Cathedral State Park

Cathedral State Park is a virgin Eastern Hemlock forest located in northeastern West Virginia.  Hemlock grows well here due to the altitude (around 2500 ft) and the moist acidic soil.   (For more details and pictures of Eastern Hemlock, click on the Trees in West Virginia tab at the top of this page.)

Some of the things I noticed about the virgin forest...

* The trees were not as large as I expected.  And the flora was not very diverse.

* Undergrowth was very low, mostly ferns and seedlings.  This is due to the lack of sunlight reaching the forest floor because of the canopy provided by the trees.  There was a thick layer of leaf litter that was spongy from the decaying leaves and trees.

   

* Fallen and dead trees were abundant and parasites enjoy living on them.

While at the park we conducted soil tests which had an average pH of 4.55 proving the soil is quite acidic.

We also calculated the board feet of an average hemlock (pictured below) in the forest.  The tree we chose had a height of 43.23 feet and a diameter of 1.35 feet.  We calculated this tree to have 741.84 board feet.  (See May 5, 2012 post Estimating Board Feet for calculation process.)  Hemlock currently has a value of $3.20 per board foot, meaning this tree is worth $2,373.89 (not taking into account the cost of harvesting the wood).