Stump Talk

Here we are looking at a stump from a harvest eight to twelve years ago. We were counting eight nodes on oak seedling sprouts, so we are pretty close on the timeline. Black oak stumps fall apart pretty fast, and you can see that the sapwood is almost totally gone, and bark is hanging on just at the bottom of the stump. One of the things you learn is to estimate the time since a tree was cut by the stump. White oak stumps last much longer, and down in the bottoms, stumps disappear quickly with rot and floods erasing them in short order. We figured out a plan of action for this timber, and the new owners will be busy. They will need to do two or three burns to bring up oak regeneration through the competition, but they have trails in place, so that will be easily managed. They can break up the woods into three burn units and rotate the burn to the next unit every spring. In ten or fifteen years they should see their young oaks popping up throughout their timber.