Of course, if you do not have any longleaf pines in your forest but want to manage for them, then you will have to consider some form of artificial regeneration like planting. Planting can be expensive and getting seedlings to survive can sometimes be difficult. While artificial regeneration methods such as planting are common forestry management practices, it is not the only way to regenerate your forests. Today, when landowners consider restoring longleaf pine on the landscape, most think they need to clear-cut and replant to start the next forest. Regardless of the opening size, seedlings always had to be present on the ground for the forest to continue. In some cases, there were also large openings of several hundred acres due to tornadoes or hurricanes. These openings would have varied in size and may have ranged from less than an acre, due to the loss of a single tree from a lightning strike or windfall, to a few acres due to insects or a large-scale wind event. So stands of young seedlings needed to develop under larger trees, where they would wait for an opening in the canopy to occur so height growth could begin in earnest. Longleaf pine seed is heavy and falls only about 75 feet from the parent tree. The original longleaf pine forest was self-perpetuating where seedlings always had to be present in the understory. To germinate, longleaf seeds benefit from contact with bare soil, but fire suppression allows hardwood and other pine species, such as loblolly, to invade the remaining stands of longleaf, thus inhibiting regeneration. Natural regeneration of longleaf at the time was also generally unsuccessful. Widespread harvesting of forests in the late 1800s reduced longleaf acres substantially. This is due, in part, to conversion to agricultural use, urban development, lack of fire (natural or human caused), and plantation forestry. The area covered by natural longleaf forests has been declining for 150 years. This led to longleaf forests often being called “longleaf savannas.” Because of these fires, longleaf pine forests were generally open with very few woody stems in the midstory, and they had understories that consisted of grasses and legumes. The location of historic longleaf forests was tied closely to the occurrence of frequent fires that were once common across the Southeast. It was once the dominant species on the southeastern coastal plain from North Carolina south through central Florida and west to eastern Texas. Longleaf pine’s life history is unique among southern pines. Landowners often overlook the option of uneven-aged management of longleaf pine because they think it is too complicated.
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