wildlander's Favorites

LIFER!!!

It's always nice finding your targeted species for the day! I've been trying to find this species for a while too, which made it even more rewarding.

I actually didn't see it at first, I was walking away from it when I heard some loud rattling behind me a few feet off the path. When I went to go investigate (I realized by that point it wasn't a cicada and probably a rattlesnake) I saw this beauty being all defensive. Although the pics don't look like it, I was maybe 6 feet away, if not farther, when I snapped these photos. It was maybe 4- 4/2 feet long.

Hard to tell on the photo but I'm fairly sure with those long needles its P. palustris. My grandma and mom both independently verified that this photo was taken in the lower field.

I have been trying to find evidence that the ridge here was historically a mixed Post Oak-Longleaf pine savannah type ecosystem, surrounded by bottomland hardwood wetland type habitat. With the finding of more old post oaks on the ridge, and several savannah-specific and even a few species that heavily benefit from fire, I am getting more confident in this historical identification of the ecosystem. Pinus palustris may be extirpated here, or maybe I am just waiting to find that lost individual. the area this was in was converted to a loblolly stand around the mid 80s, unfortunately(you can see it still there on the map) so I doubt that this specific individual still exists.

Will make a journal post soon.