10 BULLETIN 1493, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
Following the first slash fire, various weeds—mostly those not found 
in the virgin forest—take possession of the ground and create a 
vegetative cover which, dying and drying up each year, adds greatly 
to the inflammability and to the danger of subsequent fires. Chief 
among these weeds are fireweed, hawkweed, pearly everlasting, 
bracken fern, and thistle. After five years or so, if the area is not 
reburned, these plants give place to bushes such as hazel, alder, 
salmonberry, vine maple, and elderberry, and to tree saplings; and 
with the decrease in the annual piants and the increase in the shade- 
producing and less combustible brush, inflammability declines. 
In certain portions of the Douglas fir region there is considerable 
small stuff in the virgin forest—understory hemlocks 6 to 16 inches 
in diameter, smali cedars, and patches of unmerchantable pole wood. 
Some trees that are too small to be utilized remain standing after log- 
eing is completed; but trees of this nature, especially hemlocks and 
cedars, are very apt to be killed by the slash fire. They are killed, 
but not consumed. After a few years’ exposure to the elements and 
decay they fall over, or their limbs break off, and the ground becomes 
littered with dry trash which is an invitation to fire. Where there 
is much of this small unmerchantable stuff left, the inflammability 
of the area is about as great after the slash fire as before. There is a 
good deal of this class of logged-off iand in the fog-belt type, where 
small hemlocks abound. 
These facts indicate that slash burning, as now practiced, is at best 
a halfway measure and that it leaves the ground in such condition 
that there is grave likelihood of recurrent fires. 
IMPORTANCE OF PROMPT SLASH DISPOSAL 
Fresh seed that becomes mixed with mineral soil or lies in a pro- 
tected spot may escape destruction by the slash fire, but tender seed- 
lings can not. This is something to remember. HH logged-cff land 
carries a supply of seed—either that shed by the forest before cutting 
and stored in the duff or that blown in from near-by standing timber 
after logging—it is better to burn the slash before that seed has ger- 
minated than to delay the burning until after the seed sprouts. If the 
slash burning lags a year, or even a summer season, aiter logging, the 
majority of the seed supply then on the ground will Have germinated, 
and the tender sprouts are almost sure to be wiped out by the fire. 
In such an event the only chances for the area to reforest naturally 
come from such seed trees as may be left, from an occasional unger- 
minated seed that still lies dormant in the duff, or from seed blown 
m from a neighboring bank of green timber. Be it remembered, 
moreover, that in the normal progress of a logging job the standing 
timber retreats farther and farther from the older cut-over land; it: 
is the first season after logging that land has the best chance of being 
reseeded from the virgin stand. If the full benefit of seed from the 
neighboring uncut timber is to be obtained the slash burning ought 
to be done before this seed is dispersed. 
In short, delayed slash burning on logged-off lands is incompatible 
with successful natural reforestation. This is also true of second 
fires. Even when the fire does not run over the ground completely 
but burns skippingly, it injures the oncoming crop of timber seriously 
by making a patchy distribution of the trees, causing understocking, 
and fire-scarring seedlings which survive. Any fire which runs over 
