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More on the upland pine ecosystem and its management.
More photos:
Semi-annual photos of Public and Restricted Area Pines, 2007-date.
Volunteers plant wire grass Wire grass is the dominant grass in upland pine and its presence helps sustain the fires on which the ecosystem depends. All wire grass had been shaded out when restoration of NATL's upland pine began. In 1997, the Entomology and Nematology Student Organization planted 330 wire grass plugs. In 2004, Ken Prestwich (pictured) helped plant 295 pots of wire grass in NATL's upland pine ecosystem. |
Wire grass blooms in NATL Wire grass is most likely to bloom and set seed after a late spring or early summer burn. This clump, which grew from one of the plugs planted in 1997, is blooming in early September 2005 after a control burn on 14 April 2005. |
Larger pines planted In July 2004, a volunteer planted 52 longleaf pines, supplied by the Physical Plant Divison, that were 5 to 7 ft. high. All were put near the trails in NATL's public area, to illustrate a growth stage of longleaf pine growth that would otherwise not be seen for another ten years. Here Tom Walker measures one of the 33 transplants that survived the first 14 months. |
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Some transplanted pines succumb to sawflies About one-quarter of the transplanted larger pines died during the first year. Pine sawfly larvae (left photo) apparently caused most of the mortality. The tree in the foreground (right photo) was defoliated by these insects and later died, whereas the tree in the right background of the same picture was untouched and still thrives. |
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Woolly pineneedle aphids stress transplants Woolly pineneedle aphids sometimes form linear colonies on the needles of longleaf pine where they stress the plant by sucking its sap. These are on a grass-stage transplant that is beginning to shoot up. |
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More pines planted In early summer 2005, two volunteers planted 288 grass-stage and ready-to-shoot longleaf pines in NATL's public area upland pine ecosystem. To make it easy to track the health of the transplants and to treat any problems detected, these were planted in 48 groups of six in manually cleared, mapped areas and individually staked. [The six pines in the foreground constitute Group #33.] |
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Natural reproduction begins anew On 20 June 2005, volunteer Ken Prestwich detected this and two other naturally germinated longleaf pine seedlings in the north public-area upland pine. This was the first such longleaf pine recruitment in NATL's upland pine in more than 40 years. Note the charcoal from the 14 April 2005 controlled burn. That burn left mineral soil exposed, on which the germination occurred. |