Strange totem found in woods

[GW]

I found this just above the shoreline of the pond site. I think I know what it is and I wanted to see if I could "stump" anyone here.  :D 

Woodn't you?  :D :D

It's standing deadwood which is broken off just above where the photo cuts off.

[SwampDonkey]

 : It's fun when ya know something no one else does, eh?  :

[GW]

Yes. 8)

[Dan_Shade]

is it a pine tree? or what's left of one?

[OneWithWood]

Looks like a method for collecting sap.  Is it a pitch pine or a maple?

[Jeff]

I'm not from down there so i think its fair to guess. I think its from a turpentine harvesting tree.

[GW]

I'm pretty sure it's pine for turpentine.

I'll be doing everything I can to save this beauty.

[Fla._Deadheader]

Go north from Folkston, and there's a whole plantation of 'em.  : ;D ;D :D

[GW]

I think this is the third old turpentine tree I've seen on our property, but the others don't have the sheet metal. Any guesses about the age of these stumps?

[Dodgy Loner]

When I lived in south Georgia, we had a whole forest of dead turpentine trees that looked just like that.  They were standing in a pond that was dammed ca. 1910, and still rock-solid.  The pattern on the side of the trees is called a "catface" and was created by swinging a heavy metal club against the tree to remove the bark.  Only slash and longleaf pines produced enough rosin for turpentine production.

Judging by the way the sap was collected from that tree, it appears that your tree was tapped sometime in the 1930s or 1940s.  Before 1900, trees were tapped by chopping a big hole (known as a 'box') into the bottom of the trees.  The sap flowed into the box and was collected from there.  However, this method was very harmful to the trees and often resulted in their death.  A UGA professor by the name of Charles Herty (also an early football coach) came up with the method of pitch collection that was used on your tree.  Rather than cutting a box into the trees, he developed a cup-and-gutter system for collecting the rosin.  However, up until the 1920s, most of the rosin was collected in a round clay cup.  This proved to be quite fragile, so by the 1930s they had switched to the tin pan that is present in your picture.  They continued to use these tin pans up until the 1960s, when the turpentine industry basically died in the South.  The heyday was in the 1930s and 1940s, which is why I think it is most likely that your catface is from this era.  You can tell by the methods they used that it was no earlier.

[GW]

Much obliged Dodgy.

[SwampDonkey]

Thanks for the info Dodgy, very interesting. They used to collect pitch here to, only from spruces. It was collected and used for goodness knows how long by natives for canoe making, then Voyageurs, and other early explorers working for the 'Bay', known as 'the Bay men'.

[Norm]

Very interesting post GW and thanks DL for telling about how turpentine was collected.

[DanG]

The industry isn't completely dead, it has just gotten really small.  There is a turpentine company listed in the phone book in Bainbridge.  I think I'll look them up and see what's going on. ;)

[Dodgy Loner]

My hometown, the great city of Portal, GA, is known as "The Turpentine City".  Every year, they tap some trees, fire up the turpentine still, and hold a festival in honor of this dying art.  I still have a bottle of turpentine that I bought a few years back.  You'd have to do an extensive search to find any companies that are actively producing turpentine from southern pines these days, though.  The vast majority of the turpentine we use today comes from Asia.

[tonich]

The turpentine collecting method is very similar here, including the metal sheet at the bottom, which is the final collector, hooking the collecting pot. Only pine are used for this purpose – mainly Austrian Pine (Pinus Nigra), which is very resinous. The whole procedure usually takest 2-3 decades. There is a special sequence of resin-tapping, done during in the years until trees matured, being cut at the end and then sawn. (even though it is a second grade timber).
This not being done nowadays. I suppose, we use Asian turpentine too.
I keep finding many tapped trees, when I’m out for marking.