Treesearch

Tabulates data on height, diameter, and age of seedling and coppice regeneration of Nyssa aquatica in Wateree Swamp, N. Carolina, 30 years after felling. Although the sample was small, coppice stems apparently grew as fast as seedlings and showed no sign of rot. The stand, however, seemed inferior to a well stocked seedling stand, mainly because of irregular stocking. Unless exploitation of N. aquatica for pulpwood becomes economic, discouragement of coppicing by very low felling (perhaps mechanically?) is advocated; use of arboricides in swamps would probably be uneconomic.

A handy, inexpensive tool for planting acorns has been developed at the Delta Research Center of the Southern Forest Experiment Station and used successfully in experimental plantings. One of its merits is that it ensures a planting hole of eactly the desired depth.

Many thrifty, second-growth baldcypress trees (Taxodium distichum) [L.] Rich. ) appear to lay down several rings each year. These false rings may cause foresters to underestimate the growth potential of a highly prized species by overestimating the age of sample trees.

Chemical debarking of standing trees, as an alternative to mechanical methods of peeling felled trees and bolts is of continuing interest to industries using bark-free wood for their operation. It has been tried extensively in the North, but because of possible insect and decay losses in usable wood has received less attention in the South. It has not been previously tested on bottomland hardwood species of the Mississippi Delta.

The most important cause of cull in southern hardwood forests is heart rot that develops from wounds made by fire. This study derived means by which the forester working with bottomland red oaks can determine the amount of decay behind old fire scars and estimate the rot that can be expected from new wounds.

A common timber cruising practice in the South is to tally trees in the 4- to 9-inch d.b.h. classes as pulpwood and trees in the 10-inch class and up as sawtimber. The results are then summarized and presented as cords per acre and board feet per acre, with their tacit implication that the two figures are equally valid, or approximately so. If the cordwood sampling precision is slightly less, that is considered acceptable because cordwood stumpage value is also somewhat less.

Since the introduction of plotless cruising in this country by Grosenbaugh and the later suggestion of using a wedge prism as an angle gauge by Bruce this method of determining basal area has been widely adopted in the South. One of the factors contributing to the occasionally unsatisfactory results obtained is failure to calibrate the prism used. As noted by Bruce the inexpensive prisms commonly used require the computation of a basal area factor for each prism. This is done by setting up a target of convenient width (w), sighting on it through the prism, then moving the prism forward or...