Forest Trees and Forest Scenery

by G. Frederick Schwarz

The type of artificial forest that differs least from our own eastern woods is one that has received the name of “selection forest.” It constitutes a transition to the more complex forms. As in our own case, trees of different kinds and of various sizes are intermingled in the forest; but the European forest has more uniformity than ours, and expresses a conceived purpose. This is readily explained by the fact that from the beginning of the new method the trees were never removed indiscriminately from the wooded area, but that a careful selection was made from time to time of certain kinds, according to size and usefulness. Useful material, however, was not the sole consideration. The cutting was intended also to improve the conditions of growth for the trees that remained standing, and to increase the proportion of the species that were most useful or desirable. Finally, by opening up the forest to a proper degree of sunlight, the way was prepared for the germination of seeds that might fall from the old trees, in order to provide early for a new generation in the forest.

A German “Selection Forest”

It will be readily understood, I believe, that in course of time such a forest would betray to the eye a certain gradation in the sizes of the trees, and a fixed proportion in the number of those belonging to one or another species. To this extent the selection forests differ from our second-growth woods of the East; and yet, as compared to the other three European types, their principal merit, esthetically, is their naturalness. Though very different from our virgin forests, they nevertheless possess the variety, cheerfulness, and interesting play of light and shade that have been noted in an earlier chapter. In Germany they are usually somewhat precise and trim in appearance; but in France and elsewhere they look a little wilder, and are often enlivened with holly or ivy, some sportive raspberry, or other gay shrub or vine. In European countries where forestry has become thoroughly established this type of forest has gradually disappeared, or has diminished greatly in proportion, in order to make way for the other more highly developed forms.

The young forest growth that goes by the name of “coppice” is linked to the preceding kind by the association of time, for it is also one of the old forms. The sound of the word brings to mind the copses of England, those sportive little thickets that we may have read about, or seen running along the streams, or straggling over the hills. But the coppice of Germany or France is not quite the same as the copse of England. It is a young forest of businesslike aspect, in which a design for usefulness is unmistakable. The purpose in it is to reap an approximately equal harvest each year, such as firewood from beeches, hornbeams, or the like, withes from willows, charcoal from chestnut, or tanbark from oak.

The means to accomplish the end are very simple. Only one kind of tree composes the coppice, and the forest is graded in sections, each a year older than the preceding. It is like a series of blocks, in which each is a little taller than the last. The tallest falls by the ax, and the next the following year, and so through the series till the cycle is completed, when it may be resumed as before. The repetition is possible because a tree is chosen for this kind of forest that will renew itself by naturally sprouting from the stump that is always left after cutting.

The coppice woods must be seen to appreciate their charm. They have a distinct flavor and a character that one easily remembers after a first acquaintance. Not too far removed from the town or village, yet often hidden in some secluded part of the hills, we find the coppice a neat-looking place. The small wood that has been cut is carefully stacked along the roadside in bundles or cords. Within one of the sections we see the wood-cutters at work with their axes and bill-hooks, and can fancy them trudging home contentedly at the close of day. We find the rabbits taking the coppice for their own, sporting about and wearing tracks in the thickets. A quiet place, and homelike withal. We can look out above the thicket of young trees at the sky and the older environing woods. The sounds come mellowed through the distance to this open spot, as of the heavy ax in the large woods, or the song of some woman in the far valley.

We have no coppice woods just like these in America. Our willow farms are the only ones that have been subjected to a system like the one described, and these are entirely too low to be called woods. They are graded in size and age from one to four years, and separated into blocks, just like the willow coppices of Germany. At a distance the lithe stems with diminutive tufts of foliage at the top, standing in straight rows, almost as dense as grain, have more the appearance of an agricultural product than a tree farm.

The Christmas tree plantations, a kind of forest gardening, as it were, remind us of the coppice in appearance, but cannot truly be called such. As the conifers that furnish us with Christmas trees are not capable of sprouting from the stump, the growers must depend upon planting for their propagation, which is a principle directly opposed to the idea of coppice.