A NATIONAL PLAN FOE AMERICAN FORESTRY 555 



MINOR BY PRODUCTS OF THE FOREST 



By W. A. DAYTON, in charge of Range Forage Investigations 



In order to form an adequate concept of the complexity of the 

 forest community and to understand its full actual and potential 

 importance, it is necessary to realize the enormous number and vari- 

 ety of organisms of which it is composed. In addition to upward 

 of 1,200 species and varieties of trees indigenous to the approximately 

 600 million acres of forest land in this country, and to the myriad 

 sorts and sizes of forest zoological denizens, there are probably at 

 least 25,000 species of flowering plants and ferns, besides a vast 

 uncounted host of lesser vegetation, including mosses, algae, lichens, 

 fungi, and bacteria. 



As Clapp has pointed put in A National Program of Forest Research 

 (published by the American Tree Association, 1926), the forest, while 

 exceedingly complex, is a biological unit wherein all the component 

 parts affect the whole, often vitally. It is not possible in this brief 

 account to do more than hint at a few of the beneficial and detri- 

 mental effects of the subordinate forest vegetation on the forest itself. 

 This complex forest society of living organisms produces numerous 

 miscellaneous byproducts which, although of relatively minor impor- 

 tance in themselves, are yet in the aggregate of great actual and 

 potential value to industry and society. Among those already estab- 

 lished on a commercial basis are maple sugar and sirup, tanbark, 

 sumac, cascara bark, wild nuts, blueberries and other wild fruits, 

 and ornamental plants. 



The maple sugar and sirup industry is chiefly confined to the opti- 

 mum range of the sugar maple tree, which (aside from adjacent por- 

 tions of Canada) embraces eastern New England, New York, Penn- 

 sylvania, the Lake States, the southern Appalachians, and a few 

 other localities of the northern and northeastern States. Along the 

 Pacific coast the bigleaf maple, and in various other places the silver 

 maple, boxelders, and a few other species of maple are occasionally 

 tapped. The sugar maple, with its varieties, is usually dominant 

 and ordinarily comprises from 25 to 75 percent of the total stand of 

 approximately 62,500,000 acres of the northern maple-beech-birch 

 type in the United States in which the tree characteristically occurs. 



The heaviest sap production, aside from the effect upon it of 

 certain climatic factors, appears to be associated with great leaf 

 production (large crown and numerous branches), together with good 

 soil moisture and humus conditions, and a moderate amount of sun- 

 light; in general, the maple sugar and sirup industry requires a 

 different type of tree from the taller, clean-boled, few-branched, 

 narrower-crowned type favored by the lumber trade. The maple 

 sugar and sirup industry, with a product valued at several million 

 dollars annually, is largely conducted on privately owned lands by 

 individual farmers or associations of farmers. Because of present 

 economic conditions current price quotations for " sugar-bush " lands 

 hardly represent fair valuations. The George Washington (formerly 

 Shenandoah) National Forest, Va., is issuing sugar maple tapping 

 permits at 10 cents per tree per year. The latest census figures 

 show for the 9 leading States, 34,823 farmers reporting, 1,341,491 

 pounds of maple sugar and 2,341,023 gallons of sirup produced during 



