Southern Yellow Pine ?

[woodhick]

I live in central West Virginia.  We have a pine around here that locals call bull pine, black pine, red pine, and Virginia pine.     I have heard the same tree called all of these names.  It is not a white pine or Hemlock, that I know for sure.  Would these fall into the "southern yellow pine" catagory?

[Jeff]

My reference here lists as common names: Southern pine, southern yellow pine, Florida longleaf, Florida yellow pine, Georgia yellow pine, slash pine, loblolly pine, shortleaf pine, American pitch pine, Gulf coast pitch pine, longleaf pitch pine, longleaf pine and longleaf yellow pine, Carolina pine, northern Carolina pine, meadow pine, salt water pine, spruce pine, she pitch pine, swamp pine, bassett pine, black pine and foxtail pine

It also states that Virginia pine is not a southern yellow pine, but closer akin to the northern and western pines.

[SwampDonkey]

Yeah, red pine is also Norway pine. Virginia pine, is just that, but looks almost like our northern jack pine. If you didn't know the little details you might call jack pine a Virginia pine.

The southern yellow pines also have similar volume and tangential shrinkages when drying, around 12.2 and 7.6% respectively. However, relative densities differ a bit.

[Tom]

Southern Yellow Pine is a catagory that includes only four hard pines.
Pinus taeda (Loblolly Pine)
Pinus echinata (Shortleaf Pine)
Pinus elliottii (Slash pine)
Pinus palustris (Longleaf Pine)

Loblolly is sometimes called Bull Pine because it reaches such great girth so quickly.
It is also called Black Pine sometimes, but usually Black Pine is reserved for Pinus serotina, which is also called Pond Pine and marsh pine.
Virginia Pine (Pinus virginiana) is a smaller pine that sometimes grows to saw size and may be found in your area, but it isn't a Southern Yellow Pine.
Red Pine (Pinus resinosa), also called Norway Pine, is found in the N.E. U.S.A. and you are on the southern end of the range.  It could be Red Pine but that is still not a Southern Yellow Pine.
Ponderosa Pine (Pinus ponderosa)is called Bull Pine, but doesn't occur in West Virginia.

The use of common names can certainly confuse you when trying to identify a plant, can't they?


 

[Dodgy Loner]

I have also seen pitch pine (Pinus rigida) included in the southern yellow pine category, but it makes up a very small percentage of the SYP harvest (<1%). 

As the others said, Virginia pine is not a southern yellow pine and should not be sold as such, but that doesn't mean it won't make good sawlogs.  A tall, straight tree with few branches will still make good lumber.

[thompsontimber]

Yes, pitch pine also marketed as southern yellow pine, and have also seen it pulled of once with table mountain pine.  Georgia Pacific plywood guys out of Prosperity, SC bought a tract above Marion, NC that had quite a bit of Table Mountain pine.  They weren't even sure what they were looking at in the beginning, but decided it was of sufficient quality and characteristics for their product and bought same as any other southern yellow pine.  As for Virginia pine not being a southern yellow pine, that is true also and not supposed to be marketed as such, but its done quite a bit in the heavy Virginia pine areas of the south...you should see them picking out the nice clean logs bought as cheap VP and milling it with the shortleaf and loblolly.  Round these parts, its a southern yellow pine.

[WDH]

Virginia pine might not be a Southern Yellow Pine, but it is a yellow pine.

[thompsontimber]

yup, doesn't get much more yeller!

[SwampDonkey]

Yeah, even wild jack pine makes nice lumber. It grows thicker after fires, so it limbs up well. The plantation jack pine they have planted are way too limby and that causes them to become crooked as well. I believe they should be planted 3-4 feet apart and thinned, but it's too costly for an under valued species, so they plant them like spruce 6-7 feet apart. They grow fast though. None grow in my area naturally, I planted a few around on the old farm and in my yard. The yard ones are too open, thus limby and crooked. The ones I planted in small patches have not done too badly. Heck they grew where spruce wouldn't, because of the tall weeds.

[DanG]

This looks like just a dandy place to clear up something that may have been a misconception on my part.  I had understood that there were the four MAJOR Southern Yellow Pines, but there were others in the category that were too rare or isolated to be considered major.  An example would be the Sand Pine.  I'm not challenging anybody here, I just want what little knowlege I have to be correct.

[Dodgy Loner]

I will try to shed some light on the subject, but I may just as well be muddying the waters.  There are, indeed, four major southern yellow pines: loblolly, slash, longleaf and shortleaf pines.  However, pitch pine and pond pine are close relatives of loblolly pine and are often of sufficient quality to be harvested and sold along with the other SYPs.  Virginia pine, sand pine, and jack pine are another group of closely related species, and as I understand it, they are more closely allied with lodgepole and ponderosa pines, which are known as western yellow pines.  I've seen samples of virginia and sand pine, and in my opinion, they appear more similar to the SYPs than the WYPs, but they are clearly yellow pines.  I think they are somewhat weaker than the other SYPs.  There are also a few uncommon species, such as table mountain pine in the Appalachians, and spruce pine in the coastal plain, that are yellow pines.  Table mountain pine is most closely related to loblolly pine, and should therefore possess characteristics similar to the other SYPs.  I'm not sure what spruce pine's closest relative is, but I've read that it's weaker than the SYPs, so it is probably more simalar in wood properties to the WYPs.  Does that help?

[DanG]

Yes, that helps quite a bit.  Perhaps my love affair with the language is getting in the way of my curiosity about trees, but it seems that the phrase, "major SYP" implies that there are minor SYPs.   Logic tells me that if it is a yellow pine that grows in the South, it must be a southern yellow pine , but we all know that logic doesn't always apply.

FWIW, I have sawn quite a bit of spruce pine, and once the bark is gone I can't distinguish it from Loblolly.  The old timers around here call spruce pine, "turkey pine."  Is that a common term elsewhere?  Of course, those same old timers refer to longleaf as yeller pine and all the others as white pine.

[SwampDonkey]

Depends on what you call west, some call the west line the Rockies, for others is the beginning of the prairies others call the Mississippi R the west line and probably a few other notions. For me it starts at the Manitoba border. If you ever drove from Kenora Ontario to Winnipeg you'll see why. And it's not a myth that you will cross over the Mississippi River in Manitoba while traveling Route 2 highway. Jack pine grows east of the Rockies and is pretty much equal in geographic area in Ontario, Quebec, NB and NS as the northern prairies, and southwestern Yukon territories around Great Slave. Just a smidgen falls into far northeastern BC. Some people think East is Ontario and everything beyond is void and mythic.

Lodgepole growing on a swamp perimeter is very dense, the axe unless real sharp will glance right off it. I've seen guys injure themselves cutting falling corners and not using the proper stance when they tackle one of those petrified specimens. It was a very common injury with new "green horns" on the crew. Well not petrified, but real hard to chop into.

Not trying to cause split ends on anyone's hair do, just taking my seat in the crowd.

[Tom]

I'm not a technician, specialist or dendrologist by any means, but I've heard that a sawyer who saws up "black pine", when used as a term to identify Pond Pine or Pocasin Pine, can find himself on the street.

Pocosin, or Pond pine, (Pinus Serotina) definitely hasn't the strength or stability of the other yellow/hard pines.  I can smell it as soon as the saw hits the wood and know to back off or its tension will roll it right off of the mill.  I've even tried to cut fence posts out of it, a product it should perform good in, and had it bend and twist so bad that my 4" square turned to 6" at the middle of the cut and then to 2 or 2 1/2 at the end, surprising me as it broke the final fibers and jumped onto the mill bed as the blade exited.   Pocosin smells very strongly of lemons to me, usually has a wide growth rings, is prone to knots and has a very dark bark with quite small plates.  The sap that exudes is chalky and white when it dries.  It's wood is inferior to Loblolly (the least desirable of the SYP's) and it doesn't produce enough sap to have made it a target for Naval Stores.   

Those times that the grain was tight enough to fool me , lasted only long enough to get the sawblade into the wood.   You begin to learn its fallibility's pretty quickly.

I still think it has a place in the market as a fence post.  It seldom develops much heartwood and takes pressure treatment readily.  If you can cut it such that it remains fairly stable, it should do well as a place to hang fence wire. 

Growing in the woods or alongside of the road, it is fairly easily identified because of its very small pine cones.  They are supposed to be "serotinous" or will open in the heat of a fire.  The tree is fire tolerant and that leads to its being found, along with Long Leaf on ground that is burned frequently.  Pocosin is one of the few pines that will stump sprout, another way it survives the fires, and the needles that it grows from the bark on the trunk of the tree is another identifier of the species.

It flowers within the same periods as Loblolly and produces hybrids on occassion.  It can also get crossed up with Long leaf and slash, but the time tables are off enough that it doesn't happen too often.  A Forester told me one time that the hybrid, Sonderegger, as most pine crosses, generally seems to carry the worse traits of the two trees that crossed.  Still, I've read of intentional crossing of Loblolly and pitch pine to produce a lumber tree that will grow out of zone. Most pine hybrids seem to include Loblolly as one of the contributors.  I guess it has to do with the close proximity of the flower periods.

SYP is a marketing term and that is why it usually includes only four species.  The Southern Pine inspection bureau was responsible for the designation to align the lumber with its grading rules.  So this is why Southern yellow pine defaults to the four species, longleaf, slash, loblolly and shortleaf.

[nsmike]

When I'm trying to understand the relationshihtp between pines I go to the conifer oranization site http://www.conifers.org/pi/pin/index.htm it shows that virginia pine is clearly in the jack pine /logepole pine group. As you can see there are alot of species of SYP yet the marketing board only shows four.
Mike

[Tom]

There are yellow pines other than Southern Yellow Pines, but I have to disagree that there are more than four Southern Yellow pines..  Southern Yellow Pine is a Marketing term approved by the American Lumber Standard Commitee and is, defacto, very specific in its designation. 

The site you linked to is an interesting one.

[Dodgy Loner]

Well Tom, as a botanist I would have to disagree that the only acceptable definition of a Southern Yellow Pine is the one presented by the American Standard Committee .  We consider it to be a group of closely related species, including those pines that I mentioned, but you make an interesting point about the dubious properties of some of the minor species. 

In my own experience, I have never sawed pond pine, but I have seen it mixed with loblolly pine during harvesting operations in south Georgia.  It's no wonder, a lot of foresters can't tell loblolly pine from shortleaf pine, much less loblolly from pond pine.  Without the cones, even I have trouble reliably separating the two.  I've heard pond pine called black pine regularly by the old timers in south Georgia.  I'm surprised to hear of its strange wood properties.  It is very closely related to the pitch pine we have up here in the mountains.  Up here, pitch pine is far more common that shortleaf or loblolly pine, and it's regularly harvested and sold as southern yellow pine.  From what I can tell, it's pretty much identical in properties to the other SYPs.

DanG: As far as spruce pine goes, I can't say that I've ever heard of it being called turkey pine.  I've also never seen it being cut and sold along with the other SYPs.  It's kind of an oddball species, very unique in appearance.  Don't know what the wood looks like, but if you say it looks like loblolly, then I believe you

[DanG]

Yeah, spruce pine is strange all right. To clarify just a bit, the logs I sawed all came from one customer.  They obviously weren't open grown trees as the logs were long, straight and clear, but the ring spacing was wide like an open grown loblolly.  They were loaded with free water.  The boards were heavy, but dried real fast.  They had been down for a while, as the bark was beginning to slip.  I asked him if they'd been laying in water but he said they had been stacked high and dry.  I did note that the lumber lay really flat with very little movement during sawing or drying.  It was pleasant sawing, except that those 20 ft 1x10s were pretty heavy for an old fart like me.

[SwampDonkey]

I think there may be a difference only in opinion on the designation of these pines. In Wood Tech under Section "Wood Identification and Description of Wood by Species" these pines are grouped with other pines under the heading "Southern Pines" versus the heading SYP used in grading like Tom says.

The following footnote may help clear up some things or may just make each brace their feet all the more. Here goes.

In order to assist in selection of wood suitable for structural purposes, grading rules for Southern Yellow Pine contain the density rule provision. To qualify under the provision, structural timber must show on one end of the piece an average of not fewer than 6 rings per inch and 1/3 late-wood.

For the most part it is difficult to separate the lumber of each species. Longleaf and slash frequently exhibit multiple late-wood bands, and the pith of longleaf is twice the diameter of the others (0.2 in), 0.1 or less for the other southern pines.


So really, it's not a specific species, it's the density of the piece from the southern pines that class it SYP in grading.

[fishpharmer]

I find this to be a fascinating discussion.  Botany or lobotomy.  Tomato or tamatoe.  Seems like this is a matter of semantics.  I had to look that up to make sure I was using it correctly.

http://as200l.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=semantics

Seems like everyone here is right in some respect.  Not that I have any authority to be a judge.  I am more like the redneck in the crowd yelling out his uneducated opinion. 

Seems to me Tom and lumber standards folks are concerned more about the physical and engineering properties of the wood.  Tom has seen and smelled it first hand, which to me is the best kind of experience.
I am sure others have too.  I may be kinda like dodgy loner, I have read alot about it but never actually had the chance to put hard shiny steel into aromatic fresh logs of many different species of southern pines(I am refering to region only).  I haven't smelled the the fresh sawdust, steel and diesel fumes wafting through the air.  I couldn't tell if the engine will bog more with one species or another.  I don't know if a log will jump out of the dogs.  Heck there is alot I don't know.  Guess thats why I am on Forestry Forum.

Wood color, leaf shape, region, common name, and physical properties all seem to be ways to lump together types of trees. 

Seems like the folks marketing SYP  use a combination of these things and maybe more.  I would think that the builders and consumers that buy SYP lumber don't really care what species it is.  They just want and expect a board that performs consistantly and a competitive price. 

Loggers are a different story,  a couple that I know, (not all, and I know several) will put a few Pinus serotina and Pinus virginiana in the middle of a load and sell it to a big mill as SYP in a heartbeat.  I bet I couldn't tell the difference.  I bet Tom could.

Here's a couple links that helped me draw the above conclusions;

http://www.southernpine.com/whatis.shtml

http://www.alsc.org/untreated_graderuleorg_mod.htm

http://spib.org/

Some say I am a good cook others say I just like to stir the pot.

[Dodgy Loner]

Fishpharmer, you are absolutely correct that we are merely discussing semantics .  But semantics often seem to make for great topics of discussion, don't they?

I found they first link that you provided quite interesting.  On the first page, you'll find this line:

Southern Pine grows in a vast band across the Southern United States, from East Texas to Virginia. In fact, it's a rare county that doesn't contain a representative of one of the four main species: shortleaf, longleaf, loblolly or slash.

  If there are four main species, according to the southern pine council, doesn't that imply that there must be minor species as well?   Also interesting was this line:

Lumber from all four is marketed as Southern Pine (or Southern Yellow Pine) and graded in accordance with the grading rules of the Southern Pine Inspection Bureau (SPIB), approved by the American Lumber Standard Committee.

  This indicates to me that "southern pine" is in fact synonymous with "southern yellow pine".  But of course, with the exception of eastern white pine, which only snakes its way south along the Appalachian ridges, all pines in the South are yellow pines. 

As a consumer, however, all that really matters is the strength of the lumber, hence the "rings per inch" rule that SD cited.  Once the bark is gone, there's no reliable way to tell one southern yellow pine from another.  However, I do have to disagree with the last statement Donk makes:

So really, it's not a specific species, it's the density of the piece from the southern pines that class it SYP in grading.

  A loblolly pine will always be a southern yellow pine, even if the wood has two rings per inch.  It just can't (legally) be sold as structural timber due to its insufficient strength.

The final message, I guess, is that southern yellow pine is a common name for a group of trees, and as we all know, common names are confusing

[SwampDonkey]

I think egos have an even bigger role.

[Tom]

As a lobotomist, my ego dictates that, I can't tell one SYP tree from the other after it is been sawed into lumber.

I can make  a pretty good guess at Long Leaf, but I've also seen loblolly with rings so tight you can't count them.  That has been, supposedly, one of the factors in marketing SYP over the years, in that the word "lumped" is used in describing it.   "Once sawed, they are lumped into the market as SYP".  Those last quotes are mine as a synopsis of written and verbal comments I've heard over the years.

There is even a distinction as to the quality of lumber that comes from the four "major" species.  Loblolly is inherently the hardest to saw.  It's wide bands of summer wood (early wood) let a narrow kerf band wander around like a drunk on Main Street, and offers little guidance or resistance with the kerf as the Winter wood (late wood) is contacted.   I've sawed Loblolly that looks like a snake, almost as if you deliberately sawed it to look like a ribbon because the "waves" from one side matched the other.

Longleaf is the premium.  It makes the prettiest deep yellow lumber with red heart (not the disease) that one could ever want.  I hate to put any finish at all, but for some wax, on a piece of longleaf that has a mixture of heart and sapwood.  It looks like a piece of streak-a-lean bacon and gets prettier as it gets older.

So there is a lot to the claim that the definition may be structural when defining sawed boards, especially when the source is not known.  Knowing the character of some of the yellow pines, though, without some indication as to the source, SYP could lose its reputation as a strong and pretty building material if a "look-a--like" piece of Black Pine (Pocosin) makes it into lumber destined for headers, ladders or scaffolding.

In my simple opinion, the term SYP should be one that we should revere and protect, if for no other reason than to protect the reputation, and the uniqueness, of the region in which it grows. By making the distinction among Yellow Pines, we are declaring a special seat in the hierarchy of lumber for SYP.  That can be called semantics, if you like, but I call it marketing. 

[Dodgy Loner]

Here's a collection of seven common yellow pines, six of which grow in Georgia.  Anyone want to take a stab at them?







Tom, I totally understand your reasoning behind wanting to maintain the reputation of the term "southern yellow pine", but my feeling is that if you walk into any box store and check out there selection of 4x4's, that reputation is already well on its way to ruin.  Loblolly has to be the most variable of the SYPs, with some of them as hard, strong, and tight-grained as any longleaf pine, but the majority of them are of much lower quality, and I've even sawed some loblolly that was about as light as spruce - in color and in weight.  I wish all SYPs were longleaf

[DanG]

p. quartersawnus, p. flatsawnus, p. riftsawnus, p. gonnawarpus, p. niceboardus, p. denimus, p. particleboardus

[Tom]

Nah, I got better sense than that.   I know I couldn'lt guess one when I've not even seen all the yellow pines.

Well, what the heck, maybe it'll be fun to make a stab at it. using some of my eyeball memories.  All I have to go on.  
left-right
The first could pass for LongLeaf vertical grain.

The second I would guess as flat-sawed Loblolly or plantation grown slash.  The color and thickness of the winter wood makes me think there might be some reaction wood envolved. The color could also be indicative of pond pine.

The third looks like slash from the end but it's hard to tell from the wide surface, the wide grain on the right side of the board sure indicated that it jumped in those 4 years represented. I'd say it might be loblolly too.

The stripe of heart and the even grain of the fourth board indicates a possibility of longleaf, but slash will do that too.  

The fifth one over shows a very flat-sawn piece with oval images indicative of a board sawn from a marbled surface.  I'd say it was grown under a canopy. It's grain is tight, but I can't see it from the end.  It could be Loblolly, based on the light color, though it probably is one I've not seen much of , like shortleaf maybe.

The Next one over has very wide grain on the right but it is like there was a limb there or maybe a lump on the side of the tree or a bend in the log.  I'd guess it to be open-grown, whatever it is.

The one on the far right, I haven't a clue.  It's almost white. All I'd guess is that it was wet footed.

[Dodgy Loner]

You did very well, Tom!

From right to left, they are:

Longleaf pine (P. palustris)
Slash pine (P. elliottii)
Loblolly pine (P. taeda)
Pitch pine (P. rigida)
Shortleaf pine (P. echinata)
Virginia pine (P. virginiana)
Lodgepole pine (P. contorta)

The virginia pine is curious to me, in it's similarity to the southern yellow pines.  I would have definitely called it a southern yellow pine, not a western yellow pine, just by looking at the wood.  The lodgepole pine has much wider earlywood and much narrower latewood rings than the SYPs, giving it a much whiter appearance.  Close inspection reveals very little difference between the actual color of the latewood and earlywood bands between SYP and WYP, but the greater percentage of latewood in SYP is what gives it the yellow appearance.  Research from some of my esteemed colleagues at UGA has shown that the width of the latewood bands has more to do with the timing of the rainfall received than with the growth rate of the trees.  Areas that receive more rainfall in late summer, when the trees are producing latewood, will have wider latewood bands than areas that receive more rainfall in the spring, when the earlywood is being produced. 

You can see in the photos of the endgrain that the first three specimens all have a decent growth rate and very wide latewood bands, indicating that they were grown in a climate with lots of summer rainfall.  Southeast Georgia is one such region (which is where the samples came from).  Wood from this region is superir to wood from northeast Georgia, which tends to receive the bulk of its rainfall in the spring.  The next three species all have a greater percentage of earlywood, which makes sense, since all of the samples were taken from northeast Georgia.  The last sample has very narrow rings and the latewood bands are the narrowest of any sample.  I'm not familiar with rainfall patterns where this tree grew (heck, I don't even know where this tree grew), but I suspect that it's likely that it gets very little in late summer.

[SwampDonkey]

Tom, I think you'll agree with me on this. It's a lot easier to tell them apart when they are in front of you, you possibly hand selected the samples from known sources and you are the one doing the testing. 

Heck, let me put up some spruces. I could show you all kinds of variability. I can show you tight rings you can barely distinguish and they could fall into all 3 eastern spruces. Then I could make it easier and show typical samples, then you would still find it difficult to separate red spruce from black.

[nsmike]

Tom, I understand that your defensive about the term SYP when it comes to lumber and keeping your list to the four major species Longleaf, Shortleaf, Slash and Loblolly. In the pulp market the list is eight and adds Pitch, Pond, Spruce and Table Mountain. If you ask a Dendrologist he'll add in a whole bunch of species from Caribbean Islands and Mexico. I guess we all have to keep in mind context. Just to add fuel to the fire Loblolly is more closely related to three of the minor species, Pitch, Pond, and Table Moutain pine than it is to the other three major SYP species, a case can be made for dropping Loblolly from the SYP lumber designation but I won't get into that.
Mike  

[SwampDonkey]

Not much variability is earlywood width, so it stands to reason that they could make that conclusion. It's a pretty good hypothesis going into the experiment.   That's been researched for a long time. Wet spring, turning dry for a stretch then later in summer heavy rainfall will induce lamas growth as well. I think some of those pines, a couple species at least show this fairly common.

[beenthere]

Mike
Make your case. I'd like to hear it.

And could you fill in some on your bio?  please

[SwampDonkey]

If you look at volumetric shrinkage of the 4, they are pretty much the same. Specific gravity (relative density), a bit wider margin between them. But, density in grading is different then relative density obviously.

[Dodgy Loner]

If you ask a Dendrologist he'll add in a whole bunch of species from Caribbean Islands and Mexico.

You mean like P. caribea?   I have never seen Carribean pine in person, but my dad has pictures from a sawmill operation in Honduras where they were sawing some pretty nice logs.  It's a close relative of slash pine, and I've read about some work with hybrids between the two.


Don't trip while this blade is running!

[SwampDonkey]

Nice pictures Dodgy, that's your dad I assume. He sure takes a lot of cool pictures. 

[nsmike]

beenthere, I have family ties to the lumber industry in the Carolinas my Sisters boyfriend (more like commonlaw BIL) runs a thinning crew for a major forestry company in NC and an Uncle that was involved in the industry in SC. Most of the arguments for excluding Pond, Pitch and Table Mountian pine applys equally to Loblolly unless it comes from carefully managed plantations.  Most of the complaints I hear are from my Uncle and making density he prefers Shortleaf.
Dodgy yep that's what I was thinking along with Cuban and Honduran.
Mike

[fishpharmer]

SYP maybe alot like Angus Beef in alot of resteraunts.


Who can tell the difference by taste?

[SwampDonkey]

I can't even tell the difference between beef and bison.

[WDH]

The key to strength is the % latewood ( the dark band).  The amount of latewood is directly proportional to the amount of summer rainfall received.  Loblolly produces fine lumber if the trees have age and grow in a vigorous stand.  However, the problem with quality today is that the rotation age of commercially managed stands of loblolly (slash too, for that matter) has steadily decreased because of economic factors.  The average rotation age of commercially grown SYP plantations by Industry (they are the ones that produce the lions share of the lumber sold into the market) is now less than 30 years, with 26 being a good average.  That is the biggest problem, not the inherent nature of the 4 SYP commercial species.

You do not see the problem as much in slash, longleaf, and shortleaf since they are not usually grown in plantations to the extent that loblolly is (loblolly simply grows faster than the other three).  Plus, shortleaf and longleaf have a hard time producing sawtimber sized trees in 26 years.  As to size loblolly and slash on a good site can produce sawlog sized trees in that amount of time if the stand density is manipulated to maximize diameter growth.  That is what the foresters of the large companies do, focus on fast diameter growth.  That is the only way to grow trees commercially on a large scale and stay in business when growing SYP.

[Tom]

There is another way, if the industry would pursue it

There are a lot of farms and land owners who would be tree farmers again if the mills weren't so cut-throat.  The landowners can take a beating with price and they also empathise and sympathise with the loggers when quotas are so one-way that they have to sleep in their trucks at the gate to sell their one load a day.

I know it's deeper than the mills.  They are taking a beating too.  There is a lot of fiber coming into the states from outside the borders, competing with subsidized wood.

I'm wondering if tree farming isn't maybe becoming a thing of the past.

Do they grow material for studs and framing in India?

[WDH]

Tom, you are right.  I am concerned about the ability of the private tree farmer to own land and grow trees.  The Industry is cutthroat and the competition from imports is fierce. 

[SwampDonkey]

Well if you could get land owners all to participate and hold foreign imports to the standards of the domestic business then it might be a step toward a solution. Heck I've seen it here many times. A mill will cry for wood. There are a number of crown leases that have volumes of wood that can not be processed by the mill with that lease. For instance a softwood stud mill isn't going to be producing paper and vise versa. Although, some companies are fully integrated and they have sub-licensees as well. But, when one mill is crying for wood, the other licenses should be supplying some volume, not exporting it. My point is, while this is going on proivate wood is going state wide, because of price and no playing around with turning on and off the deliveries. Heck we have contracts with these mills, honor the darn contracts or the land owner is going to say to hell with it. It all boils down to this, as soon as they make a deal with another lease holder for volume, they shut the tap off from private deliveries. Then when their supply runs short, they expect all the private volume to come through the gate at year end to fulfill the contract. Then blame the private sector for not supplying wood at their whim. Just makes you want to grab someone by the throat sometimes. 

[WDH]

For the small landowner, timing is critical.  The big Industrial guys cut all the time, regardless of the market, while the small private guy has to be more discerning in when to harvest.  I recently sold a first thinning (planted loblolly pine) that will be harvested this year, but it is a silviculturally driven sale.  I have some stands that are in their early 20's that need second thinning, but I am delaying that harvest because the prices are so low.  The growth on those stands has slowed (needs thinning), but the growth is on trees of sawlog size, so it will not take much of a price improvement at all to get me back even or ahead.

On the first thinning, those stands (ages 12 and 13) are growing lower value pulpwood, so the sooner that I can thin and get the new growth in the form of chip-n-saw (small sawlogs), the better I will be from a financial standpoint.  As a trees moves from pulpwood size to small sawlog size, the price/value for that tree doubles.

Anyway, you have to be smart when you sell. 

There will a Thinning WDH thread in the near future.  Tom has gone ahead and started something.........you have to keep up with the Toms .

Also, don't worry, these are true Southern Yellow Pines .