62 BULLETIN 272, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
and reduce the competition for hight. Heavy openings without 
adequate seed trees contain a rank undergrowth of saw grass, cat- 
tails, iris, and various shrubs, but the same openings supplied with 
an abundance of cypress seed will start a new timber crop. 
Groups or small stands of polewood cypress occurring in virgin 
stands should be thinned in order to give the better individuals 
increased space for crown development, as well as root space if subject 
to acid water or periods of summer drought. 
CUT-OVER CYPRESS AREAS. 
It is doubtful if any operations toward the improvement of old 
cut-over cypress tracts will pay for themselves. Reproduction follow- 
ing the early cuttings has generally been good. On one logged tract 
in Iberville Parish, La., an average of 340 cypress trees per acre 20 to 
30 years old, were counted.1_ Plate V shows saplings filling in small 
openings in the stand. Since the general introduction of overhead 
cableway skidders and the resulting very clean logging of cypress, 
the possibility of a future cypress stand has been practically eliminated 
from several million acres. The complete removal of a mature virgin 
cypress stand without making provision for the succeeding crops is 
giving results similar to those from the clean cutting of virgin stands 
of white and longleaf pines. The rank growth of shrubs and vines 
and the sprout reproduction in mixed cypress and hardwood cuttings 
makes it doubtful whether the expenditure of money for reforestation 
would bring a profit, especially when the uncertainty about future 
uses of the lands is considered. 
CARE OF YOUNG STANDS. 
Thinning is one of the few operations to be considered in dense 
young second-growth stands. The characteristic cypress “ponds” 
and shallow swamps over the coastal plain contain pure stands of cy- 
press of comparatively small size, including a good deal of young 
~ growth. Much of the suppression of young trees in groups can be 
overcome by thinning and improvement cutting. In some cases this 
will be profitable, although in others the materials removed will not 
repay the expense of thinning. Only in the former case should the 
operation be attempted. There are two methods of thinning: (1) 
Removing the smaller trees which are crowded or overtopped by their 
larger neighbors, and (2) taking out the larger dominant, and ‘“ wolf”’ 
trees which suppress the growth in several adjacent trees of average 
size. Because of the all-aged character of cypress stands, the first 
method will generally give better results, varied occasionally by the 
removal of one or more dominant trees from a group in order to benefit 
adjacent trees by affording light and perhaps root space. After 
thinning, the new growth will be distributed among fewer individual 
1 By McLean, F. T. Manuscript report on cypress, Forest Service, 1908. 
