>>2715012In the south (and this is an over simplification) you generally have two types of general landscapes and then subvarieties of those two. You have upland and bottomland. The bottomland is mostly untouched because you can't plant pines on it. Pic rel is an untouched bottomland. Now the upland on the other hand is typically Longleaf Pine savannah. Longleaf Pines with red oaks, maybe post oak, blackjack oak, Scarlet Oak etc. with wiregrass underneath and all sorts of vaccinium and hawthorn shrubs plus things like wild plum and crabapple. Maybe some eastern red cedar. This is of course an over simplification. There are thousands of upland species. Anyways- I don't think planted pines cause erosion. Wiregrass and most of the more common upland plants WILL grow under planted pines. The problem is no one plants longleaf pine because it isnt profitable and the longleaf pine is sort of a foundational species for upland forests for some reason. Idk I never really figured out why- it changes the soil I think over time. But yeah I hate planted pines. A natural upland forest is very interesting. One of the most surreal things is being in a bottomland that backs up to an upland and going from one to the other. It's like you walked 50 yards and got transported to another continent.
