The longleaf pine was nearly wiped out 100 years ago. Can Southern landowners help it make a comeback? | Southerly
Longleaf pine forests once stretched from east Texas to the Florida panhandle, reached up through the sandhills of the Carolinas and into southern Virginia. The ubiquitous giant could live up to 500 years and grow up to 120 feet tall and two feet wide. Poets, scientists and historians marveled at the majesty of the tree: in 1791, naturalist William Bartram wrote in his book Travels Through North and South Carolina, Georgia of a “forest of the great long-leaved pine, the earth covered with grass, interspersed with an infinite variety of herbaceous plants, and embellished with extensive savannas, always green, sparkling with ponds of water.”
Across the Southeast, longleaf forests have been found to house over 1,200 endemic plant species and more than 300 rare or threatened animal species — including endangered species like the red-cockaded woodpecker and the gopher tortoise. Animals make their homes in the tree’s trunks and amongst its needles and burrow through its vast roots systems. “The longleaf system has so many homes, so many microhabitats,” Moore said. “That’s one of the reasons it supports such a diversity of species.”
Incredibly fire resistant, longleaf flourishes when wildfires tear through its forests. Fire burns away other tree species that threaten to choke it out, keeping ground cover low and the tree canopy high. Its lower branches drop when exposed to flame, making the trunk smooth and straight.
Its perfection proved its demise. Longleaf populations that had thrived for nearly 12,000 years under the care and management of Native Americans were demolished by white settlers in under two centuries, used to build ship masts, house frames, railroads and telephones poles. The trees became turpentine, kitchen furniture, hardwood flooring, railings, joists, roofs, and walls.
By the 1920s, mature populations of the tree had almost disappeared, and foresters turned to faster growing pine species to match the pace of the logging industry. The pine that helped build the American South lingered only in areas with government protection or places too difficult to access. One 2012 survey conducted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimated that under five percent of remaining longleaf pine forests in the U.S. are fully mature — roughly 12,000 acres. Several species, including the red-cockaded woodpecker, depend on old-growth longleaf to make their habitats.
