A single shipment of seeds from 1772 helped start what federal researchers now say is the widespread non-native tree invasion in the forests of the southern United States, and it is still growing today. That year, Benjamin Franklin sent tallow tree seeds to Savannah, Georgia. According to a peer-reviewed US Forest Service research review, that shipment is the recorded introduction of the species to the country. The same review documents that the federal government planted more of the tree along the Gulf Coast around 1900, and that forest inventory records now put the tree's footprint at an estimated 185,000 hectares of southern forestland. That inventory-based figure, drawn from the same Forest Service review, shows why land managers from Texas to the Carolinas still spend time and money fighting a tree that was planted with good intentions almost two and a half centuries ago. The Chinese tallow tree keeps spreading.
How a single shipment became a two-wave invasion
