The relatively small arboretum Group 17 is squeezed between the vast Group 16 and a remaining enclave of the oak forest that occupied this site before the arboretum was founded. Growing on the edge of the meadow here are Bald cypress trees, which not only occur along the lower Mississippi River, but further south in the famous Everglade wetlands. Loblolly pines, a few of which have grown old here, are a dominant species in the pine forests that stretch along the acidic clay soils of the southern and eastern coastal plains, from Texas to Virginia. A young plantation includes Eastern cottonwood trees, which, in addition to other poplar species, have supplied the gene material of the Euro-American hybrid clones that we use frequently. The Burr oak and Yellow buckeye are not typical species of the Mississippi Valley, but they occur on the slopes west of it, on the Ozarks Mountains in Arkansas, and eastward, towards Alabama.