Flora of colonial Charleston

 

Flora of colonial Charlestonⁱ

i Flora of Colonial Charleston and SC

Tracts of “old growth” forest, dominated by live oaks and bald cypress trees, are now exceedingly rare in the Lowcountry thanks to the long legacy of plantation farming and logging. When you visit a site like Drayton Hall or Middleton Place, or drive down any of the rural roads that traverse our community, most of the trees in view represent the regeneration of natural forest that commenced in the years after the phosphate-mining boom of the late nineteenth century and the pulpwood-timber-farming bonanza of the early twentieth century.

Amidst all of this history of deforestation in the South Carolina Lowcountry, there is one important exception to the general rule. In fact, it’s a little-known facet of our community’s arboreal heritage that has been much in the news in recent times. I’m talking about the legal protection of shade trees standing along the edges of rural roads, which commenced in the Charleston area some three centuries ago. To understand the context of this legal framework, and to better appreciate the vestiges of this protection, we’ll first need to rewind our time machine to thirteenth-century England.

Highway robbery is an ancient crime in which thieves prey on individuals traveling along one of the “high” roads or public thoroughfares of various communities around the world. To combat this and other types of criminal behavior in Medieval England, King Edward I issued a law in the year 1285 that became known as the Statute of Winchester. This important document, which formed the cornerstone of law enforcement policies throughout the English-speaking world, also sought to stem the common practice of highway robbery by denying thieves a hiding place along rural roads. Oaks and other “great trees” were allowed to remain along either side of the road, but the Statute of Winchester ordered property owners to remove all other roadside features, “so that there be neither dyke, underwood, nor bush whereby a man may lurk to do hurt, near to the way, within two hundred foot of the one side and two hundred foot on the other side.”

Fast forward now to the early days of English settlement in the South Carolina Lowcountry. Besides clearing forests for plantation agriculture here, early colonists also created a law enforcement system based on centuries of practice with the framework established by the Statute of Winchester. Roads connecting urban Charleston with rural plantations gradually evolved from footpaths to a network of narrow, sandy, public highways, maintained by property owners whose land abutted the respective roads. At least some colonists followed English tradition by removing road-side obstructions that might give shelter to would-be robbers. We know this because complaints about the practice eventually convinced the South Carolina General Assembly to revise the Medieval practice to suit local conditions.

On September 15th, 1721, our provincial legislature ratified a law that created a board of “Commissioners of the High Roads” for each parish within the young colony. Long before the creation of the South Carolina Highway Department, each of these parish boards was responsible for creating, repairing, and maintaining the public highways, paths, bridges, navigable creeks, causeways, and water-passages with its respective jurisdiction. Breaking from English tradition regarding the clearing of highway verges, the twenty-third paragraph of the 1721 “High Roads” act granted legal protection to road-side trees that provided much-needed shade for travelers moving slowly through the Lowcountry in horse-drawn vehicles: “That when any road shall be laid out, altered or mended, in any part of this province, that the commissioners of such precinct shall give directions for the leaving such trees standing on or near the line of each such road or path, as shall be most convenient for shade to the said road or path; and in case any person, after such road or path is laid out, altered and cleared, shall cut down a tree growing within ten feet of the path, [he] shall, for each tree so cut down, forfeit the sum of twenty shillings.”

From that moment forward, the country roads of Lowcountry South Carolina developed into narrow paths of sand cooled by the dappled shade of live oak trees draped with melancholy stands of Spanish moss. But this legal protection was only as strong as its enforcement within the rural landscape. In the spring of 1743, for example, members of a Charleston grand jury complained “that a law enjoyning [sic] the leaving ten feet of standing woods on each side of all high roads, in this province is not observed and duly executed by the several Commissioners of the High roads in their several districts throughout this province.”[8] Nearly thirty years later, in 1770, another grand jury complained of the frequent violation of “the law for restraining people from cutting down trees, within a certain distance on each side of the public roads, if there be such a law in force, and if there is not, we recommend the necessity of such a law, for the benefit and relief of travelers, as well as making those roads more ornamental to the country.”

Despite this evidence of negligence, there is also plenty of evidence that the 1721 law did eventually take root (pun intended). The survival of many ancient trees and descriptions penned by eye-witnesses indicate that by the end of the eighteenth century, most of the rural roads in the Lowcountry were shaded by the branches of trees growing along the verge or shoulder. In 1774, for example, an anonymous visitor to the Charleston area recorded his or her impressions of the place. “All the roads throughout this and the other provinces to the northwards,” they wrote, “are very good, broad and charmingly shaded with lofty pines, oaks, and cedars. . . . The trees of South Carolina are loaded with a particular kind of moss peculiar to that province [that is, Spanish moss], which hangs down over the branches a yard or two in length and almost covers them and the leaves: it has a very venerable look and casts a pleasing gloomy shade along the roads, which makes travelling inexpressi[bly] [r]ural and agreeable in that country.”[10]

Here in twenty-first century South Carolina, we continue to admire those few surviving country roads where modern highway practices have not yet intruded. The live-oak canopy that shades much of Ashley River Road, for example, is a living vestige of our colonial-era adaptation of a highway policy rooted in Medieval England. Here, as in many other shady paths you’ll find on Johns Island, near McClellanville, Hollywood, Edisto Island, and elsewhere, our predecessors purposefully encouraged the growth of grand trees close to the roadway in order to make their travels cooler and more pleasing to the eye. As a collection of living historical artifacts, these venerable trees, in my humble opinion, now represent an invaluable asset to our community. They connect us to our shared past in a very tangible and even visceral manner—towering over our fast-moving vehicles to remind us that we are small and fleeting. The close proximity of these trees to the road is not the result of natural coincidence or neglectful maintenance. Rather, the long cultivation of roadside trees in this area is the active expression of deep, historical ideas and values that shaped our community. Just like the fabric of the built environment at Drayton Hall, Middleton Place, St. Michael’s Church, the slave quarters at Boone Hall, and other historic sites, we deem these trees to possess enduring value that trumps all efforts to sweep them aside for the sake of modern convenience.

We could, with sufficient time and interest, continue this conversation about historical tree protection into the urban confines of downtown Charleston. As early as the year 1750, for example, our local government deemed it important to encourage citizens to plant trees in front of their urban homes to shade pedestrians traversing the ancient sidewalks of the colonial capital. The paper trail of that story is so rich and interesting, however, that we’ll have save it for a future occasion. But the take-away is very similar to today’s conversation. The tree-scape we see today along the public streets and roads of Charleston County is not simply the result of modern urban planning or recent highway management policies. The early settlers of this area brought with them traditions and practices that re-shaped the natural landscape in many ways that are still visible today, if your eyes are historically informed.