Softwoods to Hardwoods

“This is the view I see from our mountain tops looking down across the landscape of the Androscoggin River valley.”

Seeing the Forest Through its Trees Part X

By Larry Ely

Our northern forest of mixed hardwoods and softwoods midway between the equator and the north pole live their lives through a distinct four seasons. I tend to think of our forests instead as living between two transition seasons with fall/winter transitioning from the dense green cover in summer of hardwoods and softwoods to a multi-colored forest and then to a starker landscape of green conifers with the grays of hardwoods and eventual blanketing of white. The coming of spring and summer then transitions to a lush forest of both softwoods and hardwoods with pale to ever darker green leaves. This is the view I see from our mountain tops looking down across the landscape of the Androscoggin River valley. 

“Fall color gives way to the starker landscape of green conifers, gray hardwoods, and eventual blanketing of white.”

This series previously focused on the softwoods or conifers, the tree species first occupying our landscape after the last glaciation. With low nutrient requirements and no need to expend energy to reproduce leaves annually, softwoods were the first trees able to grow on the nutrient poor soils that were revealed after the glacial period.

As better, well drained soils then developed through natural processes, the early softwood forest evolved into the present day mixed Northern Hardwood-Conifer forest of the Mahoosuc region. That mixed forest composition is due to a blurred zone where the southern limits of the boreal conifers blend with the northern range limits of the northern hardwoods. Climate change will likely alter this transition zone with the demarcation zone moving further northward, and some species will be more affected than others. 

“Between boreal conifers and northern hardwoods lies a blurred boundary—one that continues to shift as climate and time reshape the forest.”

The later emerging hardwood forest was composed mostly of oak, sugar maple, and beech, along with yellow birch and assorted maples, cherries, paper birch, and white ash joining the forest. White pine also became a scattered component of that forest from early successional stages. 

“Summer’s green transitions to the multi-colored soft-wood forests of fall.”

Leaves of the broadleaf trees have a much thinner waxy covering than evergreen needles as there is no need to be protected from winter’s freeze. Consequently, leaves may be as much as ten times as effective in capturing needed carbon dioxide, conducting photosynthesis, and storing the energy needed to replace leaves annually. That excess energy allows sugar maples to be tapped in the spring without damage to the tree. 

A single maple or other hardwood leaf by itself is of inconsequential mass, but it is estimated that the accumulated leaves from such a hardwood forest total as much as 1 to 3 tons per acre depending on the forest type. Multiple organisms break down the leaf litter and contribute to the food chain while also providing up to 50 to 80 percent of the tree’s nutrient needs for the next year from that process.

This series next focuses on the major individual tree species in the region’s hardwood forests, first looking at one of my favorites - paper birch. This series may help readers identify individual tree species, but it is not offered as a guide to tree identification. The Maine Forest Service Forest Trees of Maine is a great guide to the trees in our region in both Maine and New Hampshire and is available for downloading at the Maine Forest Service website or can be purchased as a hard copy. 

This article is part of a continuing series looking at the life of the common trees in our Mahoosuc Mountain Region.

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