Interesting Oak

[tcsmpsi]

That's alright, Don.  Those Georgianianians, might have a bit of a quandry with photos of the Acer grandidentatum from the canyons out around Vanderpool.   

[Dodgy Loner]

Rest assured that the leaves of the Georgia oaks growing on the mesic soils of the UGA campus are similarly stunted.   It's actually more closely related to water oak than to northern red oak .

[Texas Ranger]

Yeah, but probably stunted by excess moisture there, from beer drains.

[WDH]

Yeah, TR, that was a tough one.  Not very common.  OK, DL, the challenge is to come up with some stuff that is more ubiquitous .

[tcsmpsi]

Ahhh....but what is Life without challenge?

                                               

[SwampDonkey]

Kind of like black maple vs sugar maple. Which is which? 

[WDH]

Kind of like black maple vs sugar maple. Which is which? 

You are the hard maple man, don't ask me .

[Dodgy Loner]

Yeah, TR, that was a tough one.  Not very common.  OK, DL, the challenge is to come up with some stuff that is more ubiquitous .

I can't help it, I like the rare stuff.  Y'all have probably noticed, what with the Georgia oak and Oglethorpe oak, and everything else most people have never heard of.  At least they're not herbaceous plants .

[SwampDonkey]

Now, now. Don't knock the herbs. 

[Dodgy Loner]

Only reason I don't like them is because I can't identify them...at least, not without extensive googling

[SwampDonkey]

Well they are kinda like trees. Once you observe some traits that look similar among them you narrow things down. Goes without saying I guess. Some handy keys, which are sometimes hard to come by, help to zero in on it. I used Peterson's keys to ID Jeff's Ilex, but I also had a clue from being familiar with a similar family member. There are a couple other plants in my 'Woodlot Flower' thread that are in Audubon's, but their photos don't show enough of the plants, lacking flowers or leaves. 

Like shrub #2 which is Diervilla lonicera very similar to your D. sessilfolia in the south. Yup, even NW Georgia. Only yours is nearly sessile. And yes a square stemmed, serrated leaf honeysuckle, with capsule fruit. The northern and southern bush-honeysuckles. Just to blow the theory that honeysuckles are round stemmed and not serrated and only with fleshy fruit. 


But, of course they are false honey-suckles.   

[Lanier_Lurker]

Naw, it's a red oak.  Think granite outcrop (ie, Stone Mountain) rather than river bottom.  Haven't heard from you in a while, LL.  Good to see you around again!

Well, I kinda figured I was wrong - but I wanted to provide some fodder for the thread.  The bristles had me thinking "red oak" family. 

While I had heard of Oglethorpe oak, I had not heard of Georgia oak.

For the past several weeks, I have been suffering from the "WW" ("W squared") syndrome (or disorder - take your pick).

What are the two Ws?  WORK and WIFE......

My wife teaches high school, so she is home now to assign and supervise all of my activities when I am not at work.  And (unfortunately) work has shifted into overdrive recently.  Everywhere I go I am being "directed", and have to respond to cadence calls.  I feel like a buck private in basic training. 

I need to figure out how to read and post on Forestry Forum during the 2+ hour round trip to/from my job.

I've got lots of other decent material to submit to this forum.  I just need to find the time to do it.  Maybe when wife goes back to work in a couple of weeks.........

DL, I have a short excursion planned to the southern terminus of the Appalachian Trail in August - the Springer Mountain area.  I was there many years ago, but that was before I had sense enough to care about trees.  I've been told that some of the virgin hemlocks in that area are over 8ft dbh.  Is that true?

[WDH]

I don't know about those hemlocks, but you better post some pics of the flora you find or DL and I will personally hunt you down (just kidding ).

[Dodgy Loner]

DL, I have a short excursion planned to the southern terminus of the Appalachian Trail in August - the Springer Mountain area.  I was there many years ago, but that was before I had sense enough to care about trees.  I've been told that some of the virgin hemlocks in that area are over 8ft dbh.  Is that true?

LL, I doubt if that's true.  The current GA champion hemlock is a hair over 6 feet in diameter, and 120 feet tall.  I also know that the guy who wrote Hiking Trails of North Georgia (I think his name is Tim Homan) was a big tree hunter who has hiked every mile of public trails in North Georgia.  He was the nominator of a previous state chamion hemlock, and I have a feeling that if there were such big hemlocks in that area, he would have been quick to notice them.

I've been through that stretch of woods, too, but it was also before I had sense enough to notice the trees!

[Dodgy Loner]

SD, I just read today that Canada has only 140 species of trees in the whole country, which helps to explain why you like your herbaceous stuff so much.  You just don't have enough trees to identify!  The state of Georgia alone has well over 200 native tree species, and the county that I live in has over a hundred.  I've got my hands full trying to keep all of our trees straight, so I don't have time to worry about the herbs...at least, that's my story and I'm sticking to it .

[SwampDonkey]

Actually about 180. Must have been the count in 'Native Trees of Canada'. I know it states 140 species are represented in that book.  I'm still learning many traits of our native trees. Some stuff a person forgets until he/she jogs the noodles. No one will ever know all this stuff and just when someone thinks they know it, something will come up to prove them wrong.  I like learning about herbs and shrubs because I'm just as interested in knowing about them and what makes them tick. Also, a person can tell a lot about what's under the duff, by what's coming up through it.  I've used a couple different site classification schemes and the one thing you can always count on are those little site indicator plants, some not so little. Trouble is, some places bypass site classification and plant black spruce on sugar maple sites. 

Oh, but I digress with more babble. 

[Dodgy Loner]

Oh, but I digress with more babble.

Hey, digression is the Forest Forum way .  Speaking of people bypassing site classification and planting less suitable species, in south Georgia that has become a federally funded tradition in recent years.  The Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) was originally created as an incentive to encourage farmers to plant year-round ground covers in place of row crops as a method of reducing soil erosion.  In some parts of the country, farmers planted pastures to take advantage of the subsidies.  In the southeast, farmers primarily planted pines (in fact, I believe the flooding of the pulpwood market as all the CRP plantations were ready to be thinned is what triggered the precipitous decline in pulpwood prices in the last decade). 

Now, however, it is next to impossible to get federal funding for all but the most erosion-prone land for planting loblolly pine, the most ubiquitous of the southern yellow pines.  The CRP has instead been converted into a "Bring Back the Longleaf Pine" program in south Georgia.  An admirable goal, to be sure - native longleaf forests now cover only 2-3% of their native ranges - but the problem is that not all row crop fields are equally suitable for growing longleaf pines.  It needs a loose, sandy soil to outcompete other species, while many of the fields, especially near middle GA, are heavy clay soils.  The farmers, though, accustomed to a stipend of $15-$20 per acre per year for replanting their fields, began to plant longleafs regardless of whether or not their sites were suitable.

Indeed, my own grandfather planted 23 acres of longleaf pine on a heavy clay field simply to earn the stipend.  If he had chosen to plant the field several years earlier, he could have been funded for planting loblolly pine, a much more suitable species for the site.  But why would he plant the more appropriate species when there was no financial incentive to do so?  The logical response is that the increased growth of the appropriate species on the appropriate site is more likely to earn money in the long-run, but that explanation overlooks a vital fact: My grandfather is over 70 years old, and unlikely to earn any revenue from his plantation other than the CRP money.

As it turned out, the mortality rate in the plantation was incredibly high in the first year, so it was replanted the second year and again the third year.  Fortunately for him, the federal government was more than willing to split the costs of the extra plantings that would have been unecessary had the proper species been planted in the first place.  I know this is a long-winded rant about the general ineptidude of the federal government, and only tangentially related to your previous post, SD, but I think it is also an interesting look at how well-intentioned goals (We need more longleafs!) can lead to poor silvicultural decisions (Let's plant longleaf pine on a heavy clay soil!) when the incentive programs intended to achieve those goals are poorly thought-out.

[Texas Ranger]

In other words, bureaucrats trying to manage a biological situation, with out a clue.  Why am I not surprised?

[SwampDonkey]

The more appropriate spruce to plant on those maple sites would have been red spruce. Also true for sites along the Fundy coast, as Irving has learned the hard way. Don't get me wrong though, spruce or fir native to the region will do very well on those sugar maple sites. It's just easier to manage the softwood because the chemicals applied to control weeds will not affect the softwood when applied at the right time. They still will require thinning, because the chemicals merely slow the growth of the maple a couple years, then the plantation gets overgrown with sugar maple. Under our silviculture program we don't get the same rate for plantation cleaning. Even though at times the plantation is as thick as the natural regrowth on non planted sites. There was public perception back in the 80's, that forests don't regrow after clear cuts. So, the government response was plantations. We had a forest extension that put on courses about ecology and management, but the vast majority would never attend these courses. Mostly the weekend logger/hobbyists that don't rely on their woodlots for a living. Rarely a nurse or doctor or engineer who quite often owns 200 + acres.  Why I bring this up with planting trees is the fact that those furthest removed have the loudest voice. Those close to the land are the minority. Same with farming. None-the-less, the government was pushing softwood management and treating hardwoods as weeds. From my experience, about 95% of harvested sites do not require replanting. I don't know folks, seems to me if I harvest sugar maple I can expect sugar maple will re-establish, not palm trees.  And it must have been worth something, or I wouldn't have cut it.   A lot of woodlot owners were told that hardwood was worthless, plant softwoods. For many years this was almost the case, you could sell stove wood and maybe small volumes of hardwood for specialty products like handles, bowling pins (hard maple/beech) berry boxes (aspen) or basket weaving (ash). To take advantage of reforestation programs, landowners must replant softwoods because they are easier to manage and deer and moose are not as likely to destroy the seedlings. Although, I have seen spruce and pine trees pulled out of the ground on some fresh planted sites in the spring.

[Dodgy Loner]

There was public perception back in the 80's, that forests don't regrow after clear cuts.

I think, by and large, that this is still a huge misconception about managing forestland in general.  John Q. Public is not educated enough (or is simply educated in the wrong areas) to know that a forest, if left alone, will eventually revert to its natural state.  Heck, that's how we got most of the National Forests in the East.  They were cut-over, eroded lands that nobody wanted.  Now they're havens for fish, wildlife, and the eco-terrorists who want to bring down Weyerhaeuser and IP and the Forest Service for cutting down their precious trees.  What many of them don't realize is that their real enemies are the strings of beautiful new homes and the well-trimmed golf courses that stand where productive forests once did.  Timber companies and the US Forest Service have a very strong incentive to ensure the future of productive forests.  Developers do not.