URAR CLOVER 43 



Stanislaus National Forest alone, it is evident that bear clover is a 

 serious menace to the natural reproduction of our western slope 

 Sierra pine forests, and that sooner or later something will have to be 

 done about it. Considering the nature of the plant, adequate fire pro- 

 tection is unquestionably the first and most essential step. While this 

 alone will ultimately reduce the unstocked acreage materially, there 

 will probably still remain considerable areas on which artificial re- 

 forestation will have to be resorted to. This presents a problem yet 

 to be solved, as past efforts in this direction have proved generally 

 imsuccessful, particularly where broadcast and seed-spot sowing has 

 been tried. Even where furrows were plowed and the seed sown in 

 the mineral soil laid bare, the results were not particularly encouraging, 

 as the bear clover soon spread over the furrows and choked out the 

 pine seedlings that did manage to become established. Better success 

 with nursery stock is to be hoped for ; but the aggressive root compe- 

 tition of the bear clover will have to be reckoned with and some means 

 devised to counteract it. 



