Treesearch

Tree planting involves many considerations - site classification, selection of species, planting practices, and protection from fire, insects, and diseases. The information about many of these aspects of planting is scattered and fragmentary.

Tree planting involves many considerations - site classification, selection of species, planting practices, and protection from fire, insects, and diseases. The information about many of these aspects of planting is scattered and fragmentary.

Despite intensive research and zealous control efforts, the Dutch elm disease continues to kill valuable ornamental and wild elm trees over wide areas in the United States and Canada. Control of the disease at present is based on sanitation, the removal of dead and dying ornamental trees, and use of insecticides to kill the insects that carry the disease. The primary vector is the smaller European elm bark beetle, Scolytus multistriatus Marsh.

Ten years ago - in 1949 - four 5-acre plots were established on the Fernow Experimental Forest near Parsons, West Virginia, to show the effects upon mountain hardwoods of each of four management treatments.

Second-growth timber occupies more than one-third of the commercial northern hardwood forest land in New England. The origin of these stands - clearcutting, or land abandonment with or without fire - determined their present characteristics; they are essentially even-aged, with a high proportion of intolerant and intermediate species and many stems of sprout origin (Fig. 1). Some stands contain a few large holdovers from earlier logging operations.

Poor hardwood land presents a problem that is only too well known: what to do with areas in hardwood country that support only stunted, slow-growing trees? This is a question that vexes foresters and landowners in many parts of West Virginia and neighboring mountainous areas of Maryland and Virginia. On these poor sites, it is doubtful whether the hardwoods can pay the taxes. Such stands usually are dominated by short-boled chestnut and scarlet oaks; and black gum, sourwood, white oak, and sassafras are the principal associates.

When spruce-fir stands in the Northeast are cut, balsam fir seedlings often predominate in the regeneration that follows. Most landowners would prefer to have the spruce; but they do not get it, and they wonder why.

Under certain conditions that we do not yet fully understand, balsam fir has a tendency to form dense thickets that cause stagnation of growth. This condition is common throughout the spruce-fir region, and it presents the landowner with one of his most perplexing management problems. A typical thicket averaging 15 feet tall may contain 5,000 to 10,000 stems per acre (fig. 1). Small areas may have densities up to 30,000 stems per acre.

Twenty years ago the deliberate use of fire in forest management was frowned upon by many foresters. Many heated arguments developed over it, even though ecological studies had shown that fire favored the maintenance of several valuable forest types. Today attitudes have changed: most foresters accept fire as one of their management tools - though admittedly it is dangerous and is applicable only in certain areas.

Foresters and landowners in the northern and eastern states are vitally concerned with the destructive browsing of forest regeneration by large numbers of white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus). Attempts to prevent over-populations of deer have been made through legislative and administrative measures with varying success, but more direct methods of reducing or eliminating browsing damage are also being sought.