Cape Lookout National Seashore - Plants (U.S. National Park Service)

Maritime Forest

In the area near Portsmouth Village at Cape Lookout National Seashore, much of the land is awash at high tide; only a few areas support vegetation. Scattered groves of trees grow on Core Banks, particularly at Guthries Hammock. The Cape Lookout Bight area and Shackleford Banks have large dunes, and it is at Shackleford that you will find the most extensive maritime forest in the park. Vines are abundant-and are at war with the trees. The changing geography of the island produces the strange and beautiful "ghost forests" on the ocean side of the groves; trees killed by advancing sand and salt spray leave their sun-bleached skeletons protruding from the sand.