Shrub Swamp
Shrub swamps, also called scrub swamps or buttonbush swamps, are a type of freshwater wetland ecosystem occurring in areas too wet to become hardwood swamps (“true” or forested swamps), but too dry or too shallow to become marshes. They are often considered transitional (“mid-successional”) between wet meadows or fens and conifer or hardwood swamps.
By some classifications, shrub swamps must have at least 50% shrub cover and less than 20% tree cover. Other definitions specify large shrubs with small trees less than 35 feet in height. Creation of shrub swamps often follows a catastrophic event in a forested swamp (flood, cutting, fire, or windstorm). Another route of development is via drained meadows and fens which progress to shrub swamps as a transitional state to forested swamps.
Read more about Shrub Swamp: Development, Types, Notable Shrub Swamps
Famous quotes containing the word swamp:
“We read that the traveller asked the boy if the swamp before him had a hard bottom. The boy replied that it had. But presently the traveller’s horse sank in up to the girths, and he observed to the boy, “I thought you said that this bog had a hard bottom.” “So it has,” answered the latter, “but you have not got half way to it yet.” So it is with the bogs and quicksands of society; but he is an old boy that knows it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)