

SIMPLE COPPICE. 115 



suckers, as the sweet chestnut, the elms, most of 

 the fruit trees, the ash, the evergreen oaks, the 

 Pyrenean oak, the lime, the willows, &c. 



The beech very rarely produces suckers, and most 

 of its stool-shoots are derived from adventitious 

 buds ; moreover it ceases to coppice at an early age. 



ROTATION. The length of the rotation has a 

 marked influence on the number and vigour of the 

 shoots. As far as reproduction alone is concerned, it 

 may be said that there is no minimum length for 

 the rotation, for the younger the coppice is cut the 

 greater are the chances of finding the dormant buds 

 still alive and vigorous.* But actually there exists 

 an inferior limit lower than which no one ought to 

 go : this is the age at which the standing crop attains 

 a marketable value and offers an advantageous 

 investment. It is easy to understand that this 

 inferior limit varies with different trees, and that if 

 a willow bed may 'be cut every year or every second 

 year, the same does not hold good for a plantation 

 of sweet chestnut, which cannot be cut with profit 

 before the tenth or fifteenth year. A simple coppice 

 of alder or of the two oaks, ought not to be cut 

 before the age of twenty-five or thirty years. 



Article 69 of the Statute of 1827 fixes, for State 

 forests, a minimum rotation of twenty- five years, 



* This remark requires a slight qualification. Very young and 

 small stools throw up not only fewer but weaker shoots than older 

 stools in the full vigour of their vegetation. Who in India has not 

 observed the repeated efforts of a young stool till at length it 

 throws up shoots strong enough to resist the forest fires ? Many 

 of our so-called seedling trees of the broad-leaved species have 

 originated thus. 



