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How to Recognize It
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You can recognize the Mixed Oak / Heath Forest by the fact that almost all its biggest trees are oaks. Unlike the similar Chestnut Oak / Mountain Laurel Forest, there are a variety of oaks, including white oak, black oak, scarlet oak, and chestnut oak. Its generally sparse understory consists of low-growing hillside blueberry and black huckleberry bushes (deciduous shrubs), and not much if any mountain laurel (an evergreen shrub). All these shrubs are in the heath family. The Mixed Oak / Heath Forest is found on many of the park’s dry, flat to rolling hilltops and upper slopes. It grows in coarse sedimentary deposits of sand, cobbles, and gravel, or in soil weathered from acidic bedrock.
Can you find this combination of key features?
Identifying This Natural Community
- A mixture of oak types in the forest canopy: white oak, chestnut oak, northern red oak, black oak, scarlet oak (look for their leaves on forest floor)
- Several shapes and sizes of acorns
- Near-absence of American beech trees
- Low-growing, deer-browsed hillside blueberry (green-stemmed) and/or black huckleberry bushes
- Near-absence of evergreen mountain laurel shrubs
- (Optional) cobbles (rounded, potato-sized stones) at the base of large trees where erosion and frost action have exposed them
- Located on a hilltop or upper slope
If so, welcome to Rock Creek Park’s Mixed Oak / Heath Forest!
Not sure? Check out Tips to Distinguish (below), or try the Compare Natural Communities tool.