Bob,
I once marked 35,000 board feet on one acre around a
cottage in the town of Palmer, MA along the Ware River. The stand of
giants was starting to shed big branches and a few of the trees were a
hazard to the cottage so the landowner decided he wanted them all gone.
I'll testify to the great skill of the loggers who dropped those 30 to
40 inch monsters without flattening the cottage or themselves!
White pine is not the best tree to have near a house
because of its higher potential for storm damage rather than a good
hardwood like red oak. White pine is also not the best roadside tree
either. We Tree Wardens prefer good hardwoods.
I remember marking a beautiful 15 acre stand of white
pine in Orange where I marked over 100,000 board feet in one day. That
was my personal record.
On a two acre stand on Rt.202 in Orange that was turned
into a mini-golf course I marked 40,000 board feet in about 3 hours in a
young 70 year old stand. Hey that's what they wanted.
Your remark about lumbermen fiddling around with
matchsticks is both funny and sad at the same time. Of course everyone
knows why timber is cut prematurely on private land and that's because
there are always loggers and mills running around convincing landowners
to sell their high quality timber before its ready.
However, because of the nefarious insect called the
white pine weevil, there are many white pines that are of low quality.
You might get one good 16 foot butt log but then the tree becomes a
multi-forked mess of low value pulpwood. Prior to a biomass market, we
only had one choice to get rid of these wolf trees and that was by
girdling. Now we can send trees up to 30 inches in diameter through a
chipper! Hooray!
So the weevil is the biggest hindrance to white pine
productivity. We can try and discourage it by growing young pine in
partial shade until they reach at least 20-30 feet or try growing it in
dense stands.
There are also some white pine trees that don't self
prune as well as others because of not enough competition early in their
life or whatever, so you get these big bony pines with big branches
which make the trees lower value.
There is also a huge difference in site productivity
across pine's range. Mohawk is an exceptional site whereas pine usually
does best on the poorer drier sites where competition from hardwoods is
less. But you're right, if we could carefully manage white pine stands
for 130 years we could produce some real giants but most private stands
get cut when they achieve merchantability starting at the young age of
60. The mentality in industry is that they all race around trying to get
to the good timber first but then lament about the lack of good
woodlots. But they are violently against any reasonable regulations.
They only think day to day but we foresters think
decades into the future and that's why we should control all commercial
timber harvesting on private forest land. Then we could grow more giant
white pines.
Mike
Although it is mature second growth instead of old
growth, there are a number of acres of Mohawk Trail State Forest here in
western Mass with over 100,000 board feet per acre. If that sounds
unreasonably high, we're talking about a place that has 86 white pines
over 150 feet in height and well over 200 over 140. Most are in prime
condition. The majority of canopy pines have DBHs ranging from 25 to 40
inches, with a not insignificant number of trees with DBHs of 41 to 43
inches. At least 17 have DBHs of 44 inches or more with the top now at
about 48. The average density of mature pines in Mohawk is around 75
trees per acre and in some places the number is higher than that. There
are at least 3 acres that I've identified with basal areas of over 300
square feet per acre. Again, this is mature second growth. In today's
short rotation mentality, there is no way such standing volume would
survive without a lot of protection. People forget what the land can
produce in a period of about 130 years if left alone or managed
carefully.
In terms of bonafide old growth, when it was in
prime condition, Hearts Content in PA was described as having well over
100,000 board feet per acre. A small area had close to 200,000. I don't
know if that was standing volume or projected mill volume. I suspect the
former. Regardless, modern day lumbermen mostly fiddle around with
matchsticks. They have no clue.
Bob
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