Up to the late 20th century, most ecologists tacitly assumed that fire was not an important factor in eastern deciduous forests. Nowhere is fire mentioned in E. Lucy Braun's monographic treatment of this biome (Braun 1950). Oosting (1942) likewise omitted any mention of fire in his survey of the successional and mature communities of the eastern Piedmont. Whittaker (1956) speculated that wildfire played an important role in the maintenance of ridge top shrub and pine dominated communities of the southern Appalachians but not in deciduous hardwoods.