CHAPTER XII 

 PROTECTION OF THE WOODLOT 



A WOODLOT must be protected from its enemies if it is 

 to be successful. Trees are attacked by disease and insects 

 the same as other forms of plant life, and they are subject 

 to injury from fire, storm, animals, and the acts of man. 



Tree Diseases. — There are many kinds of diseases to 

 which trees are subject. The most common of them are caused 

 by fungi. These are low forms of plant life that cannot man- 

 ufacture food, being without chlorophyll, and so live on other 

 plant life. They live on the wood and other parts of a tree, 

 consuming the woody tissue and causing what is known as rot. 

 The fungous disease is spread by spores that are very light 

 and small and are carried through the air. Falling on the 

 exposed surface of wood the spores will begin to grow, forc- 

 ing their way into the tree and branching out in all directions 

 through the woody tissue. After the fungous disease is well 

 established in the tree it produces a fruiting body which is 

 often in the shape of a shelf-like bracket or of a toadstool. 

 Mushrooms and pufifballs are the fruiting bodies of fungi. 

 The fruiting bodies vary in the diflferent kinds of fungi from 

 a foot or more across to those barely visible. They vary in 

 color also from colorless to black or red, but never green. 

 From these fruiting bodies the spores are scattered by the 

 wind. 



As long as the bark on a tree is intact it will protect the 

 tree from most kinds of fungi and decay. The spores may 

 enter a tree through a broken limb and work down through 

 the body of the tree, or they may enter through an injured 



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