SILVICULTURAL MANAGEMENT OF BLACK SPRUCE IN MINNESOTA 5 



white pine (Phius strobus) and sold as "northern pine." Small quan- 

 tities of black spruce also are used for mine lagging, mine poles, fence 

 posts, and farm construction work. However, the total amount used 

 for all of these purposes is negligible compared with that cut for 

 pulpwood. 



F-415226 



Figure 4. — Spruce pulpwood in the harbor at Grand Marais, Minn., ready for 

 loading and shipment by boat to an out-of-State destination. Much of the 

 region north of Lake Superior has no nearby railway facilities. Pulpwood 

 from this district is transported by boats to Pennsylvania and Michigan, rafted 

 across Lake Superior to Wisconsin, or trucked to railway loading points at or 

 near Two Harbors and Duluth. 



Black spruce is cut rather extensively for Christmas trees in Minne- 

 sota because of its abundance and ability to withstand rough handling 

 and tight packing, as well as its straightness, symmetry, close branch- 

 ing, comparatively blunt needles, and dense foliage (fig. 5). It has 

 one drawback, rapid shedding of the needles upon drying, which, 

 however, can be corrected by standing the base of the tree in water 

 (23) , 8 or, as is done by some Christmas tree processors, by dipping or 

 spraying the trees with a film of paint. In recent years, the annual cut 

 of Christmas trees in Minnesota has amounted to about 2,600,000 trees 

 {26). The majority of these were black spruce cut from swamps 

 where growth is too poor to produce trees of pulpwood size. 



It is clear that black spruce is a natural resource that should, if 

 possible, be maintained at a high level of production. From the forest- 

 management standpoint black spruce has another feature that makes 

 it a valuable species. It is the chief one of the very few economically 

 useful trees or other plants capable of growing reasonably well on 

 more than two million acres of peat swamps in northern Minnesota. 

 It is true that growth of black spruce is low in the swamps, but in the 

 absence of this tree species many swamps are barrens. 

 8 Italic numbers in parentheses refer to Literature Cited, p. 54. 



