JOURNAL OF FORESTRY 



Vol. XVI MAY, 1918 No. 5 



THE YIELD OF VOLUNTEER SECOND GROWTH AS 



AFFECTED BY IMPROVEMENT CUTTING ' ' ' -" 



AND EARLY WEEDING ''* '' ^'''* 



By R. T. Fisher '^^" 



The life history of the natural or volunteer reproduction which fol- 

 lows the usual portable mill operation of Central New England involves 

 an enormous waste of potential lumber. This waste consists primarily 

 in the elimination of the more valuable species of trees by the worthless 

 or inferior. Such reproduction originates in part from seed falling at 

 or near the time of felling; in part from stump sprouts, and in part 

 from seedling and sapling advance growth, which was present in the 

 previous stand. Coming after a clear cutting (which, for convenience 

 in logging, includes most of the undergrowth, as well as the merchant- 

 able trees), the new crop is substantially even-aged. In composition, 

 however, it exhibits such great variety as to make a classification into 

 even secondary types extremely difficult. Nevertheless, there is a sub- 

 stantial percentage of young growth, amounting for the region under 

 discussion to at least 20 per cent of the areas cut over, which, at the 

 outset, contains the elements of a fully stocked forest of mixed pine 

 and hardwoods. 



The natural progress of such crops to maturity is well indicated by 

 the accompanying photograph (fig. i). This represents a stand which 

 has followed a clean cutting of forty years ago. The original stand 

 consisted of mixed i)ine and hardwoods over a hundred years old. The 

 cutting was made in a seed year and was followed by a heavy repro- 

 duction of white pine. The balance of the new growth was furnished 

 in part by hardwood sjjrouts and small advance growth atul in part by 

 seedlings of gray birch, pin cherry, and large-toothed poplar. The 

 result-of forty years of competition among the trees in mixture has been 

 that practically none of the pine survived beyond the small sai^ling 

 stage. Tile hulk of the valuable hardwoods, too, are in varying stages 

 of suppression, and the dominant stand consists almost entirely of in- 



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