Witness Trees at Bennett Place

This past winter, there was some bad news and some good news about the old post oaks (Quercus stellata) scattered through the thirty acres of woodland at Bennett Place. The bad news was that one of the trees was accidentally cut down during some harvesting of firewood. The good news is that we were able to get a local tree expert to count the rings.

Multiple counts showed the lost post oak to have been at least 146 years old. (The marker at the middle of the cross-section says "1864".) Such trees, termed "witness trees" because they were alive at the time of the historic Civil War surrender, are of great historic and ecological value, and quite a few still remain in the woods.

The tree rings from recent decades were very close together, reflecting the slowing of growth as faster growing weedy tree species have increasingly competed with the post oaks for sunlight and water. The ascension of other tree species could be interpreted as natural succession in the forest, but what is more likely is that the historic natural plant community was a "fire climax" forest, in which tree species whose thick bark allowed them to survive periodic natural or Indian-set fires would have remained dominant. The leaves of oaks and pines are very resistant to decomposition, and essentially act as a persistent fuel source ready to fuel a fire as it moves across the woodland floor. The spacing and age of the post oaks and shortleaf pines suggests that they were part of a savanna landscape of scattered trees and rich herbaceous understory sustained by periodic fire.

Since fire has been excluded from the landscape, the only way to restore and sustain the historically authentic landscape of post oaks, shortleaf pine and understory of low-bush blueberries, wildflowers and grasses would be by management to discourage the weedy tree species that would not have survived the fires. It's not clear how much longer the witness trees will survive without management, since some have already died.

To help with this effort, contact me at the email address shown in "show my complete profile" on the right of this page.