Summer 2005

Crowning Glory

by Kelli Whitlock Burton

William Boyer crawled out of the white Chevy Blazer and stretched his 6-foot-plus long frame, working out the kinks from the 3-hour drive from Auburn to the small town of Flomaton, AL. Donning a baseball cap, he quickly drenched his shoes and trouser cuffs with insect repellent. A veteran of the southern Alabama woods, Boyer knew the bugs would be biting among the pine trees on this humid June afternoon.

At his feet lay a Natural Heritage Site marker blown over by Hurricane Ivan, a category 2 storm that, on September 16, 2004, made landfall about 100 miles southwest from where Boyer now stood. His gaze lifted to the woods in front of him, his eyes settling on the familiar rough-edged bark of the long-needled giants that swayed gently beneath a gray sky. When the hurricane roared onto land 9 months before, the east side of the forest at Flomaton bore the brunt of its 120-mileper-hour sustained winds, which some have estimated knocked down over half the forest. With trees dating back 200 and 300 years, the 60-acre Flomaton Natural Area is one of the last remaining stands of old-growth longleaf pine, the dominant species in an ecosystem that once covered more than 90 million acres from Texas to Virginia.

Boyer stepped lightly around the grasses and flowering plants that covered the ground, his eyes trained on the forest floor. Alongside him, colleagues Dale Brockway and Kris Connor kept a keen watch below as well, searching, like Boyer, for something in particular. They didn't have to look long. As Boyer brushed back the vegetation, he discovered a pile of long, bright green needles surrounding a small tan bud. A longleaf pine seedling. He spotted several others in the same area, and began to smile. "This is good to see," Boyer said. "Very good."

With time, good weather, and room to grow, these short, grassy-looking plants will one day tower high above the forest floor. "Imagine what this place looked like hundreds of years ago, when Flomaton, and much of the Southeast, was covered with longleaf pine," suggested Boyer's colleague Brockway, gazing at the trees that are left, their perfectly linear trunks stretching as high as 100 feet, topped with branches that end in elegant needles extending up to 15 inches in length. As the small group of researchers stood silently, the wind blowing through the trees' crowns filled the forest with earthy music that was peaceful and somber. "Longleaf as far as the eye could see," Brockway said. "Wouldn't that have been a sight?"(...continued...)