Will,
Thanks. A fascinating history. I had a feeling you could educate
us on the species.
Bob
Sent from my iPhone
On Oct 1, 2009, at 9:48 AM, Will Fell <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Slash Pine is the most common pine in natural stands in SE Georgia.
> It's range is limited to the deep south as it is very intolerant of
> ice and snow. In the early years industry tried planting Slash up in
> the piedmont of GA and into the Carolinas, but most stands were
> decimated by ice storms over the years. Now it is restricted to FLA,
> SE GA, and the immediate gulf coast of ALA and MISS. The needle length
> is intermediate (9-12 in) in length between Loblolly (7-9 in) and
> Longleaf Pine (12-18 in). In it's natural range in the deep south it
> is much preferred for sawtimber and poles as it produces tall straight
> naturally well pruned trees in natural stands. Longleaf and loblolly
> generally are knottier and don't grade out quite as well, Longleaf
> because of it's large knots and Loblolly because it doesn't naturally
> prune itself as well. In the past 30 years or so Loblolly has replaced
> Slash as the primary species planted by industry as it responds to
> fertilization better than Slash and as most plantation wood was grown
> for fiber, form and pruning were not important issues. In recent years
> the trend has reversed with many former ag fields being planted in
> slash under the CRP program in anticipated of the burgeoning straw
> market. Slash produces much superior straw than Loblolly.
>
> The Gum Turpentine business is now dead in the US, the last producer
> shutting down some 8-10 years ago. When I started as a county forester
> in Appling County GA back in the 70's I had over 300 gum producers in
> the county. Even the paper companies leased their slash stands to
> producers to work. Bugs and labor killed the business in the US. There
> is still a large gum turpentine plant in Baxley, but all of it's raw
> gum is shipped in from China. The other sources of Turpentine and
> rosin are tall oil, a byproduct of the paper industry and steam
> extraction from lightered stumps. There is only one plant still doing
> stumps and that is Hercules in Brunswick GA. They are still buying
> lightered stumps at the same price they were getting 30 years ago,
> about $5 a ton. Used to be about every town had a stump buyer and it
> was big business, now they are just about all gone. They even had dogs
> that would go in the woods and sniff them out like "drug" dogs.
>
> The gum industry started up in the mid Atlantic states with the pitch
> pine to caulk the ships, hence the name naval stores. They gathered it
> by pilling the wood, setting it afire and covering the pile with dirt.
> They would leave a drain out the bottom of the pile for the gum to run
> out and catch it in a dug hole. Later in the 19th century the industry
> moved south into the Carolinas where they discovered they got better
> yields by "boxing" the longleaf pines and distilling the gum with
> small fire stills. During the first years of the 20th century, Charles
> Herty near Savannah researched using external cups, developing the
> "Herty" cup out of clay that was suspended from the tree with a tin
> gutter directing the gum into the cup. This avoided the damage that
> "boxing" did to the pines. These clay cups evolved into glass cups and
> eventually the tin (galvanized) cups. At the end there was even some
> minor usage of plastic cups and a little reseach into tapping the tree
> with a wood bit like maples and screwing a 2 liter coke bottle into
> the hole, or suspending a plastic bag under a metal "tap". Dispite the
> inovations, the cheapness of imported gum killed and inability to get
> the labor (and bugs) killed the business.
>
> Slash Pines yielded more and better quality gum than the Longleaf so
> gum turpenting settled in the deep south during the 20th century
> leaving the longleaf forests of the Carolinas. Just about every little
> community and crossroads had a fire still during the first half of the
> 20th century. After the second world war, larger comercial operations
> sprung up slowly closing the small fire stills. You can still find the
> remains of these stills in the country sides, though the copper was
> long ago sold for scrap. There are perhaps a half a dozen left intact
> and preserved around south GA. In fact this morning's paper ran a
> story about this weekends CatFace festival in Portal GA where they
> will fire up one of the few remaining stills and run off a batch of
> rosin and turpentine. Portal bills itself as the turpentine city and
> catface is the name given to the streaked faces of the worked trees.
> The diagonal streaks added every few weeks resembled a cats wiskers.
>
> Probably more than you wanted to know....but the industry was a part
> of our culture and still fascinates.
>
>
>
> On Sep 25, 8:34 am, [email protected] wrote:
>> Larry,
>>
>> Slash pine is a cool species. But I know very little about it and
>> where it fits into the ecosystem as well as its economic uses.
>> Wasn't it an important source of turpentine? I would image our
>> buddy Will Fell could tell us a lot about the species.
>>
>> Bob
>>
>>
>>
> >
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