A bolting longleaf pine tree.

Bolting longleaf pine tree

Longleaf pines, Pinus palustris, have an interesting life cycle, from big seeds with wings that only sprout on bare soil, to grass stage that looks like a clump of grass 18 inches in diameter and can stay that way for years if not weeded while a root goes down, to this bolting stage with the trunk extending, to sapling and then tree stage.

The furry-looking stuff up top is the candle it grew just this spring, about two feet long.

A mature longleaf can grow 100 feet tall in about 100 years, and can live more than 300 years.

You don’t see many mature ones these days, because while they used to be the main forest from southern Virginia to eastern Texas along the U.S. coastal plain, 98% of them were cut down for ship masts and lumber.

In the few scraps of longleaf pine forest that are left, such as on my land that my grandfather bought in 1921, species diversity is greater than anything outside a tropical rainforest.

Most of the diversity is in the undergrowth such as you see in this picture.

Yes, this area needs to be burned. Weather and time permitting, it will be this winter.

-jsq

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