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Moss layer on the forest floor. This layer contains mostly non-woody vegetation, or ground cover, growing in the forest with heights of up to about one and a half metres. The herb layer consists of various herbaceous plants (therophytes, geophytes, cryptophytes, hemicryptophytes), dwarf shrubs (chamaephytes) as well as young shrubs or tree ...
The forest floor can consist of bare soil, short vegetation (like grasses, mosses, creeping vegetation, etc.) or litter (i.e. leaves, twigs, or small branches). [ 1 ] This throughfall is especially rich in nutrients which makes its redistribution into the soil is an important factor for the ecology and water demand of surrounding vegetation. [ 2 ]
Mor humus is a form of forest floor humus occurring mostly in coniferous forests. [1] Mor humus consists of evergreen needles and woody debris that litter the forest floor. This litter is slow to decompose , in part due to their chemical composition (low pH, low nutrient content), but also because of the generally cool and wet conditions where ...
Moder is a forest floor type formed under mixed-wood and pure deciduous forests. [1] [2] Moder is a kind of humus whose properties are the transition between mor humus and mull humus types. [3] [4] Moders are similar to mors as they are made up of partially to fully humified organic components accumulated on the mineral soil.
[12] [13] [42] Below the spruce-fir forest, at around 1,200 meters (3,900 ft), forest composition shifts in favor of deciduous trees such as American beech, maple, birch, and oak. [13] American rhododendron is the dominant understory shrub throughout the deciduous layer but is only occasionally present in spruce-fir forests.
The understory can be further subdivided into the shrub layer, composed of vegetation and trees between a height of approximately one to five meters, the herbaceous layer, composed of vascular plants at a height of one meter or less, [6] and sometimes also the moss layer, a layer of non-vascular bryophytes typically present at ground level ...
A felled tree allows direct sunlight to reach the forest floor. The creation of a treefall gap causes a break in the canopy to form, allowing light to penetrate through to the understory . This light can now reach shrubs and treelet species, which under normal circumstances never grow tall enough to reach the canopy. [ 7 ]
The understory is the underlying layer of vegetation in a forest or wooded area, especially the trees and shrubs growing between the forest canopy and the forest floor. Plants in the understory comprise an assortment of seedlings and saplings of canopy trees together with specialist understory shrubs and herbs.