turtl,
Oaks are very tolerant of shade when they are young. This is nature's way of regeneration. They sit on the forest floor "waiting" for some catastrophic event to take out some overstory trees -- lightening, winds, ice, etc, and then they grow and fill in the gap. Keep in mind, though, that oaks lose this tolerance as they age -- go into any oak forest and look under canopy cover, for instance, at the mid-story level, and you will see dead oaks and twisted oaks, searching for light, whose tops are flat and dying. We clear-cut (that's right -- clear-cut) 40 acres of mature oak, having 10,000 seedling oaks per acre under their canopy, several years back, because many of those young oaks where starting to top out and die. You should see this area now! Five years post harvest it is the best big buck farm I know of because of the cover and browse food supply. This tract has thousands of white oak per acre that are growing fast and are strong and vibrant. The white oak on this tract will someday be of superior quality and should have many veneer quality trees per acre. I have yet to see such quality in areas dominated by oak that have been select harvested, and we spend every day managing timber ground across the state.
In areas with extensive hard maple, oak regeneration is almost always non-existent or very poor (all of northeast Iowa). The more shade tolerant, and faster growing, hard maple completely shade out any young oak seedlings. The end result is a forest with mixed older oak species -- but few if any younger trees -- and mostly hard maple of various age classes. This is a HUGE problem with east-central and northeast Iowa. The forests are turning from oak-hickory stands to mostly maple. Ask most any forester in southern Iowa and they will suggest that you kill all hard maple in your oak timber if you want to sustain good oak regeneration there into the future. One of the leading experts on white oak in the world literally pats us on the back when we do a good job killing the hard maple in the forests we work on with him. Hard maple are a HUGE threat to the future of our oak forests.
Anyone can feel free to contact us if they'd like to see some of the things I've described first-hand (tour one of our properties). We also have a DVD available that talks about the basic aspects of going about TSI.
Best,
Rich Waite
Oaks are very tolerant of shade when they are young. This is nature's way of regeneration. They sit on the forest floor "waiting" for some catastrophic event to take out some overstory trees -- lightening, winds, ice, etc, and then they grow and fill in the gap. Keep in mind, though, that oaks lose this tolerance as they age -- go into any oak forest and look under canopy cover, for instance, at the mid-story level, and you will see dead oaks and twisted oaks, searching for light, whose tops are flat and dying. We clear-cut (that's right -- clear-cut) 40 acres of mature oak, having 10,000 seedling oaks per acre under their canopy, several years back, because many of those young oaks where starting to top out and die. You should see this area now! Five years post harvest it is the best big buck farm I know of because of the cover and browse food supply. This tract has thousands of white oak per acre that are growing fast and are strong and vibrant. The white oak on this tract will someday be of superior quality and should have many veneer quality trees per acre. I have yet to see such quality in areas dominated by oak that have been select harvested, and we spend every day managing timber ground across the state.
In areas with extensive hard maple, oak regeneration is almost always non-existent or very poor (all of northeast Iowa). The more shade tolerant, and faster growing, hard maple completely shade out any young oak seedlings. The end result is a forest with mixed older oak species -- but few if any younger trees -- and mostly hard maple of various age classes. This is a HUGE problem with east-central and northeast Iowa. The forests are turning from oak-hickory stands to mostly maple. Ask most any forester in southern Iowa and they will suggest that you kill all hard maple in your oak timber if you want to sustain good oak regeneration there into the future. One of the leading experts on white oak in the world literally pats us on the back when we do a good job killing the hard maple in the forests we work on with him. Hard maple are a HUGE threat to the future of our oak forests.
Anyone can feel free to contact us if they'd like to see some of the things I've described first-hand (tour one of our properties). We also have a DVD available that talks about the basic aspects of going about TSI.
Best,
Rich Waite
