Aceretum rubri: The Red Maple Swamp Forest of Central Long Island

Abstract

No red maple forest type is recognized by the Society of American Foresters in their Forest Cover Types of the United (1932). This is due to the small area of the usual stands of this type. They state, however, with respect to their type 26, Black ash-American elm-red maple, that in New England red maple often predominates and may be found in pure stand. Type 26 occurs throughout the Lake States and New England and adjacent regions. It is described as occupying moist to wet muck or shallow peat soils, in swamps, gullies and small depressions of slow drainage or in elongated areas along small sluggish streams, occasionally covering extensive swamps. It is a minor type unimportant commercially. From the forester's point of view, the red maple swamp type here under consideration is nothing more than a variant. From an academic standpoint and for more intensive plant socioldgical studies it is well to recognize it as a distinct association, especially since the codominants of type 26 are absent from these stands.