Awesome trees Russ! Up here people brag up getting 2 inches of diameter
growth every 10 years and there you are getting more than 5 inches!
Clearly WV has the capacity to grow some of the best hardwoods in the
world. Given the potential value growth why would any landowner have
their woodlot subjected to a devastating 12 inch diameter limit cutting?
If every landowner was given the real financial facts and every forester
had to practice good silviculture and if all commercial timber
harvesting was under the direction of a real forester then I guess
there'd be no problem. So what's stopping this?
Hey I miss Arlyn Perkey's periodical "Forest Management Update" which
stopped around 2000. Unlike most government forestry papers, his
research and publications on crop tree management were useful to the
practicing forester. The main idea was that area wide thinning can be
too expensive or not economically viable so an excellent alternative is
to just thin around selected crop trees. It's best to thin on all 4
sides so that no competing tree is touching the crop tree and you can
double diameter growth. You can have as few as 20 crop trees/acre or as
many as you want. And I liked Arlyn's idea that crop trees can not only
be timber crop trees but you can also have wildlife crop trees or
aesthetic crop trees that will never be cut.
With the advent of biomass markets, area wide thinning of degraded
woodlots can now be feasible. But Arlyn's principles of crop tree
management still apply.
Mike
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of [email protected]
Sent: Saturday, August 01, 2009 2:38 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [ENTS] Re: big red oak
Joe:
The tree wasn't hollow. There was a small spot on the
lower trunk that was dead, possibly from an old fire scar but the tree
was sound.
The only old trees in the area that were hollow were
some old yellow poplar and chestnut oak that appeared to be old growth
remnants. Most of the old culls were running between 30 and 40" DBH.
On the same property I encountered an American chestnut stump from the
last time the area was cut in the 1930s. The chestnut stump was located
beneath a rock overhang and most of the stump had never been wet and
looked like it was just a couple years old....all of the stump exposed
to weather was missing almost as though it was dipped in acid....any
how, making a long story short...the chestnut tree had 232 growth rings
when it was cut around 1930.
The property is within five miles of where Arlyn Perkey
did all of his crop tree research.
The photo's attached are of a red oak here at Crummies
Creek.
The red oak tree was 26.9 inches in diameter prior to
the beginning of the 2009 growing season and the tree has grown 5.6
inches in diameter in the past 11 growing seasons. In the photo where
you can see the length of the stem, the first branch in the red oak is
at about 70 feet.
Russ
-----Original Message-----
From: Joseph Zorzin <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Sent: Sat, Aug 1, 2009 10:35 am
Subject: [ENTS] Re: big red oak
Russ, looks like a hollow at the left?
The one thing old growth forests have in abundance is
hollows in trees. I wonder if any wildlife researchers have ever focused
on this variable? Such as: the total amount of space in tree hollows on
a per acre basis in an old growth forest? And how might that correlate
with abundance of which wildlife species? Then compare different old
growth forests.
When you tree measuring experts measure trees, do you
ever take note of hollows?
Joe
----- Original Message -----
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Sent: Saturday, August 01, 2009 9:16 AM
Subject: [ENTS] big red oak
ENTS:
This is a good example of a red oak wolf tree. The
person in the photo is about 6' tall. The tree is on private property
but the adjoining property is part of Coopers Rock State Forest and the
WVU Research Forest and just a couple miles south of the WV/PA state
line near White House, PA.
Russ
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