Summer 2005

Revitalizing Wiregrass at Fort Gordon

by Zoë Hoyle

We're at Fort Gordon, in the sandhills of Georgia, on a hot, dusty day in late June, standing in what looks at first like just another open field. In the background are stands of loblolly pine; in the foreground, rows of young longleaf pines. Some are in the grass stage, some a foot or so high, others several feet tall with the characteristic candlestick limbs. They were hand planted as seedlings in an area where offsite slash pine was cut to create the sun-drenched gaps longleaf needs to grow. The area has been burned within the last year: the sandy soil is streaked with gray ash, nearby tree trunks scorched.

U.S. Army wildlife technician Aaron Linebarger has just revved up a seed collector--basically a weedeater with a basket contraption on the front--to show us one way wiregrass seeds are collected. Looking closer at the ground, I see clumps of wiregrass, tufts of rough emerald green sprouting out of the sandy soil, in between delicate legumes and passionflower vines. Like the needles of longleaf pine, wiregrass has that certain iridescence. Considered a key ground layer plant in most of the longleaf ecosystems of the South, wiregrass disappears from areas where the soil has been heavily cultivated or where fire has been excluded for long periods of time.(...continued...)