Some considerations in connection with the thinning of conifers in Ireland.

Abstract

In modern scientific forestry thinning is of paramount importance but unfortunately our experience of it is limited to 15 or 20 year in scattered small blocks up and down the country. Furthermore our climate is exceptionally favourable to species from the North American continent and Japan and, wisely or otherwise, we have used a lot of these exotics-Picea sitchensis, Pinus Contorta, Pseudotsuga taxifolia and Larix leptolepis being the species mostly used-so that thinning technigues in Britain, which would approximate more closely to conditions here than would those on the European continent, may not always suit especially in the South of Ireland. One has only to glance at crops of Picea sitchensis and Pinus contorta in the South to realise that the rotation for either species on the evidence to date will, in certain places, be considerably shorter than was anticipated...