Red spruce forest stand and understory vegetation

This red spruce forest and understory vegetation are part of a larger patchwork of red spruce forest stands across the central and southern Appalachians, separated from each other by miles of hardwood such as maple, oak, and beech. Pleistocene relicts of a once-continuous forest, red spruce moved over time uphill into cooler, higher elevations after the last Ice Age. Much of the spruce forest was logged at the turn of the 20th Century, and the debris left behind (logging slash) fueled widespread wildfires