Vegetation
Vegetation types and important trees and shrubs of the Shasta–Trinity National Forest The Shasta–Trinity NF lies at the intersection of the Eastern Klamath Mountains and the Southern Cascades (Miles & Goudy, 1997), and is largely forested, though at low elevations there are areas of chaparral, woodland, and grassland. At high elevations in the Trinity Alps, Eddys, and Mt. Shasta, forest gives way once again to montane chaparral, subalpine woodlands, and ultimately to alpine rock and scree.
Starting with lower elevations in the foothills around Shasta Lake, north of Redding, the forests and woodlands are dominated by gray pine, knobcone pine, ponderosa pine, blue oak, black oak, canyon live oak and Douglas-fir. Shrub diversity is very high. Common understory shrubs at lower elevations are whiteleaf manzanita, wedgeleaf ceanothus, California buckeye, California coffeeberry and western redbud.
In moist stream canyons, other trees and shrubs prevail—bigleaf maple, western spicebush (Calycanthus Occidentalis), dogwood, white alder, and willows.
At mid-elevations sugar pine, incense-cedar, white fir and Jeffrey pine join Douglas-fir, ponderosa pine, and canyon live oak, while the other pines and oaks drop out of the mix. Huckleberry oak, shrub tanoak, greenleaf and pinemat manzanitas, and bush chinquapin, are important understory components. In the Cascades east and north of Mt. Shasta, bitterbrush and tobacco brush are very common. On the serpentines of Trinity County’s mid-elevation Klamath Mountains, incense-cedar and Jeffrey pine woodlands are inhabited by shrubby Congdon’s silktassel, leather oak, and hoary manzanita. Farther west, on the long ridge of South Fork Mountain that divides the Shasta–Trinity and Six Rivers National Forests, the tree form of tanoak grows mixed with Douglas-fir and golden chinquapin.
Upper montane and subalpine forests are made up of red fir, mountain hemlock, western white pine, lodgepole pine; and at the highest elevations, foxtail and whitebark pines. Montane meadows and streamsides in the Klamath Ranges are marked by an abundance of California pitcherplant, western azalea, and occasional Port-Orford-cedar, which is disjunct here from its coastal populations.
Much more detail on the vegetation zones of Mount Shasta, and their associated flora and fauna, can be found in C. Hart Merriam’s important early biological survey, published in 1899. http://ia700202.us.archive.org/18/items/resultsofbiologi00merr/resultsofbiologi00merr.pdf
Vegetation species on forest - (common name) - Scientific name (white fir) - Abies concolor, (red fir) - Abies magnifica, (bigleaf maple) - Acer macrophyllum, (California buckeye) - Aesculus californica, (white alder) - Alnus rhombifolia, (hoary manzanita) - Arctostaphylos canescens, (pinemat manzanita) - Arctostaphylos nevadensis, (greenleaf manzanita) - Arctostaphylos patula, (whiteleaf manzanita) - Arctostaphylos viscida, (incense-cedar) - Calocedrus decurrens, (western spicebush) - Calycanthus occidentalis, (wedgeleaf ceanothus) - Ceanothus cuneatus, (tobacco brush) - Ceanothus velutinus, (western redbud) - Cercis occidentalis, (Port-Orford-cedar) - Chamaecyparis lawsoniana, (golden chinquapin) - Chrysolepis chrysophylla, (bush chinquapin) - Chrysolepis sempervirens, (dogwood) - Cornus (several species), (California pitcherplant) - Darlingtonia californica, (Congdon’s silk-tassel) - Garrya congdonii, (tree tanoak) - Lithocarpus densiflorus var. densiflorus, (shrub tanoak) - Lithocarpus densiflorus var. echinoides, (Whitebark pine) - Pinus albicaulis, (knobcone pine) - Pinus attenuate, (foxtail pine) - Pinus balfouriana, (lodgepole pine) - Pinus contorta, (Jeffrey pine) - Pinus jeffreyi, (sugar pine) - Pinus lambertiana, (western white pine) - Pinus monticola, (ponderosa pine) - Pinus ponderosa, (gray pine - Pinus sabiniana, (Douglas-fir) - Pseudotsuga menziesii, (Bitterbrush) - Purshia tridentate, (canyon live oak) - Quercus chrysolepis, (blue oak) - Quercus douglasii, (leather oak) - Quercus durata, (huckleberry oak) - Quercus vaccinifolia, (California coffeeberry) - Rhamnus californica, (western azalea - Rhododendron occidentale, (willow) - Salix (several species), (mountain hemlock) - Tsuga mertensiana
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)