REFORESTING THE CUTOVER PINE LANDS 



If landowners are to restore their forests to production quickly 

 and efficiently, research will have to find the answers to many trouble- 

 some questions. 



Under what conditions is it most profitable to plant slash pine? 

 Longleaf pine? Loblolly pine? How can planting techniques be improved 

 to attain better survival and growth? Can selection or crossbreeding 

 develop new pine varieties that will be easier to grow and more pro- 

 ductive? The cost of planting nursery seedlings is high; can money and 

 time be saved by sowing pine seed directly in the field? Where pine 

 seed trees are left, how can they be made to restock the land fully and 

 quickly? What is the most efficient system of converting the vast acre- 

 age of scrub hardwoods to pine? 



Choice of Species 



Since most of the acreage that now needs restocking was once 

 covered with nearly pure stands of high-quality longleaf, it would seem 

 natural to plant or seed this species again. The trouble is that longleaf 

 is hard to get established, while loblolly and slash pine are easy to 

 plant and grow vigorously on many former longleaf sites. Accordingly, 

 many landowners have turned to loblolly and slash, despite the fact that 

 young trees of both species are highly vulnerable to fire. 



Slash pine, which does not naturally occur west of the Mississippi 

 River, has enjoyed the greatest popularity (fig. 5). Recently, however, 

 heavy damage from ice storms and the southern fusiform rust ( Cronar - 

 tium fusiforme) have caused some landowners to switch to loblolly for 

 well-drained sites. 



Loblolly vs. slash in plantations . - -Studies confirm that loblolly 

 is the better species on average or better sites that are well drained. In 

 one 23-year-old plantation, the loblolly trees were 2 feet taller and 1 

 inch larger in diameter than slash. The loblolly yielded 4 cords more 

 pulpwood per acre than the slash. Nearly 25 percent of the slash pine 

 had rust cankers on the trunk; loblolly had almost no trunk cankers. Ice 

 damaged about 50 percent more slash than loblolly pines. 



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