New Forest Service policies take a big step backward

[Geoff Kegerreis]

> > -They were not grown in soil, they were grown in media material,
> > which was composed of water, agar, and nutrients.  All sterile.  As
> > were the petri dishes.  Everything was done under a hood.
> If everything was sterile, as you state above, then the only other
> source of fungal contamination is the seeds themselves.

-In fact, the source of the fungi was on the seeds.  It is a mold that I believe
occurs in nature that maintains the function to control the percentage of seeds
germinating under specific conditions.  I have not confirmed that, however -
the seeds origin was Roan Mtn., NC.

> But fungal spores are so small that they can hide inside diatomaceous
> earth. It's also _possible_ that the sterilization process was not
> complete.

-The sterilization process was extremely complete.  Turns out the way
to germinate these seeds with any success in the lab is to subject the
seed capsule to ethanol and then bleach/water solution, and then by removing
the cotyledon from the seed capsule.  That was the only way I found to
get them germinated.

> [snip]
> > -Not true.  Soil is not a requirement.  The rest are necessary though.
> Soil is _not_ a requirement? You are saying that Gifford Pinchot's
> discovery of soil as a requirement is false? That's the first time
> I've heard that statement.

-According to the below...

> I am aware that plants can be grown in spun rock, in hydroponic
> situations which have no soil per se. But even these situations
> generally require something for the roots to attach to for stability.

...it is not the first time you have heard the statement.
Soil is of course the medium that woody plants occur in
out in the "field", but sterile medium is fine, and of course hydroponically
grown platns do not even need a medum after a signifigant root structure and the
basal vegetation is formed at all!  A plant can be held up by the basal leaves
on a string and you can run a mix of water and nutrients over the roots
and grow the plant just fine.  You realize that well over 99% of the plants'
carbon structure is derived from atmospheric CO2, don't you?
This is another reason why harvesting forests is not such a bad thing -
carbon sinks.  The stuctures of growing trees uptake CO2, and even
CO, but the structures of older trees often do not do that.  The CO2 is
of course a waste product of the decomposition of trees, and gets traded
throughout the forest community and beyond (some of it as atmospheric
CO2)...and on goes other processess...Fungi aid signifigantly here.

> [snip]
> > > The key to the above statement is "the landowner's objectives".
> > > Forestry is the art and science of growing trees, not just the art of
> > > cutting them.
> >
> > -I have heard this time and time again.  I will respond once again to
> > say that forestry is not a science, but an art which is based on science.
> > Despite what the academics seem to repeat...  Of course the academics
> > claim to be foresters, which is also not true.
> Then again there are people who claim to be foresters who are not...

-You are right, there are plenty of them.  They piss us off.
I would suggest that a forester is one who makes a majority of his/her living
directly managing forests.  S/He must hold at least a Bachelor's degree in
forestry from an accredited university.  S/He must base their management
on relative silviculture, so a high-grading log buyer doesn't fit my qualifications.
That is pretty much it as far as I am concerned.
The rest are specifics.

>

> > > Ignore mycorrhizal fungi and trees in nature cease to exist quickly.
> >
> > -That is very possible, but who is ignoring them?

>
> If you do not know what they are, how to identify them, or how they
> form mutalistic symbiotic relationships with plants, isn't that
> ignoring them?

-No, because there is not one person in the world who can say s/he knows all the
fungi in the world.  There are obvioulsy fungi which are more important than others
as far as foresters are concerned, you have touched on a few, but from where most
of us stand, here are a few more important ones (these are genii/problems I am referring to):

Nectria and Hypoxylon cankers
Cytospora cankers
Armillaria root rot (many tree species)

(those three are ones I see most often in
the woods, and it's usually too late to do anything about them
other than removing the trees).  Fungi usually do not do large
scale damage to trees, but sometimes that happens

Here are a few others...

Dibotryon causing black knot in Cherry
(there's another one I see on a daily basis)
Leptographium black stain root diseases
Annosus Root rots
Verticillium wilt
Ceratocystis wilt carried by the beetle to American elms,
although this one isn't such a problem anymore, because most
of the elms are gone - although there are some healthy ones
growing on my land.
However, the same genus causes Oak wilt, which is becoming
more and more of a problem locally here.
Pythium root rot caused by Oomycetes
Phytophthora killing Frasier fir Christmas trees.  What about
Port-Orford cedar root rot by this genus as well?
Antrhacnose problems in Sycamore and Dogwood (especially
shade grown and more recent problems with the last one).
(That is the genus Gnomonia)
Diplodia tip blight problems...
Sirococcus shoot blights...
Phomopsis and Kabatina tip blights
Gyptosporangium spp..

I can go on and on and on with this list, and still not hit them all.
The fact is, you or no other experienced mycologist is going to
know everything, just like I am lacking information on trees,
but it doesn't mean that we're ignoring things.

>
> [snip]
> > -Now that's a silly statement.  Neither greenhouses nor laboratories are for
> > growing "old growth" however that term is defined!!!

>
> Exactly. That's where the similarities of greenhouses and controlled
> conditions demanded by science fail in natural applications. What
> works in a greenhouse does not always work in nature.
> [snip]
> > > American heritage? No. But we do need them as sources for mycorrhizal
> > > fungi that are found only on old-growth trees.
> >
> > -Give me a break.  That is unable to be proven.
> >
> Not in your lifetime or even mine perhaps. But the evidence is fairly
> clear and straight-forward.

-I disagree with that.  Those fungi are found everywhere in one stage
or another, especially in soils of
coniferous forests where the are necessary for growth of conifers -
but not most broadleaves.

> > > Even as a variety of trees grow on a given acre in succession leading
> > > up to climax forests, varieties of mycorrhizal fungi grow with
> > > individual trees leading to older trees. Mycorrhizal fungi found with
> > > seedling trees are seldom those found with old-growth trees.
> >
> > -They just don't come out of nowhere, now do they?
> At least 60 species of animals have been shown to be advantageous
> mycophagists with truffles. All truffles are mycorrhizal. The old
> forester stand-by that all mycorrhizal fungi are dispersed by wind
> just won't stand up to any sort of serious scrutiny. If that were
> true, there would be chanterelles everywhere. There aren't. Nor do the
> chanterelles found in North America also appear in Europe (although
> Elias Fries thought that C. cibarius was identical to C. formosus,
> recent DNA analysis has proven otherwise).

-Why not wind spread?  As we both know, those organisms have several different
phases they go through.  The spores are found in many places
where the fruiting bodies are not!  However, spores are so small that they
could have (and probably do have) many different vectoring agents.

>
> > -Not really, because foresters are not out to "grow" the kinds of forests
> > that you deem "old growth".
> "Foresters" can't even figure out the mycorrhizae necessary to grow 50
> yo trees on a given plot of land. The ability to grow 400 years old
> trees (or older) is _way_ beyond them.

-That is completely out of line with reality.  I can show you thousands of
square miles of trees that are older than 50 years here in this state grown by
foresters at least supervising the CCC crews.  Mycorrhizae, which causes
root branching in confiers and greatly helps them grow is present in most
of our soils throughout the northern 2/3 of the state.  Places where it is not
present, it is easy to tell by looking at the pine growth.  All it typically takes
is taking a sqaure foot of soil from a site infected with Mycorrhizae and
insert it into the lacking soil, and typically, it doesn't take long to get enough
to grow conifers well.

> [snip]
> > There are very few trees that are 120 feet tall in Michigan, relative to the
> > total population.

>
> So you admit that you don't know how the trees which do grow in Oregon
> get that way, huh?

I did not say that.  The soil composition and climate play huge differences.

> A Douglas-fir of 120 feet is considered to be
> pretty basis timber here. It means probably a 100 foot stretch of
> timber with a 6-inch top, more than 22-inch diameter base, and another
> 20 feet of biomass without much economic value. Such as tree contains
> about 1,000 board feet of timber, or approximately 1 cord of wood.

Try 2 cords.  Not 1.  By the way, I doubt you'd get 1000 board feet out of
a tree that size.  Maybe about 800.  Certainly there are larger trees there.
The biomass that you refer to has indirect economic value, which is the adding
of nutrients to the soil, of which the tops have the most nutrient content within
them.  This is why tops are left scattered or burned under most good practices.
Also, I have seen 16-foot logs here in the East that have more than 1,000
board feet in them.  It's not like we don't have trees here, too.  Quite valuable
ones, too - relative to your conifers out there.

-Geoff Kegerreis

http://www.timberlineforestry.com  (it's slow unless you have high-speed internet
access - I will be fixing that problem as soon as I can)

>
> Daniel B. Wheeler
> www.oregonwhitetruffles.com
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