NEW TREE-PLANTING EXPERIMENT BEGUN

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30210, 15 August 1963, Page 12

NEW TREE-PLANTING EXPERIMENT BEGUN

A new series of experimental high-altitude treeplantings is to be started this year at and above the bush-line in the Craigieburn Range, at the field station of the Forest and Range Experiment Statical, New Zealand Forest Service. Some of the seed for the new experiments is now being set out in the nursery at the field station headquarters. “Up to now, we have restricted ourselves, in the main, to comparative tests between one species and another; but now, having eliminated many species as unpromising, we are evaluating various strains within certain of the remaining species,” explained Mr J. Y Morris, who is in charge of the project. When in Europe in 1961, Mr Morris explained, he had paid special attention to well-grown stands of three European species showing promise in the upland plantings at Craigieburn. Seeds from the different areas had since been sent to him by the forestry services of the various countries, and seedlings raised from these seeds would be planted at various altitudes alongside each other. A climatic station would be set up wherever seedlings were being grown. Seeds from several stands of each of three North American species also, were on their way; the selection of the stands had in this case, however, been made from recorded information and with the advice of American scientists. Later, additional North American seed was expected to be sent from Mexico by Mr I. J. Thulin, a New Zealand Forest Service scientist on a Food and Agriculture Organisation

mission in that country, while others would be sent from the Chilean mountains by Mr C. H. Brown, also a Forest Service officer on an F.A.O. mission. The European species being planted are Pinus sylvestris (Scots pine), Pinus unciata (European mountain pine), and Larix decidua and some of its subspecies (European larch); the North Americans are Pinus contorta (lodgepole pine), Picea glauca (white spruce), and Picea engelmanni (Engelmann spruce). As an example of the wide range of distribution represented by the sowings, the Scots pine seed is in 19 separate lots—--16 from various European localities, one from a district in Western Siberia (chosen by Russian scientists), one from Manchuria (arranged for by the director of the Research Institute, Dr. S. D. Richardson, in a recent visit to China), and one from a New Zealand stock, known to come from North Canterbury but of original ancestry unknown. Mr Morris hopes that the experiment, while valuable in its own right, will shed some light on a major problem—the factor in the New Zealand mountain environment that causes the treeline for all the native and i most imported mountain species to be so much lower i than in other parts of toe world where broad features t of the climate seem much . the same. Mr Morris be- ! lieves that at least a contributing factor may be the ■ occasional bursts of springlike weather which occur i towards the end of winter, ; and which may cause buds ■ to burst only for the young I growth to be nipped off after i a few days by renewed cold.