State park officer explains old growth forest

Added: 2026-05-17

[00:00:00]How do you know this is an old growth forest? And I'm like, just look at the canopy. We have these magnificent live oaks and magnolias, these insanely tall sable palms. But like, what I like to bring up with that is forest succession.

[00:00:14]Certain plants pop up first when trees fall down. So you get things like your palmettos, your little saw palms and things like that. You get your shrubs and your grasses. But another big one are going to be your pines. And predominantly we got slash pines out here. And those guys, they throw down a taproot and then they just shoot up for the sky. And those slash pines, which we predominantly have out here, they live for about 150 to 200 years. And that's what they do. They shoot up out of the ground and they'll just be up in that canopy just taking it over. And while they're doing that, these live oaks and magnolias are kind of creeping up underneath while they're living out their life. And then at that 200-year mark, 150, all of a sudden those pines will kind of fall over. And that whole time the oaks have been shading out that understory. And there's no There's not really any more pines that are going to pop up. So to get this oak dominant canopy where the pines have died off like that, you're looking at at least 200 years, if not 300 years or more there.