SEED SOWING ON NATIONAL FORESTS 



G. B. MCDONALD 



Recently, a " lumberjack" in eastern Idaho, who was in- 

 specting some freshly extracted lodgepole pine seed, made the 

 query, " Do you mean to tell me that each one of those little 

 things will grow a big Bird-eye tree?" When assured that 

 each of the good seeds would produce, in time, and under proper 

 conditions, a mature lodgepole pine tree, he volunteered the 

 remark: "Well, they don't grow from those things here, they 

 just come up naturally." 



It is to be regretted that not all potential timber lands 

 secure a thrifty stand of reproduction, "naturally." If they 

 did, the work of reforestation would be greatly simplified. 



In parts of the country, notably the central and southwest, 

 reforestation has been attempted by planting nursery stock, 

 and has been attended with at least partial success. Heretofore, 

 very little has been done on the National Forests to test the 

 practicability of broadcast seed sowing as a means of reforesta- 

 tion, but at present plans are being prepared for conducting such 

 experiments, on all the Forests, where there is any possibility of 

 broadcast sowing being a successful method of reforesting de- 

 nuded areas. It is the intention of the Forest Service to con- 

 tinue these experiments for a series of years, varying the methods 

 from time to time as acquired experience dictates. Sowing will 

 be done both in spring and fall, in order to determine the most 

 suitable season for the work. 



The experiments on most of the forests will be laid out in 

 the form of strips one chain wide and ten chains long. In this 

 way, each experimental area can be made to cover a variety of 

 soil and moisture conditions, and later, a comparison of results 

 can be made. The methods of sowing the different strips will 

 be as varied as possible, in order to determine the most suc- 

 cessful, as well as the cheapest methods for doing the work. 

 For example, on a certain forest there may be three types of 

 land to be reforested, viz: burned over areas at the higher 

 elevations, burned areas at lower elevations, and open grass land 

 in the yellow pine belt at the lower elevations. As soon as the 

 work is fully under way each of these types of land will be repre- 

 sented by an experimental sowing and planting area. A typical 

 portion of the high altitude burn will be selected, marked, and 

 named. During the present spring, perhaps four experimental 

 one acre strips will be laid out, two to be sown with Engelmann 

 spruce seed, and two with limber pine seed. One acre for each 



