FOREST PLANTATIONS AT BILTMORE, N. C. 21 



been ascertained. In this stand there has been almost no mortality, 

 probably because of the lack of crowding. 



In another of the Rice Place stands there is a mixture of white 

 oak and white ash. There the oaks are not as tall as those in the 

 better of the pure oak stands, and they are 10 feet shorter than the 

 ash trees. The diameters are about in proportion to the heights. 

 At about 20 years after planting, some of the oaks were only 5 feet 

 high, but the smallest ashes were more than 20 feet high. 



When planted with pines, the oaks, like other hardwoods, have 

 generally grown much more poorly than the pines. Sometimes they 

 are slender and crooked, trying to get their heads up through the 

 pine-leaf canopy. Often they they are hardly more than low shrubs. 

 There is one place on Long Ridge where some shortleaf pines were cut 

 and burned because of bark-beetle attacks. In the opening so made 

 little sprouts of white oak have grown from the 1-inch stumps of 

 small trees that were evidently about 5 to 10 feet high when at the 

 time that the much taller pines were cut, they were cleared out 

 as underbrush. Now that the pines are gone, the oaks are promptly 

 beginning to fill the opening. (PL 3, A.) Similarly, in one part of 

 the Apiary plantation rows of chestnut oaks 2 to 4 feet high are 

 persisting under pine planted a couple of years after the oaks, but 

 now 30 feet high. In the Old Orchard plantation the oaks and other 

 hardwoods have been overtopped by yellow pines planted about 

 three years afterward. 



WHITE ASH 



The best ash in the Biltmore plantations is in the mixed stand 

 of oak and ash in the Rice Place group. Here the white ash at about 

 20 years of age was 30 feet high, or equal to pines of the same age. 

 The diameter, however, was only half that of pines of this height. 



In a near-b}^ pure stand of white ash this species was less suc- 

 cessful. At about 20 years from planting the ash trees averaged only 

 20 feet high and an inch and a half in diameter. Some of them were 

 only 9 feet high and the tallest only 33 feet. 



Sometimes, when the ashes did not seem to be growing well in 

 early life, yellow pines were added, and these promptly overtopped 

 the ashes just as the} 7 did other hardwoods under like conditions. 



YELLOW POPLAR 



Yellow poplar has grown better at Biltmore when self-seeded from 

 native trees than when the small nursery-grown plants were set out. 

 A month after planting, about 75 per cent of the trees of this species 

 in the Horse Stable plantation were dead or seemed likely to die 

 before long. They were cut back in May and by June were develop- 

 ing good shoots; but 16 years later only a few were found. These 

 were on an average 25 feet tall and 2% inches in diameter and were 

 practically as large as white pines of the same age. 



In the Approach Road plantation the yellow poplar was reported 

 as doing well two years after planting; but at about 10 years it was 

 considered a total failure, and Schenck added 1-year-old shortleaf 

 pines to replace the planted hardwoods. At about 18 } r ears of age 

 these pines were far ahead of their associates, although a few of the 

 yellow poplars were larger than the pines. Some of the yellow poplars 

 of the Approach Road plantation are shown in Plate 5, A. 



