 The deciduous forest of the Saint Lawrence Lowlands is mostly composed of deciduous species such as the sugar maple, the red maple, the white ash, the American beech, the butternut (white walnut), the American elm, the basswood, the bitternut hickory and the northern red oak as well as some conifers such as the eastern white pine and the northern whitecedar.The distribution areas of the paper birch, the trembling aspen and the mountain ash cover more than half of Quebec territory.At the time of first European contact and later colonization, Algonquian, Iroquois and Inuit nations controlled what is now Quebec.