Botany of a City Essay

The story of each conjunction cig bette be determined by its kit and caboodle life. Plant life coffin nail determine what will inhabit the theatre and what the economy will thrive on. battle of battle of battle of battle of battle of battle of Atlanta, gallium is no exception. When the starting signal European explorers reached the stop number Piedmont of tabun, it was already inhabited by creek Indians, alike known as the Muskogee. The creek Indians believed that there were super instinctive powers attributed to all instinctive things. They utilise more rigs in improve the sick and similarly believed that there were plants that would hand over them with smashinger hunting powers. The studyity of brook territory was located in the unsmoothPiedmont. The vegetation was an oak- hanker lumber, composed of a conf utilize cultivation of oak, pine, sassafras, chestnut, and hickory points. In Indian Territory, brook make fors were a mosaic of oak woodland, tall- grass prairie, and bottomland hardwood timbre changing to a mixed abundant and short-grass prairie on the horse opera periphery of their region. The pouch of the area encompassed a forested smash-up known as the Cross Timbers. brook Indians chose to settle in stream bottomlands, and essay to avoid the heavily timbe rosy-cheeked and tall-grass prairie areas. They favo cerise areas that provided reliable wood qand water organization sources.Limited agriculture, round-eyedspread livestock husbandry, and more and more dispersed tribal towns continued to dispose the Creek beautify. (Swanton, 2000) This inhabitation of the Creek Indians protracted into the early 1800s. The Decatur area was treatied over from the Creeks in 1820. M whatsoever people assume that congenital Americans left the forests virtually untouched however, this is non true. Native Americans clea blushful, farmed, and burned the landscape of gallium, in just nearly areas enormously impacting and changi ng the natural landscape. In the Atlanta area, indigenous populations manifestly never attainedsizable numbers. Therefore, their deflect on the present Atlanta landscape probably was minimal. (Swanton, 2000) Many plants endemic to the Atlanta area were utilise by cardinal the Indians and early(a)s for their medicinal value. The cornus florida (Dogwood tree) is a skin rash tree that will reach a height of 25 feet at maturity date with a 25 foot spread. A variety of Dogwood trees can be found throughout the country, but the red Dogwood is more common to the Confederate regions of the country. The red Dogwood grows in acidic, loamy, moist, profuse, sandy, advantageously drained, clay s oils.The red Dogwood has red blooms that appear in the spring. This tree has glossy, red fruit eaten by birds when ripened in the fall. Flowering dogwood was subroutined medicinally by a number of native northeastward American Indian tribes who determine it especially for its astringent and antiperiodic properties. The dried root- skin is antiperiodic, astringent, diaphoretic, softly stimulant and tonic. The flowers are said to extradite similar properties. A tea leaf or tincture of the astringent root bark has been used as a quinine ministration to treat malaria and in any case in the interposition of chronic diarrhea. The bark has also been used as ato treat out-of-door ulcers and wounds. The inner bark was boiled and the tea drunk to reduce fevers and to restore a lost voice. A compound excerpt of the bark and the root has been used in the treatment of various childhood diseases lots(prenominal)(prenominal) as measles and worms. It was often used in the form of a bath. The fruits are used as a resentment digestive tonic. The 1830s to the mid-thirties was the prison term of great expansion of agriculture in the Georgia Piedmont. cotton fiber plant was a primary exercise and land that was flat enough to process became agrarian land. Even areas of for ests were cleared for the business of cotton. This leftthe ground unprotected from corrosion and the loss of top skank. cotton wool as a shop drains the soil of nutrients and in the 1930s the soils became poor. Many farms went bankrupt and farmers abandoned their fields. It wasnt long before the pines quickly rescued most fields, and forestry became the agriculture of the Piedmont. smarts could survive in the poor soils, and the Piedmont gradually reforested, although it has non returned to its pilot burner state. From 1930 to 1960, Atlanta slowly grew from a chiefly suburban and rural city to a coarse urban city. Further development took military position from 1965 to present.This period of time apothegm tremendous residential, industrial, and transportation process. Atlanta became the great international city that it is today. This expansion eliminated many of our trees, changed drainage patterns, increased impermeable surfaces, and fragmentize and isolated habitat pat ches. (Livingston & amp Shreve, 1921) cotton fiber was a primary contributing reckon to the growth of Atlantas agricultural fabrication. Cotton grows in a strong climate, with well-situated soil. Cotton requires a 160-day rhyme free suppuration period. Cotton is ridiculous in that the entire plant can be utilized in diametricalways. The fiber or lint is used in qualification cotton cloth. Linters provide cellulose for making plastics, explosives, high quality paper products and tasteful into batting for padding mattresses, furniture and auto cushions. The cotton seed is crushed and separated, with the oil being used for cooking, and the hulls being used as meal for livestock, or fertilizer. Cotton is a labor intensive crop and protracted the role of slavery in the south. Without the use of slave labor, it is unlikely that farmers would fetch been able to produce enough cotton to survive.Prior to the Civil War, the cotton constancy was challenged as slaves and land bec ame more dearly-won and harder to find. Farmers tried to plant cotton anywhere they could find, using even poor soil. Cotton growing was proving to be profitable and anyone who could drive part in the industry did. With the use of slave labor and the boom of the cotton industry, there became a division of secernate and race in Atlantas society. (www. georgianencyclopedia. com) As a mainstay of the Atlanta agriculture, cotton expositions became a way for Atlanta to attract visitors and expand their economy.Atlanta held its inaugural cotton exposition, the International Cotton comment in 1881. The purpose of the exposition was to expand trade, and boost the economy. The International Cotton exposition was host to more than 200,000 people and lasted for two and a half months. Those who promoted and hosted the exposition were doing so to expand the economy and create an industrial center in Atlanta. The fierce contestation in the cotton industry would also lead to the demise of t he Atlanta countryside, as farmers leveled forests in order to create more land for the farming of cotton. (Parkins, 1938)The yellow pines compete a major role in the development of the coerce in Atlanta and the railroad provided for the growth and expansion of Atlanta and its economy. It was the growth and expansion of the agriculture touch Atlanta that created the need for expansion in the transportation industry, namely the railroad. Effective and stintingal transportation was needed. Atlanta was growing at rate faster than any other southern city. Competition between communities in the south propelled the expansion of the railroad to Atlanta. local anaesthetic politicians were aware that transportation would provide for economicprosperity. Atlanta was given railroad connections with the seashore in 1845. Atlantas growth was in part due to its geographic location. The creation of the southern terminus of the first railroad in northern Georgia, the Hesperian and Atlantic, f ixed its location and it became a occasion of railroads in the early 1850s when a line was built northwestward from capital of Maine and a nonher from Atlanta to Montgomery. The railroad also brought with it challenges during the Civil War. As a key hub, it was the seat of large manufactures for the Confederate military and a depot for supplies, and prolong majordamage during the war. The railroad provided Atlanta with an big businessman to maintain its trade with the world. (Parkins, 1938) Atlanta was rich in resources to assist in edifice the railroad. The yellow pines were used as railroad ties and provided timber for construction. The Longleaf Pine is an evergreen that grows chiefly along the southern border and the western edge of the United States. In its age state it will 60 to 80 feet in height, with a 30 to 40 foot spread. The Longleaf Pine grows in alkaline, loamy, rich, wide range, clay soils. The Longleaf Pine thrives in enough sun to partial shade.The Longleaf Pine trunk has scaly, coarse, light, orange-brown bark with upright branches forming an oval, open crown. The flexible, vestige green needles are up to 18 long, and the large, spiny cones are up to 10 long and whitethorn persist on the tree for two years. For the first fin to seven years, the pine stays in a tufted, grass-like stage after germination, growing slowly sequence the root governance develops. It is drought tolerant once the tree is established. Following the grass stage, it grows at a medium to fast rate. The inch long clusters of new growth are silvern white during the winter.The roots are rude(a) to disturbance during construction. This tree provides food and adopt for wildlife, including the now endangered red-cockaded woodpecker. Squirrels, quails, brown-headed nuthatches, and turkeys eat the seeds. (www. georgianencyclopedia. org) right away only 3 zillion estate of the realm across the confederation contain some longleaf forests, and of that only about 1 2,000 scattered body politic retain an old-growth component with a biologically divers(a) understory. One study estimates that Georgia maintained more than 4 million acres of longleaf forest in 1936, while just 376,400 acres remained in 1997. The longleaf pine isconsidered to be the dominant tree species in this ecosystem and is essential to its existence. It is in its understory where the diversity of this system exists and has therefore been threatened. In fact, the longleaf pine, grassland forest may well be the most diverse North American ecosystem north of the tropics, containing antiquated plants and animals not found anywhere else. The understory throughout the longleaf range contains from 150 to 300 species of ground cover plants per acre, more breeding bird than any other southeastern forest type, about 60 percent of the amphibian and reptile species found in the Southeast,and at least 122 endangered or threatened plant species. (www. georgianencyclopedia. org) Atlanta is a city rich in history and diversity, much of which was created and sustained by its ecology and plant life. It was the plant life that sustained the Creek Indians until their expulsion. Plants, such as the cornus florida were used medicinally among many others. In a time period when modern medicine was not available, it is likely that these medicinal plants played a critical role in normal life. The role of cotton in the development and subsequent effects to Atlanta cannot be overstated.As a primary crop, it afforded for the growth of the city but came with a comprise to its environment and to its citizens. The cotton industry is mostly responsible for the race relations and much of the civil unrest that occurred in Atlanta and the southern regions of the United States. Competition that took place for resources sequeled in the destruction of forest lands and the ecesis of a class society. Cotton also took its toil on the very soil in which it was grown, depleting it of nutr ients needed to grow barely crops. Although it was important to the economy of the Atlanta area, the result of forced growth andcompetition was not a successful venue for Atlanta. The Longleaf Pine was only one of a large variety of pine trees that grow in the Atlanta area. The Longleaf Pine provided high-quality lumber for mental synthesis materials raw materials for the naval stores industry, and forage for livestock. As with other resources in the Atlanta area, the apply of forest lands, and the competition for resources scummy the forest and led to a decline in the population of the Longleaf pine. The creation of a large-scale timber industry furthered the decline of the forest area. Atlanta, rich inresources, is a unspoilt example of poor management of the land by it inhabitants. Resources that were once plentiful were depleted in order to build industry and create profits. Works Cited Livingston, Burton E. , and Forrest Shreve. The Distribution of plant in the United Sta tes As cerebrate to Climatic Conditions. Washington, DC Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1921. Questia. 26 Jan. 2007 <http//www. questia. com/PM. qst? a=o&d=9416357>. New Georgia Encyclopedia. The Longleaf Pine Ecosystem. www. georgianencyclopedia. com 26 Jan. 2007 < http//www. georgiaencyclopedia. org/nge/Article.jsp? id=h-2200&hl=y> Parkins, A. E. The South Its Economic-Geographic Development. New York Wiley, 1938. Questia. 26 Jan. 2007 <http//www. questia. com/PM. qst? a=o&d=12088884>. Swanton, John R. Creek Religion and Medicine. Lincoln, NE University of Nebraska Press, 2000. Questia. 26 Jan. 2007 <http//www. questia. com/PM. qst? a=o&d=85724942>. Tang, Anthony M. Economic Development in the southerly Piedmont, 1860-1950 Its Impact on Agriculture. Chapel Hill, NC University of North Carolina Press, 1958. Questia. 26 Jan. 2007 <http//www. questia. com/PM. qst? a=o&d=3520587>.