44 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



8. The Cultivation of Hardwoods. 



By J. Boyd. 



In submitting the following remarks regarding the cultivation 

 of hardwoods, I do so with diffidence, yet with the conviction, 

 which has grown on me, that very many of our hardwood 

 plantations have suffered permanently through the very common 

 practice of mixing the broad-leaved trees with conifers. It has 

 been my lot to have had something to do with such woods 

 during all my experience in forestry, and the result of that 

 experience, and of observations elsewhere, is that, rightly or 

 wrongly, I have arrived at the conclusion that, generally 

 speaking, the practice is wrong, and that, unless under excep- 

 tional circumstances or special conditions, hardwoods should be 

 grown by themselves, and conifers likewise. 



Plantations, created under the system referred to, have usually 

 a certain number of hardwoods planted out by single trees in 

 lines, at distances apart varying from about 6 to 15 or 1 6 feet, 

 there being generally a mixture of four or five kinds of hard- 

 wood trees, and the intervening spaces being filled in with 

 another mixture of three, or probably four, kinds of conifers. 

 All the trees are more or less of an even age. The result is, not a 

 mixed wood, but a very complex mixture of trees, which is very 

 difficult to manage. Of course, the conifers are only supposed to 

 be retained on the ground for a short period, as nurses, to draw 

 up the others into clean, straight stems, and this, in itself, entails 

 a considerable amount of extra attention and expense in the 

 management, if the woods are ever to have a chance of attaining 

 the end for which they have been formed. Even with the best 

 possible attention it is a very difficult task, and sometimes an 

 impossible one, to keep the woods as dense as they ought to be, 

 and, at the same time, to preserve the hardwoods. Not 

 infrequently, indeed, does it happen that a large proportion of 

 the nurses have to be removed so early — to prevent the per- 

 manent trees from being overtopped — that the canopy is 

 destroyed, with the result that instead of the hardwoods being 

 drawn up into clean straight stems, the very opposite takes 

 place. The extra space given, through the removal of the 

 nurses, encourages an increased lateral growth at the expense of 



