Trees are rooted in Frank White’s heart

Press, 14 March 1987, Page 22

Trees are rooted in Frank White’s heart

Cmintrv Diarv

Derrick Rooney

■- Frank White has farmed a property near Hororata for almost half a century. He is highly Regarded in the district for the .quality of his livestock and for the well-tended appearance of Jis pastures and shelter belts, but you could easily get the impression, when talking to him, that the farm is just a sideline that linances his real occupation: growing trees. '* Frank White is, in the true sense of the word, a man of the trees. Over the years he has raised, planted, or given away trees by the thousand — for shelter, for timber, for shade, for wildlife habitat, for ornamentation, or just for the hell of it. He is a long-time stalwart — and a past president — of the Central Farm Forestry Association, and a few years back he won the national award as "Farm Forester of the Year.” The shelter belts, the woodlot, and groups of ornarqgptal

trees that he has planted on his farm are a patchwork of species. A farm map prepared by the North Canterbury Catchment Board lists an estimated 150 different kinds. Members of the Central Farm Forestry Association recently had a rare chance to appreciate the scope, diversity, and dedication of these plantings when they held a field day on the farm, and Mr White took them on a guided tour. It was an interesting exercise.

Even the two-hectare woodlot is a patchwork. Though predominantly radiata and Corsican pines and Douglas fir, it includes experimental plantings of cedars, leyland cypresses, macrocarpa, minor species of pines, eucalypts, larch, and black walnuts. There are also specimens, growing away strongly, of the cypress clone No. 268, believed to be an intergeneric hybrid between the Nootka cypress (Chamaecyparis nootkatensis) and Cupressus glabra, one of the Arizona cypresses.

Originally this tree was thought to be an Australianraised cross between the Arizona and Bhutan cypresses, and was distributed under the name Cupressus “Arilosa.” The putative parentage is now known to be incorrect, and the confusion is thought to have arisen because of misplaced nursery

imported cuttings. Whatever its name, cypress No. 268 appears to be a tree of considerable promise for growing in the drier parts of New Zealand. Down the middle of Mr White’s woodlot is a row of black walnuts that he raised from seed. This walnut has had a lot of promotion recently as an “alternative” tree for planting on suitable sites, and is highly valued not for its nuts but for its fine hardwood timber. Here, the seedlings are growing slowly and some are being suppressed by the neighbouring pines, but Mr White plans to remove two rows of pines to release the walnuts from competition.

The pines in this woodlot are a continuing reminder of the importance of selecting the right strain for the site — and of the fact that occasionally even someone as tree-wise as Frank White can be caught napping. He has some scruffy-looking stems to prove it

When he ordered some Corsican pines (Pinus nigra) to fill

two unplanted rows, the nursery sent plants of Pinus nigra; but they were the Bosnian subspecies, which is a very poorly, shaped tree when compared with the Corsican. The nursery told him they would be all right. His advice as a result: Don’t accept substitutes.

Of course, there are times when even the right stuff can catch you napping, such as when the radiata trees which were bought as a shelter line began to outperform trees bought as “elite” timber stock. Mr White thinks the latter may belong to one of the lower classes of “eliteness.” The best tree in the woodlot, incidentally, is a selfintroduced radiata specimen which seeded in from a nearby shelter belt. It is much bigger than any of its neighbours and has a clean, well-shaped trunk.

Another “mistake” was the inclusion of a small block of larch in the woodlot. Although larch on a good site produces timber of high quality it does not seem to thrive in Canterbury, and good stands are few and far between.

Mr White’s larch are poorly shaped, and opossums have added injury to insult by browsing the larch heavily and ringbarking some stems. Opossums certainly seem to find this conifer very palatable — so much so Mr White may not have

been joking when he suggested that every woodlot should include a block of larch to attract opossums to a central site where they may be conveniently trapped, shot, or poisoned. The woodlot has been planted piecemeal over about 10 years, and Mr White is continuing plantings there, and anywhere else on the farm where there is space or need for more shelter belts. He has many new species of trees growing on in his little nursery beds in the homestead garden. He may not see these seedlings reach maturity, but is untroubled by this. “I just love growing trees,” he adds. “Give me any sort of tree seed and I will have a go at it.” As well as numerous seedlings large enough to be planted out, he has plants too small yet to be pricked out, more seeds waiting to germinate, and boxes of forest duff in.which plants have been germinating at intervals for several years. All of this could be seen as a fairly confident expression of optimism by a man approaching 77 years of age, but Frank White just sees it as an investment in the future. That, he says, is precisely what trees are.

He is definitely unhappy about some of the patterns that have in forest management

in New Zealand, and one of the things that bothers him most is the short rotation time (20 to 25 years) of pine forests. “You can’t,” he says, “grow a decent tree in 25 years, or 30 years. Trees of that age are just saplings. I believe in planting for 100 years, not 30 years.” The practice of milling trees in summer also bothers him. “Back in England,” he says, "no-one would dream of felling a timber tree in summer.” The proper time to fell a tree for timber — or for firewood for that matter — is in winter, when the sap is down.

Winter-felled logs, he says, make better and more durable timber, and if the trees are 60 or more years old so much the better. As evidence of this, he displayed a billet of pine firewood, full of resin, which came from a log under a shelter belt near his homestead. “Put a chunk of that on the fire,” he says, “and it will keep you warm all night and gradually push you to the back of the room, away from the fire.” The tree from which the billet came was planted probably in the 1870 s — and it was felled 38 years ago.

“Who says you can’t get durable timber, from radiata?” asks Frank White.

Older trees, he says, not only produce stronger and more durable timber because they contain a high percentage of heart wood; they also yield relatively greater volumes of timber, a fact which did not escape the attention of a sawmiller to whom Mr White recently sold an old shelter belt.

“When I told him the trees were 60 to 70 years old he was very pleased,” Mr White said. “He told me that he was happy to get some logs that he could cut”

In his half-century on the property, Mr White has planted only one radiata shelter belt, but he still rates this species tops for nor’west shelter. He also values the slower-growing cedars and Spanish fir.

For shelter from the southwest, he reckons the best he has is a belt of macrocarpa, with Douglas fir on the windward side. This belt was planted by the then farm manager while Mr White was serving overseas during the Second World War; the Douglas fir has been allowed to grow naturally, but the macrocarpa was topped at 4m about 30 years ago and has subsequently been trimmed regularly.

The result is a belt which provides low, dense shelter and permeable high shelter, a combination which ensures calm air in its lee on the most bitter southerly day. says Mr

White, the best lambing shelter on the farm.

From all accounts, that shelter is needed fairly often. Frank White’s farm is in a block of country exposed to fearsome south-west and -nor’west winds, and he can recall storms which literally blew lambs across the paddocks and piled them up against the netting fences, where they were eventually sorted out by their mothers when the winds abated.

With all this knowledge behind him, someone asked, what would Frank White do if he were starting over again? What was his starting advice for a young farmer getting established on a block of bare land?

“Well,” said Mr White, “I would advise him to start planting shelter on the nor'west side with radiata, then plant the next belt with Douglas fir. Do the same on the south-west side. Build the homestead centrally on the farm, and have a central alleyway running down the property, with paddocks as nearly as possible the same size, depending on the water supply.” One last tip: site fences three metres away, from tree trunks. This will ensure that when trees blow over, as they often do in Canterbury once they reach an advanced age, the lifting rootplates will not take the fences with them. 4? k

‘Don’t accept substitutes’