"Releasing" trees

[GlennCz]

I am marking trees on my property for harvesting.(northern hardwood) This is the first cut and I am doing a "light" cut, basically cutting down stuff that isn't growing right, some obvious crowding problems and a few $$money trees for good measure.  Since my forest is about 80 yrs old apparently, never timbered, there are some nice 22"dbh or more cherries.  I want to leave most of the good ones to grow bigger and to admire.  Is there any harm in thinning around these trees and taking out obviously weak trees.  Is it possible that this could cause a growth spurt and devalue the timber in any way?  Will a "maturing" cherry that is >22dbh even react to thinning??

For some of these trees, is it going to do any good to thin around them?  The nice fat straight ones I would like to grow more, but the ones that are crooked at 8 ft up, or obvious rotting problems, even thought they may be >20"dbh they probably aren't going to pack anything much more, so take them out and make soom for new hardwood.  Like I said above, we really aren't going to get into too much thinning, because I want to start with some of the more obvious problems. 

[Ed_K]

 On your save trees, leave some shade on them,on the south side. They will sprout suckers ( don't remember the correct name, Ron can I'll bet) unless the trees are competing for crown space. I try hard to have some shade on the bole at least.

[woodmills1]

I think it is ectopic but maybe not correct spelling.  I think it means sun grown and it will interfere with a nice smooth bole.  I did a medium original test cut on some of my land and got a few of these kind of branches bit they soon self pruned.

[GlennCz]

i have a 1960 booklet plublished by Forest Service title "Silvical Characteristics of Black Cherry".  Here is what it says about thinning. 

"The species shows little response to thinning" They quoted two studies where they measured thinned trees for 10 years and compared them to unthinned, and found no appreciable difference.

[Jeff]

The term is actually "epicormic branching"

Here is a link from the Forest Service website that describes a publication that talks about this on Cherry in the Appalachian area

http://www.treesearch.fs.fed.us/pubs/9397

Here is a link to the PDF of the publication. Its a large file size. You can also get the link from the page linked above.

LINK TO PDF

[Ron Wenrich]

All trees have buds underneath the bark, called epicormic buds.  They are stimulated by sunlight.  Open it up too much and you get them.  

Stocking levels that fall below 60-70 sq ft of BA can result in epicormic branching.

Making room for hardwood is fine, but you have to have sufficient opening for regeneration.  Make room for regeneration before you take out your seed source.

[GlennCz]

Ron et al, we have one couple acre area that had some beech thinned out >20 yrs ago, there is a high canopy of pretty nice trees but it is all ferns underneath and no developing understory except beech under a few massive beeches that were left from 80 yr old clearcut are and certainly >100yrs old.  A few years ago I did some roundup spraying of the ferns and it has worked I can still see where I walked 3 yrs ago with the sprayer, then there are some areas where the ferns are 2 ft high again and dense and I swore Iwalked there too.  I suppose that I can hope, when I open it up a bit, the ferns will hopefully "burn out" and left some trees come up between.

[SwampDonkey]

Heavy ferns means lots of moister, lots of shade and rich ground. The beech regen will flurish in lots of shade, where cherry will not germinate and sugar maple will just stagnate. And often times when you release that established maple regen it will burn up in the hot sun because their leaves are adjusted to shade conditions. We cut beech from a beech/sugar maple stand years ago that had a carpet of sugar maple at the time. The mature maple were casting more shade than the beech because of beech bark disease, that's why the beech was taken for the furnace. Also, because the beech were stressed they were producing an abundance of seed. Now you can barely walk that ground because the beech and ironwood is as thick as grass and the maple seedlings were killed out. A complete transformation in the understory. There were also alot of indian cucumber root in the old understory and the beech even wiped them out. In the spring time or dormant season, beech is like walking in barbed wire. Unbeleivable tree. I always like to leave the smooth ones, if I have control of the harvest. We are loosing alot of beech mixed hardwood forests up this way from disease. It's even tough to thin precommercially because of the thick stool shoots on the stumps, hard to select one outta 30 of'em without clipping the leave tree with the blade of the saw.  :-\

[GlennCz]

this is a great paper on thinning and it's effects.

LINK