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Abstract
A prominent difficulty during bottomland hardwood afforestation is that sites are often flooded during the preferred months of planting (January-March), which results in delayed planting (April-June) and reduced survival. We monitored growth and survival of oak seedlings planted in 11 different months (February through December) after varying periods of humidified cold storage to investigate the hypothesis that seedlings held over the summer months in cold storage and planted in autumn months would fare better than seedlings planted in late spring and summer. Results for Nuttall oak (
Quercus nuttallii Palmer) generally agreed with this hypothesis, whereas results for overcup oak (
Quercus lyrata Walt.) did not. Both species' height growth during the second growing season decreased with increased time in cold storage. These results suggest that although reduced height growth can be expected, long-term storage over the summer months and subsequent planting in autumn need not result in heavy mortality of some bottomland oak species.
Parent Publication
Citation
Mercker, David C.; Buckley, David S.; Conn, John P. 2011. Effects of prolonged storage on survival and growth of outplanted bottomland oaks. In: Fei, Songlin; Lhotka, John M.; Stringer, Jeffrey W.; Gottschalk, Kurt W.; Miller, Gary W., eds. Proceedings, 17th central hardwood forest conference; 2010 April 5-7; Lexington, KY; Gen. Tech. Rep. NRS-P-78. Newtown Square, PA: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Northern Research Station: 341-346.
