Summer 2005

Restoring Native Longleaf Pine in Virginia

by Chris Asaro

When Captain John Smith landed in Jamestown in 1607, longleaf pine forests covered well over a million acres in southeastern Virginia. By the early 1800s, almost all of those forests were gone.

Although a few thousand longleaf pines still stand in Virginia, less than 500 are known to be genetically native, these located in marginal stands whose health is steadily declining.

Restoring longleaf pine is never easy. In healthy forests, seeds sprout quickly and seedlings thrive. But in marginal stands, longleaf pines often fail to bear enough cones to reproduce.(...continued...)

Back to CSI--Longleaf Pine!