Cove Hardwood Forest
A degree of romance or mystique surrounds the cove hardwood forest. The name was used as early as 1905 in professional forestry literature, but was probably coined much earlier, perhaps in the days of settlement.
The coves share all of their predominant trees with the neighboring plant communities, and no common animal or plant is restricted to cove forest. The key to its recognition is variety, particularly in the make-up of the canopy, the name given to the roof level of any woodland. Cove forest is not restricted literally to topographic flats and hollows; it may also occur on steep slopes, where soil moisture conditions are suitable.
In its best development, cove forest may sustain 20-25 tree species tangling branches far overhead. Look for white ash, sugar maple, magnolia, American beech, silverbell, and basswood. If most of these are present, with or without buckeye, holly, yellow birch, and hemlock, you are being treated to cove hardwood scenery.
Oaks, hickories, red maple and yellow-poplar (tulip tree) will also be present, but these widespread species are not really useful in settling the question. One often workable rule of thumb is the presence of yellow-wood, but this small tree is absent from the cove hardwood forest community in many parts of the park.
Many of today’s typical cove hardwood trees have also been found as fossils in rocks of Cretaceous age in the eastern United States. This match up—and the recognition that the southern mountains have been continuously available for land plant growth since Dinosaur Days—has given plant geographers much food for thought. Cove forest is now plausibly regarded as a very ancient mixture of species. Probably, it was the ancestor of several other widespread forest communities. Perhaps it was the haven of refuge sought by many plants and animals during the Pleistocene glacial period. Its significance today is its wealth of species composition and its heritage—millions of years of forest evolution. We are fortunate that significant stands of this forest type survive uncut in the Great Smoky Mountains.
A great benefit of these rich, lush forests for hikers is the refreshing coolness they afford on hot summer days. Many people have described them as “green cathedrals” because of the coolness, rest, and peace they seem to engender.
When the yellow-poplar seeds into an abandoned farm field it means that the field could eventually become a cove forest. But the yellow-poplar needs the company of a dozen other species to form true cove forest.
The yellow-poplar grows fast and straight. Its bark has white-sided ridges.
Cove forest has less moss cover than the spruce-fir forest, but it boasts more kinds of mosses. The abundance of trees, flowers, and lower plants is produced by ideal moisture and a temperate climate.