The Loblolly Pine

Through grafting, forestry science has developed an especially fast-growing variety of the Loblolly pine for timber (this variety has been termed a "super species", becoming ready for harvest in about 15-20 years). In Franklin County, Mississippi, stands of these artificially-planted trees are seen everywhere. In fact, in some parts of Mississippi (including Franklin County), the Loblolly has largely supplanted the native Longleaf pine.

Planted Loblolly stands give the appearance of a one-species scrub forest. Little other plant life can grow among them, as herbicide is applied among the trees to suppress the growth of hardwoods and other unwanted plant competitors. Some have termed these forests of cultivated Lobblolly a "biological desert", as they harbor so little other life (although a few animal and bird species do apparently like cultivated Loblolly forests).

However, one must remember that in Franklin County at least, if not elsewhere, in past decades one would have found cattle pastures, cotton, corn, or soybeans in some places where the commercial Loblolly now grows. Moreover, by the 1930's, much of the "old-growth" forest of Mississippi had already been exploited for timber.

And in discussing Loblolly cultivation, or any other type of monoculture, it is also difficult to avoid a certain preciousness. One is by implication rebuking society only for developing the resources that it seems we could not do without. Still, even an amateur's familiarity with the swamps, natural lakes, and forests that used to exist in Mississippi is enough to marvel at the elegant interdependence of life that once prevailed in them. A complex world existed and maintained its own balance, independent of humans.

One guesses that the natural world of Mississippi before the arrival of white settlers was brutal, inhospitable. Human beings* were seemingly its least important element: their greatest virtue (as regards the natural world) was their relatively small number and lack of technical ability and inclination to alter the land.

It is odd to think that the biological and cultural richness of the cypress swamps, lowland hardwood forests, and other largely vanished ecosystems of the South has gone mostly unmissed. They were only a kind of curiosity, without the clear human purpose of the Loblolly pine.

*the Choctaw and Chickasaw