Longleaf pine (Pinus palustris): what the agencies record

This page reports what US federal publications say about one tree. It does not identify trees from descriptions or photos and does not say what should be done with any tree. The family overview, tree species in the agency records, explains the sources and holds the comparison table.

At a glance

Item	What the source records
Scientific name	Pinus palustris Mill., pine family
Other names	Longstraw, yellow, southern yellow, swamp, hard or heart, pitch and Georgia pine (Silvics)
Native status, USDA PLANTS	Native in the lower 48 states
Former extent, Silvics	Longleaf pine forest may once have covered as much as 24 million ha (60 million acres); by 1985 less than 1.6 million ha (4 million acres) remained
Green weight of the wood, NRS-38	55 lb per cubic foot, without bark

Native range

The Silvics of North America handbook (Agriculture Handbook 654, volume 1, 1990) describes longleaf pine as a premier timber and naval stores tree that in presettlement times grew in extensive pure stands across the Atlantic and Gulf Coastal Plains. It gives the natural range as most of the Atlantic and Gulf Coastal Plains from southeastern Virginia to eastern Texas and south through the northern two-thirds of peninsular Florida, with the species also growing in the Piedmont, the Ridge and Valley and the Mountain provinces of Alabama and northwest Georgia. The climate it lists is warm and wet, with annual mean temperatures of 16 to 23 degrees Celsius (60 to 74 degrees Fahrenheit) and annual precipitation of 1,090 to 1,750 mm (43 to 69 in).

Growth and form

Silvics calls longleaf a high quality timber tree suited to poles, piling, posts, sawlogs, plywood, pulpwood and naval stores, says it naturally prunes itself well, and says most stems are well formed, straight and largely free of branches. It adds that the species almost always has higher stemwood specific gravity than loblolly or slash pine. The handbook describes a grass stage in which seedlings put on little height growth, calls the length of that stage the critical element in stand growth, and says that once height growth has begun the tree can grow as well as the other major southern pines and often exceeds them. Intense exploitation since colonial times and a lack of planned regeneration are named as reasons for the decline of the longleaf forests.

Roots

The handbook says longleaf pine develops a massive taproot that in mature trees may extend 2.4 to 3.7 m (8 to 12 ft) or more, and that a hardpan close to the surface, by stopping the taproot, reduces windfirmness. The lateral roots are extensive, with most within 0.3 m (1 ft) and nearly all within 0.6 m (2 ft) of the surface.

Special uses

Silvics says even old lightered stumps, with resin-soaked heartwood, are pulled and distilled for chemicals, that fresh needle litter is baled and sold as pine straw mulch, and that regularly burned longleaf forest has a parklike look with a grass and forb understory that is habitat for quail and forage for cattle and deer. It names mature longleaf stands as the most desirable habitat of the red-cockaded woodpecker.

Wood

The Wood Handbook (FPL-GTR-282, 2021) groups longleaf with shortleaf, loblolly and slash pine as the four major Southern Pine species and gives the longleaf range as eastern North Carolina south into Florida and west into eastern Texas. It says the grading standards classify lumber from longleaf and slash pine as longleaf pine if it meets the growth-ring and latewood requirements, and that a density rule applies to structural timbers. The denser, higher strength southern pines are listed for stringers in factories, warehouses, bridges, trestles and docks, roof trusses, beams, posts, joists and piles, and lower density lumber for interior woodwork, sheathing, subflooring, boxes, pallets and crates, with treated Southern Pine used for crossties, piles, poles, mine timbers and exterior decking. The handbook also states that logging and land-use change have affected the southern pines, most severely Pinus palustris, which it says the IUCN classifies as endangered.

Wood Handbook Table 5-3b	Specific gravity	Modulus of rupture (lbf per square inch)	Side hardness (lbf)
Green	0.54	8,500	590
At 12% moisture content	0.59	14,500	870

The Wood Handbook states that specific gravity is based on oven-dry weight and the volume when green or at 12% moisture content. The green weight of the wood without bark is in the NRS-38 table, the same figure used in the log weight calculator.

Pests, diseases and damage the handbook names

Silvics (1990) says longleaf is less susceptible to most damaging agents than the other southern pines, strongly resistant to fire except as a small seedling, and resistant to most pathogens. It names these agents by the names it used.

Brown-spot needle blight. The major disease, which the handbook says causes serious damage only to grass-stage seedlings.
Other diseases. Pitch canker, annosus root rot in thinned plantations, cone rust near the coast, and dry face of turpentined trees. Fusiform rust is called rarely a problem for longleaf.
Insects. The southern pine beetle, which the handbook says does not seem to afflict the species severely, covered in the southern pine beetle page; the black turpentine beetle, which can be a problem on trees injured by turpentining, logging or fire; Ips bark beetles after lightning; and the pales weevil on grass-stage seedlings.
Weather and mortality. It calls lightning, often followed by bark beetle infestation, perhaps the greatest single cause of death in pole and sawlog-size stands, says ice storms can damage longleaf but less than slash pine, and gives an average annual mortality of 1 tree per hectare (0.4 per acre) in mature stands.
Animals. Hogs, heavy livestock grazing, pocket gophers, cottontails, ants and seed-eating birds, mice and squirrels.

The guide on reporting a pest in the United States and the Canada reporting page give the offices that take sightings of regulated pests. Who may apply pesticides is in pesticide licences by country.