Treesearch

The white pine weevil is the most serious insect enemy of white pine in the Northeast, where more than 75 percent of these valuable trees are weeviled. Weevil larvae feed just beneath the bark; this kills the leader, causing folks, crooks, and a subsequent degrade of timber. In fact, widespread damage by the weevil has reduced the demand for white pine planting stock considerably.

West Virginia farmers own one-third of the forest in the State - more than 3 million acres. If these woodland areas were given the same attention and care that is given to cropland, within a few years West Virginia farm forests could be producing their proportionate share of the farm income. Yet the farm woods are almost completely neglected.

Fungus diseases of poplars might be spread to new locations if hybrid poplar cuttings (now being test-planted in various parts of the northeast) were not sterilized before shipment. Among these diseases are the canker-producing fungi Septoria musiva and Dothichiza populea and the leafblotch fungus Septotinia populiperda.

Fungus diseases of hybrid poplars may be spread by spores that lodge in the resinous coating of buds of dormant cuttings, and in the lenticels. Surface sterilization by dipping the cuttings in fungicides was tested to determine whether such treatment would prevent the germination of spores of the canker-producing fungi Septoria musiva and Dothichiza populea and the leaf-blotch fungus Septotinia populiperda.

In January 1946 a small study of thinning and prescribed burning was started in an old-field stand mostly of shortleaf pines about 38 years old. The stand is located on private land in Salem County, N. J.

Heavy damage to a young Virginia pine stand was noticed recently on the Beltsville Experimental Forest in Maryland. The injury was confined to pine trees that had come in on an abandoned field. This reproduction ranged from 1 to 10 feet in height and had an average density of 19,000 per acre. Andropogon was the predominant ground vegetation.

Through the McSweeney-McNary Act of 1928, Congress authorized the Secretary of Agriculture to conduct a comprehensive survey of the forest resources of the United States. This work was assigned to the Forest Service. The purposes of this forest survey are (1) to make a field inventory of the present supply of standing timber; (2) to ascertain its current rate of growth; (3) to determine how much it is being reduced through industrial and domestic uses, fire, and other causes; (4) to estimate the present consumption and the probable future trends in requirements for forest products; and (5)...

In any discussion of site evaluation we need to know first what the forester means by the term "site", and the function site serves in the field of forestry. The term may mean different things to different people.

The budworm was present in small numbers throughout the entire spruce-fir region of Maine in 1953; but, as in 1952, noticeable defoliation was restricted mostly to two areas - the vicinity of Madawaska Lake and the Fish River Lake-Beavertail Pond area.

What is this thing called "growth"? We foresters are constantly thinking in terms of growth. We use growth data to evaluate a forest property. We use them to determine how much we can cut. We use them to weigh the results of a type of cutting.