier parts of the Rockies, etc. But again, each case really needs to be considered on its own basis. Then there are "sub-climax" forest species. These can be dominant in a given stand for hundreds of years, yet are not necessarily the climax forest. It really does get complicated!

Pinetree30, Spruceman, and of course, Pineresin, should they see this thread, could all offer relevant parts of the picture.

+oM

1 reviewer said - What mystifies me is his snide, condescending tone.

I have nothing to add to the original question. However, I was raised and gardened in Michigan but moved to NJ almost 30 years ago. The first spring I was here I was dumbstruck by the beautiful dogwood, rhododendrons & others. I love gardening in NJ!

That being said....I'll always be a Wolverine--GO BLUE!

Here is a link that might be useful: A public garden in my county

In general, the domination of conifer or flowering plants depends on how adapted they are to the unique characteristics of an ecosystem.

Best to handle each scenario independently:

NJ pine barrens for example - Fire influenced landscape with nutrient poor drought prone soils. It's an early successional forest populated by fire adapted conifers that are exceptionally good at colonizing (cones that open in fire, easily distributed seed, preferred mineral soil seed bed, seedling drought tolerance, fast growing young trees without a requirement for shelter, tolerance for poor soils, etc.) Where fire has been absent, the successional forest has progressed to Oak.

Many of those same attributes also apply to the southeastern pine forests.

Maybe someone else could tackle another ecosystem?

Ken, my friend, how many times I've to tell you not being rude here at this forum?
You're a bad student ;0)

Conifers don't dominate here (but there are spots nearby that they do). But they do have advantages -- like right now. They have a headstart happily making food during mild, sunny days like today while hardwoods are still asleep.

Here is something to read about evergreen vs deciduous. I hope you enjoy reading it.

Marko

Here is a link that might be useful: Adaptive Signiï¬cance of Evergreen vs. Deciduous Leaves: Solving the Triple Paradox

There are a few other factors to consider as well such as soil types, natural growth rate, and shade tolerance. In the northwest the Pseudotsuga tolerate the shade when young and have a very fast growth rate. When they rise above the other species they shade them out and dominate as they grow up to almost 300 feet (100 meters) in height in the dryer areas as do the Thuja plicata trees in the moister areas. In the Northeast the hemlocks and beeches once dominated since they tolerated shade until they made their own canopies. Farther south deciduous trees dominated except for areas like the Blue Ridge mountains where soils also played a role. Along the cost the wind and salt tolerance would also have had some effect. There are many factors at work in the natural ecosystem. In the future conifers may become more dominant since they are wind pollinated and do not depend upon insects and bees are in trouble.

Interesting question! I've always heard that needles have less surface area and a waxy covering that protect them from dehydration, so that explains dry climates. The other "gimick" of conifers is that by keeping their foliage all year they get a "head start" on growing in Spring...they can use the early spring snow melt and rains to grow while deciduous trees are still regrowing their leaves. In a sufficiently cold climate there wouldn't be enough warm months to justify regrowing big, water-losing leaves every year. This doesn't really explain the subtropical or moist Northwest, though. Could it have something to do with the timing of the rain? Does either location get most of their rain in early Spring. I kind of like parker25mv's answer.

I don't know of any deciduous trees in the northwest that grow to 300' like the conifers do.

Taking another crack at this, one aspect is that many conifers take what's left after the angiosperms, with their typically-faster growth rate, have taken the better sites. Let me offer just one example, that of Thuja occidentalis up at my land in NE Wisconsin: A part of this land is straight-up swamp, that is, a forested wetland. The "cedar"-the colloquial name for this species,is able to colonize areas having water table essentially within an inch of the surface. I kid you not, when we dig there, the holes immediately fill with water. This coniferous species also grows well on higher, more well-drained sites, but is easily surpassed in growth in such locations by pioneering aspens, birch, maple, etc. So in this one case, the Thuja is taking what's available to it-water-logged soils. Tamarack, another well-known swamp species is exactly the same way. Plant tamarack on an upland site and protect it from encroaching hardwoods, and it will grow very well. but it has essentially no shade tolerance, and left to its own devices would quickly become overtopped by the same hardwood species mentioned earlier. Now do realize, nature is full of niches and diverse situations. What I've described here is just one such item-there are many more.

Pyric plant communities are another area where certain conifers, usually pines, can dominate, so long as that fire is not withheld for too long. Think of the great pine woods (whatever is left) of the SE coastal plain of the US. Fires would periodically go through these areas, killing off shrubby species as well as non-fire-adapted tree types, but the pines, with their specialized bark, would survive these fires. The result was the beautiful rather open woods of these areas, replete with saw palmetto understory, etc. If you want to see what happens when man's activities interrupt this process, throwing in some exotic invasive species, look at the demise of the slash pine woods of S. Florida, now with "ladder fuels" allowing fire to climb up into the tops of the pines and thus killing them too. Sad situation, but nobody wants the Walmart to catch fire-well, maybe most don't! In this case, it's man's control of fire, along with the invasion of primarily Malaleuca-an Australian species now virtually extinct in Australia-that is effecting this changeover. Those woods are doomed.

There are as many more explanations as there are forest cover types....and that's a lot of types!

+oM

If we look at Sweden, it has a huge expanse of broadleaf forest despite being so far up North (around 59 N latitude), and if we look at the average monthly precipitation levels it can give us an idea why: in Sweden the rainfall peaks in July. This is the part of the country where most of the population lives.

Now obviously if we start going into the vast expanses much farther North of Stockholm the forest turns into mostly scotch pine. And in parts of Norway that have a lot of coastal influence and have more mild temperatures in the winter, we again find conifers.

Because of ocean currents, the Scandinavian peninsula is comparably much warmer than other places in the world at a similar latitude, but also because it is so far North the sunlight and temperatures are very seasonal. These are prime conditions for broadleaf deciduous forests to grow.

Something else I read, while it may be too cold for the tree to actually carry out photosynthesis during the Winter, evergreen conifers still have a significant advantage in the times of the year around late Fall and early Spring. In regions with dry Summers (and thus limited growth) these can be very important parts of the growing season.

There was no shortage of pine trees https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caribbean_pine on Grand Bahama island when we visited there last spring. We took the jeep tour of the island and saw miles upon miles of Caribbean Pine forests. This tree in variation is also native over a wide area including Cuba and central America. Though it is relatively spotty over it's native area. The guide told us it never gets colder than about 55d F. in the winter. Very sandy soil and 60" rain annually. The fan palms were everywhere and we were told they helped protect the trees during wild fires. They do have a dry period/fire season.

There was a large area of pines that were dead. We were told that the last hurricane went over the island dropped huge amount of ocean water that it had sucked up. He said the pine roots can take salt water just fine but the needles die when salt water is applied. So kind of a disaster two ways.

ETA: These trees raise their own crowns as they grow. Even the trees that weren't crowded did not have lower branches.

parker, certainly that is the case in boreal forests when mid & even late-spring has alot of sun but still not warm enough for active growth.