ENTS, I found more information on this topic on the USFS web site. Read more at: http://www.na.fs.fed.us/stewardship/pubs/crop_tree/crop_tree.htm
At the bottom of the page are two links to more detailed information. Regards, Paul J. ----- Original Message ----- From: [email protected] To: [email protected] Sent: Sunday, August 02, 2009 10:57 AM Subject: [ENTS] Re: big red oak Mike: Arlyn Perkey retired about a week after he was old enough to retire from the FS. I hosted a forestry workshop at Crummies Creek that took place on the day he was old enough to retire (his 55th birthday) he left the FS a couple weeks later and has been happily working on his personal PA and WV woodlots ever since. The main problem here with diameter limit cutting is it is what most people understand and what most foresters don't want to challenge...it makes their heads hurt because of the thinking required to not do diameter limit cutting. I have an interesting story about crop tree management. Back in the late 1970s after the Arab Oil Embargo the FS came up with a program that cost shared having foresters mark woodlots for thinning by cutting firewood. Scott Sylvester and myself completed a large amount of that sort of work when we were working for Alan Page and I was constantly arguing with the state service foresters and the FS about how we thinned the woods. At the time the only guide for woodland thinning and stocking levels was the Leakey Stocking guides that were developed by Yale University and all thinnings were based upon the assumption that any stand being thinned was even aged and good or acceptable crop trees were going to automatically occur at a fifteen foot spacing. A little unreal for most private woodland. Anyhow, after continually challenging the use of the stocking guides, the Forest Service sent a delegation of reps from the Durham, NH research office to look at what I was complaining about. Besides local State Foresters Jim Soper and Dick Kulis and a few people from UM, among the people who came was Arlyn Perkey and a few others from Durham. We all travelled to a woodlot on the Green River in Leyden, MA that had been thinned with the idea of releasing individual trees to get them "free to grow". The idea really hit on some of the people, especially Arlyn and he really dove into the topic. About 1982 or 83 Arlyn relocated to Morgantown, WV and when I made my first visit to Morgantown he had just completed his first crop tree thinning at Coopers Rock State Forest. He took me for a ride up to the site and said..."this is your fault" and he took a series of photos of us both at the thinning site. As it turned out he had begun questioning the traditional assumptions on forest thinning after that visit to the Gooley property in Leyden and he ended up spending the rest of his career promoting crop tree management.....just a little story but as a plain old dirt forester it made me feel good to have someone take up on an idea I had been promoting. Russ -----Original Message----- From: Mike Leonard <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Sun, Aug 2, 2009 8:33 am Subject: [ENTS] Re: big red oak 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 stoppi ng 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 y ellow 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 i s 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 --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Eastern Native Tree Society http://www.nativetreesociety.org Send email to [email protected] Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/entstrees?hl=en To unsubscribe send email to [email protected] -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~--- --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Eastern Native Tree Society http://www.nativetreesociety.org Send email to [email protected] Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/entstrees?hl=en To unsubscribe send email to [email protected] -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
