SHORTLEAF PINE IN VIRGINIA 9 



CONDITION AND COMPOSITION OF OLD-FIELrD 



STANDS 



As early as 1735 it had become a fixed part of the farming 

 system of middle Virginia to clear new ground each year and to 

 abandon to lallow a parcel of the oldest and most worn farming 

 land. The land thus turned out was rapidly colonized with pines 

 through seed blown by the wind from old trees nearb/! When 

 these pines had become large enough and the humus had been re- 

 stored to the soil through them, the land was usually cleared again. 

 Such a system of rotation of timber and cultivated crops was pos- 

 sible only in a region where land was abundant and cheap. It was 

 due in part to the lack of local markets, which made it necessary to 

 export a large portion of the crops and therefore to produce them 

 as cheaply as possible, regardless of the effect upon the soil; and 

 in part to the fact that these soils were not natural grazing lands, 

 and the depleted humus could be renewed naturally and cheaply 

 by the replacement of the native pines. Some of the existing 

 groves of old-held pine thus originated before the Revolutionary 

 War. Most of them, however, are younger, having originated dur- 

 ing and just after the Civil War or in the subsequent periods of 

 agricultural depression about 1880 and 1892. These stands are 

 consequently of all ages; from the youngest, just in process of 

 stocking land which has been turned out during the past decade, 

 to those more than 100 years old. Stands between fifteen and 

 forty-five years old are, however, the most numerous. 



Such old-field stands were thus established naturally, and_no 

 efforts were made by the owners to increase their density when 

 they were too open or to protect them, while young, from fire. 

 They have seldom been thinned judiciously for improvement. As 

 a result, they vary widely in density. Small tracts 3re usually 

 well-stocked, since, if seed-bearing trees were nearby while stocking 

 was taking place, seeds were in a few years scattered uniformly 

 over the entire tract and such small tracts were often protected 

 from fire by fences, or by adjacent cultivated fields. The trees in 

 such well-stocked stands are slender and clean-bodied, with small 

 crowns. The average tract, however, is poorly stocked. The trees 

 are isolated, individually, or in irregular groups, and consequently 

 short-bodied, knotty, and coarse-grained. This open condition of 

 many of the stands is due to the fact that seed trees were too 

 few or too distant while the stocking was in progress, or to the 

 fact that the fields became grassy and the seedlings were killed by 



