Figure 23. — Merchantable stump land in the flatwoods of south 

 supply for wood naval stores. 



Suitable supplies of merchantable stumps are 

 found mainly in the longleaf pine, longleaf-slash 

 pine, and scrub oak types, the latter occupying areas 

 formerly in old-growth longleaf pine. Although 

 land that has been clear-cut and has not yet 

 reforested is considered the best source of stumps, 

 many stumps are obtained also from land support- 

 ing reproduction and small saplings (fig. 23). 

 Many owners hesitate to allow the removal of 

 stumps on land that bears well-established young 

 growths, as the damage to the stands often is greater 

 than the return from the sale of the stumps. 



Stumps are extracted commercially either with 

 the use of powder or with large machines that 

 pull and remove the stumps and their taproots. 

 In locations suitable for stump-pulling machines, 

 they have a decided advantage in cost of removal 

 per ton and in tonnage removed per acre. Areas 

 "stumped" with machines generally yield about 

 two-thirds more volume than those stumped with 

 powder (fig. 24). 



As it is impracticable to operate the heavy stump- 

 extracting machinery in wet, swampy locations, 

 stumps in swamps, bays, ponds, and river bottoms, 

 even though suitable for distillation, are seldom 

 removed. Although in south Georgia approxi- 

 mately 31 percent of the forest area is so classified 

 (table 2), these unfavorable locations contain less 

 than 3 percent of the merchantable stump wood 

 volume. Any future possibility of extracting 

 stumps from these difficult situations would, there- 

 fore, increase the potential supply very little. 



33 



Topography, soil, density of 

 stumps, and other influencing 

 factors combine, however, to 

 restrict the area suitable for 

 stump-pulling machines to a 

 relatively unimportant total. 

 Consequently, the figures used 

 hereafter in this report refer 

 only to the tonnage that can be 

 removed through blasting. 

 The area of merchantable 

 stump land is given in table 1 0, 

 classified according to topo- 

 graphic situation and number 

 of merchantable stumps per 

 acre. Only areas lightly 

 enough stocked with living trees 

 to permit stump extraction 

 without serious damage to the 



standing timber are included in this table. 



There are 618,600 acres which have too few 



stumps (five or less per acre) to warrant extraction 



operations under present practices. 

 Approximately 38 percent of the stump land, or a 



little less than 1 million acres, lies in the flatwoods 



Georgia, a source of 



Figure 24. — Stump-pulling machine removing a seasoned stump 

 with a long taproot. The stump will then be shipped to a dis- 

 tillation plant producing wood naval stores. 



and has sufficient volume (averaging 4% tons per 

 acre) to be considered as productive stump land. 



When the volume of merchantable stumps, as 

 In table 10, is classified according to stumps per 

 acre, about 97 percent is found to be located in 

 areas of sufficient density to warrant extraction. 



A total of approximately 7% million tons of 

 merchantable stumps was found on less than 2 l / 2 



