Sure, coastal redwoods are grand. But what do you know about eastern hemlock, bald cypress, or ponderosa pines? A tour of old-growth forests around the United States.
By Reed McManus
The term "old-growth forest" may conjure images of the Wests majestic redwoods and Douglas firs. But stop there and you deny yourself the graceful pyramid form of an eastern hemlock, the massive buttresses of a bald cypress rising from an ink-black bayou, or the park-like expanse of a ponderosa pine forest.
Old growth is found in nearly every state in the nation, ranging in size from several acres to well over 20 square miles. While biologists have no concrete definition of the term, it generally refers to forests that have suffered little or no logging or livestock grazing, and appear largely as they did prior to European colonization. Naturalness and age rather than tree size alone distinguish an ancient stand.
Yet not all trees in old-growth forests are old. These woods are mosaics, a mix of saplings, mature trees, and trees 150 years or older. (In western conifer country, for example, old-growth forests are generally considered those with at least eight trees per acre exceeding 200 years in age or 32 inches in diameter.) While 360-foot-tall California redwoods are hard to miss, the largest trees in old-growth eastern or midwestern woods might, at around 150 feet tall, be only 20 to 30 percent larger than midsize specimens nearby. What catches the eye of the forest ecologist are the common traits of many ancient groves: deep, multilayered canopies; an abundance of shade-tolerant understory plants; plentiful snags and downed trunks; and trees with heavy limbs, spiky tops, craggy silhouettes, and contorted, leaning, or spiral trunks rutted with cavities.
Besides genetics, factors that keep most eastern old growth from soaring to the skies are thin, rocky soils and frequent hurricanes, windstorms, and ice storms. The tallest tree in the eastern United States, a 207-foot white pine growing among other giants in the Cataloochee Valley of Great Smoky Mountains National Park in North Carolina, wasnt discovered until 1995and promptly lost its topmost 35 feet when Hurricane Opal tore across the South that fall, nearly losing its title in the process. (The most ancient eastern forest is also found in North Carolina: a stand of 1,700-year-old bald cypresses at the Nature Conservancys Black River Preserve. More common eastern species like red spruce live only about 400 years.)
The most significant reason that old growth is rare, of course, is that so much of it has been cut for timber. Just 500,000 acres of old-growth forest remain in all of New England and New York. In fact, more than 99 percent of eastern old-growth forests, and more than 90 percent on the West Coast, have been heavily logged. At least half of whats left in the East is still open to logging, according to the Kentucky-based Eastern Old Growth Clearinghouse.
Much more than curiosities, ancient forests are nurseries of biodiversity. Abounding with live and dead trees, decaying logs, and thick layers of moss and leaves, they provide flourishing wildlife habitat. Birds thrive in their high canopies and trunk crevices, while fish benefit from the nutrients their woody debris provides to sheltered streams. An exhaustive University of Wisconsin study of northern forests found that old-growth areas had the "highest bird densities and species richness." Even-aged, managed sites (like tree farms) were the least diverse. Biologists traced the decline in 11 species of old-growth-dependent birds in Southern Californias San Jacinto Mountains as logging continued over a 30-year period. Nature writer Robert Michael Pyle (who holds a doctorate in forestry and environmental studies) says a visitor can sense the difference immediately: "The industrial woods may be deep, they may be dark, but they are not diverse. You couldnt imagine Sasquatch lurking in such a stand; your children would not look for leprechauns behind the shamrock sorrel. It takes time, lots of it, to make such a place."
In the following pages, we highlight a few of the countrys lesser-known old-growth forests, from Massachusetts to the Carolinas, Mississippi to California. Theyre all accessible to the public; we hope youll plan a visit, crane your neck, and discover for yourself what "old growth" means.
Reed McManus is a senior editor at Sierra.
SEE A TREE
This time of year, you might prefer the southern latitudes, kayaking the everglades (January 611), where you can take in mangrove forests and bald cypresses; paddling Floridas St. Johns River, following the route of naturalist William Bartram (February 1622); or kayaking amid Suwannee River cypresses in Georgia and Florida (two trips: March 30April 4 and April 1318).
If youre more of a landlubber, you can help maintain trails in Ocala National Forest, home of the worlds largest continuous sand pine scrub forest, while enjoying hikes along the Florida
National Scenic Trail (February 23March 1), or ramble around some of the tallest and oldest trees in the eastern United States in North Carolinas Nantahala National Forest, while building and restoring scenic trails on another Club service trip (March 30April 5). Or explore the Nantahala area, while staying at the forests Tapoco Lodge (April 612).
For more information, including additional trips, go to www.sierraclub.org/outings/national, or contact Sierra Club Outings at 85 Second St., 2nd Floor, San Francisco, CA 94105; (415) 977-5522.
Up to 70 percent of the trees in the region were logged before the park was established in 1934. Poplar became lumber; chestnut and hemlock produced tannin used in tanning; oak, maple, and cherry were crafted into furniture and flooring; and red spruce was pulped into paper. The latter was also cut during World War I because its strength and light weight made it ideal for military airplanes.
But the parks steepest, most remote slopes have always protected some of its oldest trees. Just this summer, the parks forest ecologist discovered a 278-year-old pignut hickory growing on a rock outcrop. Because the thin soils there hold very little water, it was only 16 inches in diameter. Although trees were cut from surrounding areas prior to the establishment of the park, specimens like this one were so small and inaccessible they werent worth the effort required to cut them down.
SAVED BY THE SWAMP
Commercially prized for their lumber, most bald cypress forests were decimated by 1930. What remains today was either too remote or too young at the time to be sawed into planks, the best of which were often five feet wide. Swamp forests of bald cypress and tupelo grow in low-lying areas such as floodplains or abandoned river channels. Normally separated from a river, much of this swampland is flooded year-round, with the water standing up to several feet deep.
MEMORIES OF THE HEARTLAND
What wasnt torn up and developed was obliterated by years of fire suppression: In the absence of regular blazes, oak savannascharacterized by scattered trees with sparse understory and rich with grassesmust compete with colonizing native and exotic trees and shrubs. Without fire, these invading species can eventually replace the oaks. Efforts are under way to introduce prescribed fires to restore pre-European savanna conditions.
THE GREATEST NORTH WOODS
"The Porkies," as theyre known to locals, also provide some of the best recreation in the Midwest: The state maintains 16 rustic trailside cabins for public use and 90 miles of foot trails that lead to placid lakes, churning rivers, and rocky cliffs with views of the park, Lake Superior, and the Apostle Islands.
Considering that only 20 percent of western Great Lakes forests remain unfragmented, the Porcupines are a rare natural treasure. Most of the original white and red pine forests outside the boundaries of protected areas like Porcupine Mountains State Park have been logged for paper mills and replaced by younger stands of birch and aspen.
FORESTS THAT NEED FIRE
A natural ponderosa forest is open and parklike, the product of low-intensity wildfires, which burned every 2 to 12 years before European settlement. These blazes cleared the forest floor of litter and allowed for reseeding of new grasses and other understory plants. Without these periodic fires, ponderosa forests develop understory thickets of shade-tolerant species like Douglas fir.
In these crowded stands, trees become increasingly susceptible to attack by insects and pathogens, blowdowns in storms, and catastrophic crown fires as live and dead forest fuel builds up.
An example of the predicament is the forest that stretches some 120 miles from near Flagstaff, Arizona, east along the Mogollon Rim to the White Mountains region, the largest ponderosa pine forest in North America. Today it is characterized by "dog hair" thickets of young pines with a heavy accumulation of litter on the forest floor. A sizeable fire under these conditions can destroy entire stands.
SHORT AND VENERABLE
But the landscape is far from barren. Joining these trees are well-adapted blueberry, huckleberry, and sheep laurel, as well as a variety of mosses. Though a 40-foot-tall pitch pine is a giant, you can also find 100-foot-tall hemlock and yellow birch in well-protected and well-watered ravinesjust 90 miles from Manhattan. With all but 2 percent of New Yorks pitch pine barrens already lost, Minnewaska State Parks 6,000 acres are as much museum as "preserve."
A NATURAL LANDMARK
Its nearly a miracle that so much ancient forest survives today, because the trees were at the center of a late 1800s logging boom that supported a frenzy of shipbuilding and construction. But in the 1920s, the Cook Forest Association formed to save the few surviving old-growth areas on vast acreage owned by the A. Cook Sons Company, which had been logging in the region for nearly a century. The association, endorsed by then-governor Gifford Pinchot (first chief of the U.S. Forest Service), helped purchase the land from the Cooks. It was the first Pennsylvania state park acquired to preserve a natural landmark.
LOADED FOR BEAR
Another telltale sign of ancient woods is a preponderance of coarse woody debris, the dead limbs, large stems, and other material that provide rich habitat for wildlife. One study found that part of the Mohawk Forest showed accumulations of 30 tons per acre of such material, compared to 9 tons per acre in a nearby second-growth stand. The 6,450-acre forests five stands of old growth are excellent places to see large mammals: Once rare, an estimated 1,000 black bears now roam the woods of western Massachusetts. Savvy bear-watchers look for claw marks in smooth beech bark.
OLD AGAINST ALL ODDS
But Florida does offer a good variety of old growth, including bald and pond cypress forests (the states tallest tree is the Senator, a 115-foot-tall bald cypress in Spring Hammock Nature Park near the St. Johns River); scrub cypress, which was overlooked by loggers intent on felling the heftier big cypress; longleaf pine (a fire-sensitive species once found throughout the southeast coastal plain); and the mangroves that protect low-lying southern Florida and wildlife like the roseate spoonbill from the wrath of hurricanes.
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