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NURSE PLANTS. SPACING. PRUNING. 
surely need not be long in making a successful choice. There is the common 
manuka ready to serve us under cultivation as it has so well done in a wild state. 
The scheme for its use would be to sow it in lines twelve feet apart, allow it to 
grow for two or three years, and then plant or sow the eucalypts in intermediate 
lines. There are the acacias — many species of them. With the aid of Australian 
botanists, selections of these could be made until the best could he ascertained and 
adopted. There is the common cypress ( Cupressus macrocarpa) . Granted 
suitable soil conditions, this tree finds a congenial home anywhere over a wide 
range in both Islands. As a nurse it would need to be planted in lines sixteen 
feet apart and six feet apart in the lines. The eucalypts would be planted or sown 
in intermediate lines after the cypress had become large enough to shelter them. 
Later the cypress would become an associated timber yielder of great value. There 
is larch (Laricc Europaea). In the Rotorua State Forests this tree has the 
distinguished honour of having nursed one of the finest stands of Californian 
redwood ( Sequoia sempervirens) in the Dominion. Suitably managed it might 
be made to nurse such eucalypts as E. pilularis and E. saligna. 
Trees of all kinds can befriend and shelter other trees. Plantations give 
quietness and comfort to the homestead and farm. Forests modify climatic 
conditions over wide regions. Thus does the otherwise impossible in raising the 
choice products of the earth become increasingly possible. 
SPACING, PRUNING, AND THINNING. 
It looks well and is convenient to have planted trees in straight lines and 
equally spaced. The lines may be made straight by using ranging sticks or a tight 
wire. Spaces can be measured with a rod or by links in the wire. The distance 
apart at which trees should be started is a difficult question and does not admit of 
an inflexible rule. It is obviously desirable that all trees grown for their timber 
shall be early denuded of their side branches and forced up to a maximum length 
of straight, clean hole. The ideal method wherever it can be practised, and 
especially for small areas, is to plant the trees rather wide apart and prune off the 
side branches by means of ladders and saws. The pruning process begins at the 
base of the tree and follows up in a succession of operations, a sufficient amount of 
foliage being always left fully to maintain the tree’s vitality and vigour. The 
cut for removing each branch or branchlet must be clean and close to the stem. 
The cost of this method bars the way to its general adoption. It is cheaper to secure 
the same object in a less complete degree by planting the trees so close together 
that the side branches will die and fall away while they are still very small. 
Conifers and broad-leaved trees have sometimes been planted as close as four 
feet apart each way. For eucalypts the maximum spacing permissible for 
complete suppression of side branches is perhaps six feet apart each way. But 
all close planting assumes that when the trees have reached the tall sapling stage 
the plantation will be heavily thinned. 
Here, again, the knowledge and skill of the forester are required. In a dense 
plantation of saplings some units will be dominant, others sub-dominant, others 
suppressed; some will be shapely, others ill formed. It will rarely be feasible to 
