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Wooded swamps are forest wetlands dominated by mature conifers and lowland hardwood trees. They are usually associated with ancient lake basins and retired riverine oxbows. Wooded swamps are important for stormwater and floodwater retention. They also provide habitat for wildlife including white-tailed deer, furbearers, songbirds, ruffed grouse, barred owl, and amphibians. Wooded swamps include Coniferous Swamps and Lowland Hardwood Swamps.
 Lowland hardwood swamps are dominated by deciduous hardwood trees and have soils that are saturated during much of the growing season, and may be inundated by as much as a food of standing water. Dominant trees include black ash, red maple, yellow birch, and south of the vegetation tension zone, silver maple. Northern white cedar can be a subdominant species in stands within and north of the vegetation tension zone. American elm is still an important component of this community, although its numbers have been greatly reduced by Dutch elm disease. These communities are commonly found on ancient lake basins. Vernal pools often occur in wooded swamps.
The shrub layer of hardwood swamps is often composed of shrub-size individuals of the dominant tree species, as well as the dogwoods and alder species of shrub swamps. Groundlayer species include some of the ferns, sedges, grasses, and forbs of sedge meadows.
The Wisconsin Natural Heritage Inventory divides this community type into two separate community types: northern hardwood swamp, and southern hardwood swamp. Click here to read the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources’ community descriptions for these community types.
The wetland plant community description in italics above is excerpted from Eggers, S.D. and D.M. Reed. 1997. Wetland Plants and Plant Communities of Minnesota and Wisconsin. (2nd Edition). U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, St. Paul, MN.
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