Bill Finch et al., Longleaf, Far as the Eye Can See

I spent two or three happy hours yesterday with a fascinating book on the native forests of America's south: Longleaf, Far as the Eye Can See, by Bill Finch, Beth Maynor Young, Rhett Johnson, and John C. Hall. This is a beautiful, glossy picture book that also taught me a lot about ecology and history.

When white men first explored North America, 90 million acres of the southeastern coastal plain and the hills beyond were covered by forests dominated by a single species of tree, longleaf pine. The longleaf is easy to tell from other southern pines because of its very long needles, averaging around two feet (60 cm). The longleaf pine forest was unique -- and, where it survives, still is -- because of the open canopy. The floor of a longleaf forest is not a quiet zone of moldering leaves and ferns, but an open, sunny meadow. According to this book, it is the most diverse forest ecosystem in North America. There may only be one species of tree, but the understory boasts 170 species of grass and comparable riches of other plants. The bogs within the forest support more than a hundred different species of carnivorous plants, including pitcher plants (above) and the venus fly trap.

A small sample of the many lovely wildflowers illustrated in Longleaf: Large-flowered pennyroyal and Cheerokee bean.

The longleaf forest is created and maintained by fire. According to calculations described by Finch et al., any given patch of wild longleaf forest would burn, on average, once every four to five years. Longleaf pines are resistant to fire even as seedlings. But most other trees are highly vulnerable to fire when they are young, and since the forest burns so frequently they never get a change to grow tall and outcompete the longleafs for sunlight. Where the forest is kept from burning, longleafs gradually lose out to other trees, which is one reason there is so little longleaf forest left.

The longleaf forest was crucial to the development of the American South. In the early days settlers let their half-wild cattle roam freely through the forest, grazing on the rich grass and herbs. The trees themselves were a valuable resource, perfect timber for floorboards, furniture, and other uses. Even more valuable was the pine resin. This was harvested two ways: as turpentine, by slashing the trunks near the base and collecting the resin that oozed forth, or as pine tar, by burning pine logs and branches in a slow, covered fire much like the ones used to make charcoal and collecting the gooey black resin that puddled in the bottom of the stack. (The true origin of the Tar Heel nickname for North Carolinians, whatever else you may have read.) These commodities sustained hundreds of thousands of people, along with the British navy and the American merchant fleet

Much of the lowland forest was cleared in the 1700s for plantations, but throughout the South there were large stretches of country where the sandy soil was no good for cotton or tobacco. These "Sand Hills" were left in forest until after the Civil War, when the worldwide demand for pine led to a logging boom. Between 1870 and 1930 the longleaf forests were all cut down; the Big Cut, this is sometimes called. As the old growth forest disappeared "progressive" forest managers got involved, and they encouraged landowners to develop tree farms or plantations featuring faster growing loblolly or slash pines. Fires were extinguished whenever possible, and since the forest had been broken up by peanut fields, roads, subdivisions, and so on the fires that started did not spread as they once had. The vast open longleaf forests yielded to tightly packed loblolly stands, a much less diverse and productive environment.

Now there is a movement afoot to bring the longleaf forest back. It involves preservationists but also timber interests, because while loblolly pine grows fast it is not as valuable as longleaf. These folks have a vision of restoring millions of acres of longleaf forest in stretches vast enough to be managed naturally, so that the world that once defined so much of the south can be seen again.