Flora on Martin Farm
2023 is the first year that (nearly) all of the land has been burned. Of the 87 acres on the primary property, All was burned this year except the pasture, the back field area and a small area around the houses. So probably six acres not burned. At least half of what was burned was seeing fire for the first time in 70 or more years ! So I am kind of counting this year as year 1 in the move toward a return to Savanna.
Through my various fanboy attempts to connect myself with every longleaf event that I can, I went to a plant hike last summer over on the recovering property nearby that was lead by Bruce Sorrie. Bruce is literally the guy who wrote the book on Sandhill’s Wildflowers and is currently involved in the NC Biodiversity Project .
Later, when I spent several hours with Terry Sharpe on his properties, seeing what he had been doing to encourage the return of herbaceous groundcover species in his piedmont savannas. I had been telling Terry about my ongoing burns and how others had suggested that I might be surprised by the species that might return after fire was returned. And how that might change over time. Terry mentioned that Bruce might be willing to help document where I was starting and changes over time. Wow ! That would be awesome. I sent a message to Bruce, explaining my project and shockingly he seemed willing to help. Bruce came out in April immediately after I had finished my last burns, so of course we found a lot of black. But we were able to find some interesting plants in the wetter areas. Bruce returned the end of May and after another hike around the property, we had found many others. For a total of more than 100 species !
In hindsight, I am sure I annoyed Bruce terribly, but if I did, he didn’t show it. Whenever we would find a new plant, I would use my plant ID app, PictureThis, to take a picture and attempt an ID. So after Bruce ID’d it, my app would reaffirm his work or contest it. So “picture this”. Here I am standing with a renowned authority of Sandhill’s flora while he is surveying the plants on the land and he is humoring me while I “confirm” his identifications with a snap of my iphone. Sorry Bruce ! I will try to be better next time.
So currently we have about 134 species documented, and Bruce feels like we might find eventually 2 or 3 times that many. That seems hard to believe to me, but here I am trying to correct the expert again…..
Look for updates late summer. I hope Bruce will come back for another look in August !