Upslope ca. 60 m SE is FS Rd 85, there is a hiking trail used to access the cove located ca. 60 m S on a dry ridge spur with an oak - pine / heath forest recemtly burned and covered in the state rare Mountain fetterbush. Downslope in the cove the community is similar to plot GWNF.56. Scattered throughout the cove are large 80-100 cm dbh trees. There are also many standing and fallen Eastern hemlocks similar in girth. Land is owned and managed by the George Washngton NF. On the ridge are rich xeric oak forests. See polts from Dyers and Bother Knobs for more context. To the W of the plot just outside the cove forest is a younger forest with smaller hemlocks and yellow birches with little if any ground cover. There is an old skid trail above the plot.;Low diversity high elevation cove forest with a NW aspect. The forest is dominated by large but stunted Quercus rubra and smaller in dbh but same heght as the oaks, Betula alleghaniensis. There are a few scattered sickly but living Tsuga canadensis shrubs in plot. The community seems confined to the center of the cove. The forest floor is covered in a dense patch of Laportea canadensis. The substrate is large cinderblock and larger pieces of sandstone colluvuim mostly covered with mosses and litter/duff. Forest is now a red oak - yellow birch stand, but it could have been a hemlock forest type not that many years ago, prior to the adelgid. The state tracked oak fern is located near the base of one of the large oaks in the plot.
Representativeness
Small patch of high elevation red oak - yelloe birch forest. A community type known to occur in WV, but it is a type which we have few sample plots. The patch is only slightly larger than the plot.
