![]() Trees tower so tall that most people do not recognize them as plants as they would the wild chickory which lines highways with its distinctive blue flowers. Unusual algae, lichens, mosses and liverworts cling to rocks, tree bark and soil. Slime molds actually move and hundreds of mushroom and fungi are unparalleled for their fantastic forms and shapes. Pennsylvania’s rich plant life is characterized by a tremendous variety of shapes, structures, sizes and colors. The growing season ranges from about one hundred and thirty to one hundred and seventy frost-free days, stimulating vigorous plant growth.Īnd Pennsylvania claims some of the most beautiful, as well as wondrous, forests, plants and spectacular wildflowers. Rainfall averages between thirty-five and forty-five inches each year temperatures vary from -30° F during cold snaps in the northwestern highlands to sizzling high nineties during the summer in the Philadelphia area. The terrain was formed by three significant river systems: the vast Ohio complex in the western part, the Susquehanna in the east-central and the Delaware on the eastern border. Elevations range from near sea level to an immense plateau region whose ridges measure nearly three thousand feet high. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Situated roughly between 40° and 42° north latitude, and 75° and 82° 30′ west longitude, Pennsylvania is in the heart of a great mesophytic (growing under medium conditions of moisture) forest region. Founder William Penn, entrepreneur and seventeenth century land promoter, heavily advertised his province as “the land good, the air clean and sweet, the springs plentiful, and provisions good and easy to come at … The fields are white for the harvest.” But only recently have Pennsylvanians – and Americans for the matter – rediscovered the great outdoors. Pennsylvania’s beauty – the gently sweeping valleys, the broad rivers, the rugged mountains and the rolling hillsides – is the bounty which lured waves of settlers to the New World more than three centuries ago. ![]()
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