PINUS STROBUS IN EUROPE 113 



forest administrations and foresters in Germany and Austria. The result 

 of this inquiry was presented at the meeting of the German Forestry 

 Society 192" at Frankfurt by Yanselow (1927). His conclusion was: The 

 losses during youth and pole age caused by blister rust were so heavy that 

 this excellent tree henceforth should be used only as a temporary nurse 

 crop. Even more depressing was the opinion of Tubeuf (1927); he wanted 

 the white pine completely replaced by the resistant Pinus veuce Griseb. 



Fortunately, the white pines out in the European forests didn't know 

 about their "First Class Funeral", as the proceedings of this meeting 

 came to be called; they continued to grow. The continuing presence of 

 the tree was an undeniable fact, and this led to the constitution of the 

 "White Pine Commission," which visited the German regions where F. sir-cbus 

 was grown extensively. In its report (Wappes et at. , 1935) , the Commission 

 came to the following conclusions: 



1. Blister rust was found in all stands that were inspected; 

 together with the honey fungus it caused heavy losses . 



2. The growth of the white pine was good on all sites. 



3. Use of the tree was absolutely necessary to secure certain and 

 easy reforestation on poor soils after coppice, and fairly complete 

 removal of litter. 



4. Given proper management, natural regeneration came on all soils. 



5. The tree had a shallow root system; therefore it was not storm 

 resistant. 



6. Logs generally brought good prices, but the market possibilities 

 for small material were limited. 



After World War II reforestation problems again aroused the "White 

 Pine Question". Another assembly of foresters discussed the problem for 

 a third time, during the meeting of the Hessian Forestry Society in 1954. 

 Three lectures on the problem were presented and published in the 

 Society's annual report (Hesse, 1954; Mulder, 1954; RossmSssler, 1954). 

 These discussions resulted in the firm belief that in the state of Hesse 

 white pine would maintain its importance in forests of all ownerships. 



. DISTRIBUTION OF EASTERN" WHITE PINE 



The ups. and downs in the evaluation of the place of P. strobus in 

 European forestry makes it difficult to obtain estimates of the present 

 stand area. According to Buchanan (1964) it is growing in more than 40 

 European countries, but we can be sure that the area in most of these 

 countries is tiny. The most recent collection of stand data was reported 

 for middle Germany by Lembcke (1966), for Austria by Rannert (1958, 1959a, b 

 and 1960) , and for Hesse in 1954 by Eckstein (in press) . While all these 

 data are not fully comparable, those for middle -Germany and Hesse are 

 listed, according to age classes, in Table 1. This helps correct esti- 

 mates made before the war for Germany (Wappes et at. , 1935) , and even 

 those made earlier for Switzerland (Wappes, 1927). 



