Author: Clarence J. Telford

Publisher: Forgotten Books

Published: 2016-12-22

Total Pages: 26

ISBN-13: 9781334738722

Excerpt from Brownfield Woods: A Remnant of the Original Illinois Forest The monarch of the Woods. Bur Oak, 65 inches in diameter and 105 feet in height.that younger trees have not been able since then to persist in numbers. If this is the case, when the stand opens up again the normal number of smaller trees will become established and the forest is in no danger of destruction through lack of regeneration. In support of this latter as sumption is the fact that the stand as a whole seems vigorous and the crown canopy dense, and here the condition of relatively few small trees prevails; but along a strip through the center of the stand where there was formerly a highway, seedlings and small trees have come in until the old road is now choked with them. Perhaps the most interesting fact brought out in the tabulation is the relative abundance of the species which make up the stand. There are actually almost as many hard maple trees present - 49% - as all other species combined, but this preponderance of maple is only found in the smaller-diameter classes. If we use 13 inches, the diameter of the aver age tree of the stand, as an arbitrary dividing line, maple composes 62% of the total number of trees from 3 to 13 inclusive while it makes up but 17% of the total number of trees of 14 inches and up. Thus maple is assured a heavy representation in this forest a hundred years hence merely by the great numbers of young trees now present, but its dominant place in this future stand is doubly assured because maple is the most tolerant tree growing in this region. It can grow where shade is too dense for any of its neighbors, and when a forest becomes dominantly of hard maple and is undisturbed by cyclone, grazing, fire, or heavy cutting - all accidental forces which suddenly destroy the adjustment of a forest to its environment - it remains hard maple. This woods is on the point of reaching the final state of its evolution or climax type for the region. As a forest it has been on the road to this maple type for hundreds and probably thousands of years, during which the prairie has given place to elm, hackberry, soft maple, then oaks and hickories, and now hard maple. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.