Daughter of Longleaf

From 90 million acres to 1%: A daughter's witness

This essay traces the ecological and personal history of the longleaf pine ecosystem of the American Southeast, exploring the intertwined fates of a landscape, its creatures, and the humans who have called it home. This is part of my recent series, Field Notes from a Disappearing World.

Daughter of Longleaf

Running my fingers along the deep fissures between the warm, smooth papery bark, I discover the molts of several cicadas. Their translucent caramel-colored shells stick like dried resin. A line of black ants runs parallel to my fingers—where are they going? I peer upward, almost on tiptoe, tracking the parade, but this towering 100-foot pine doesn't reveal its secrets. I must be about seven, and these old longleaf pines are the guardians of my play.

Living on the southern border of the Okefenokee and the eastern edge of Osceola National Forest, I never thought my playground of longleaf pine savannas and molasses-dark swampland was an endangered landscape.

My childhood there included sitting for hours watching giant Florida Harvester Ants expose white sand beneath rusty pine straw beds while the longleaf taught me to braid with its needles fascicled in groups of three. Occasional walks to the Saint Mary's River were supervised by hundred-year-old longleaf. In the black water, I saw reflected among the white sandy beach that same pine-needle rust at the water's edge. My cousins and I swung out on a rope and dropped into that obsidian water, sending alligators and water moccasins out of sight. And as they say, "out of sight, out of mind."

During summer days, there was a constant hum of insects setting a rhythm that sank deep into your body, becoming a way to measure time. At night the chorus changed, signaling sleep. The Harvester ants had tucked in after gathering seeds from tall grasses and whatever had fallen to the ground. Day birds quieted and made way for Great Horned owls, nighthawks, and bats. The ground pulsed with sounds of crickets and frogs in trees and surrounding waters. Walking paths through the forest at night between my grandmother's house and my mother's, a flashlight revealed the casting of webs by giant golden orb weavers overhead and foraging opossums and armadillos below. I would often stop and turn off my flashlight to gaze upward through the longleaf at stars—a vastness that sent me to bed contemplating mysteries.

Deep Time

Thousands of years ago, before my bare feet ran across pine needle beds, glaciers of the last ice age melted and retracted to form the land as we know it. Then a great longleaf pine forest was born, stretching from Mexico through Texas across to Virginia down to Florida—90 million acres of contiguous fire-adapted forest.

It was not uncommon for me to run outside after a jet-black, powerless night of lightning's pows and claps to see what signatures the storm had left. Scorched and blackened trees stood with oozing resinous wounds. Periodically giant, mossy-haired oak trees toppled, revealing secret sandy caverns where their roots once grew. I became familiar with the sound and feeling of lightning. When it struck close, even inside our uninsulated tin trailer, you could feel the air change. If you saw lightning and counted seconds until thunder, you could estimate how far away the storm was and plan your outside play time.

Sometimes lightning would strike and set stretches of wood aflame, volatile organic compounds released into air you could smell before seeing smoke or flame. While Smokey Bear campaigns had most of us believing forest fire was bad, the longleaf pine ecosystem needs fire. There are grasses that won't make seeds unless burned; hardwoods and invasives that will push out native species if not kept suppressed with fire. Knowledge held by Native Americans of this region, yet repressed like the fire itself.

And as repression often does, it builds fuel. When it ignites, it can be catastrophic for land and inhabitants.

Driving from my grandparents' place toward town, I would watch the landscape pass by, occasionally spotting deer and turkeys, but also noticing parts of the forest that looked different—pine trees in neat rows of various progressive sizes, from grass phase to bottlebrush phase to saplings. These parts of the forest had a different feeling. It wasn't uncommon to be stopped by a train in town and see cars carrying pine bodies stacked like pencils, or large commercial trucks on the highway hauling away freshly cut trees. Both scenes always left me shocked. As a child still learning about the world, I looked into my family's faces to see if they felt what I was feeling, but I seemed alone in my perception.

Over the years, I would occasionally survey the adults around me: "Why do they grow those pines like that? Where are they taking those trees?"

The answers weren't varied—either the paper mill or the wood mill.

My mother explained there was a system of harvesting and replanting so they didn't have to cut down the entire forest. Which seemed reasonable—like a promise that the forest was safe because of a sacrifice of these "other" cultivated pines. But as Macclenny grew, I realized that wasn't true. Thousands of acres of old-growth pine forests were cut down for homogenized commerce and housing developments. Instead of a diverse ecosystem of pines, owls, gopher tortoises, indigo snakes, foxes, ground and tree orchids, and hundred-year-old sprawling oaks, there now stands a Super Walmart and Starbucks. Sprawling subdivisions where I once walked in silence to hear wind in pine needles, vibrational echoes of woodpeckers, consoled by the hum of insects.

On those walks, my eyes and heart were open to reading and sensing the forest. Discovering snake skins, studying seeds and insects, learning species' processes through seasons, collecting hardened pine resin, sometimes finding artifacts revealing these forests' history. Not just arrowheads or shotgun shells, but pieces of metal stuck in a pine tree that had since grown around them. These are called "cat face trees." Sometimes you encounter nothing but a stump, its multiple diagonal scars indicating the way of its death. A macabre scene.

The Taking

After the longleaf pine ecosystem filled the coastal plains of the Southeast, explorers and colonists arrived, declaring what they had "discovered" as a resource created for them by God himself. They described the wide open spaces of the forest—tall, dense trees clear of undergrowth—as places where one could ride a horse or cart freely.

What they witnessed was a forest system culturally stewarded by Native Americans, maybe as early as the Clovis people, based on artifacts found at the Page–Ladson archaeological site in North Florida. Their burn practices kept the longleaf ecosystem healthy and thriving.

A 1782 report by Frances Philip Fatio catalyzed Britain to set its eyes on the vast, ancient resource of the great longleaf pine forest. He wrote of "barren lands" that produced "the best naval stores in all America," forests that could produce "any quantity of tar, pitch and turpentine." But he also noted the "vast destruction" caused by "straggling hunters and cattle keepers" who set lands on fire for pastures and hunting grounds.

Although slow to begin, by the 1700s the early colonies of the North had used up most of their forests, and Britain had the world's largest naval fleet. They looked to southern colonies from Virginia to Florida to produce what they needed. What took probably two million years of geological time to form—90 million acres—was reduced to 1% in about thirty years. Giant, wise longleaf trees were cut down and tapped for naval stores. Pine pitch, resin, timber, sap, and turpentine were pumped out of the Southeast like an industrial machine. After the Civil War, the industry boomed as harvesting became more efficient with pop-up mills, moving trees via rivers, then rail. What people thought was vast and endless was, in fact, finite.

Portrait of a Tree

Longleaf pine trees are the longest-living southern pine species. They are evergreen conifers that evolved about 150 million years ago, splitting into lineages that adapted to different strategies. Pinus palustris adapted to fire-prone landscapes.

Their common name derives from having the longest leaves of eastern pine species—needles up to 18 inches long on trees that can grow 120 feet tall. The botanical name's species designation, palustris, means "of the marsh," though this might be a misclassification from when English botanist Philip Miller first saw longleaf standing in temporary seasonal flooding. Longleaf actually loves well-drained, sandy soil. They withstand hurricanes, fires, lightning, and pretty much anything but human development plans.

The oldest documented tree is estimated over 450 years old. The tree goes through several phases before reaching adulthood. Born from small papery winged seeds that flutter to ground once released from cones, germination shoots out a group of needles forming what looks like grass—hence the "grass phase." This can last five to ten years while the tree develops deep, sturdy roots and becomes highly fire-resistant. After this, the tree pushes out a white tip, a growth bud called the "candle," which can grow multiple feet in a month. This "bottlebrush stage" of upright growth with long needles emerging from the candle is when longleaf is most vulnerable to fire—its strategy is gaining height to protect its growth bud from flame.

Once past bottlebrush phase, it grows horizontal branches, thickens its bark, and shoots upward 3-4 feet yearly. A tree takes up to 30 years before bearing cones and seeds. After about 300 years, a great longleaf will begin to weaken, become susceptible to beetles and red heart fungus, its crown thinning until it loses all foliage and dies. The bark falls away, foraging insects and woodpeckers hasten the process, and this naked old pine—a "snag" with residual resin—will ignite and return to the ground from which it sprang.

As a daughter of longleaf, I experienced these phases differently. I collected fallen pine cones for arts and crafts, shaking their flying seeds onto sandy ground and bringing them inside to be adorned with glue and glitter for Christmas trees. While trees were in grass stage, I would pass my hands over their needles, tickling my palms. During that awkward adolescent bottlebrush phase, I'd peer at the bald, odd-looking candle jutting from the top, not knowing if I should be embarrassed or apologize for staring. I would sometimes pluck young green needles and smell the papery, resinous fascicle, then pop them in my mouth—a taste and smell that lingers viscerally in memory.

I saw the longleaf pine as companion. I empathized with its awkwardness and celebrated its natural processes. Feeling hope when a tree recovered from lightning that cut deep and left bark smoldering for days, mourning when they couldn't heal and died. I was born and raised in a family of longleaf, and there was unconditional love.

I never thought to look at the tree like a biologist; I observed its stages and processes only from a place that saw our similarities. Even now, writing about this tree, I see those giant longleaf towering above my child-self, delighting in my play, watching me make head wreaths and weavings of pine straw, stacking cones to make tiny enclosures, watching me grow through my various phases. I have so much love, gratitude, and emotional connection to this tree species. I am part of its ecology.

The Longleaf Family

"In 'pine barrens' most of the day. Low, level, sandy tracts; the pines wide apart; the sunny spaces between full of beautiful abounding grasses, liatris, long, wand-like solidago, saw palmettos, etc., covering the ground in garden style. Here I sauntered in delightful freedom." —John Muir

The longleaf pine ecosystem, despite being monodominant, is home to 200-300 species per square meter. One acre contains about 4,000 square meters. We have lost 90 million acres of longleaf pine ecosystem. Growing up along the Florida-Georgia line, I was fortunately unaware how endangered the land I loved was—in my sandy corner, life was abundant.

On my childhood dresser sat a collection of treasures: a glass heart-shaped box with black sharks' teeth from Atlantic shores, bird feathers, an arrowhead found in sandy forest floor, deer antlers, hard-to-find whole snakeskin molts, lumps of hardened pine resin I occasionally lifted to smell, and a jar of perfectly intact cicada molts. The sound of these screaming insects is my childhood's soundtrack.

Unlike periodical cicadas known for lengthy underground time, Florida cicadas are perennial. With about 19 species, their chorus becomes hypnotic white noise. Some experts can distinguish each species solely by the male's song. Though Florida cicadas don't live underground for 17 years, they're still root children, burrowed in soil, sucking mineral-rich xylem sap from tree roots.

In its underground phase, the bug goes through four molts. When ready for its fifth and temperatures are warm enough, it journeys upward, aerating soil. If it escapes creatures waiting to eat it—birds, praying mantises—it crawls high and holds tight for final transformation. Males sing to attract females, who eventually lay eggs to safeguard the next generation. In Florida, there's a unique solitary wasp called the Cicada Killer who paralyzes adult cicadas and transports their much larger bodies one at a time to her sandy underground nest, where she lays eggs upon their bodies and buries them for gestation. This wasp is remarkably docile, with little temper unlike other family members. Perhaps Cicada Killers ease pressure on trees feeding so many young cicada nymphs.

Thousands of cast-away exoskeletons seem like reminders of constant change, life and death, enduring journeys that make us who we are. Cicadas represented my hope for transformation into my authentic self—to escape parts of southern culture that didn't suit me, to molt and fly to forest canopy tops, screaming my heart's desire.

Nesting in Living Heartwood

Imagine welcoming into your heart a bird's nest, its warm clutch snuggled into the deepest part of you where it and generations of offspring will raise families. You feel tiny vibrations of bills, wing flutters, calls of hungry chicks. To this bird, you are home.

At tops of longleaf pines, one rarely sees the resin-framed cavity built by the red-cockaded woodpecker. A bird I mostly know from its chittering and soft drumming when foraging along pines. It's mostly black and white with an elegant white cheek patch. Males have a unique, discreet red "cockade" on their black crowns, difficult to spot from distance. The term came from 1800s fashion when ribbons or ornaments were worn on hats.

This bird co-evolved with longleaf pine and its ecosystem. Longleaf is the only tree species it nests in, hence why it's been listed as endangered since the 1970s. Red-cockaded woodpeckers create nesting cavities deep within trees, reaching heartwood but never killing the tree. The bird practices stewardship, knowing trees about 100+ feet have sufficient heartwood density—height achieved only by 60-to-100-year-old trees. Embedded in all longleaf ecosystem species is fire season. The red-cockaded woodpecker and longleaf know height guarantees safety.

Another unique feature: clever tapping and scratching around the nest's entry stimulates thick, resinous protection around the cavity, helping protect nests against rat snakes and other climbing intruders.

This bird is so adapted to longleaf that despite past reforestation efforts including other pine species—loblolly, shortleaf, slash, or pond pines—red-cockaded woodpeckers know only longleaf meets their specific needs of superior resin production with sufficient heartwood that nests remain sap-free within. Perhaps these characteristics matter because they aim to build heritage homes used for up to 30 years by multiple generations.

But there's a housing crisis for these critically endangered birds. Lack of mature longleaf is the major conservation factor, though sometimes nests are ruined by other species like pileated woodpeckers who widen nests, putting off red-cockaded woodpeckers. But these woodpeckers, who take 1-6 years to make a cavity, are considered keystone species because as they abandon perfectly made homes, they make way for other species to flourish. The cavities fill with roosting and nesting birds—redbellied woodpeckers, redheaded woodpeckers, eastern bluebirds, brown-headed nuthatches, tufted titmice, great crested flycatchers. Other species taking advantage of these unique secondary homes are snakes, frogs, and Southern flying squirrels.

The longleaf forest clearly shows us reciprocity in every ecosystem layer. Every species gives way for another to thrive.

The Guardian of the Ground Dwellers

Walking among longleaf pines is a species around for over 60 million years. Like a wise old man, the gopher tortoise burrows deep in mostly reclusive underground chambers. The tortoise's name derives from dwelling underground, but curiously polyphemus in Greek means "one of many songs and legends" or "multiple fames"—also the name of the giant cyclops in Greek mythology.

In ecological context, the lone tortoise is a significant keystone species contributing to all ground-dwelling creatures' well-being, from insects to mammals. Gopher tortoises dig deep, long tunnels, sometimes maintaining about 35 at once. These tunnels are the fallout shelters of longleaf pine ecosystem. When animals pick up first scents of smoke, they retreat to deep underground sanctuary built by gopher tortoises.

Everyone knows about these burrows. About 350 different species spend time in tunnels constructed by gopher tortoises. Florida mice, rattlesnakes, Eastern Indigo snakes, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and insects all seek shelter with the otherwise solitary reptile. Symbiotic relationships are illustrated by various species who help maintain burrows—janitorial staff keeping dung and parasites low in gopher holes include several beetle species and Camel Crickets that provide food for the critically endangered gopher frog.

There is so much collaboration in the vision held by gopher tortoises, who slowly build underground retreats for all who cannot fly or grow above the fire line. Despite slow and less-than-charismatic disposition, gopher tortoises uphold biodiversity of the forest floor upon their solitary backs.

Meanwhile, breezes blow across wire grass regions reminiscent of wheat fields and woven baskets. This grass dominates longleaf pine understory from Sandhills to Flatwoods to coastal plain ecosystems of the Southeast. This grass needs fire's burn before producing flowers. Wind-pollinated flowers produce seeds providing forage for many bird species. Gopher tortoises can typically be found grazing upon fresh, tender, post-fire wire grass while the entire longleaf ecosystem orbits around, each dependent upon the other to thrive.

Over the last hundred years, gopher tortoise populations have seen an 80% decline across native ranges. As a keystone species, this decline has had somber effects on forest biodiversity. The driver? Habitat loss. There are few laws protecting tortoises, and enraged environmentalists point out that people have been filling burrows and burying tortoises alive, facilitated by legal loopholes.

As a child, encountering a gopher tortoise burrow held an aura of reverence. I knew it wasn't only a tortoise who could live in these portals to the underground world existing beneath trees. When one appeared around our house, it felt like a guardian had blessed us—another family member who toiled around copper pine straw beds, blessing the land one step at a time.

Cat Faces

The "cat face" scars on some pine trees I encountered during walks are left over from the turpentine industry's last days. There are still camps sitting in the forest as relics of a boom equatable to the rubber industry of tropical South American forests. African slaves, leased prisoners, and impoverished populations labored to create 70% of the world's naval stores. Moving through thousands of acres, the work motto was "Cut and move on!"

Looking through historical society and state archives, some images captured this primeval forest being tapped and chopped. Ghosts of men stand among bodies of felled trees bigger and longer than any I've ever seen. 175-200 foot giants, some 500 years old, felled by the ax of two men. It seems this should not be a feat so easily accomplished—there should be some safeguard or resistance. But trees have no defense against us; they rely on our internal discernment of what is sacred and what we treat with reverence.

The trees and ecosystems they support rely on us to love them.

The Daughter, Now

When I return to Florida now, I seek them out—the longleaf that remain. I drive the back roads of my childhood, past the Super Walmart and subdivisions, searching for the survivors. When I find them, standing tall with their impossibly long needles catching light, I pull over and walk among them like I'm visiting old family.

Sometimes I find the white spray paint marking a tree—the bright circle that means a red-cockaded woodpecker has made its home here, that this giant holds a heritage cavity in its heartwood. In those moments, I feel something between grief and hope. Here is proof that people who care and steward life on this planet are working to help nature persist. The paint is a small act of protection, a acknowledgment that this tree and the bird within it matter.

I run my fingers along the familiar bark, breathe in the resinous air, listen for the chittering call of woodpeckers overhead. The longleaf feels unchanged—still teaching patience through its century-long journey from grass phase to giant, still offering shelter, still practicing the ancient reciprocity that sustained this ecosystem for millennia.

Nature always wins, in the end. We just have to learn to get out of its way.

I love the Florida landscape I grew up in and grieve its rapid loss. But I am grateful for the childhood memories and lessons taught by my subtropical plant family. Those years spent in conversation with longleaf, learning the rhythms of fire and flood, watching the collaboration between tortoise and pine, ant and cicada—it formed my love of the natural world and empathy for all living things.

The longleaf pine ecosystem may exist now in fragments, but it persists. In the remaining stands, in the restoration efforts, in the white paint marking where woodpeckers still nest. In the stories we tell, in the children who might still run barefoot through pine straw beds, in the recognition that we are part of something larger than ourselves.

I am still a daughter of longleaf. And I carry forward what they taught me: that everything is connected, that patience and resilience can outlast destruction, that love is both witness and resistance. The giants that raised me may be mostly memory now, but their lessons root deep.