Those of you Daily Bucketeers that read comments probably know I've been spending days out in the woods helping restore Longleaf pine on the sand ridges east of the Apalachicola River that runs south thru the Florida Panhandle. There are diaries about all the wildflowers I find, the controlled burns I see, the restoration work, the steephead ravines, the rare plants.
Here's something I hadn't see before. Out at Spring Canyon yesterday, as we set up for another day of hacking and spraying hardwoods, Ms Helen pointed out a dead Longleaf, dead by lightning, that had been struck again. Chunks of the tree were littering the ground. Most were 1-2” thick. Some longer than others. One was arrowed into the ground.
We looked around and saw a few dozen pieces. Helen pulled a big chunk out of a sparkleberry tree. Where they landed matched the side of the tree where the bark is ripped off. Also, work related, in photo above there's shrubby regrowth from prior years cutting but not spraying. One burn was not enough to kill them hardwood suckers.
So twice in this pine's life, it's death and slow decay still being part of life, it has been struck by lightning. Go for 3 was my snide aside. Or as Helen speculated, maybe clearing the hardwoods has left the taller Longleaf pines exposed to lightening storms. If you consider that I am next to the dead pine looking downhill to where we are clearing — most those big Laurel Oaks are coming down. Any next to a pine or smaller than 6” is dropped. It's amazing to sit back and rest and look at a day's work and realize how many pines were buried among the encroaching oaks. You can see a young one in the background just left of our exploding pine.
Short bucket since I'm typing on iPad, uploading photos and updating on iPhone Thanks for stopping by. I'll be lost in the sand pines most of Friday looking for a rare Rosemary, Conradina glabra. Find it and flag it before the trash pines are cut and ground run over as first step in restoration. Maybe I'll get lucky and find a clear opening to distant cell tower to see you in comments with your nature observations.
Updated for Saturday. Sure wish I had my Mac desktop back to upload photos from Friday workday… Gnarly was leader Annie’s word of the day. She's happy we covered it all but no Rosemary. Lots of Calamint between the rows of sandpine, a few other uncommon finds, Ashe Magnolia flowering when we reached the ravine. Turn and go back, several times. Each gnarly pass was a fight thru thorny smilax vines, smack your face branches, thickets of oak saplings and sparkleberry, and more vines … Still cool like when a few passes ended near the steephead and we looked almost straight down to where water seeped out, the vegetation changed, and a huge Magnolia reached up from there to way over our heads, all that.