Despite the labor, costs and the “finicky” nature of the longleaf pine, forestry consultants say the tree is beginning to place its roots more and more into Orangeburg County soil as the pine of choice for foresters.

“More and more people are buying, not so much to max out their timber returns, but to have an attractive place to live and hunt,” said James Simons, an Orangeburg County forestry consultant and longleaf pine grower. “I do see more (people) getting into it every year.”

Loblolly pine has been the species leader in the state and county for years due to its low maintenance, low cost and high production.

“Longleafs are more expensive to get established and they are more finicky in that they are harder to get a good stand. Survival tends not to be as good on the longleaf as it is on the loblolly,” Simons said. “Many have been afraid to spend the extra money and the greater risk for poor survival. But we are getting a lot better in growing, seeding and understanding better what makes a successful plantation.”

Simons explained that the longleaf tends to grow slower than the loblolly and is more sensitive to tree competition in its early stages. The key is to see the pine through to maturity, where it tends to do as well, if not better, than loblolly.

Simons says the increase in longleaf plantings can be credited to the federal Farm Service Agency’s Conservation Reserve Program, which gave foresters a greater incentive through annual rental payments for landowners willing to establish environmentally friendly practices on eligible cropland.

Pat Lee, president of Lee Forestry Inc. in Orangeburg County and a forest manager, says the longleaf is seeing a resurgence as the tree is noted for its pine straw, which serves as good mulch; the trees’ value and aesthetic appeal; and foresters’ increased attraction to it as wildlife habitat.

“It is a good timber tree,” Lee said, explaining that the longleaf grows straight and serves as a prime timber for the telephone pole market. “It looks better than loblolly.

Generally, it has a very open understory and does a good job of covering the ground and shading the plants and bushes.”

Challenges in longleaf growth include costs — loblolly costs about $40 to $45 for 1,000 bare root seedlings, compared to $75 for 1,000 longleaf bare root seedlings — and growth uncertainty.

“You can plant a longleaf under the best of conditions and a percentage won’t survive,” Lee said. “I tell landowners that a loblolly makes a forester look better than he really is. It is a very tolerant seedling.”

Forester Joe Rochester of Rochester Forestry Company says while he helps growers plant longleaf, he is not entirely sold on the tree.

“Loblolly works and I know it,” Rochester said. “I have planted longleaf for years, but I still recommend loblolly. Landowners look to me to see how they can make the most money out of their woodlands. Loblolly is a proven winner.”

But Rochester says he does accommodate landowners and will plant accordingly.

“It is a beautiful tree to look at,” he said, noting that even as a Clemson student in the early 1970s, the longleaf was under study. “There has been a lot of research on it, trying to improve it genetically to keep the species alive and viable.”

In light of the challenges, Orangeburg County Clemson Extension Agent Beth Richardson said longleaf is like a woman in that “if you don’t handle a woman right, it won’t do for you.”

“It has caused many people to shy away from anything dealing with regeneration of longleaf,” Richardson said. “The push by a few and the publicity is a welcome sight for landowners to be exposed to the importance of longleaf and its speciality for wildlife species.”

Richardson acknowledged that the longleaf has been difficult to establish artificially, requiring seedlings to be planted slightly above ground level.

The key to increasing the number of longleaf pines is educating foresters about the tree, Richardson said.

According to the South Carolina Forest Inventory, since 1998, Orangeburg County has grown about 3,504 acres of longleaf, Bamberg County 1,246 acres and Calhoun County 919 acres. The numbers are based on cost-share records.

According to the inventory, the state had 424,982 acres of longleaf pine in 2001, compared to 376,579 acres in 1993.

“Longleaf is the highest-quality, most valuable and the most resistant to insects, diseases and wind damage of all the Southern pines,” says Bob Franklin, who is working with the South Carolina Lowcountry Forest Conservation Program in an effort to protect 2.9 million acres of forestland in the state’s coastal plain.

Longleaf accounted for 8.5 million acres of South Carolina forests in 1883, but that dropped to less than 300,000 acres before climbing in 1993.

“The 15 percent increase over the 1993 figures is the first increase in longleaf acreage since records have been kept,” Franklin said.

Based on the response from more than 150 landowners and professional foresters attending three workshops this spring, he believes the trend will continue.

“Participants indicated that they will plant more than 2,000 acres of longleaf in the coming year and will strongly consider converting pine plantations to longleaf in the coming years as they harvest existing plantations,” Franklin said.

Franklin said that the three workshops reached the owners and managers of more than a half million acres of land in South Carolina.

Participants indicated that what they learned would help them save more than $124,000 and earn more than $517,000 in the future in their management efforts with longleaf pine.

National longleaf pine experts say the move toward longleaf is due to declining prices on wood grown for paper. Paper companies can buy raw material cheaper from places like Brazil, Indonesia and New Zealand.

A recent timber sale survey conducted in Mississippi tracked timber sales for 20 years.

When broken out into longleaf pine versus all other pine species, for each 1,000 board feet, longleaf received a premium of 20-25 percent regardless of the market.

Tree planters and foresters report they average about 85 percent survival for container seedlings versus 65 percent for bare root seedlings.

Nationally, since 1996 about 60 million longleaf seedlings have been planted annually.

That number is holding steady as other species show a dramatic drop. About a billion loblolly pines were planted in 1996, but those numbers are down to about 400 million today.

Resistance to hurricanes is a plus for longleaf pine.

Studies of forests in south Mississippi damaged by Katrina in 2005 showed 75 percent of loblollies broke, 37 percent of slash pine broke and less than 10 percent of longleaf broke, with about 10 percent uprooted. Uprooted trees can be salvaged for timber.

-- T&D Staff Writer Gene Zaleski can be reached by e-mail at gzaleski@timesanddemocrat.com or by phone at 803-533-5551. To comment on this and other stories, visit TheTandD.com.

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