Piney Woods in Central Florida

[ibseeker]

I was hoping one of our experts from Florida could tell me if I correctly understood what I was recently told. I just returned from a week in Orlando....I really enjoyed the whole experience. One of my fellow students was from GRU and we hit it off pretty well. He was gracious enough to change his plans one evening and played tour guide on a trip over to Coco Beach. Along the way he explained that the piney woods we were seeing usually came about because of failed citrus groves that were killed off during a serious freeze that hit a while back. I don't recall the years that the freeze hit but it seems like it was quite a while back, maybe 20 years ago. He also said that the South Carolina pine forests were different in that they were more naturally occurring and tended to be much larger areas than the Florida ones. Since I tend to get some facts twisted around in my head, would one of you help me out here?

[Rocky_J]

I've lived in Orlando for over 40 years. The citrus freezes were in the mid 80s. Most of the residential areas where I now work used to be orange groves.

As far as pine woods, many of them were planted by large property owners for tax purposes. Even if you never harvest them, land planted with pine trees falls under some sort of tax classification that minimizes property taxes. Much cheaper than bare land.

[Lanier_Lurker]

Yep, the large citrus groves along the turnpike north of Orlando are long gone.  Got to be too cold.

I don't know how we are going to survive this DanG global warming.

[Tom]

There are many acres of planted pines in the state.  Some of the Orange groves that froze may have been replaced with Slash or Loblolly pine, but most of the plantations/forests have been around before the freeze.  

The Sparse Pines in the grazing pastures are natural longleaf.  They are not thickly populated but regularly cover hundreds, or even thousands, of acres of cattle land.   They grow in the midst of a heavy undergrowth of saw palmetto, making them difficult for anyone to harvest who hasn't the equipment to reach them.  These pines produce some of the prettiest pine lumber a man could wish.

The central part of Florida has suffered tremendously from fires set by arsonists in the last few years.  It seems, to the locals, that the growth of urbanization by commercial interests such as Disney, has released a lot of thrill seekers on the open pine lands.  Most of the fires you might hear about in the Central Florida area are set by arsonists.  The area, Palm Coast, between St. Augustine and Daytona has been the worst hit.

[ellmoe]

The Christmas freeze back in about 1983 killed alot of the Citrus groves. Other freezes before and after that drove the citrus industry further south. In order to keep an agriculture tax rate on these now empty lands, many landowner planted pines. This was mainly from Orlando/Leesburg south. Since that time alot of the pines have been cut and the land was sold into lots and replanted into snowbirds. ;D The pinelands you see north of Orlando are natural or were planted by the timber industry in Florida. North Florida is heavily invested in the pine plantation business. The land you would have seen off the "Beach Line" (Formally the "Beeline") between Orlando and Cocoa is largely a ranch own by the Morman Church. The timberland there is scattered longleaf and slash pine. I used to mange the natural resources there in my younger days and it was the cause of my sawmill career. In needed to figure out what to do with the 25,000 acres of cypress the ranch had. A sawmill seemed like a good idea.

Mark

[DanG]

I lived at Cocoa Beach back in '65-'66, and made numerous trips to Orlando.  DisneyWorld didn't exist back then, nor did the Beeline or I-95.  At that time, there was hardly any citrus being grown along there.  All you saw along S.R.50 was pine trees and palmetto.  There was plenty of citrus all around the area, but apparently that land didn't support it well.

One thing a lot of people don't understand about Florida is how far it is from Key West to the Georgia line, and how drastically different the climates are from one end of the State to the other.  If you take a U.S. map and fold it at the Ga-Fla line, it reaches into W. Virginia.

[Rocky_J]

Yup, you could easily divide Florida into 5-6 states. South Florida, west coast (centered around Tampa), central florida (Orlando), N.E. (Jacksonville) and the panhandle (Tallahassee). Different environments, different types of people, even different cultures. 

[WDH]

They are all gators, though .

[Tom]

Not all of us, WDH.  :D   Some are Crocobullgatordogs

Woof!!

[PC-Urban-Sawyer]

They are all gators, though .

Well, although I matriculated and spent my freshman year at UF, in this neighborhood there seems to be quite a few 'Noles...

[DanG]

My favorite two teams are the 'Noles and whoever is playing the Gators. ;D  I really don't dislike the Gators all that much, or hold any grudges against them, but I don't think they should be allowed to breed.

[WDH]

I knew that the 'Noles would surface.  The hurricanes have already been messing up things.