Healthy Maine Beech

[chester_tree _farmah]

Is this as rare as I think it is these days? I have two beech on my land that seem to be perfectly healthy. 

[chester_tree _farmah]

 

[thecfarm]

Ayup. I was walking through my land with my logger and came to one like that. I had no idea what it was.  :   I looked up and felt dumb. I only have one,that I know of. That's out of 150 acres.

[chester_tree _farmah]

Good hear there must be some others around! Maybe there is hope for them in the long run. Valuable wild life tree and the best firewood around here IMO. I am leaving them.

[Ken]

Smooth barked beech is quite rare here in central and southern NB but much more common up north for some reason. 

[petefrom bearswamp]

Only have a couple of dozen in my home woods, some healthy some not.
Visited my 2 Steuben county properties last week.
One has lots of small pole size beech and lots of root sucker saplings.
Most appear healthy.
I would much rather see Red oak saplings but it is not to be.

[chester_tree _farmah]

Yup. The disease does not seem to set in till the trees get about 3 inches in diameter. Hard to tell by the pics but the larger one is about 11 or 12.

[clww]

Most of the clearing jobs I've done in the past six months in the Tidewater area have all had some beech. Biggest I recall was near 48" DBH. Hard, heavy wood.

[chester_tree _farmah]

No beech bark disease? It's my favorite wood to burn. Bank the stove at night and it leaves a nice big pile of coals for the morning.  I have seen it in floors. The heart wood and it is nice. Has a redish tinge to it. Can be mistaken for some other more prestigious species. ;-)

[Mark Wentzell]

I don't think I've ever seen a clear one.

[Ron Scott]

Yes, I would leave them for the reasons that you mentioned and since there are only two of small size. They will add to your stands diversity.

[SwampDonkey]

I always leave the smooth ones and suggest same to neighbors and woodlot owners. It's amazing how every one around them is all diseased and one gem among them as smooth as the back side of a mare.  ;D

[711ac]

This leads me to the question, is "smooth bark" just kinda slang for healthy? I have both smooth (healthy) and some with beech bark disease. They grow like a weed around here after the last logging, and any some areas grow very, very thick (dense) young stands. Mowing them seems only to encourage them. Lately I've been getting help from my new best friend Herb  Acide aka roundup. Great firewood despite being not the best to split.

[KBforester]

In Maine, they say 1-2% of beech are disease resistant.

[mesquite buckeye]

Let that small percent reproduce and soon it will predominate the stand with resistant types. ;D

[SwampDonkey]

Better take along something to cover the flowers with and something else to gather 'good' pollen to control pollination. Otherwise it might take a few thousand years. :D

[mesquite buckeye]

All you have to do is kill the ones that get sick. 

Goes a little faster that way. ;D 8) 8) 8)

[SwampDonkey]

That assumes everyone else is doing the same. Probably just as slow but you can keep warm trying. Lots of firewood. Trouble is they all get cut for firewood, even the good ones around here.  I would try to point the smooth ones out to my uncle as resistant, they became firewood just like the rest. Heat comes from resistance to. I think I learned that in school, but had something to do with electricity. :D

[mesquite buckeye]

My point is just that by controlling, even partially which trees are allowed to reproduce, the whole population can be fairly rapidly affected. Most pollination comes from the closest trees. I'm sure that one could make substantial progess, at least on your own place in a lifetime. With a family that stays with the land, I think it could be fixed. ;D

Way easier than with a lot of other problems, like Dutch elm, emerald ash borer, or chestnut blight where there was essentially little or no resistance to work with.

I think this is more akin to what can be done with black locust, having some resistance present combined with management can result in decent success even on the short term, at least as far as a forest's lifespan goes.

[SwampDonkey]

Pollen travels a long ways on the wind. A seed not so far. You'll have more non resistance, the other 99 %, overwhelming the probabilities. Not only that, is the fact that the parents will remain carriers of bad genes for none resistance. They won't be breed pure. Some offspring will be resistant but the majority won't be. It will still be far more generations than anyone will remember about what was done. ;D

I've seen breeding programs with trees. Some tree improvement has gone on for decades. They talk about 3 or 4 % gains, that's about it over decades beginning with careful selection of 'plus trees' from the wild for seed and grafts. The grafts then control pollinated. ;)

[chester_tree _farmah]

Why is it so prevalent around here? are we at the beechs northern limits climate wise?

[SwampDonkey]

We are at the fringe. But the disease is actually less prevalent in northern NB and northern Maine because of the cold winter that affects the insect prevalence, which seems to lesson the spread of the disease.

At Forestry Canada in Fredericton, Dr. Judy Loo (and others) has been studying the disease.

http://pubs.cif-ifc.org/doi/abs/10.5558/tfc2013-122

[chester_tree _farmah]

Interesting. 

[mesquite buckeye]

Pollination by wind or even by insects is a hyperbolic function. The greatest amount of pollen, even windblown comes from trees within a few hundred feet. Yes, in fact, windblown pollen can blow for miles, or even hundreds of miles, but the preponderance of it that pollinates a plant comes from relatively nearby. There is lots research to support this, much of it in crop plants, but the principle is the same in trees. To say that attempting to shift a population's resistance to a greater percentage is pointless (essentially) is simply not correct. Look at the success of breeding superior pines in the south as examples. Selecting for healthy trees results in more healthy trees in the next generation, just as high grading degrades the next generation.

Just sayin'.

[SwampDonkey]

This is true about local pollination, but if it's not controlled pollination it's very slow.  Your also dealing with very few diseased resistant trees among thousands that are not. Removing the worst removes them from the gene pool in proximity to ones you want, but does not eliminate bad genes from coming in from the neighbors' woodlot. Are the next good trees that near by? Or are they as suggested by surveys very few and very far apart? Woodlots are narrow for the most part, easier for outside pollen to reach your good trees. We rarely have pure beech stands in my region, maple is usually the dominant species with the beech. So it may be easier to remove the bad beech without the stand blowing down.  I have seen one or two relatively pure beech stands, but because the maples were all harvested out over a generation. It's a whole lot easier to reduce the good trees because they are fewer in number.

Your talking about breeding programs for ideal sightly traits (phenotype) in controlled conditions with your pines and not disease resistance. They do the same up here with mainly spruce. But the genetic gains are slow and very low percentages. How long has it been with breeding chestnut for blight resistance? That is a lot more controlled than in the woods. It simply takes a very long time and a lot of money.

[chester_tree _farmah]

I just like to see a healthy beech around these parts so they r staying. My lot is about 1200' wide. I cut the dieing ones for firewood. My lot is a "Mosaic" stand. Some old wood. Some 25 year old wood etc. Some pure hemlock groves, pine, fir, spruce, pure hardwood sections with red oak, hard maple, soft maple, Yellow birch, white birch, ash, beech etc. Some areas they mix some are well defined edges.The lot soils vary from area to area so I have about all species you can grow in these parts. That's  a big ole' hemlock for my avatar on 5/19/2014.   ;D

[CJennings]

I see a lot of healthy beech around me in southern/central Vermont, but there is a lot of beech bark disease as well. I was honestly a little shocked when I was in Maine (Orono/Bangor area) at how much worse the beech is. A lot more beech bark disease and a lot fewer healthy beech trees. That's just an informal observation.

Beech sprouts terribly when disturbed. So if you go through and log a site, taking out the diseased beech, you might just end up with a forest full of beech sprouts that will become diseased as they grow larger unless you're very careful and/or using herbicide on the diseased beech. This may account for some of my observations in Maine, as I was on more intensively managed lands than in VT.

You're doing the right thing by keeping those healthy beech, keeping them and breeding them is the only way we'll have healthy beech in the future.

[SwampDonkey]

We don't find that beech suckers off roots, like in the south, in this region. It does stool shoot, but mostly them shoots don't grow well with the rabbits nibbling the bark off. I've had this conversation before with someone from NY. Our beech are mostly from seed and not much from suckering up here. I've posted photos on here of sugar bush beech regen. Thick, but from seed. ;)

[mesquite buckeye]

If the sick ones are resprouting, better make sure they are all dead or all your selection efforts will be wasted. ;D :( 8)

[chester_tree _farmah]

No need really. They are scattered about I really haven't had a big problem with them. I typically don't clear large openings and the trees around them are usually large enough so u don't have to worry about them being over taken by any beech that pops back up.

[Pete and Jesse]

Not many grown beech left in my woods but I do have a few that are growing well.
Northern Woodlands Magazine ran an article about beech.
Here is the link.
http://northernwoodlands.org/articles/article/beech-party-woodlot