edging of the lumber. The lumber from behind the 
face was in no way affected by the presence of the 
face. 
Progress in getting general adoption of the bark- 
chipping and acid method has been reasonably good 
considering that the gum naval stores industry is not 
susceptible to rapid change in operating methods. 
The techniques for this method were worked out in 
1944, but satisfactory equipment for the application 
of acid was not available until several years later. 
In 1950, a fourth of the gum naval stores producers 
were using acid to stimulate gum flow. 
Another practice which improves the value of the 
worked-out trees for wood products is hanging the 
cups in such a way as to permit removing all the 
nails and metal from the trees when turpentining 
has been completed. Because of the damage to saws, 
stumpage prices for timber with nails in it are con- 
siderably less than for nail-free timber. 
Selective cupping is another practice which serves 
to reduce the conflict between gum and timber pro- 
duction (fig. 37). Instead of working all trees above 
a certain diameter, only those trees which should be 
removed from the stand to improve its quality and 
growth are worked. Leaving the best trees to grow 
means not only greater gum yields in the future but 
also more and better quality timber. Turpentining 
| only those trees that are scheduled for early re- 
moval has another advantage. It avoids excessively 
long turpentining periods that characterized older 
methods. The fresh faces resulting from shorter 
periods of turpentining have much less timber de- 
fect than older faces, which usually get burned and 
become wormy and pitch-soaked. 
Research findings in recent years have made avail- 
able to landowners practical improvements of dem- 
onstrated value for increased gum production and for 
a integration of gum and timber production to 
obtain the maximum value from both. In spite of 
the fact that this information is available in clear 
| “how-to-do-it” style, there still remains a big job 
in getting general adoption of improved practices. 
Cutting Practices and Forest Conditions 
| Poor methods of timber harvesting are contribut- 
ing to poor stand conditions. Although an increasing 
number of landowners and forest industries are im- 
proving their cutting methods, it still is a common 
practice in Florida to clear-cut all the timber large 
enough to make pulpwood (fig. 38). The effect of 
ig type of cutting varies depending upon the char- 
|The Timber Supply Situation in Florida 
acter of the stand and quality of forest land. Even 
when all of the merchantable timber is removed, a 
scattered residual stand of spindly and defective 
trees is often left. Many of these recover and in 
time grow large enough to bear seed. With pro- 
tection from wildfires, the better sites restock quite 
readily. But this is a slow process which greatly 
increases the time required to grow another crop of 
timber. Further, foresters fear that these residuals 
left to restock the land are sometimes inherently 
slow-growing and poor in quality. There is the 
danger, then, that this practice will result in a 
steady degradation of the quality and growth 
characteristics of the timber in subsequent genera- 
tions. 
Unfortunately, these heavily cut areas are often 
subjected to repeated burning. Not only are the 
seedlings which get started repeatedly killed, but the 
number of seed trees and potential seed trees is 
steadily reduced. In spite of the readiness with which 
the good sites regenerate naturally, in 1949 nearly 
a half million acres of good-quality pine land (site 
index 70 or better) were so completely denuded 
that planting will be required to bring them back 
into forest production in a reasonable length of time. 
On poor sites, heavy cutting is an even more 
serious threat to stand productivity. At best, re- 
generation is slow and uncertain, particularly in the 
case of longleaf pine. The delay in restocking caused 
by cutting all of the seed-bearing trees permits 
the establishment of a heavy cover of scrub oak and 
other undesirable shrubs and hardwoods over ex- 
tensive areas of dry, sandy ridge sites. Largely be- 
cause of the presence of scrub oak on such sites 
in 1949, 2.8 million acres of poorly stocked long- 
leaf pine type and nearly 2 million acres of scrub 
oak type were not expected to restock naturally 
with commercial species. Since the first survey, the 
scrub oak type has increased by 600,000 acres. 
A great deal of the heavy cutting in Florida is 
associated with the practice of diameter-limit cupping 
for gum production. Because many of the stands 
are even-aged, cutting the worked-out trees frequent- 
ly leaves the area virtually denuded of timber. Raising 
the minimum diameter of working trees from 7 to 9 
inches and reducing the number of trees being work- 
ed has resulted in an increase in the number of round 
trees in worked-out stands, but it still is possible to 
find instances where small round trees have been 
cut along with the worked-out timber. 
43 
