Sandhill Longleaf
Habitat Description
Characterized as sandhill ridges of loose, porous sand that starts in southern Virginia and runs through west Georgia at about 500 to 600 feet above sea level. A few isolated sandridges exist on the Florida panhandle and peninsula. Longleaf Pine sandhills are characterized as a forest of widely spaced pine trees with a fire-stunted understory of deciduous (scrub) oaks and a sparse to continuous ground cover of bunchgrasses and herbs. Today, sandhill longleaf sites make of some of the largest acreages of remaining longleaf pine habitat (despite comprising roughly 10% of the original landscape).
Soils - Droughty, deep beds of white sands that are relatively low in fertility and result (often) in lower species diversity and usually shorter longleaf pine. In some areas sands can be 2-15 feet deep. In some areas of the Carolinas, sands can be 100 - 150 feet deep without changing.
Mammals - Sherman's fox squirrel; pocket gopher, hispid cotton rat, Eastern cottontail rabbit, grey and red fox, southern flying squirrel, yellow bat, hoary bat
Birds - bobwhite quail, ground dove; rufous-sided towhee, summer tanager, screech owl, red-tailed hawk, ground dove, bluejay, common crow, turkey vulture, mourning dove, white-breasted nuthatch, brown-headed nuthatch, brown creeper, pine warbler, eastern bluebird, loggerhead shrike, Bachman's sparrow, great crested flycatcher, angular-winged katydid
Reptiles and Amphibians - gopher tortoise, fence lizard, Carolina gopher frog, northern pine snake, southern hognose snake, eastern hognose snake, short-tailed snake, peninsula crowned snake, central Florida crowned snake, Pinewood's treefrog, Barking treefrog (or bell frog), Northern mole skink, Florida worm lizard, six-lined racerunner, slender eastern glass lizard, eastern coachwhip, eastern diamondback rattlesnake, pygmy rattlesnake, Florida gopher frog, nothern mole skink, peninsula mole skink, bluetail mole skink.
Common Plants - pricky pear cactus, wiregrass, bluestems, hairsedge, piney woods dropseed, gopher apple, golden aster, hairawn muhly, pineland phlox, sandhill lupine, bird's foot violet, dwarf iris, fringed bluestar, pinebarren frostweed, pineland wild indigo, man-root (morning glory), sandhill roseling, orange-fringed orchids, yellow-eyed grasses, narrowleaf sabatia, threadleaf gererdia, goat's rue, butterfly pea, Carolina indigo.
Common Trees and Shrubs - turkey oak, bluejack oak, southern red oak, blackjack oak, sand post oak, myrtle oak, Arkansas oak, mockernut hickory, sand hickory, black cherry, sassafras, blackberry, sparkleberry, persimmon, low-bush blueberry, pawpaw.
Rare/Endangered Species - east coast coontie; Florida coontie, Godfrey's blazing star (Liatris provincialis), pixie moss, Texas trailing phlox, white wicky, Azure sage, Sandhills lily, southeastern kestrel, red-cockaded woodpecker, blue-tailed mole skink, eastern indigo snake, short-tailed snake; gopher tortoise, Apalachicola rosemary, Florida bonamia.
Fire Frequency - 3 to 7 years carried almost exclusively by bunch grasses
Without Fire - Usually succeeds to canopy dominated by scrub oaks (like turkey oak).
Causes for Decline - Fire-suppression, overgrazing, forest conversion (especially to sand pine).