The Marshall Forest Preserve is a 300-acre site with a large area of old-growth pine-hardwood forest located near the Coosa River just outside Rome. There is apparently some debate about whether it contains any true virgin forest, but it at least has been undisturbed by human activity for more than 100 years. The old growth forest covers about a quarter to a third of the 300 acres. It was designated a National Natural Landmark in 1966. We had never been there, so last Monday Leah and I went to take a look. One thing I wanted to see was longleaf pines, since I have become a fan.
This is what the forest looks like.
Leah in the distance
This and the other photos here were taken with my phone.
The part we saw was hilly and fairly open, with quite tall trees and relatively sparse undergrowth. It’s a mixed pine and hardwood forest, which is what we see on Lavender Mountain as well. But the pines in particular are significantly larger.
Leah with a loblolly pine
This is a big pine for our area. I estimated the height of a similar tree at 80 to 100 feet.
I think it’s possible to differentiate between a loblolly and a longleaf by the bark, but I can’t do it. I have to look up towards the crown to see the foliage. These pines are tall, and surrounded by hardwoods, so their crowns are not easy to see. But I was able to find one next to the path.
Me, with longleaf
I don’t look happy, but I am. This longleaf is larger than the largest one I have seen on Lavender Mountain, and I think it’s significantly taller.
This is how hard it is to see the needles on these trees.
Looking towards the top
There are a lot of oaks and hickories in the Marshall Forest, but I saw very few chestnut oaks, which is the variety that seems most common around our house. The Nature Conservancy Web site says that there are chestnut oak stands here in addition to the pine-oak and mixed hardwood stands.
I wouldn’t expect this forest to be a particularly good environment for longleaf pines to survive, since they typically do not compete well with hardwoods or our other types of pines. The Nature Conservancy site says, “It is thought that periodic ice storms (like the 1993 blizzard) and fires open the canopy for pine growth, preventing domination by a single plant community.” We didn’t see many open areas, but we did see several very large downed trees, all of which were pines. They appear to have been uprooted fairly recently, probably by one of the strong storms we had a couple of months ago.
I wasn’t sure what to expect of the Marshall Forest, and I don’t think we saw enough for me to draw any conclusions about it. The part we saw looked similar to some parts of the forest on Lavender Mountain that have not been disturbed for a relatively long period. That was not too much of a surprise since the Marshall Forest is located at the base of Mount Alto, which is the same sort of environment we have on Lavender Mountain. Mount Alto is visible from our deck as the first long ridge visible to the east. I don’t think we saw any hardwoods that were noticeably larger than the hardwoods on Lavender Mountain, but the pines were definitely larger. The only place near here that I have seen loblollies that tall is along Redmond Road, which is the boundary between Berry College and the western part of Rome. I lived on Redmond Road until I was a teenager, and I can remember the very tall pines along that road. Most of those trees were removed when Redmond Regional Hospital and some other medical offices were built.
I think one possible indicator of the level of human disturbance to a forest is the presence of poison ivy. I am (or used to be) very sensitive to poison ivy, so I look carefully when I walk in the woods. There is a lot of poison ivy around our house, mostly at the edge of open areas like the roads, but I saw only one small plant in the Marshall Forest, next to the path. So that is one difference between the forests of Lavender Mountain and the Marshall Forest.
I want to see more of the forest, so I’ll be going back. We met two men and a dog on the trail, so I think it will be safe to bring Zeke with me the next time I go. And the next time I will make sure to put a memory card in the camera.
I was never much interested in pine forests until we moved right into the middle of one. We were a little spoiled living on the California coast for so many years before we headed inland; we had a redwood in our Santa Cruz backyard. The thing that sparked my interest was finding a sugar cone pine. There are two on our property boundary. It really does take quite a bit of effort to ID the different pines, but the reward is so worth it!
Western forests can be so much more dramatic than the forests here in the East. I lived at Lake Tahoe for a while back in the ’70s, and the pines there were generally larger than even the largest pines we have around here. Even in the Tahoe Basin, which was basically deforested for mining on the eastern slopes in Nevada, the regrown forests were hugely impressive. But a redwood in your back yard? That’s pretty cool.