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.

Bill Boyer, the retired Southern Research Station scientist known as "Mr. Longleaf" to fellow researchers, estimates that a longleaf stand needs to produce 360 cones per acre to get the first successful seedling. Cones average 50 seeds apiece, so natural regeneration requires at least 18,000 seeds per acre. In 2005, all the remaining native longleaf pine trees in Virginia together yielded only 1,241 viable seeds.

The lack of native seed and seedlings, combined with the diminishing quality of known native Virginia longleaf pine stands, make it essential that coordinated and thoughtful action be taken to protect and propagate remaining individuals.

The Virginia Departments of Forestry and Conservation and Recreation are working together to locate all the remaining native longleaf pine trees in the State, establish planting sites and easements, and purchase land to protect remaining native seed sources.

Over 500 seedlings have been started from native seeds at the forestry department's Garland Gray Nursery, and the department plans to graft another 900 trees for seed production and research. Researchers are also looking closely at longleaf pine genetics to determine how much effort to put into developing native Virginia sources, as opposed to using longleaf pine seeds and seedlings from nearby North Carolina.

Funding from the USDA Forest Service, Southern Pine Beetle Prevention and Restoration Program is providing cost-share for landowners interested in planting and establishing native longleaf pine, as well as supporting the basic costs of pollination and grafting, collecting seed, and protecting native trees from seed and cone insects. The Virginia Department of Forestry is exploring the possibility of hiring a fulltime restoration forester, whose salary would be supported in part by Federal funds.

Future priorities for the project include:

• Joining the Longleaf Alliance
• Identifying additional nonprofit anduniversity collaborators
• Mapping and protecting locations of all known native longleaf pines
• Increasing seedling production capacity towards producing at least 50,000 containerized longleaf pine from native Virginia sources
• Planting over 500 acres or more of native longleaf every year

For more information:

Chris Asaro at 434-977-1375 Ext. 3360 or
chris.asaro@dof.virginia.gov

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Chris Asaro is forest health specialist with the Virginia Department of Forestry.

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