windthrow

[Terry Brown]

fore057 at canterbury.ac.nz wrote:
> 
> In <4jincr$fgm at cc-server9.massey.ac.nz>, A.S.Chamove at massey.ac.nz (Arnold Chamove) writes:
> 
> >We did this ourselves as we have a VERY (underlined) windy site, so windy that
> >almost nothing grows--we've tried gorse, radiata, corsican pine, flax,  This
> >year we are trying broom, manuka, rugosa,
[snip]
> What's the altitude, how heavy is the soil, are there any
> nutrient deficiencies, and is the soil well drained?  Pinus
> contorta and Pinus mugo may be worth looking at.

Pinus contorta is a class B noxious weed (in New Zealand), (is that
only in some regions perhaps), anyway, it's very hard to control the
spread, particularly in windy sites.  A 20 year programme at
Ruapaehu has largely brought the problem under control there, but I
know there are diverse tussock ecosystems in the Canterbury /
Arthur's Pass area being quite rapidly destroyed by P. contorta
spreading from old Forestry Dept. trials.  Initial control is very
expensive.

Many of the other conifer spp. in these trials are a) still alive
and well (at least 15 years on) and b) still in the plots they were
planted in.

Cheers -tb

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Terry Brown                      email: brown at lvlham.lincoln.ac.nz
Lincoln Environmental
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