Treesearch

Northern hardwood forests occupy about 9 million acres of land in New England. In recent years, these hardwood forests have made increasing contributions to the economy of this region. Their future management should be even more rewarding.

Previous work by Bramble et al , Suggitt, Trevett, and Worley et a1 has shown that high spray volumes are more effective than low volumes in the basal bark treatment of woody plants with herbicides such as 2,4,5-T in kerosene or other oils.

Eastern white pine is one of the most important sawtimber species in the Northeast. This species would have still greater potential value were it not for the white-pine weevil, Pissodes strobi (Peck), its most serious insect pest. This is a native insect that occurs throughout the range of eastern white pine. A large percentage of the white pines in natural stands and plantations have been attacked once or more; and the crooks or forks that result from attack greatly reduce the quality and quantity of timber that such stands produce.

There is not enough pine reproduction in the woodlands of southern New Jersey. This increasingly important problem, which plagues the state's Pine Region, is especially severe where seed sources for natural regeneration are poor. In some of these areas, pulpwood cuttings have removed all pines large enough to bear many cones. In other areas, wildfires have killed or damaged the seed source. If such sites are to support productive forest growth in the near future, more pine seedlings must be established through planting or direct seeding.

Mine timbers are a basic need of West Virginia's giant coal industry. The annual requirement of sawed mine timbers is roughly 250 million board feet. The mines also use a large volume of wood in rough form for props and lagging. Yet, compared to sawlogs and veneer logs, these mine timbers are low-value products. This means that they must be produced at low cost.

A serious handicap in planning forestry programs in the Northeast is a lack of basic information about forest diseases and their impact on the forest. Magnitude of disease losses, the relative importance of various diseases, their locations, rates of spread, intensities, and the tree mortality they cause - information on all these factors is basic to the development of a sound forest-disease research program. And we do not have it.

Sweet birch (Betula lenta) is also known as black birch and cherry birch. It is commercially less important than the two principal members of the genus, yellow birch (Betula alleghaniensis) and paper birch (Betula papyrifera).

Past experience with cuttings in old-growth northern hardwoods has demonstrated that the primary regeneration problem is to obtain a large proportion of desirable species of good quality. Regardless of method or intensity of cutting, the total amount of reproduction usually is adequate. Second-growth stands are a different story: this report pertains only to old-growth.

When forest fires swept over southwestern Maine in 1947, some 130,000 acres of forest land were burned over. This was mostly white pine land--sites too poor to grow good hardwood stands. After the fire, white pine reproduction became established on 5,000 to 6,000 acres of this land. But by 1954 most of the young pine was suppressed or at least was in competition with hardwood sprout growth and brush species.

The continuing heavy demand for high-quality Allegheny hardwoods, particularly black cherry and sugar maple, impresses on us the need for more information responses of hardwoods to pruning. Pruning may have beneficial effects: it may increase quality without sacrificing growth. Or it may have detrimental effects: it may cause dieback of cambium, decay, staining and discoloration, gum formation, or other pathological and physiological reactions that reduce the quality of potential factory logs and veneer bolts. Better information about such effects should point the way to hardwood pruning...