Guide to Arbor Day

Loblolly Pine (Pinus taeda L.)

Credits: James B. Baker & O. Gordon Langdon

Plant Information Center

I am a loblolly Pine (Pinus taeda), sometimes called an Arkansas pine, North Carolina pine, or oldfield pine. I am one of the most commercially important forest species in the southern United States. I am dominant on about 29 million acres and make up over one-half of the standing pine volume. I am a medium-lived, intolerant to moderately tolerant tree with rapid juvenile growth. My species responds well to silvicultural treatments and can be managed as either even-aged or uneven-aged natural stands or can be regenerated artificially and managed in plantations.

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My name is loblolly pine and my native range extends through 14 states from southern New Jersey south to central Florida and west to eastern Texas. It includes the Atlantic plain, the piedmont plateau, and the southern extremities of the Cumberland plateau, the highland rim, and the valley and ridge provinces of the Appalachian highlands. I do not grow naturally in the Mississippi River flood plain and I am scarce in the deep, coarse sands of the lower Atlantic plain and sandhills of North and South Carolina. I am important only in localized areas in southeastern Georgia and northern Florida. In some cases, I have even been grown on other continents as I am very adaptable.

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The main factor limiting northern extension of my species is probably low winter temperature with associated damage from ice, snow, and sleet and cold damage during flowering. Lack of water or rain probably stops me from growing any further west than Oklahoma and Texas.

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Loblolly Pine continued…

I grow in pure stands and in mixtures with other pines or hardwoods, and in association with a great variety of lesser vegetation. I grow with longleaf, shortleaf, and Virginia pine, southern red, white, post, and blackjack oak, sassafras, and persimmon on well-drained sites. Pond pine, spruce pine, blackgum, red maple, and water oak, willow oak , and cherrybark oak are common associates on moderately to poorly drained sites. In the southern part of my range, I can frequently be found with slash pine and laurel oak.

There is a great variety of lesser vegetation found growing with me. Some common understory trees and shrubs include flowering dogwood, American holly, inkberry, yaupon, hawthorn, southern bayberry, pepperbush, sumac, and a number of ericaceous shrubs. Some common herbaceous species include bluestems, panicums, sedges, and fennels.

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My needles occur in clusters of three. They are slender and stiff, 6 to 9 inches long and pale green. They drop during the third season.

I also have oblong cones which are 2 to 6 inches long, light reddish to brown, and are armed with a spine at the tip of each scale. My cones will drop their seeds in autumn and winter but I will hold onto the cones for another year.

At 60 years my mature bark is thick, bright reddish to brown, and is divided by shallow fissures into broad, flat-topped plates covered with thin scales. I often reach 90 to 110 feet in height on good sites, with a tall, cylindrical trunk 2 to 3 feet in diameter. My lower, short, thick branches on older trees droop, while my higher branches grow upward. My mature crown usually is compact and round-topped. Resinous wood is coarse-grained with a marked contrast inside of me—as in other yellow pines—between the bands of spring and summer wood. Sometimes people will count these rings to find out how old I am.

I have a wide range of uses, such as lumber, pulpwood, plywood, poles, and piling. Because I am useful and grow very quickly, I am the target of much of the forest management in North Carolina—and in the entire southeast. I am the most widely planted forest tree and many thousands of acres of productive loblolly pine plantations are now growing in North Carolina.

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I am a loblolly pine and some of my problems are caused by wind, lightning, temperature extremes, ice, drought, flooding, insects, and diseases. Lots of literature about the effects of these problems in my pine stands are available; a brief summary follows.

When I grow large, I am more vulnerable to high winds than smaller trees, and trees with large cankers caused by rust disease break more readily than sound trees. In general, damage resulting from severe winds associated with hurricanes or thunderstorms is caused primarily by windthrow or blowdown. Windthrow is most common on shallow soils with coarse-textured profiles. Wind damage is also more likely to occur in recently thinned stands.

Direct losses to lightning are small, averaging only about 2 trees per 100 acres) per year. Large, dominant, open-grown trees are generally the most vulnerable to lightning strikes. Probably more important than the direct damage caused by lightning is the possibility that a lightning-struck tree will become a center for insect infestation.

My seedling babies cannot stand cold or hot temperatures nor can the seedlings tolerate flooding.

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My other serious insect pests are bark beetles, particularly the southern pine beetle whose attack may result in extensive mortality and pine engraver beetles that can cause death of isolated or small groups of trees. Pine tip moths can often infest young trees. I am the favorite host of the southern pine beetle which is the most destructive insect for this species. Most infestations originate in stands that are under stress because of poor site, adverse weather, overstocking, or overmaturity. Once a buildup of southern pine beetle occurs, adjacent well-managed stands may also be attacked.

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Loblolly Pine continued…

Loblolly pines growing in plantations provide habitat for a variety of game and nongame wildlife species. The primary game species that inhabit pine and pine-hardwood forests include white-tailed deer, gray and fox squirrel, bobwhite quail, wild turkey, mourning doves, and rabbits. Some of these species utilize the habitat through all stages of stand development, while others are attracted for only a short time during a particular stage of development. For example, a loblolly pine plantation can provide forage for deer only from the time of planting until the crown overhead closes. This usually occurs in 8 to 10 years. Bobwhite tend to use the plantation until a decline in favored food species occurs. As the habitat deteriorates, deer and quail usually move to mature pine or pine-hardwood forests or to other newly established plantations. Management modifications such as wider planting spacing and early and frequent thinnings will delay crown closure, and periodic prescribed bums will stimulate wildlife food production.

Wild turkeys inhabit upland pine and pine-hardwood forests and do particularly well on large tracts of mature timber with frequent openings and where prescribed burning is conducted.

Pine lands are the chief habitat for some birds such as the pine warbler, brown-headed nuthatch, and Bachman's warbler. Old-growth stands are very important to the existence of the red-cockaded woodpecker. Large loblolly pine trees are favorite roosting places for many birds and provide an important nesting site for ospreys and the bald eagle.

In urban forestry, loblolly pines often are used as shade trees and for wind and noise barriers throughout the South. They also have been used extensively for soil stabilization and control of areas subject to severe surface erosion and gullying. Loblolly pine provides rapid growth and site occupancy and good litter production for these purposes.

Redbay (Persea borbonia)

Greetings! I am Persia borbonia – people usually refer to me by my common name – redbay. I am a North American native evergreen tree and I can reach 50 feet in height with a comparable spread but I often seem somewhat shorter and wider, particularly when grown in the open in an urban area. My glossy, leathery, medium green, six-inch leaves emit a spicy fragrance when crushed and my inconspicuous, springtime flower clusters are followed by small, dark blue fruits which ripen in fall. These fruits are enjoyed by birds and squirrels and add to my beauty and overall attractiveness for wildlife. My trunk bears very showy, ridged, red-brown bark and frequently branches low to the ground forming a multi-stemmed habit similar to live oak, but it can be pruned to make a single, short central leader which would be most suitable for many urban plantings.

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Use and Management: Thriving on little care in full sun or partial shade, redbays can tolerate a wide range of soils, from hot and dry to wet and swampy. Redbay is a rugged and adaptable plant suitable to many landscape applications. Unfortunately, the wood is reportedly brittle and subject to wind damage. Pruning to keep lateral branches less than half the diameter of the trunk will increase the tree's longevity and help prevent branches from separating from the trunk. The densely-foliated, spreading branches create a lush, billowy, rounded canopy making redbay a wonderful shade tree. It can make a nice street tree planted on 20 to 25-foot centers but be sure to prune it properly as mentioned. Plant with caution where cars will park or near sidewalks since birds love the fruit and often visit the tree, leaving their droppings on cars. The fruit can also be messy on cars and walks. Its ease of growth and neat, dense crown habit also make redbay ideal for the low-maintenance and naturalized landscape. The dark brown, furrowed bark is particularly attractive on older specimens.

Propagation is by seed which germinate readily after several months in the ground.
Sweetgum (Liquidambar styraciflus linnaeus)

Credist:

A Natural History of Trees of Eastern and Central North America, Donald Culross Peattie
Edward F. Gilman and Dennis G. Watson, University of Florida, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS)
Out of a bizarre and dramatic moment of history comes, like a puff of pungent smoke, the first reference to this American tree. It is written by a witness of the ceremonies between Cortez and Montezuma, and he says, of the Emperor: “After he had dined, they presented to him three little canes highly ornamental, containing liquid-amber, mixed with an herb they call tobacco, and when he had sufficiently viewed and heard the singers, dancers, and buffoons, he took a little of the smoke of one of these canes.”

He must have recognized the burning liquid-amber by its odor, since, though no Liquidambar is native to Europe, the gum of an Asiatic species was well known in the pharmacopeias of western civilization and was prized as an incense in Christian churches and Indian temples. The plant which produced it, however, was for a long time quite unknown to science and the gum arrived mysteriously in the markets of Constantinople either as a resin floating in water and sewed up in goatskin bags or as a bark in camel’s-hair bags. Retailed over Europe at advanced prices, it was valued both in perfumery and incense and in the treatment of diphtheria. Ultimately Europe learned that the gum was derived from Liquidambar orientalis.

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The American species which produces a like resin was described to Europe by Francisco Hernandez, the first great herbalist of Mexico who dwelt in that country from 1571 to 1575. He speaks of it aptly as having leaves “almost like those of a maple” and a resin of which the “nature is hot in the third order, and dry, and added to tobacco, it strengthens the head, belly, and heart, induces sleep, and alleviates pains in the head that are caused by colds.

According to a translation, this account of the learned (if credulous) Hernandez did not see print until about 1651. Yet over 20 years earlier the sweetgum tree, as most Americans call it, had been recognized—for the first time on the soil of the present United States—by Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca. This bold, Christian, and observant adventurer was a member of one of the most desperate of the Spanish expeditions into the New World, and so it was he found himself in 1528 near the present Appalachicola, Florida. “The country,” says he, “where we came on shore to this town and region of Apalachen is for the most part level, the ground of

Sweetgum continued…
sandy and stiff earth. Throughout are immense trees and open woods in which are walnut, laurel, and another tree called liquid-amber. This account was apparently published for the first time in 1542, long after Cabeza de Vaca had returned home after shipwreck, Indian captivity, near starvation in the wilderness, and further incredible hardships.

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This sweetgum is a noble tree that might well impress anyone new to the sight of it. And the sight is a common one for it grows along any fence row, in piedmont Virginia, beside any country road of the Carolinas, in any field abandoned by agriculture and growing up to scrub pine and dogwood. It comes up in company, in these upland sites, with sassafras and red cedar, and may be known by its beautiful star-shaped leaves. Their upper surface has a star-like glister, but unlike most shining leaves, those of the sweetgum are not dark at maturity but a light yellow-green. Crushed in the fingers, they give out a cleanly fragrance; on the tongue they have a tart taste. Foliage so odd and yet so attractive would make any tree conspicuous.

But even when the leaves have turned a deep winy crimson and fallen, sweetgum is striking by reason of the corky wings on the twig. True, one might confuse them with those of some of the Elms, but the fruiting heads of woody spiny balls, hanging all winter on the slim stalks after the winged seeds have escaped, are unique among all American trees. In the eastern states and on uplands, the sweetgum is often a small tree, sturdy rather than graceful, 20 to 40 feet tall. In the deep gumbo soils of the Mississippi Valley, in the swamps of Missouri’s Tiwappatty Bottom, sweetgum becomes a giant, up to 140 feet high with a trunk five feet thick.

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Country folk refer to it simply as gum tree, and to furniture salesmen the wood is plain Gum, or Gum wood, which is confusingly ambiguous since many trees are called so. In the pharmaceutical trade the name for the exudates of this tree is liquid-amber, or copalm balm, or incorrectly, storax. The gum, which is considered identical in its properties with the oriental gum, flows from the tree in the form of bitter-tasting but sweet-smelling balsamic liquid. It is then semitransparent and yellowish brown, but on exposure to the air it hardens into a rosin-like and darker solid. From pioneer times it was used in the south for the treatment of sores and skin troubles, for a chewing gum, for catarrh, and in the treatment of dysentery was much favored by doctors in the Confederate armies.

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Sweetgum continued…
In the years that followed the Civil War, American copalm sank into insignificance, for Oriental storax could easily undersell it. During the first World War, interest in the native gum revived, only to languish again. In the second World War, with Formosa (whence it had been coming chiefly) completely cut off, it became definitely important as a needed base of salves, adhesives, perfuming powders, soaps, and tobacco flavoring, just as in the days of Montezuma. Clarke County, Alabama, which had retained from the first World War a memory of the technique of tapping the trees, became the center of the industry.

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Sweetgum grows in a narrow pyramid to a height of 75 feet and may spread to 50 feet. The beautifully glossy, star-shaped leaves turn bright red, purple, yellow, or orange in the fall (USDA hardiness zones 6 and 7) and early winter (USDA hardiness zones 8 and 9). On some trees, particularly in the northern part of its range, branches are covered with characteristic corky projections. The trunk is normally straight and does not divide into double or multiple leaders and side branches are small in diameter on young trees, creating a pyramidal form. The bark becomes deeply ridged at about 25 years old. Sweetgum makes a nice conical park, campus, or residential shade tree for large properties when it is young, developing a more oval or rounded canopy as it grows older as several branches become dominant and grow in diameter.

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Use and Management: Be careful when locating sweetgum as a street tree since its large, aggressive roots may eventually lift curbs and sidewalks. Plant trees 8 to 10 feet or more away from curbs. Some communities have large numbers of sweetgum planted as street trees. Much of the root system is shallow (particularly in its native, moist habitat), but there are deep vertical roots directly beneath the trunk in well-drained and in some other soils. The fruit may be a litter nuisance to some in the fall, but this is usually only noticeable on hard surfaces, such as roads, patios, and sidewalks where people could slip and fall on the fruit. The cultivar Rotundiloba is fruitless. The tree should be planted only in soil with a pH of 7 or less. The seeds provide food for wildlife and will often readily germinate in shrub and groundcover beds requiring their removal to maintain a neat landscape appearance. Tree thickets form in this manner creating dense monocultures of sweetgum.

Although it grows at a moderate pace, sweetgum is rarely attacked by pests and tolerates wet soils, but chlorosis is often seen in alkaline soils. Trees grow well in deep soil, poorly in

Cultivars have been selected for their fall color, leaf shape, or growth habit: ‘Burgundy’—beautiful, glossy green leaves, burgundy red fall color, holds leaves late into fall, narrow pyramid, less cold hardy, more adapted to the southern part of its range; ‘Festival’—narrow upright growth habit, peach-colored fall foliage, less cold hardy, more adapted to the southern part of the range; ‘Moraine’—is reputed to be the most cold hardy; ‘Palo Alto’—pyramidal, symmetrical growth, bright orange fall color; ‘Rotundiloba’—round leaf tips, no fruit production, narrow pyramidal form.

#1: Introduction & Tree-Plant Consideration

Male Voice, Birds Singing, Wind, Chain Saw
#2: Black Cherry

Female Voice, Light Classical Music, Birds Singing

Female Voice, Light Classical Music, Water Running, Birds Singing

Deep Male Voice, Chain Saw (sawmill sounds), Sound of Tree Falling, Voices Calling

“Timber,” Crows Calling
#5: Red Bay & Arbor Day

Male Voice, Squirrels Chattering, Water Flowing, Birds Singing, Frogs Croaking