A grim, overcast day greeted me for the start of a new year and my new project documenting the Piney Woods Church Road landscape. So much for plans to begin with a sunrise. Instead, I leisurely made my way to the road late in the afternoon, an hour or so of what passed for sundown. Glancing into a grove of trees between Piney Woods Church Road and Rico Road, my eye was caught by a loblolly pine (Pinus taeda) that has most likely been killed by the southern pine beetle (Dendroctonus frontalis), an insect measuring only 2 to 4 millimeters as an adult. Closer at hand, a young pin cherry (Prunus pennsylvanica) growing beside the road has been disfigured by crown gall, a woody tumor caused by the bacterium, Agrobacterium tumefaciens. All around me, tiny organisms were slowly devouring the forest.
