The ancient pine south of Stone Mountain had been thoroughly woodpeckered. The drill holes were less than an inch apart. The bark looked like a sieve.
I found a sculptured pine borer, Chalcophora virginiensis, which are as common as pines in Southern forests. The beetle, at first glance, looks like an inch-long sculpture, carved in wood with a chisel, with a lot of rough edges. If you see that, you’ve found a sculptured borer. They are sometimes called metallic borers. If you flip one over and look at the abdomen, you might be reminded of a .22 casing. They are also called flatheaded borers. The larval stage is a worm that looks like a concrete screw: pointed at the tail, getting wider at the top with a head that looks like a mortarboard.
The ancient pine I saw is dying and has been for years. The borers are recycling it.
Each year, the forest produces tons of new growth — tree trunks, limbs, leaves. It also recycles tons of dead vegetation.
The growth is obvious, especially in spring. The addition is easier to see than the subtraction. The dying, death, decay and release of nutrients to sustain new life is harder to see. But that process goes on all the time.
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