Serpentine barrens are a unique ecosystem found in parts of the United States in small but widely-distributed areas of the Appalachian Mountains and the Coast Ranges of California, Oregon, and Washington. The barrens occur on outcrops of altered ultramafic ophiolites.
They are named for minerals of the serpentine group, resulting in serpentine soils, with unusually high concentrations of iron, chromium, nickel and cobalt. Serpentine barrens often consist of grassland or savannas in areas where the climate would normally lead to the growth of forests.
The ecology of serpentine barrens is poorly understood: the evolution of plants adapted to such areas and the relationship between the soil geology and ecology, particularly the ways in which plants handle high concentrations of metals such as nickel, is largely unexplored.
Read more about this topic: Serpentine Soil
Famous quotes containing the word serpentine:
“I lay awake awhile, watching the ascent of the sparks through the firs, and sometimes their descent in half-extinguished cinders on my blanket. They were as interesting as fireworks, going up in endless, successive crowds, each after an explosion, in an eager, serpentine course, some to five or six rods above the tree-tops before they went out.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)