DOMINION TREE-PLANTING.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXV, Issue LXV, 2 August 1913, Page 4

DOMINION TREE-PLANTING.

To know what .should not be done is, in a measure, just as important as to know what should be done, especially if the knowledge is applied as it should be. Apparently this truth has been exemplified in connection with tree-planting in the Dominion. In many districts private persons, with a knowledge of the value of trees for purposes of shelter, building and trade, have done a good deal of planting, and done it with judgment, but apparently it has been too much otherwise in the case of ' the work of the Forestry Department. The report of the Forestry Commission shows' that areas aggregating 18,870 acres have been planted by the State with about 44,000,000 trees. This sounds fairly satisfactory, in view of the" fact that the Forestry Branch of the Department of Lands and Survey was established only in 1896. But, of course, it is by its details that the value of the work as a whole musjt be judged, in a case of this kind, and apparently a study of the details discloses much that is unsatisfactory. Up to the year 1909 the principal plantings done by the State Department were: Larch, 10,989,835 trees; Austrian pine, 3,769,431; Corsican pine, 3,756,325; various Australian gums, 3,464,589; Catalpa speciosa, 2,196,544 . English oak. 2,041,621; Norway spruce, 1,242,723; ash, 533.925; totara, 546, 500; Sycamore, 525.247; bull pine, 291,145; Sitka spruce, 241,623; redwood, 186,641; Robinia, 161,800, American white pine, 137,126; Aus* tralian blackwood, 140,335 * B'.shop pine, 132,025; Monterey pine, 110,161, alder, 77,918. But, according to the Forestry Commissioners, much of this planting was ill-advised, if not positively useless.. They give good reasons for doubting whether larch should be used for afforestation in New Zealand, and they say in the most express terms that catalpa speciosa, English birch, Norway spruce, English oak, sycamore, and alder are useless for the purpose. Yet nearly seven millions of these trees have been planted; which means a double loss—the loss of the time and labor used up and paid for in connection with the planting, and the loss of the value of the right kind of trees which should have been planted in their stead. Apart from this somewhat costly lesson to the State, it should be well worth the while of local bodies and private persons interested in tree-planting, to bear in mind what the Forestry Commission has shown in this connection.