Author: JohnMatel

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My last photos of the day. There are live oaks and Spanish moss from the Nemours plantation. The last photo is a tuft of little blue-stem grass, a warm season grass common in southern pine savannas, well … common in lots of places around North America.
 
 
 
 
 
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The Nemours Plantation was part of the rice growing complex in the ACE basin, called that after the three rivers – Ashepoo, Combahee and Edisto – that make up one of the largest undeveloped estuaries along the Atlantic Coast. Rice production became unprofitable in the late 19th Century and much of the population left. Rich industrialists from the north bought up lots of the land for hunting preserves, among them the Duponts, who bought what became Nemours. Much of the rest reverted to forests.

The rice growers had impounded the waters by building dikes with contraptions that allowed water to come in at high tide and then prevented it draining at low tide. Although the rivers were tidal, the water if fresh. High tide merely caused the river water to back up. My pictures show the devices used to hold the water. You can see how it works in the model. Workers open the gate when the tide is coming in and the receding tide seals it. The design was Dutch, people who had a lot of experience with dikes.

When the hunting estates were formed, they converted the rice impediments to plants to feed migratory birds. They still are doing that job. Recent heavy rain and wind of Hurricane Matthew breached many of the dykes. One of my photos shows repairs underway. You can also see the gates and a model that shows how it works. The other two photos show downed trees. You can tell if a forest has not been cut for a long time by, among other things, the humps and holes caused by roots pulling up the dirt. A cleared and plowed field smooths out these things.

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Note from 2019 – On this trip I developed an aneurysm in back of my knee. It was a serious problem.  In Georgia, it was hard for me to walk.  I only later learned what it was. The doctor said that I could have surgery or try to exercise through it. I chose the latter, but worried that I would never recover, might even die from that artery disease. So far, I have mostly overcome the problem. Mostly.

I saw less of Savannah than I could have/should have because it was so hard to walk.  I regret.

Driving across the Carolinas

Crossed into South Carolina. Gas is about twenty cents cheaper just south of the border. I got to the station ahead of news of the pipeline accident in Alabama. I expect gas prices to spike up.
I know there is lots of sympathy for those opposing the pipeline in Dakota. I can understand. But as long as we use fuel, we have to move it. Pipelines are usually the most efficient way to do it. We see the dire consequences of a pipeline being disrupted. If they were not built in the first place, these higher prices would just be normal. Meanwhile, fuel would still move, but by road and rail, adding cost, danger and ecological damage.

It would be great if there was really a unicorn option.

Speaking of transport … my other photos are from the Savannah River in front of my hotel. Containerized cargo changed the way we move goods and that innovation is largely responsible for this stage of globalization.

The call it Intermodal freight transport. Those containers can be easily loaded, unloaded and transferred to trucks or trains with less effort, loss, waste or threat. Our world underwent a significant revolution in the 1970s and 1980s and we didn’t really notice.
Most real change is like that. It creeps up on little cat’s feet, silently, until we notice it suddenly and think it just happened all at once.

Savannah Georgia
Have not yet seen too much of Savannah, but what I have seen is interesting. This is where they filmed “Forrest Gump” and the Gump bench is a minor tourist attraction. I will walk up and see it.
In the meantime, I have been close to the hotel admiring the live oak and the Spanish moss. Of course, Spanish moss is neither moss nor from Spain. It is a flowing plant that absorbs what it needs from the air. That is why it requires climates that are generally warm and usually humid. Savannah is like that. The Spanish moss rarely hurts the tree that host it, unless it grows in such perfusion that it shades out the leaves.

Poetry
Last post for today. We used to have to memorize lines of poetry. It seemed a waste of time and it was, from some points of view. There are no poems that I can really recite w/o lots of mistakes. But I do recall the general lines of many. One such is “Flower in a crannied wall” by Alfred Lord Tennyson. The lines I vaguely recalled from Miss Ryan’s 12th grade English class at Bay View HS came bouncing back when I looked at a wall with ferns and flowers growing out of the cracks and crannies. The other photos show a bald cypress grove and ferns growing in and on the roots of a live oak. Below is Tennyson’s poem.

FLOWER in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies,
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower—but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.

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Learned and relearned some interesting things at the longleaf pine meeting. The keynote speaker was Reed Noss, who wrote a book that I bought (but admit I have not yet read) called “Forgotten Grasslands of the South.” He understands the longleaf pine ecosystem as much as a grassland as a forest and his point have merit. A natural longleaf ecosystem is a savanna, which is a bit of both and neither.

It stayed a savanna because of fire and grazing. If you exclude fire and grazing animals from an acre of land in the Southeast, it turns to thick forest in short order.

Noss referred the longleaf ecosystem as fire DEPENDENT. This is a slight difference from fire adapted. The fire dependent ecosystem does not exist in spite of fire but because of it. When fire is excluded, it dies.

The longleaf ecology is one of the oldest and most diverse in North America. Something like it originated Oligocene 33 million years ago and maybe in the Eocene more than 50 million years ago. It was not exactly like the pine today, but fossil record indicates it had similar services. (Note that paleontologists can recognize pine pollen, which they take from lake bottoms and they can generally tell northern from southern pine species, but cannot be more precise than that.) North America changed many times, of course. For part of the time the “coastal” plain was up around what is now Kentucky and Tennessee because of higher sea levels. At other times it was well into what is now the Gulf of Mexico from lower sea levels. What is certainly the longleaf pine biome is much more recent, after the last ice age, maybe 5-7000 years ago.

You have to think of the pine ecosystem like a pulse. It extends out or in depending on the changing climate conditions. North America has been much warmer than it is today and much colder, so the area adapted to southern pine is not the same.

Fire dependent pine species have two main strategies. Some, like jack pines or lodge pole pines, burn up entirely. Their cones will not open until they are burned and the progeny quickly recolonize burned over places. They need big, hot, crown fires. Others, such as longleaf and shortleaf, adapt by being fire resistant in their seedling stages and then develop thick bark to resist flames when they are older. They depends on frequent but not very hot surface fires. W/o fires they will disappear, out-competed by other species.
There is disagreement about when to burn. Foresters like to burn in winter because it is safer with cooler temperatures. This is not natural, however. Paleontological evidence indicates that fires were most common in May and June, when there were lightning strikes but before it rained very much. A winter fire does not kill hardwoods, while a growing season fire does and encourages grass and forbes.

Because of fire, not in spite of it, the southern pine ecosystem is one of the worlds most diverse. It is a global biodiversity hot spot that we need to work to maintain, using fire and grazing … and planting more longleaf.

At one time longleaf dominated 90 million acres of land in the south. It was down to about 3. We have brought it back to 4.5. We are planting 110 million longleaf pine seedlings every year and hope to cover 8 million acres with longleaf by 2025. We will not be able to restore it to its former glory, but we are making a good start.

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I feel a little churlish complaining about a place where I was a guest, but I do not like this sort of forestry. Pine needles, mostly from longleaf, are used as garden ground cover. Raking and selling needles can be a lucrative business for forest owners.

But there is a cost. The needles need to be clean, i.e. not a lot of sticks, cones or generally anything that is not needles. The nature of raking also means the forest floor needs to be smooth, and raking takes nutrients out of the forest and stresses the trees.

The key reason I favor longleaf pine and am trying to establish longleaf on some of my land is because the longleaf ecology is so beautifully diverse.

The land ethic informs the way I think forest land should be managed. Those things that enhance the health and sustainability of the biotic community are good. We can and should profit from our land, but there is more to it.

Look at my pictures and tell me what you see. Sure, there are longleaf pine, but it is not a healthy and diverse longleaf pine ecology. It reminds me of a warehouse with stuff swept into the middle.

I understand that people should be able to make choices about their land. I also know that those choices can be better or worse. I will not be harvesting needles on any of my land. I love the complexity of the changing face of my land and I take joy in the the things that I do not control. A forest is more than the trees, wood and pine straw.