12 MISC. PUBLICATION 61, IT. S. DEPT. OF AGRICULTURE 



for two years Schenck added shortleaf and pitch pines in the hope of 

 stimulating the growth of the walnuts. Instead, the pines have now 

 taken the lead and average 25 feet high, while the walnuts average 

 only 5 feet. These two stands are shown in Plate 6. 



APIARY PLANTATION 



The Apiary plantation, west of the French Broad River, includes 

 some of the best planted maple on the estate and also one of the best 

 stands of cherry. Plate 5, B, shows a small 25-year-old stand of 

 sugar maple on the Apiary plantation, averaging 30 feet in height 

 and iy 2 inches in diameter, some of the biggest trees being 5 inches 

 in diameter and over 40 feet high. This stand averages 2,500 trees 

 to the acre. In a near-by stand of mixed sugar maple and white 

 pine the maples outgrew the pines and by 1916 had killed or badly 

 suppressed all but a few whose tops still remained in the crown 

 cover. Here the maples rather than the pines were favored in a 

 thinning experiment started by the Forest Service in 1916. (See 

 p. 29.) Another experimental thinning was made in a small pure 

 stand of white pine in which the dominant trees when 20 years old 

 were about 40 feet high and from 6 to 9 inches in diameter, breast high. 



The 21-acre Apiary planting site, an abandoned field, level or 

 sloping gently to the southeast, was mostly poor stony soil covered 

 with beard-grass. An exception was a small patch of good soil near 

 the site of an old farmhouse, and this apparently is where the very 

 successful stand of black cherry was planted. (PI. 4, B.) Some of 

 the trees of this stand were 10 inches in diameter and 55 feet high 

 when 25 years old. As on Long Ridge, Doctor Schenck first planted 

 a good many hardw^oods on the Apiary site. After three years, 

 however, he made a big replanting in 1900 with 48,000 pines, half 

 white and half shortleaf. This replanting was at the rate of nearly 

 2,300 trees to the acre. 



BROWNTOWN PLANTATION 



The Browntown plantation was established in 1905 on 64 acres 

 now within the town limits of Biltmore Forest. No studies have 

 been made of the stands since 1920, but because of the large amount 

 of shortleaf pine planted pure and in different mixtures with other 

 species the history of the plantation is of considerable interest. 



Of the 319,000 trees planted there in the spring of 1905 nearly half 

 were shortleaf pines. Some of these were planted almost pure, with 

 merely a few white pines. Others were mixed with white pine, or 

 with sugar maple and white pine in such proportions that sometimes 

 the planting was essentially of shortleaf pine and maple. Altogether 

 a dozen species were used in these plantings, all but two of them 

 hardwoods, notwithstanding the fact that hardwood planting on the 

 Long Ridge and Apiary sites had been discontinued five years before. 

 The hardwoods used included chestnut oak, scarlet oak, and two 

 Oregon species, Oregon ash and bigleaf maple. 



The trees were planted in rows 5 feet apart at the rate of nearly 

 5,000 to the acre. One planting of 10,000 each of white pine, sugar 

 maple, and chestnut was*at the rate of more than 7,000 to the acre. 

 The smallest number to 'the acre was 1,200 in a 3-acre planting of 

 white ash. 



