Summer 2005

There's More to Restoration Than Planting Trees

by Zoë Hoyle

Discussions about longleaf pine restoration tend to focus on replanting trees and using prescribed fire, but ecosystem restoration also involves bringing back the ground cover that makes longleaf pine forests some of the richest plant communities on Earth.

"The ground cover of the longleaf pine forest is truly extraordinary," says Joan Walker, research plant ecologist with the Southern Research Station Endangered, Threatened, and Sensitive Wildlife and Plants unit in Clemson, SC. "One way ecologists describe the diversity of plant communities is by species richness, which refers to the number of species present in an area. Because this number depends on the size of the area where species are counted, ecologists specify the area. This practice allows us to compare various kinds of forests with regards to plant diversity."

'Some longleaf pine communities have over 40 vascular plant species in a square meter, or over 200 species in 100 square meters," she continues. "That's a lot of different species in a small area! In fact, at these scales, the ground layers in longleaf pine woodlands are as species-rich as any area in North America."

Walker should know. She's spent decades identifying the plants that make up the ground layer of longleaf pine forests from North Carolina to Georgia and Florida, carrying the art of fi eld botany to a new generation of students, and working with forest managers to bring back key ground cover plants to areas now being restored to longleaf pine.(...continued...)