The Moody Forest Natural Area

Between Reconstruction and World War II, lumber companies raped Georgia, clearcutting the beautiful forests that hadn’t already been cleared by greedy, slave-owning cotton farmers.  Jake Moody refused to let them destroy his beloved property, known locally as Moody Swamp.  He made his heirs promise not to allow its destruction.  In 1999 the descendents of his heirs sold 4500 acres to The Nature Conservancy, and today that organization shares ownership and management duties with the Georgia state government.  Thanks to Jake Moody’s foresight and love of nature, a remnant of old growth forest still exists here.

The Moody Forest Natural Area is located in Appling County, Georgia about a 10 minute drive north of Baxley and about a 10 minute drive south of the Hatch Nuclear Plant.  It can be accessed via East River Road, a well-maintained dirt road off Highway 1.  The dirt road is a smooth ride with very few bumpy rutted areas.  Despite being in the middle of nowhere, there are many nice houses on the opposite side of the road from the nature preserve.  The people living here must really enjoy country living–I saw not a single house for sale.  A fat old dog sleeps in just about every resident’s front yard, and many people keep cows, horses, and/or chickens.  One person even had an apiary.  I rank East River Road as one of the best places in Georgia for a naturalist to live.

Big slash pine.  Note the burned trunk.  The Moody Forest Natural Area is burned on a regular schedule to improve habitat for wildlife.  Mature pines and oaks usually survive light ground fires.

A swamp chestnut oak next to an old dwelling of some sort.  There’s space under the shack for chickens and a covered place to hitch the mule up to.  The oak is bigger than the slash pine in the above photo but a size comparison with a person wasn’t possible–by this time on our hike, the mosquitoes had chased my hiking partner into the car.  There are reportedly 200 year old post oaks and overcup oaks in the preserve.  Although dominated by pine, there are a surprising number of oaks here including swamp chestnut, post, Shumards or black (I can’t tell the difference between those species), southern red, overcup, and laurel.

There are 5 miles of trails in the preserve besides the access road that is adjacent to the Moody Family cemetery. Tavia’s Loop Trail is 3 miles long, and the River Trail is 2 miles long but because it’s not a loop that means it’s a 4 mile hike back and forth. If I was by myself, I would have hiked both, but there are no restrooms located anywhere near the preserve, and my wife needed one.  Spending money on a public lavatory probably isn’t a high priority for The Nature Conservancy.  I get the impression The Nature Conservancy doesn’t really want people to tour their protected sites.  The least they could do would be to build an old fashioned rustic outhouse.

Open pine parkland woods.  I didn’t see a single longleaf pine.  Instead,  I saw  loblolly and slash pines.

350 acres of longleaf pine-wiregrass savannah occurs at Moody, but I didn’t see any.  I hiked 1/2 mile up an access road and then another mile on Tavia’s trail, and I didn’t seen a single longleaf pine tree.  There was barely any wiregrass.  At the time of European colonization, longleaf pine savannah was the dominant landscape on the southeastern coastal plain.  Even in the protected Moody Preserve it takes up less than 10% of the land area, showing just how rare it is now.  Perhaps, if I had the opportunity to complete the whole loop trail, I would have come across it.  Instead, I saw mostly open pine parkland dominated by loblolly pine, slash pine, and post oaks.

Information I’ve read about Moody Forest makes no mention of ferns.  This type of fern is by far the most common plant in the undergrowth here. I think it’s royal fern, but I’m not sure.  It’s worthwhile  to see nature in person rather than just reading about it.

Here’s some wiregrass sprouting up after a recent burn.  The only people we encountered were a couple of workers with firestarting equipment.  By setting fires, they are mimicking Indian land management techniques .  Of course, before the Indians,  fires were more irregular and less frequent.  Pleistocene fires may have some times been devastating.  However, more often than not, Ice Age fires were  less severe because the megafauna consumed so much plant material there was less fuel, and dry climate phases fostered less plant growth.

A burrow dug by an endangered gopher tortoise.  I didn’t see the tortoise but I did see 2 rabbits just above the burrow.  I suspect they use the burrow for shelter.  I also saw a red-shouldered hawk carrying a cotton rat, turkey and black vultures, some gray squirrels, pileated woodpeckers, a red-bellied woodpecker, deer tracks, and lots and lots of mosquitoes and gnats.

A place to hitch up the ole mule.  The preserve needs an old-fashioned but working outhouse.  Women don’t like to squat in the wilderness.

This former homesite has 2 fireplaces.  This is one of them.  There are plenty of old ruins at Moody making it doubly interesting to explore.

The Moody Natural Area offers much to explore for the naturalist and the historian.  I barely scratched the surface during the brief but treasured time I was there.  I didn’t even have time to see any part of the River Trail.  Reportedly, 600 year old cypress trees stand there.

This cow pasture sits on the corner of Highway 1 and East River Road.  It’s the only really open space I saw in the vicinity of Moody Forest.  I pretended the cows were long-horned bison and imagined being in the Pleistocene.  There were Canadian geese by the creek, but I don’t think they’re visible in the photo.

Altamaha River Roadside Park

I didn’t have an opportunity to hike the River Trail in Moody Forest, but I wanted to see the Altamaha River up close.  The intersection off Highway 1 and the river has a Roadside Park that I investigated instead.

Graffiti on the Highway 1 Bridge that spans the Altamaha.  I love graffiti.

Spanish moss-draped post oaks.  This is an unusual combination of species.  Post oaks grow on dry upland sites; Spanish moss prefers warm moist lowland sites.  However at this site, they co-occur and dominate.

This is how I imagine a common Pleistocene landscape in Georgia might appear, but with taller grass and populated with bison and horses.

The Altamaha River.  This bend of the river almost looks like a lake.

A scary steep bluff.  Almost looked like a cliff from here.

Here’s proof that a kind of grape other than muscadine grows in south Georgia.  I think this is a River Grape which produces small blue fruit.

Mastodons, the Stewards of Wild Pleistocene Vinyards

I couldn’t find an illustration of mastodons yanking down grape vines from tree tops.

Grape vines co-evolved with Pleistocene megafauna.  Today, they thrive and produce fruit most abundantly when humans prune them aggressively.  Grape vines do not produce fruit on old wood, so pruning is necessary for them to bear.  In North America before man colonized the continent, mastodons were the stewards of wild Pleistocene vinyards.  Grape vines covered many square miles of forest, especially during warm wet interglacials and interstadials.   When Europeans felled virgin timber they also removed century old grape vines with 12 inch trunks–a rare site today but something mastodons must have encountered frequently.  Young grape vines will colonize second growth and oftentimes reestablish themselves as a dominant component of the local flora.  They are resilient plants adapted to being ripped apart and chewed upon by beasts such as mastodons and ground sloths.  A herd of mastodons chomping down on a grape vine wouldn’t necessarily stamp it out of existence.  Grapes not only produce seed-bearing fruit on new shoots, but  they can also spread vegetatively.  Vines growing on the ground get covered with leaves and forest litter.  The buried vines then sprout new roots and new vines can spring up quite a distance from the parent.   A mastodon could rip apart a vine, carry it or toss it many yards away, and if the vine got covered by leaves and moist dirt, it wouldl survive as a new individual.  So even if no animals eat the fruit and spread the seed in their dung, grape vines will still spread like an unstoppable alien plant from a science fiction movie.  By spreading vegetatively, they can even survive late spring freezes which prevents any fruit production. 

These grape vines sprouted from roots originating from vines extending from another grape vine that I’m growing on a fence.   Pine straw shedded from nearby trees covered grape vines growing on the ground.  Under the litter they sprouted more roots and then more vines.  The city sent me a registered letter declaring this a code violation.  It doesn’t seem like the government has the right to tell people how big plants they grow on their private property can get.

This is the after picture.  I did clear up the contested area, but it felt like I was fighting a plant monster from a science fiction movie.

It’s no surprise that grape vine material was one of the plants found in fossil mastodon dung at the Aucilla River site in north Florida.  Mastodons ate a wide variety of vegetation, and grape is a comparatively easy plant to digest because it is adapted to survive via rapid vegetative growth rather than poisonous defense.   There’s little evidence of grape in Pleistocene pollen studies.  Grape pollen is not widely dispersed, so when it is found, it’s assumed to have occurred locally, next to the actual site.  Grape pollen was found to be abundant at the Sandy Creek Run site on Warner Robins Air Force Base near Macon, Georgia, but only for the last 7,000 years.  It’s absent at that site before then.  (The site has a pollen record from the present to 13,000 BP and from 25,000 BP-30,000 BP.)

Five species of wild grape grow in Georgia today and likely grew here during the Pleistocene, being abundant during interstadials and interglacials but limited to local relic status during cold dry stadials. 

Summer Grape, pigeon grape–Vitis aestivalis

Supposed to be common in Georgia, but I’ve never seen one here.  They resemble concord grapes in appearance.

Possum grape–Vitis baileyana

Supposed to be rare in state, but it’s the only one other than muscadine I’ve ever seen here.  They’re a small black grape. 

River grape–Vitis riperia

Considered uncommon in state.  Another blue grape similar in appearance to Concord.

Muscadine grape–Vitis rotundifolia

Very abundant in state.  I can almost always find this species growing wild in any second growth or overgrown vacant lot.  Or my backyard where this sprouted up under an oak tree.  The wild variety that grows in Georgia is a purple grape when ripe.  Scuppernongs are a greenish/brown variety of muscadine, originally found growing along the Scuppernong River in North Carolina by early European explorers (Giovanni Verrazzano in 1504 and Sir Walter Raleigh in 1585).  Cultivated muscadines are my favorite grape to eat, but I don’t ever buy them in chain supermarkets–they’re always picked too early and have no flavor.  Instead I buy them at fruit stands or eat the ones I grow myself.

These are my two cultivated scuppernong vines.  They’re 20 years old.

Muscadines have tough skins and seeds but they’re the sweetest grapes and by far have the best and most distinctive flavor.  Most grapes sold in the store, such as Thomson seedless and Flame Red, are bland by comparison.

Four varieties of muscadines grow in my yeard.  Wild muscadines sprout naturally.  One of the vines I planted is the original scuppernong variety which is excellent for a wild grape but not nearly as good as the improved variety that I planted next to it.  I can’t recall the name because it has been so long since I planted it.  The latter is bigger, sweeter, and not as tough.  Last winter I planted a variety known as the giant black muscadine but it hasn’t produced fruit yet.

A cultivated variety of scuppernong is on the left, the original wild kind is on the right.

Experts say muscadines have no pests but this is not true.  Yellow jackets and wasps will destroy about 1/3 rd of the fruit every year.  Some years my vines have produced over a gallon of grapes, not counting ones eaten by yellow jackets.  When picking, one must be careful not to grab a grape in which a stinging insect has burrowed.

Note the blue-winged wasp (Scolia dubia?) feasting on one.

I made good scuppernong wine once.  It was dry, not sweet.  I put a teaspoon of cinnamon in one bottle and let it age for a few years for the best spiced wine I ever drank.  The muscadine wine sold in stores is terrible–usually sickeningly sweet and harsh.   Young grape leaves are also a gourmet edible.  Add 20 young grape leaves to stew with beef for a unique fruity but not sweet flavor.  They can also be stuffed with rice, ground beef, or mushrooms.

Fox grape, winter grape, chicken grape, frost grape–Vitis vulpina

Considered an occasional grape in the south.  It’s another blue grape like Concord.  It doesn’t become sweet until frost when it begins to decompose.

Most supermarket grapes are descendents of crosses between some of the above mentioned grapes and varieties of European grapes–Vitis vinifera.  Worldwide, all grapes are grown on American grape rootstocks which are resistant to a disease that wiped out Vitis vinifera rootstocks.

Peppervine and Virginia Creeper are also in the grape family.  The latter is a tenacious vine too.