Me thinks maybe you don't know much about the south and our oak trees. Here in Alabama alone we have 39 different species of oaks. Just here on my small acreage I'd bet I have half of those growing plus hickories and loads of pines of various types. Plenty of sweetgums, wild cherry tree and perhaps a dozen or more others just on my 6 acres.
Bill, thanks for the reply. The map obviously doesn't differentiate between species, and I am surprised that there are actually 39 species of Oaks !
I was only speaking from casual observation, which is why I posited in two different spots (IMO) and "I could be corrected"..
Perhaps I spoke in too much a general tone. The coniferous seem to be plentiful in places where the deciduous are slow to grow, such as near
the normal timberline.. Certainly Oregon and Washington both have plenty of them.
Then again, the south has it's own varieties of coniferous, witnessed by the pulp wood industry across the south. I once lived and had a home in
the "piney woods" od east Texas...but I am no forester.. So; if I generalized too much, my apologies..
In "Jolly olde England", they seem to keep closer records of aged trees than we do. Pictured below is the Newland Oak, in Gloustershire..an
ancient tree, judged to have been a sapling about 1000 AD. It finally collapsed in1955, and was nearly all gone by 1964..but some acorns were
saved and planted, to "carry on the line".
The old saying in the UK is that oaks.."grow for 300 years, rest for 300 years, then take 300 years to die". Of course there are outliers both ways.
I'm guessing the UK learned to treasure some of their very old trees, because from what I understand, much of their forests were denuded
centuries ago, many of the tall coniferous trees in Scotland, taken for masts on England's mighty navy of the middle ages.
When America was being colonized, UK ship builders were eager to get their hands on the trall, stout eastern white pines of Maine..
.