Longleaf
It’s time that someone sits down and writes an article that sets clear what longleaf pine is and what it isn’t. I love longleaf and I think I have a story that is worth telling, for this purpose. But it is, in my most earnest and open-minded calculations, “The Break-Even Tree.”
I grew up in Central Alabama where my family ran a small hardwood veneer mill. Growing up on our lands and in the surrounding areas of mixed second-growth forest, I knew nothing of longleaf. As I became conscious that there were in fact other pine species besides loblolly, I remember hearing a lot of, “You know those don’t grow around here, that’s only in south Alabama.” So was the story I came to believe.
There were a couple of things that my college instructor Dr. John Kush said to our class I was keenly suspect of. The first of which was that it is a fire-dominated and maintained ecosystem and that in the forests of early America, fire would have occurred naturally every 2 to 3 years. A young kid with little conception of pre-settlement America, I casted this off as a hoax. The second thing Kush said was that longleaf was really, in its native range, everywhere. The pre-settlement South could be broken down into two dominant sites, the uplands and the bottoms. Where there was upland there was longleaf and in most of these uplands it was by far the dominant forest component. This well-supported theory fostered in me doubt of everything I thought to be true about our forest heritage.
I came to the School of Forestry after completing studies in Economics. Before entering forestry classes, which are mostly based in science, I came from a world based in numbers, values, percentages, and returns.
In short, what happened next is I lost all sight of that, and I fell in love with longleaf.
“This is a tree that thinks, or we like to believe that it thinks,” said professor Dr. Becky Barlow as she addressed a group of students at summer practicum. “Loblolly does not care about basal area. It does not care that much about environmental factors, it just makes the seed. Longleaf waits, and when conditions are correct, BOOM—a big seed crop!” A tree that thinks critically about how it will perpetuate itself. A tree that can diagnose and sense when is the optimal time to make its seed. It’s an endearing trait to say the least.
I was not served any cup. No one ever told me it was necessarily a superior tree, economically speaking. But I began to feel a real sense that it was the tree that was supposed to be here. And every site that I saw, I just thought about it being in longleaf. I had drunk the Kool-Aid, so to speak.
I got (and continue to get) my first experience managing timberland for a small consulting shop right out of college. Immediately my concept of the identity of forestry changed again. It was clear to me that most people who owned land made decisions for better or worse depending on what their next revenue or expenditure was expected to total.
Economics applied to land and the decisions made over the course of owning it is mainly about resource utilization. In other words: what is the best use for this area and what will be the result of that use in terms of economics, aesthetics, and ecology?
My career, the problems I was dealing with, how I wanted to help people, all forced me into this structured, principled way of looking at land operations. With this new outlook, the dam that was my love for longleaf sprung a leak.
If it was the change in outlook that created the leak, it was my field observations and reflections on the market together, that burst the dam. Let me explain.
While I don’t remember a time anyone said longleaf would perform better on a Rate of Return (RoR) basis, with this Government Program going, there were some who jumped on a bandwagon of sorts. The bandwagon began to wear a cloak of this idea that longleaf was indeed a better tree on most sites (especially if the government is planting it) and that planting it had little to no negative effects on the landowning family.
I thought about this a lot out in the field. I was steadily wearing out boots, working, but also looking for examples of these conditions. I am still looking today.
My reflection on the market is just depiction of the reality. The market wants a smaller tree. The market realizes it will be supplied by loblolly plantations. Thus, the market is demanding a smaller, younger tree. In other words, once your tree gets to the age that it is of sufficient piece size, it can no longer appreciate. It can accrue volume, yes, but it cannot grow in value anymore. This market condition will only become more acute in the future.
To simplify, the market no longer rewards people for spending long periods of time growing larger trees.
“If you can grow three of these trees (3 units) to every 1 of these trees (1 unit), and they pay the same for each unit, you would have to be a crazy person to choose to only grow one unit, right?”
It took me a long time to boil it all down into an easy nugget that everyone could understand. I’ve noticed it generates a lot of blank stares and facial expressions sharing the common thread of disbelief. What I have come to realize is most landowners, in retrospect, don’t really know why they planted the tree. Furthermore, my observation and my inquiry also tells me that oftentimes someone gave them some “information” on longleaf that helped them make the decision.
What I would like to do now, is to go over these pieces of information, propaganda I would call it, as I know them best, so that no other landowners are persuaded by information that seems to be mostly fiction. They are as follows:
COMMON MYTHS ABOUT LONGLEAF
“It’s ‘almost as fast’ as loblolly.”
No. No. No. Just NOOOOOO!!!
I had a man in Bibb the other day tell me he had been told he could turn over a stand of longleaf sawtimber in just 35 years, maybe less.
Quick story. The father of my best friend in business school was a timber manager. Not just any manager, he happens to manage more privately-owned longleaf than anyone else in America. Not to be lost, the area is supposed the best longleaf sites the state has to offer. I have always been heavy with questions like, “Mr. Paul, you know it better than anyone. How fast can you grow a stand of longleaf?” And he replied in his typical very businesslike and matter-of-fact manner, “On longleaf, Hunter, even with the best site, to grow it to market maturity, it is going to take you 55 to 60 years.”
Conversely, with good silviculture you can get loblolly to market maturity now in 19 to 23 years depending on site and market. (That’s shooting for a 12-inch DBH tree.)
Its 3 to 1. I can grow 3 of these trees for every one of those. This is the most likely biological reality of your alternatives, with good management.
“This is a better site for longleaf.”
There is such a thing as a pure sand bed and longleaf will outperform loblolly on this site, but they are rare. In Alabama I would estimate that no more than 1% of the ground would be able to outperform loblolly from an economic and RoR standpoint.
But you hear this claim tossed around very casually and assuredly by longleaf’s more ardent supporters. What is the basis for their claim? There are countless sites in Alabama that have a sandy loam soil horizon only to give way to a more clayey substrate in the succeeding layers. It’s easy to kick the duff layer away from the ground and say, “See that sand, this is a better longleaf site!”
It’s possible you own a 1% tract and you would really be better off planting longleaf. Odds are that is not the case. Do proper due diligence before planting to see how the trees compare in terms of suitability on the soil you own.
“If given enough time longleaf will outgrow loblolly.”
This statement is true in certain circumstances, but a myth in the context in which most people make it. Comparing one natural tree to another natural tree, by all accounts of any good timber man, loblolly is a bigger tree. It seems to be a more efficient user of water, the key determinant of radial diameter growth, and on every site where I have seen them growing side by side, the loblolly is almost always the fatter and taller tree. So, if we are comparing natural trees to natural trees this is a myth, the longleaf may eventually outlive the loblolly on a weaker site, but that is a different conversation altogether.
The situation in which this is true is when you compare the natural longleaf stock (all that exists) to the modern-day loblolly genetics. This is to compare a tree bred by its environment for perhaps millions of years to a tree that has been subjected to advanced breeding and selection at the lab level for the last 50 years. The loblolly we grow today is a souped up racecar of a pine tree, built to fit a crop rotation, with little to no thought given to how long-lived it might be. If you manage it well, you can grow a good crop. If you don’t take care of your crop, it is quick and easy to stagnate growth and begin to die en masse. In contrast, longleaf can live 100 years in complete suppression, to be released through some event, and then thrive and live another 300 years.
A factually correct statement would be, “Natural longleaf genetics will outlive modern day genetics loblolly stock.” And that is a statement I can agree with 100%.
“Longleaf grows a superior tree in terms of stem quality.”
This is my favorite myth to unpack. This statement demonstrates a lack of conceptual understanding of the biology of longleaf and of growing crops of timber altogether.
All timber people and lots of landowners can remember walking in an old longleaf stand in all its great majesty. The tall, straight, seemingly perfect stems. Poles EVERYWHERE!! And so we plant trees today and we say, “I can’t wait to see all those poles out there.” From a lack of education, we have fostered this belief that just because we plant longleaf, we will get a stand one day that is loaded with poles.
Let’s talk about how the tree lived naturally throughout the eons. Longleaf regenerates itself in the wild via patch dynamics. As Dr. Barlow taught us, “It is a tree that shows evidence it can think about its environment.” Compared to loblolly, which seeds out every year, rain, sleet or snow, longleaf conserves its carbs and puts on no cones and thus no seed for long periods of time, sometimes decades. Then its neighbor dies out or succumbs to a violent storm. Then the neighborhood of trees gets together, seemingly, and decides to propagate this new opening in the community. They put on a huge flush of seed and BAM!—we have seedlings. This area will often exceed 1,000 stems to the acre.
Then the trees compete. Because they have so many siblings they have to reach towards the sky every year with every bit of production they can muster. A hundred years later you walk into that same forest and where there used to be many there are only a few. But those few are tall, straight, and seemingly perfect stems.
Most of our government programs plant between 375 and 500 trees. Let’s say, conservatively, that we lose 10% at planting. So, the actual stems per acre that we are planting in the ground is closer to 350-450. Essentially, we are assuming that a half to 75% reduction in stocking at stand establishment will have no long-term result on the stem quality. In other words, we are giving the tree completely different development conditions, yet expecting to get the same end result.
This is a life lie that many have invested in believing. When you plant longleaf at 400 trees to the acre all they know to do is bush out, that’s what they are programmed to do. They grow large lower limbs and maximize the width of their crown. Whereas their foregone cousins spent their first years shooting up and thrifting crown and needle to stay alive, these trees spread out and relax like a forester in a chair after a long day in the woods. They will never make poles. It simply doesn’t work that way.
“Longleaf is better from a risk standpoint because of disease and bug resistance.”
This is also a myth that can be true depending on the perspective you take. “A bug patch in a longleaf stand” is probably not something you will ever hear said. In contrast, the bugs (mostly bark beetles) can and will flare up and do some destruction in the loblolly stands, in some area, almost every year. So, if this is true, is this alone not sufficient reason to plant longleaf? My answer is no.
It goes back to a time and knowledge of timber production thing for me. Most of the losses from pine beetles in loblolly crops come from mismanagement. People get bugs and experience losses in two cases. Either they missed their optimal thinning window by years or the site grew more trees than it could sustainably support. So, I know that I can, with proper management, reliably grow a crop of loblolly to crop maturity with little to no interference from bugs and diseases.
If I can confidently grow a crop of trees without experiencing those ownership perils, I really do not believe the disease and pest resistance of longleaf is reason enough alone to make a different planting decision.
“The government helps you plant it so you are better off in the long run.”
Searching for the correct answer here requires us to consider some basic financial calculations. People often think that because they forego the planting cost now, that they must be better off in the future. From a resource economics perspective, they have been had.
So, let’s see how this plays out.
Conclusion
Now that I have dispelled all the myths that I have so much trouble hearing quite so often, I would like to circle the wagons so to speak and talk about the benefits of longleaf and how I think it fits into private timberland management.
In the past couple of years, I had been harping on a client about planting too much longleaf, “We need to get out the pen and figure out how much you have, I think you are overplanted.” All I could see was the economic factors that I have been talked about in this article. In getting out the pen and dissecting his land base I had a revelation of sorts. Now scale plays into this, but unbeknownst to him, he had set his family up with two portfolios. He had enough loblolly ground to continue cutting and starting a new crop in his life at a desirable level, but all the lands that had been planted in longleaf served as a long-term portfolio. Sure, it won’t make the returns his loblolly ground did, but when he passes one day, it will all be available to produce revenue for the remaindermen he would leave behind. In this estate management circumstance, it really seems to fit nicely.
Truly some landowners are disadvantaged and have no other way to plant back the site. Accepting cost share money and getting the site back in good production is the best thing regardless of the tree used.
This has been a tough paper to write and I genuinely fear some people may dislike my message here a great deal. But I do LOVE longleaf. I just want people to be aware of what they are doing and what expectations they should have.
In conclusion, I recommend that all my clients plant longleaf. My guidance is to hunt, scour, and reflect on the best 5 to 10% of your land that might be planted in longleaf. I think this is a nice way to ensure we continue to propagate the species and ensure it is a part of the landscape of the future while also being a prudent manager of your family’s timberland assets. And because it is a smaller portion you won’t mind spending more time and resources on it to make it extra pretty!!!