Oak, aspen and red maple.

[Tarm]

While harvesting the mature aspen clumps on my property I came upon a patch that had outstanding red and white oak regeneration. The oak seedlings were between three and six feet tall. I decided to do an over story removal and release the oak seedlings. I cut the pulp quality red maple poles and the aspen saw timber but now I wonder what is going to happen? Will the aspen sprouts choke out the oak? Will the oak seedlings keep the aspen from sprouting? Will they both grow up together? Should I treat the aspen stumps to prevent them from sprouting? What is the likely future for this small stand?

[Ron Wenrich]

It depends on how thick your oak saplings are.  I would think that the saplings will increase in height growth and also crowd out the aspen as the canopy closes up.  Aspen is an intolerant species, which means that it needs a lot of sunlight for growth.  The maples will probably stay in the understory, unless there is ample room for them to shoot up.  They are a more tolerant species.  Did you leave red maple which is in the sawtimber class?

You will have to do periodic thinnings in order to get good growth on the oaks.  That includes when it hits the small polewood stage. 

[Clark]

Around here all 3 species would respond to the overstory removal. The red maple will stump sprout and prevent any aspen from growing near the stump. The oak will start chugging along but will be passed up by the aspen. Wherever there is enough light aspen will shoot up.

Once this cut is 5-10 years past I would go out there and do some hand thinning. No heavy lifting because all you need to do is set a stem back and with all the competition it will soon die. Around every oak I would cut anything that has come up, give each tree a 3-6' radius that has everything removed. The red maple sprouts should be thinned to A) get a decent stem out of each one and B) give neighboring trees room to grow. I would leave the biggest/best red maple from each stump sprout, the rest should be cut. The aspen can be depended on to fill in all the gaps.

Clark