The Great Southern Forest

Every day since leaving Daytona Beach twenty-three days ago, until I crossed the Mississippi river, I have see that mainstay of rural Southern economy—the tree-farm forests of Southern Longleaf Pine.  They tell me I will see them again as I travel west into Texas. I tell you this because I did not take any pictures today, and will give a review of my experience with these pines since beginning the trip on February 15. 

Today came with a bad weather forecast—south wind at twenty miles per hour, eighty percent chance of rain.  The wind worried me more that the rain because I would pedal south.  But it was neither wind nor rain that brought a short end to an expected fifty-mile day.  A small white dog came out to bark.  It’s not unusual, and they seldom come close, have never bitten.  But this dog must have been born of illegitimate parentage.  It ran right in front of the bike.  I could not stop or swerve and hit the little dog broadside.  The next thing I remember was being sprawled out on the pavement.  The dog was gone.  I have a few bruises and scrapes, none of them serious.  The bike is not damaged.  I pedaled on into the wind and stopped early at Bunkie, settled into a motel, thankful it was not worse.  And that is why you are seeing trees.

Longleaf pine is one of a group of species called Yellow Pine, native to the southeastern United States, along the coastal plain from eastern Texas to southeast Virginia, including northern and central Florida.  Foresters like to call it Pinus palustris because they know so much about it.  

The first stage in a new crop of longleaf pines is planting from nursery stock.  They look like whisk brooms both before and after planting.  The root is much fatter than most pine seedling roots. 

In a year or two they start to look like we expect a pine tree to look.

Now they are adolescents at about eight feet tall.

They don’t know their fate, so they come to middle age, full of hope, reaching for the sun, competing in the world of pine business.

I looked down on their foliage from a bridge where they were vacationing along a river.

Now they are fifty feet tall and quite mature.  The saw is not far in their future.

Few of them get this big.  It’s time to set fire in the woods to get rid of underbrush in preparation for logging.

Then the saw.  These logs are not Longleaf Pine, but they show the final step from forest to sawmill or paper-and-chip mill.