What a way and a day to start the 2023 shortleaf pine seed harvest – on
the celebrated 2400-acre Jones Farm in Huntsville, with a haul of pine
cones that almost equalled the total number of cones collected all of
last year.
If you’re wondering what the fuss is about pine cones, I reckon you
missed the part about us getting a National Fish and Wildlife Foundation
grant to help restore one of the Southeast’s most endangered forest
types, the shortleaf pine forest. Unlike loblolly pine, which was yanked
out of the moist coves and forced to pave industrial forests all across the
state, shortleaf pine helped manage and oversee a massive ecosystem
of grasses and wildflowers that spread over much of the Cumberland
Mountains. It was a cornerstone for our once rich populations of quail,
grouse, elk, turkey and many other creatures.
But it has become exceedingly rare, and misguided attempts to restore
it are actually threatening its existence. That’s because there’s been no
source of seed for Alabama and Tennessee. And people have been
resorting to the Arkansas nursery version of shortleaf, which is genetically
a distant cousin and is notorious for promoting hybrids that undermine
the very reasons for planting shortleaf in the first place.
So, where angels fear to tread: We decided we had to do something to
supply native shortleaf seed to Alabama and Tennessee forests for the
first time in almost a century. Last year was our crash course in how to
collect shortleaf seed, and our only real instructors were the shortleaf
and Robert Gandy, Alabama’s most illustrious tree seed collector. But
we did far better than we anticipated, collecting almost half a million
seed.
This year, the shortleaf had a few more things to teach us, and it all
started with the Jones Farm. A bumper crop collection of seed last year
was three or four bushels of cones. But at the Jones Farm, we hauled in
almost 10 bushels in one day, thanks to the hard and generous work of
Nick Poppe and crew at Steadfast Tree Service – and to the healthy
and fecund shortleaf there and the families that protected those trees
all these years. Before it was over, we attracted the attention of forester
and social media personality Kyle Lybarger and his partner Jake Brown,
who featured the event on one of their Native Habitat segments.
Carter England put us on to these trees, and even showed us aerial
photos of the trees dating back deep into the last century. Amazing all
that they have survived, and won’t it be good to know that this
important last piece of Huntsville’s once abundant forest system can be
preserved and transplanted to the rest of the Cumberlands?
— Bill Finch