By James Schultz

It is often the forester’s worst fear: the wild, uncontrolled spread of fire. One spark, one ember growing on dry-as-dust tinder, and a massive conflagration can begin. Wildlife may die, thousands of acres of timber can be reduced to smoking ruin, and nearby homes might be destroyed. Nothing good can come of such catastrophe, says the common wisdom.

Where complex ecosystems are concerned, common wisdom is not the most accurate guide. Lytton John Musselman, who holds an endowed professorship in botany at Old Dominion and who manages the Blackwater Ecologic Preserve in nearby Isle of Wight County, says that for one species of tree, fire is the very key to its survival. Without fire, the longleaf pine cannot adequately reproduce, nor can its descendants be sustained.

“The longleaf are wonderful, marvelously adapted to their environment,” Musselman explains. “If they were simply [botanical] oddities, the fire adaptation would be no big deal. But in this ecological and historical context, the longleaf is a tree that towers over Tidewater Virginia. Really, in a literal sense, the longleaf launched this area into history.”

Musselman says that when Europeans first arrived, they were able to wander several thousand acres of park-like longleaf forests in southeastern Virginia. To shipbuilders’ delight, the tall trees with long boles (a bole is the distance from the ground to the first branch) made excellent masts for sailing ships. Also, the amount of resin within the longleaf was unusually high, so waterproofing tars could be effectively and inexpensively derived from the tree’s sap. The longleaf quickly became the mainstay of the British maritime industry in North America, with on-site production of pitch and tar in low, bowl-shaped depressions 20 or 30 feet in diameter, remnants of which remain visible today.

Abundance, however, is no guarantee of longevity. According to Musselman, the trees’ gradual decline began shortly after European settlement and was accelerated by several factors. First came the arrival of feral hogs, introduced by settlers arriving at Jamestown in 1607. As their numbers grew, so did the damage hogs inflicted on longleaf seedlings, consuming them as a mainstay of their diet. Human-initiated cultivation wasn’t just limited to naval stores; removal of mature longleaf for lumber throughout the colonial period intensified loss. And because fire was a mortal danger in the European agricultural tradition, its suppression only damaged longleaf reproduction further. By the 1840s, vast stands of longleaf pine had been reduced to scattered remnants, with burned-out or sawed stumps to remind the occasional wanderer or scientist of their original botanical glory.

A Burning Desire

Only within the last 20 years have ecologists begun to recognize the environmental advantages of fire as a means to revitalize woodlands by removing choking underbrush, thinning dense growth, and providing a foothold for a wide variety of plants and young trees. Nature’s strategy, Musselman says, is to use lightning to create relatively small-scale conflagrations that burn themselves out before causing catastrophic damage. In Nature, out-of-control wildfires are rare. In recent times they have increased due to human intervention and human settlement in formerly rural areas, where burning prohibitions created vast amounts of fuel stores that blaze furiously given the right conditions.

The longleaf’s unique architecture and structure permit it to survive conditions as an adult tree that other mature pines may not (although even these other species rely on fire for seed propagation). Adult longleaf develop a tough, almost asbestos-like bark that make them fire-resistant. Longleaf needles are extremely flammable, and because of their architecture and shape, direct heat up and away from the tender buds of its seedlings. Adolescent longleaf benefit from this strategy, as flame size is reduced and the intensity with which undergrowth burns is lessened, protecting maturing buds. Once the fire has burned itself out, the ground is replenished with nutrients and essential minerals.

Taking The Long View

Burning at Blackwater has led to the re-establishment of otherwise dormant plants that remain as seeds, awaiting the right conditions to bloom and grow. Among the species Musselman has seen thriving since controlled burnings began in 1985 are pixie moss, insect-trapping pitcher plants, white-fringed orchids and October flowers. More may be “banked” in the ground waiting for just the right circumstances to germinate.

Despite the documented benefits, Musselman says that managers cannot approach fires cavalierly. The natural system may seem random, even chaotic, but in fact it obeys specific rules that humans must learn. “Burning is a science. You need training and you must be certified,” he explains. “We have a master plan. The idea is to burn some part of the preserve each year. We have to have the fire or we’ll lose the rare plants that are coming back.”

Virginia sits at the longleaf’s northernmost range. In North Carolina, ever vaster longleaf woodlands existed and weren’t as completely exploited as they were over the state line. Fortunately, some old-growth longleaf held on in rural areas that are now part of the Blackwater Preserve. They form the basis for what may be a steady, if slow, comeback for the longleaf in southeastern Virginia..

The Preserve is a 300-plus acre tract and the only one of its kind in Virginia. In 1985 the Union Camp Corp. donated the area to Old Dominion. Since then, and with the backing of Union Camp, the Nature Conservancy, the Virginia Division of Forestry and the state Department of Natural Resources, the University is attempting to restore at least a portion of the region’s original abundance.

Musselman says he has no illusions. It is virtually impossible to exactly duplicate that which has been lost. But one day, perhaps, visitors will get some idea of the natural world in which natives and colonizers moved 400 years ago. As he writes:

The December day I visited the Blackwater Ecologic Preserve was drizzling and gray. Extraneous sounds were muffled by the fog and the gentle, consistent dripping. Vibrant in their understated manner, mosses were green and decidedly happy. Many were producing capsules to open when the air dried so the spores could be distributed by a breeze. Hummocks of peat mosses covered low areas in uneven mounds with varied hues of green and pink where insect-eating pitcher plants once grew ...

I wondered how the preserve appeared during the reign of Henry VIII, when mammoth longleaf pines towered above the deep sandy soil. I imagined how spectacular these woods must have been ... At least, we can still find vestiges of its former glory even here at its northern limit ...

My dream is that eventually anyone will be able to come to the preserve on a winter day and walk through a park-like savanna of longleaf interspersed with boggy areas of peat mosses and pitcher plants to realize just how much Tidewater Virginia owes to these longleaf pine forests.