Male tree producing a few female cones (inset) 		  
Torreya taxifolia
in Louisiana

Caroline Dormon Nature Preserve

Site visit by Torreya Guardians
November 2018

(and continuing documentation)

SEE ALSO 2018 establishment of a NEW EX-SITU SAFEGUARDING GROVE at AVERY ISLAND of coastal Louisiana (using nursery stock genetics from Florida).

The Caroline Dormon Nature Preserve is 120 acres, at the northern tip of Natchitoches Parish, between Reidheimer and Saline on hilly Highway 9 (20 miles north of U.S. 71 and 35 miles south of Interstate 20). Latitude / Longitude 32.1312,-92.981215 • Address: 216 Caroline Dormon Road, Saline, Bienville Parish, LA. (318) 576-3379 • [email protected] • Main webpage: http://www.briarwoodnp.org/. Also here.

This is one of only 4 sites where Torreya Guardians have documented full naturalization.
____________________

Importance of designating DORMON PRESERVE as an "Experimental Population"
1. This is only our fourth example of a specimen "naturalizing" (establishing seedlings) into its surrounds in a site remote from the historical native range in Florida. The other three sites are at Biltmore Gardens (Asheville, NC), Harbison House (Highlands, NC) , and Kennedy House (Clinton, NC).

2. Documentation of serial and sudden deaths of the 2 upland mature trees imply acidification of soils, combined with drought stress, as the likely cause of death. This is an important finding because the combination of yellowing from the tips, along with the canker-free branch stems, rules out Fusarium torreyae as the cause.

3. Confirmed example of a Torreya taxifolia that was male in its youth, but then also began to grow a few female cones that became viable seeds.

4. Torreya has a remarkable capacity to grow a low branch entirely along the ground, and with extensive sub-branching, to obtain sunlight far beyond the tree's own shadow. Only 2 other sites have been documented by Torreya Guardians with this adaptation: Biltmore Gardens and Harbison House — both in western North Carolina. But here is the most magnificent example of a long and reticulating ground branch. Not only does the branch reach outwards some 30 feet from the trunk, but there is extensive sub-branching that entirely fills a vast area with lush torreya leaves. (In some places, the leaves are intermixed with the fronds of Christmas fern.)

5. The one surviving, seed-producing tree is likely a distinct genotype, and thus important for us to duplicate and establish elsewhere by cutting and rooting its branchlets.

6. It will be important to introduce torreya seeds or seedlings from other sites in order to ensure that (a) nearby pollen is available, and (b) continuing seed production is both magnified and genetically strengthened (rather than selfed or inbred).

7. As with two other southern and very rural forested sites (Shoal Sanctuary in NW Florida and Ocoee watershed east of Chattanooga TN), the strong presence of predators, combined with adequate hunting of deer, may be the reason for the unusual absence of damaging HERBIVORY on the offspring young torreyas. See photos below.

 

Trail camera photos by Travis Brossette at Caroline Dormon Preserve

Advance to these topical sections

• 2018 Site Visit PHOTO-ESSAY of the 3 mature Dormon torreyas (with photo updates)
Upland Tree #1      Upland Tree #2      Valley Slope Tree #3
• 2018 Natural-born SEEDLINGS

• New discoveries of squirrel-dispersed seedlings

• 2025 New crop of SEEDS developing

• VIDEOS

• Results of Dormon SEED GERMINATION experiment in Tennessee (by Clint Bancroft)

• Background on Caroline Dormon and the preserve

• Symbolic Importance of Torreya in Louisiana

• Archive of Initial Communications

• Ongoing News of the Dormon Preserve

Site Visit Photo-Essay by Connie Barlow (November 2018 with later year photo updates)

   LEFT: Clint Bancroft, Rick Johnson, Connie Barlow, and David Johnson at Caroline Dormon Nature Preserve, 15 November 2018.

The two Torreya Guardians, Clint Bancroft and Connie Barlow (along with Connie's husband, Michael Dowd) were guided by the preserve stewards: Rick Johnson and his son David.

Both Johnsons grew up on their neighboring family property. Rick remembers childhood walks through the forest under the tutelage of Miss Caroline Dormon, whose botanical skills and advocacy for native plants and national forests are legendary in the area. (See background section below; Dormon died in 1971.)

Three generations of Johnsons have been the curators and stewards of the preserve, beginning with Rick's father, Richard.

__________

THE SITE VISIT: Our goal was to document and interpret 3 mature specimens of Florida Torreya growing in the wild forest of the preserve. Caroline Dorman had planted them circa 1950. Her archives at Northwestern State University contain a letter (included below) that mentions these trees as having derived from a collecting trip she made to Florida: "Today, years later, I have only three surviving."
    During our visit we witnessed that the smallest one (Tree #2) had died suddenly, following a recent severe drought. The other two torreyas looked lush and healthy. However, as reported below, Tree #2 was dead by 2024.

ABOVE: Several of the large-stem trees of different species: Left is American Osmanthus and Sweetbay. Right is an old White Oak.

• RETURN TO TABLE OF TOPICS.

Torreya Tree 1
alive in 2018; died in 2023
(photos November 2018)

All 3 trees are standard tree form — a single trunk, rather than the multi-stem, shrubby form of a torreya when started from a rooted branchlet instead of a seed. Tree #1 had just 2 small basals. While some of the branches drooped near to the ground, no branches ran along the ground surface (in contrast to Tree #3).

Both Tree #1 and #2 are in UPLAND locations and thus extremely vulnerable to drought. In the photo above left, notice the black watering hose in front of the trunk. And notice the absence of the plant that Torreya Guardians has come to regard as the ideal indicator species. If the evergreen Christmas fern is missing, the microclimate may experience droughts too strong for torreya to survive. (Christmas ferns are plentiful at Tree #3.)

ABOVE LEFT: Midway up the trunk, the leaves are dense and lush.

ABOVE RIGHT: The base of a large pine is visible at right. A recent treefall of a lightning-struck Red Oak is in the background.

   ABOVE: View upward; the telephoto examination of the top shows two apical leaders, both with healthy leaf structure. Based on our experience elsewhere, this is an unusual occurrence. Instead, when a torreya's apical leader is damaged, then it is customary for the tree to maintain all the branches but to send upward one or more basal sprouts to ultimately reach its maximal height. Even so, the pines already overtower the torreya on both sides.

RIGHT and BELOW: This basal sprout is very unusual in that it is leaning and has 2 apical leaders, emerging from where the initial leader had browned out. Clint Bancroft suggests (in the video) that the initial basal, vertical stem had lost its leader top, so this new sprout began as a right-side replacement.

TO DO: The apical top of the now-dead tree needs to be examined with binoculars (or on the ground after it falls). It is important to confirm whether the two top apicals both emanate from the main stem from the same spot (perhaps after the leader died) or from different locations.

• SEPTEMBER 2024 UPDATE FROM BAYLI Q. BROSSETTE, Curator of Briarwood Nature Preserve

Last summer we experienced a horrific drought — no rain for 55 days. Just before this drought began, one Torreya near the Sparta Road was showing signs of stress. The leaves started turning yellow, then brown, and it died pretty rapidly.

The year after you were here, a tornado had exposed it to full sunlight. Oddly, quite a few trees have died in that spot: all the dogwoods, sassafras, white oaks, and a beech. (Not sure what's going on there.) There is a small torreya just near it, about 5 foot tall — doing super!

• RETURN TO TABLE OF TOPICS.

Torreya Tree 2
dead prior to the 2018 visit
(photos November 2018)

ABOVE: White arrow points to Tree #1 in the distance. The yellow circle on Torreya #2 highlights a section of trunk with the greatest density of sapsucker holes. Right is a close-up of that section, showing some fungal development within several holes. Tree #1 also had sapsucker holes, but not as dense, and the tree was still very healthy in 2018 (but then it, too, died in 2023 after a 55-day drought).

• January 2020 update on SAPSUCKER HOLES: Paul Camire (torreya planter in Michigan) discovered online a 1911 document titled "Woodpeckers in Relation to Trees and Wood Products". Page 22 of the Taxaceae (Yew Family) section reported that Florida Yew, Florida Torreya, and California Torreya "are known to be attacked by sapsuckers. These trees are little used for ornament, and as yet we have no evidence that sapsucker attacks have weakened of killed any of them."

• Video (30a) footage taken during the visit includes discussion of what the cause of DEATH might have been.

To begin the assessment: Even though all 3 now-mature torreyas were planted at the same time, the trunk diameter of Tree #2 is much smaller than Tree #1 and even more so than Tree #3. This indicates a less favorable habitat. The obvious habitat difference is that Tree #2 is surrounded closely by PINES (watch the video); hence much shadier through the winter. More threatening is that pines make the soil more acidic. Our experience with the 4 upland torreyas planted at Shoal Sanctuary, Florida is that yellowing from the branch tips occurred periodically but was always reversed when lime was applied at the base. (Those upland trees were on automatic irrigation.)

All three Torreyas experienced some severe drought just before Hurricane Harvey hit August 2017. In the video, Rick Johnson talks about how he installed the irrigation hose (pumped from a pond) during that time. But, by then, Tree #2 had already begun to "yellow out." David Johnson says that the "golden yellowing" of the leaves started at the branch tips. And Connie reports that no cankers are visible on the stems. This suggests that the cause of death would not be a latent fungus, Fusarium torreyae, which is regarded as the main proximate cause of death in torreya's native range.

Given all the above, the most likely scenario is that the SOIL BECAME TOO ACIDIC around the already dought-weakened Tree #2.

The yellow rectangle (above) marks an upward view of the main stem of the dead Torreya. Its smaller stature is easy to grasp with David Johnson standing nearby.

• RETURN TO TABLE OF TOPICS.

Torreya Tree 3
still thriving and very big
(photos November 2018)

Michael Dowd (who died in 2023) with Tree #3, while Rick Johnson scans for more seeds (5 was the sum total he had spied during the summer). Right: The pole on this fruit-picking tool is just long enough to reach the highest seed.

VIDEO 3b is entirely about Tree #3 and its nearby offspring.

David Johnson and Clint Bancroft examine two of the seeds. A total of 3 were collected this day. Clint was grateful to take the seeds home to expand the genetic diversity of his young torreya plantings in Tennessee. (Rick had harvested a low-hanging seed two weeks earlier and sent it to Torreya Guardian Jack Johnston.) The sarcotesta was easy to remove from this ripe seed.

• Clint reported in July 2020 that one of the 3 seeds germinated (and he continues to nurture the seedling).

Above left is a view of Tree #3 from near the Dormon cabin upslope. Above right is a mid-section view of Tree #3. Bigleaf Magnolia stems are in the foreground. Those stems have spawned a little grove of young magnolias where the photographer is standing. Because all dozen or so torreya seedlings discovered during the past 20 years have sprouted under the parent canopy, the Johnsons regularly dig up new seedlings and move them beyond the tree's own shadow, usually to this magnolia grove. Favorable conditions include: magnolias are deciduous (so a great deal of winter sunlight) and they share the same class of mycorrhizal root symbionts as Torreya.

ABOVE LEFT: Tree #3 is the only individual to display the same subcanopy adaption as documented in the mature groves at the Biltmore Gardens (Asheville, NC) and Harbison House (Highlands, NC): a long ground-trending branch. The leafy branch in above left photo trends toward the sunlight created by the vehicle pathway. The branch is about 30 feet long. A similar-length ground-branch trends along the vehicle path emerging from the opposite side of the trunk, same height. The start of this branch is visible, extending toward photographer at the same initiation level (2-foot-height) as the fully extended branch shows.

ABOVE RIGHT: Photo above right shows the origin point of the long ground branch reaching toward the golf cart in the first photo. What is remarkable is how thin both of those branches are where they emerge from the trunk — and yet decades of leafy growth are sustained by them. (Rick Johnson mentions in the video 3b that those ground-sprawling branches have been here as long as he can remember — and he grew up here!) Also, in the photo, notice several basal sprouts; the tallest is 6 foot high.

Photos above and below show details of the ground-lying branch. Notice how it mingles well among the Christmas ferns. In rare spots along the branch's many divaricating subbranches, one can spot an exploratory vertical growth (but upward growth does not continue). Overall, it is remarkable how much of the ground is covered with leafy branches — all issuing from that one low branch from the trunk of Tree #3. It appears (though is not confirmed) that the ground-lying branch does not root where it subtends the soil layer. Connie devotes more than 10 minutes of detailed exploration of the ground branches in video 3b.

Above: Curator of the Dormon Preserve, new in 2022, is Bayli Q. Brossette, with Tree #3 (photos by Bret Bates, September 2024). Visit Bayli's 2024 essay on her long family heritage in the area.

• RETURN TO TABLE OF TOPICS.

Natural-born SEEDLINGS

ABOVE: During the November 2018 visit, this was the only Torreya seedling in the upland habitat. It is about 30 feet closer to the road than the dead Tree #2. In video (30a), David Johnson tells the story about how, about 10 years earlier, his parents (aged 90 and 85 then in 2018) had dug this one up from where it was naturally sprouting under its mother tree (Tree #3), and then planted it here.

As of September 2024, Bayli Q. Brossette reports that it is still doing well.

TO DO: Torreya depends on its taproot, and so a seedling as tall as it must be in 2025 is impossible to transplant successfully. So this can become an important EXPERIMENT: Watch its leaf color, and if it begins to yellow, apply agricultural lime.

Natural-born SEEDLINGS near Tree #3
(photos November 2018)

In the second video from 2018 (Episode 30b), Rick Johnson explains that before any seeds were noticed on the tree, his father was astonished to see a seedling about 20 feet away from the base of Tree #3. That was sometime around the turn of the century.

Since then, the maximum number of seeds counted on the tree was 14 in about 2014. (2018 had just 4 seeds.) Even so, a total of 7 seedlings are marked by flags, with 5 of the 7 having been transplanted to about 30 or 40 feet away.

ABOVE LEFT: Rick Johnson spotted this seedling about 5 years earlier and flagged it. In the video, a close-up shows that its growth was arrested by injury (herbivory?) to the apical, and so now there are 2 equal size leaders arising from the top and slightly angled outward. The seedling is well camouflaged by the ground-running parent branch.

ABOVE RIGHT: This seedling was relocated into the young Bigleaf Magnolia grove just 30 or 40 feet from the parent Tree #3.

ABOVE: Another of the relocated seedlings. A fallen leaf of the deciduous magnolia is in the foreground.

New discoveries of squirrel-dispersed seedlings

   • SEPTEMBER 2024 UPDATE by BAYLI Q. BROSSETTE, Curator of Briarwood
The big torreya by Log Cabin is thriving, and we found a new seedling a few weeks ago. PHOTO LEFT. It is about 3 inches tall.

I also discovered one much further into the woods below the log cabin, about 3 foot tall but 5 foot wide. (I will have to get a photo for you.) It's about 15 yards away.

The other offspring around Log Cabin Torreya seem to be doing wonderfully — although they have not grown much height since I have been here.

SEE BELOW FOR MARCH 2025 PHOTOS of the distant seedling.

A SQUIRREL-DISPERSED SEEDLING from Tree #3
(photos March 2025 by Bayl Brosette)

Here are photos of the seedling that Bayli Brosette discovered about 15 yards away from the mother tree — which means it was definitely carried and buried there by a squirrel.

ABOVE LEFT: March 2025 photos. Inside yellow circle is the torreya seedling. White arrow points to the evergreen American Holly, which is shading the seedling.

ABOVE RIGHT: This top-down view obscures how much this seedling is leaning away from the shade of the holly.

ABOVE LEFT: The torreya has probably been leaning away from the holly its entire life.

ABOVE RIGHT: Five arrested-growth basals arising from the original stem. But notice the vigor from the basal farthest to the left. Connie Barlow, editor, wonders if the recent tornado might have opened up some canopy above, thus encouraging the basal to grow directly skyward and thereby become the new main stem. Looking at the age of the leaning stem, one might guess this seedling is 20 years or older. Next time, the squirrel should choose a site with a deciduous canopy, like under the nearby white oak, which is where the Torreya Guardians group always recommends within-forest plantings.

ABOVE LEFT & MIDDLE: More views of the torreya with the evergreen holly leaves above.

ABOVE RIGHT: Camera rotates to the left to view upslope to Caroline Dormon's LOG CABIN.

2025 New crop of SEEDS developing

• May 2025 / Bayli Brosette and Connie Barlow / Seeds on Louisiana torreya tree are already full-size.
   On May 23, Bayli Brosette (curator of the Caroline Dormon Preserve in LOUISIANA), sent this photo of full-size torreya seeds. She wrote:

"The Torreya near log cabin is full of fruit. I counted 30 on just the lower branches near trail from the golf cart."

The torreya tree (center photo, Nov 2018 by Connie Barlow) was planted in the early 1950s by Caroline Dormon.

The seeds are full-size — but far from fully developed inside. The experience of Torreya Guardians is that if a seed is harvested before October, it will have an unhardened shell beneath the fleshy covering. The seeds need to turn yellow or orange with flesh easily peeling off.

• RETURN TO TABLE OF TOPICS.

SITE Visit VIDEOS
(15 November 2018)

   30a: Florida Torreya in Louisiana (Pt 1) - Mature Grove with Seedlings

Site visit to Caroline Dormon Nature Preserve. Of the four long-ago horticultural plantings outside of Florida that produce seeds that have germinated into seedlings nearby (with no human help), this mature grove of Florida Torreya in Louisiana is the first one in which knowledgeable local guides could provide the complete oral history and answer questions posed by Torreya Guardians. This is thus a superb example of why "natural history" observations and inquiry may be so important for learning ideal habitat preferences and best practices for siting EXPERIMENTAL POPULATIONS.

30 minutes - filmed November 15, 2018

   30b: Florida Torreya in Louisiana (Pt 2) - Mature Grove with Seedlings

This last half of the video set covers the largest of the three mature trees — the only one that is producing any seeds. Nearby seedlings naturally established are featured, as is the 30-foot-long twin ground-trending branches that achieve photosynthesis by way of horizontal extension, well beyond what the 50-60 foot high canopy can provide.

40 minutes - filmed November 15, 2018

   39: "Where NOT to plant the endangered Florida Torreya"

Photos and videos from 2007 through 2025 are aggregated here tree by tree to offer a natural history and oral history opportunity to understand several factors that make flat upland plantings in the southern-most states lethal for torreya, absent irrigation and occasional application of agricultural lime.

This contrasts with the ongoing success of downslope and ravine plantings at the two nature preserves featured here: Shoal Sanctuary in the western Florida panhandle and Caroline Dormon Nature Preserve in northern Louisiana.

CONCLUSIONS by Connie Barlow and advocacy for: (1) officially designating both preserves as "experimental populations" and (2) having seeds donated from the 2 ex situ plantings of wild genetics in northern Georgia for planting in the ravines and other downslopes of both preserves.

Results of Dormon SEED GERMINATION experiment in Tennessee

  JULY 2020: Clint Bancroft, Torreya Guardian in the Ocoee watershed, southeastern-most Tennessee, reports the first germination (photo left) among the 3 seeds he received during the Torreya Guardians visit to Briarwood Preserve November 2018.

SEPTEMBER 2023: Clint reports: "The seedling (now 3 years old) is doing well, still in its pot behind an impassable fence wire barrier. This year the tree has put up a basal sprout. I plan to leave it on the parent until next fall and then collect it for rooting. My sense is that it is yet too small for collection (and rooting) this year. This, being the rarest among our collection from various seed sources, will be dealt with very cautiously."

Background on Caroline Dormon and the Preserve

CAROLINE DORMAN (1888 - 1971) was a world-renowned naturalist, author, artist, and the first woman to be hired by the U.S. Forest Service. She wrote botanical books the titles of which, taken together, tell of her interests: Wild Flowers of Louisiana (1934); Forest Trees of Louisiana (1941); Flowers Native to the Deep South (1958); and Natives Preferred (1965). Her last work, Bird Talk, published in 1967 when she was 81, is an elegy to the diminishing number and species of birds in her pine forests, victims to pesticides, clearcutting, and the sterile pine plantation system. For more biographical information:

• "Heart of the Woods" (Caroline Dormon), published by National Park Service

• "Caroline Dormon and the Gardens of Louisiana"

• "Where the Wild Things Are: Caroline Dormon and the Briarwood Nature Preserve"

• "The Woman Who Saved Louisiana�s Forests: Caroline Dormon�s Legacy" (3 minute video, 2025)

• "In the Longleaf's Shade: The wild and wondrous life of Caroline Dormon" (2025)

• "Caroline Dormon Collection" - archive of 28 publications at Northwestern State University of Louisiana.

ABOVE LEFT: Caroline Dormon planting a Florida Torreya on her property at Briarwood Preserve (photo)

ABOVE RIGHT: NPS photo of Tree #3 Torreya ca 2000. (photo).

ABOVE: Old photo of Briarwood Preserve (left) and recent photo of a trail named for Ms. Dormon in the national forest that she was instrumental in getting established in Louisiana.

ABOVE: Ms. Dorman and an illustration she painted for one of her books.

TORREYA GUARDIAN PAUL CAMIRE DISCOVERS ONLINE MS. DORMAN'S NOTES ON TORREYA ACQUISITION AND PLANTING.

   August 6 email from Paul Camire (torreya planter in Michigan):

I was able to get a copy of Caroline Dormon's paper on Torreya.

Labeled as 765 on the Northwestern State University archive site of her papers.

It doesn't give an exact year, but it occurred after 1938 and before this paper was sent in 1966.

The most exciting thing is that the largest tree/trees on the preserve are rooted cuttings!

[CORRECTION: In the 2018 posted video on this site, participant discussion reveals that the 3 trees were very likely dug as young seedlings in Florida, confirming what Torreya Guardians already knew: rooted cuttings cannot grow into a tree form.]

The way she describes the roots as "brittle icicles" is golden!

She was a true conservationist and went to a local farmer to get cuttings from trees on his property.

The farmer's land was near Aspalaga. That is the town where Croom discovered Torreya, but the town died out. So the land became part of Torreya State Park. (I believe that is the town she is referring to when she says "Appalachicola".)

BELOW: Caroline Dorman with her favorite tree: "Grandpappy" (Longleaf Pine), and Connie Barlow in same pose with same tree, 2018.

  
CAROLINE DORMON visited JUNALUSKA

Corneille Bryan Native Garden in Lake Junaluska
was the first planting done by Torreya Guardians.

Photo left is undated image of an article; no source.

Text below.

Note: The author, ELIZABETH LAWRENCE, was born in 1904. As presented on the website of Elizabeth Lawrence House and Garden, this is how her biography begins:

Elizabeth Lawrence (1904-1985) is an internationally known garden writer. She is regarded as one of three preeminent figures in the horticultural history of the Southeast, sharing this short list with Thomas Jefferson and J.C. Raulston. She is also listed among the top twenty-five gardeners of all time. The work she did while designing, writing and gardening at her home in Charlotte, North Carolina, contributed greatly to that status.

A sample of Elizabeth Lawrence's other writings, published 11 August 1957 in the Charlotte Observers:

"This is the gate of my garden. I invite you to enter in; not only into my garden, but into the world of gardens — a world as old as the history of man, and as new as the latest contribution of science; a world of mystery, adventure and romance; a world of poetry and philosophy; a world of beauty; and a world of work."

Symbolic Importance of Torreya in Louisiana

Tunica Hills (east of the Mississippi) was the westernmost of the 3 glacial refuges (along major rivers that drained the southern Appalachian Mountains) that sheltered temperate plants of the eastern USA. Tunica Hills is where cones of the now-extinct Critchfield spruce were discovered in the 20th Century. The Apalachicola River (famous for Torreya taxifolia) and the Altamaha River (famous for Franklinia alatamaha) are the other two. Even today, folks who are accustomed to the rich hardwood mesophytic forests of the southern Appalachians will see familiar trees and understory plants in all three reserves. Notably, all three peak-glacial refuges are centered on the wind-blown hills of glacial silt alongside rivers that would have easily swept floating seeds from the Appalachian Mountains to warmer climes. The silt erodes into steep ravines that enabled S. Appalachian plants to hunker down in the ravine bottoms as the Holocene climate warmed.

   

Click images below to access the full webpages of why it is exciting for those of us working with the Pleistocene relict species, Torreya taxifolia, to locate planted trees in Louisiana — only 170 miles northwest of the Tunica Hills of Louisiana.

Note: Hazel Delcourt's 1974 paper, "Primeval magnolia-holly-beech climax in Louisiana," is cited in the report imaged below left. Delcourt's 2002 book, Forests in Peril, is reviewed in the same issue of Wild Earth magazine that published Barlow and Martin's advocacy piece, "Bring Torreya taxifolia North — Now".

 

Archive of Initial Communications

13 JUNE 2018, Garrie Landry wrote to Connie Barlow:

There is a very large old specimen of Torreya taxifolia growing at Briarwood Nature Preserve in north central Louisiana. I first saw the tree in the mid 1970s when I was an undergraduate student. At that time I learned it was a male tree. Several years ago I visited the preserve and spent a day with the caretakers who told me that in the last 10 to 15 years this tree began producing female cones as well and ultimately viable seeds. I was shown a number of well-established volunteer seedlings growing near the parent plant. Garrie Landry is Herbarium Curator, University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

UPDATE: GARRIE LANDRY HAS SINCE MOVED TO AVERY ISLAND as botany staff. Avery Island is a salt dome best known as the source of Tabasco sauce — strikingly high enough to be free of sea-level rise concerns at the coast of Louisiana. Landry, who alerted Torreya Guardians to the Briarwood torreyas, of course planted some Florida Torreyas on Avery Island, purchased in Tallahassee. See how big his Torreya plantings are at the Jungle Gardens site on Avery Island, as shown in this 31 October 2018 blog entry (scroll down to the date). You can see a photo of Garrie Landry on a visit he made in 2018 to the famous old Florida torreya in Madison, FL.

10 JULY 2018, Rick Johnson wrote to Connie Barlow:
I would love to show you the two mature trees that we have here on the property. One is a seed bearing male which has four seeds on it this year. In addition, I would like to get your input on how to best encourage our seedlings to grow; most are about a foot tall and have been that way for years. Rick Johnson is Curator of the Caroline Dormon Nature Preserve.

Ongoing News of the Dormon Preserve

 
• 11 MAY 2019 UPDATE FROM BRIARWOOD PRESERVE FACEBOOK PAGE:

"Finally able to get to a wifi signal and start to post and bring everyone up to date. Many of you may not know, but Briarwood was hit by an EF 1 tornado this past Wednesday around 5:15. Tremendous damage has been done to the preserve with most of the trees from the main gate to the visitor center destroyed. The blessing is that no one was hurt at all.

The heavy work has been done; the roads are open into the property. We now need volunteers with saws, clippers, hands and gloves to begin the process of the fine work, removing limbs, trees and other debris from the plants, the log house, trails etc.

If you can help please message me here on Face Book or email me at [email protected]. The power lines and phone lines are down into the preserve with no restoration date or time available.

Rick Johnson, Curator

News Station Tornado Report: Estimated peak wind: 105 mph. Path length: 3.2 miles. Path width: 250 yards. Started: 5:15 p.m. four miles south of Saline. Ended: 5:22 p.m. two miles south of Saline Summary: The tornado touched down in the Kisatchie National Forest just before crossing Government Rd. There it snapped and uprooted several trees. The tornado continued on to damage trees on Calvin Tyler Road and then crossed Briarwood-Preserve Road before lifting.

 
• 1 AUGUST 2019 RICK JOHNSON REPORTS SEED-PRODUCING TORREYA SURVIVED TORNADO

 

SEE ALSO 2018 establishment of a NEW EX-SITU SAFEGUARDING GROVE at AVERY ISLAND of coastal Louisiana (using nursery stock genetics from Florida).


https:// http://TorreyaGuardians.org

Contact Connie Barlow   OR     Contact Fred Bess

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