Tag Archives: pine

Loblolly pine pollen

A loblolly pine (Pinus taeda) candling with pollen:

We have lots of these, but not many with limbs like this so close to the ground. This one is in a cemetary with no close competitors, so it spread out more than up.

Pictures by John S. Quarterman, 27 April 2011, in the Revolutionary War Cemetery in Louisville, Georgia.

-jsq

The Art of Managing Longleaf

The surprising thing is so few people have heard of Leon Neel. Here’s a very interesting biography of this very influential pioneer in southeastern forestry and agriculture, including many interesting stories of south Georgia and north Florida life and politics:
The Art of Managing Longleaf:
A Personal History of the Stoddard-Neel Approach,
by Leon Neel, with Paul S. Sutter and Albert G. Way.
Leon Neel was a atudent, apprentice, and successor of Herbert Stoddard, who was originally hired by quail plantation owners around Thomasville to figure out why their quail populations were decreasing. The answer included a need to thin and especially to burn their longleaf pine tree forests. Stoddard and Neel studied and practiced for almost a century between them on how to preserve and increase the amount of standing timber and species diversity while also selectively harvesting trees to pay for the whole thing. Their Stoddard-Neel Approach is written up in textbooks. In this book we learn how it came about, and how it is basically different from the clearcut-thin-thin-clearcut “efficient” timbering cycle that is the current fad among pine tree growers in the southeast.

It starts back in the old days of Leon Neel’s youth when his daddy taught him to hunt quail: Continue reading →

Ecology of a Cracker Childhood

The other day somebody asked me to recommend some books about longleaf forests, how they used to be, what happened to them, what can be done now.

I was going to start by posting a short list, but each item was turning into a review, so I’ll just post them one by one as reviews.

Ecology of a Cracker Childhood (The World As Home), by Janisse Ray.

How dirt poor crackers and corporate greed destroyed most of the most diverse ecosystem in North America; yet these same people are the tragic heroes of the book. Half autobiography, half ecology, this book will either get you with Janisse’s “stunning voice” or you won’t get it. If you’re from around here, you’ll hear the wind in the pines, feel the breeze, and see the summer tanagers yellow in the sun. If you’re not, here’s your chance to meet a “heraldry of longleaf” up close and personal.

“I will rise from my grave with the hunger of wildcat, wings of kestrel….”
See Janisse read in Moultrie. “More precious than handfuls of money.” See her wikipedia page for a pretty good bio.

But read the book. If nothing else, you’ll never think the same again about Amazon deforestation once you realize we already did that to ourselves, and in the south we live in the devastated remnants of what was one of the most extensive forests on earth, with longleaf pine trees 100 feet tall and 500 years old, maintained by fire, protecting everything from the Lord God bird to the lowly Bachman’s sparrow, from the rattlesnake-eating indigo snake to the beetles that live in gopher tortoise burrows. The forest can return, because reforestation can pay. Meanwhile, there are still places where you can see how it used to be. Janisse Ray had a lot to do with preserving Moody Forest, too, but that’s another story.

-jsq

Elsie Quarterman Cedar Glade Festival

Dr. Elsie Quarterman, Vanderbilt Professor of Plant Ecology Emerita, with students and some grand-students:

Grand-students

This is Elsie’s 100th year: Continue reading →

Candling Longleaf

In case you wondered why the growing bud on a longleaf pine is called a candle:

Candle

This nine foot loblolly is about 3 years old, as you can see since John S. Quarterman can reach 8 feet high and it’s a foot higher than that: Continue reading →