28 



THE COMMERCIAL HICKORIES. 



older stands, and most of the saplings are seedling sprouts. In the 

 river bottoms of the South, however, the reproduction generally is 

 poor; this may be due to the fact that the ground is covered with water 

 during the winter and the nuts are washed away, or to the fact that 

 the stumps seem to sprout less readily in this region, or to the large 

 number of hogs to eat the nuts. 



Most of the hickories now standing are either seedlings or sprouts 

 from small stumps. Coppice hickory is not nearly as common as 

 coppice chestnut or oak, because hickories are slow-growing and their 

 sprouting capacity diminishes rapidly with age; trees which have 

 reached merchantable size can not be depended on to produce sprouts. 

 Furthermore, hickory sprouts grow more slowly than those of other 

 broad-leaf trees, and can not compete with them in even-aged stands. 



Sprouts may grow from the stump, the root collar, and the root. 

 Stump sprouts are exceptional; and the tendency toward root sprouts, 

 or suckers, increases with the size and age of the tree. Table 2, based 

 on measurements of 183 stumps of shagbark hickory, shows that as 

 the stumps increase in size, the number that produce sprouts decreases, 

 and that the proportion of root suckers increases. 



TABLE 2. Vigor and method of sprouting with increase in diameter of stump in shagbark 



hickory. 



Of northern species bitternut is the best sprouter, and the average 

 height of dominant 1-year-old sprouts from 20 stumps was 4.7 feet. 

 One-year-old sprouts from 31 stumps of pignut showed an average 

 height of 3.3 feet as against an average of 2J feet for the 183 stumps, 

 of shagbark, though there is but little difference in the sprouting 

 capacity of the two species. 



The distance of the root suckers from the stump increases with the 

 size of the stump. The maximum distance is about 8 feet and the 

 average about 2 feet. As a rule, the sucker does not produce a tap- 

 root but merely appropriates the parent root. 



