648 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



4 



ested in more detailed figures. Photographs made at 

 the time indicate the density of the stand but do small 

 justice to the beauty and symmetry of the trees. Care- 

 ful examination of the photograph will reveal a large 

 stump in the left foreground and a "mud-line" about 

 seven feet from the ground on all the trees. The spring 

 of 1921 was a period of exceptionally high water and 

 this flat was innundated for a period of about ten days. 



Redwood 

 seedlings are 

 exceed ingly 

 rare and hard 

 to find either 

 in mature 

 stands oi tim- 

 ber or on cut 

 over lands. 

 Many people 

 claim to have 

 t r a veil e d 

 through red- 

 wood areas for 

 years without 

 ever finding a 

 tree that they 

 could be sure 

 originated 

 from seed, 

 which has giv- 

 en rise to a 

 rather wide-spread popular belief that the trees never 

 reproduce in this way. It does take a lot of careful 

 searching to find seedling redwoods in most parts of the 

 region, but where conditions are favorable they may 

 occasionally be found in considerable numbers. I have 

 found areas of several hundred square feet where there 

 were two or more seedlings per square foot but sodl 

 inside bark. Please remember that this includes only and moisture conditions must apparently be just right 

 the second growth trees and that they were only 48 at the time seeds are cast and for some months there- 

 years old which means an average annual growth of after. Bare mineral soil of sandy loam texture appar- 

 2660 board feet per acre. In other words the volume ently furnishes ideal conditions for germination and 

 growth per acre per year was 460 cubic feet, or a little growth of the little trees and they can often be found 

 over five standard cords without bark. on the sides of railroad cuts and fills where seed trees 



Some readers w'ho are familiar only with tree are near. A little patch of seedlings can occasionally 

 growth in less favored regions may exclaim, "What be found under an old stand on the mound of earth 

 rubbish," or put this down as "Just another one of left heaped up by an old wind-thrown tree, and I have 



old growth redwoods, about four feet in diameter, which 

 had been left during the old logging operations, and 10 

 red alders varying from 10 to 18 inches d. b. h. 1 shall 

 never forget the afternoon among those trees for com- 

 putations have since shown them to have made the 

 fastest growth in volume of any stand of softwood 

 timber in the world. Since then a number of other 

 plots have been measured which confirm the above fig- 

 ures and dem- 

 onstrate the 

 remarkable ra- 

 p i d i t y of 

 growth of 

 yo u ng red- 

 wood but none 

 of these quite 

 came up to 

 the above rec- 

 ord. As I had 

 the pleasure of 

 " disco vering " 

 the Big River 

 plot I hope it 

 shall continue 

 to be the 

 greatest, but I 

 would not be 

 surprised to 

 hear that 

 someone had 



measured a plot within the region which slightly ex- 

 ceeded this one in yield. It has come to be known 

 among California foresters as the "Wonder Sample 

 Plot" and with good reason, for calculations of its 

 volume based on future utilization to a five inch top, 

 show a total of 137,416 board feet by the International 

 Log Rule, or approximately 22,000 cubic feet of wood 



REDWOOD SECOND GROWTH IS COMING TO BE USED IN A VARIETY OF WAYS, AMONG 

 WHICH THIS FENCE IS RATHER A BIZARRE EXAMPLE. 



those California exaggerations," and I will confess that 

 when I think of the days I spent in the north woods 

 among the black-spruce, tamarack and jack-pine, I find 

 the figures doubly hard to believe. 



A few days ago I was looking over, with Professor 

 Bruce, a recent Swedish publication which gave figures 

 on yields per acre in some of their splendid and in- 

 tensively managed stands. We both had to rub our 

 eyes a bit in wonder -w'hen we found the best of these 

 to be only slightly higher in yield than the poorest fully 

 stocked stand of second growth redwood we have so 

 far been able to find. 



Tlic table on the following page gives a summary of 

 the P>ig River sample plot for those who may be inter- 



seen them growing in loam which had collected on top 

 of stumps or in old rotting logs. 



Nevertheless redwood seedlings are rare and the 

 writer became interested some years ago in determining 

 why they were so scarce in natural stands and also if 

 they could be grown successfully in quantity in the 

 nurser}'. Experiments with various lots of seed have 

 been carried on in the laboratory and forest nursery at 

 Berkeley and in spite of early failures, it has been dem- 

 onstrated that under the proper conditions redwood can 

 be grown from seed as quickly and easily as can any 

 other forest tree. The early failures resulted, I believe, 

 because the seed was collected from very old trees (ring 

 counts showed them to 'be 1000 years and over) w'hile 



