PRACTICAL POEESTEY. 



From the point of view of forest management, one of the princi- 

 pal differences between trees is whether they spring directly from 

 seed or are produced as sprouts from stumps or roots already in the 

 ground. A forest composed of seedling trees is called a seed forest, 

 or more commonly but less suitably, a seedling or high forest. One 

 composed of sprouts is spoken of as a sprout or coppice forest, or, 

 more often, simply as coppice, or as sprout land. Seed forests are 

 usually composed of coniferous trees, which rarely sprout, or of 

 broadleaf trees allowed to reach -large size. Sprout forests are com- 

 mon wherever broadleaf trees are cut while they are still young, for 



Fig. 4.— Seed forest of fir in Washington. 



the sprouting power usually diminishes with age. Sprouts never 

 reach so great a height and diameter as seedling trees, although in 

 youth they grow much faster; and they are apt to be unsound, be- 

 cause the old stumps decay and infect the sprouts which spring from 

 them. 



Simple coppice. — It oftens happens, as in Pennsylvania or New 

 Jersey, that a fire sweeps over the second-growth hardwood lands 

 and kills aU the young trees down to the ground; but the roots 

 remain alive, and from them spring young sprouts about the bases 

 of the burned trunks. After several years a second fire may follow 

 and kill back the sprouts again, and other fires may continue at 

 80193— Bull. 358—09 2 



