FOREST PLANTATIONS AT BILTMORE, N. C. 25 



In plantations as young as those at Biltmore, tree diseases are not 

 likely to be very conspicuous. Butt rot due to pine root fomes 

 (Fomes annosus (Fries) Cooke) was found in a few of the white pines 

 cut in the thinning plots in 1923; and it is hard to tell how common 

 this disease may be until more cutting is done in the plantations or 

 until the fruiting bodies of the fungus develop. It is a disease which 

 is very likely to be common in such dense stands as are many of those 

 at Biltmore, and it attacks conifers more often than hardwoods. Its 

 effect in a mixed stand, therefore, or in a pine stand with hardwood 

 understory, is, like that of bark beetles, to favor the hardwoods by 

 killing the pines. 



Rhoades discovered a 100 per cent infection of a rust (Peridermium 

 cerebrum Peck) on the western yellow pines on Persimmon Heights, 

 and believed that this fungus might have been an important contrib- 

 uting factor in the failures of western yellow pine at Biltmore. This 

 is a common disease of shortleaf, pitch, Virginia, and other yellow 

 pines. The disease alternates, in distinct forms, between pines and 

 oaks. 



White pine blister rust (Cronartium ribicola Fisch.) has not been 

 found at Biltmore. Gooseberries and currants, the alternate hosts of 

 the fungus causing this disease, are not common in this region. 



The age and size of the stock planted, the methods used in planting, 

 and the weather at the time of planting are likely to have some effect 

 on the success of planted trees. While these things all varied during 

 the 20-odd years of the planting work at Biltmore, in very few in- 

 stances were the differences such that the results can be fairly com- 

 pared. When, for instance, different-aged stock of a given species 

 was used in any one year, the trees were usually planted not side by 

 side, but on entirely different sites. The same holds true for the 

 other factors. 



Whether 2, 3, 4, or 10 year old white pine stock was used seems to 

 have made no difference in the stands produced, except possibly in 

 one instance, in the Apiary plantation, where it has been thought that 

 4-year-old plants outgrew 2-year-olds planted in alternate rows. But 

 even here it is not quite certain that it is the 4-year-old plants that 

 are the survivors; and, furthermore, one set was raised in Germany, 

 the other at Biltmore. 



The j^oung trees were planted in plowed furrows and in holes dug 

 in the sod, and several small variations were tried, such as adding 

 forest soil to the hole before planting; but none of these practices 

 seems to have made any difference in the growth of the trees. A few 

 of the pines were transplanted with balls of earth about the roots, 

 but since it is not certain just where these were planted, results can 

 not be compared with those in connection with which other methods 

 were followed. 



In accordance with the teachings of that day, most of Schenck's 

 planting was very close. On Long Ridge the trees of the big replant- 

 ing were given an average spacing of less than 5 feet apart each 

 way. Sometimes rows 5 feet apart were used with very close spacing 

 in the rows. Many of the trees at Browntown, for instance, were 

 only a foot or two apart in the row. 



In some stands enough of such closely planted trees have died to 

 give room for development to the rest; elsewhere one species in a 

 mixture has been overtopped; and in other instances very crowded 



