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October 22, 2014 4:06 AM

It is easy to think of woodlands as wild places, but in the UK and Europe, most have been carefully managed for centuries. If you visit an ancient woodland in Europe at this time of year, you may well see small areas where the trees are being cut down to the base, but the stumps left behind. This is likely to be part of a traditional woodland practice called coppicing. Until about 150 years ago, most deciduous woodlands in the UK were coppiced to produce wood for use in a variety of industries, but today coppicing is largely only practised for woodland conservation.

via Kirsty Jean Jackson (@kjjscience ).

posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome (22 comments total)

Wow, coppicing.

I can't remember the last time I saw that word in print.

There was a flurry of mainstream interest around the turn of the 1960s to 70s associated with the hippie back-to-the-land movement. I first learned about the practice from the Foxfire Books (c. 1972) and Whole Earth Catalogs (c. 1971).

Thanks, JCIFA, a good find.
 
posted by Herodios at 4:26 AM on October 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

We coppice a couple of woody bushes in our backyard -- elderberries and lilacs mostly, and sometimes a forsythia that's in the right place but has gotten too large to deal with. It's kind-of magic, interesting to watch.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 5:07 AM on October 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

The closest thing to coppicing that I see here are willow stooling beds (willows grown to provide whips for replanting, cut on a yearly or every other year cycle and in a way similar to traditional coppicing), but never for construction materials.

Coppiced woodlands are beautiful to walk in but are as natural as a Weyerhaeuser tree farm. I'm also doubtful of the claim in the article that people were just opportunistic rather than deliberately planting desired species -- that sounds very unlikely to me.
posted by Dip Flash at 5:22 AM on October 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

I am stunned by how much of our forest has always been actively managed. Reading the Forested Landscape tells of Native Americans burning the forest floor regularly to diminish noise and allow for clear shots while hunting. Fast forward to now: I hear the USFS is moving toward more active management where wild growth is self limiting.
posted by drowsy at 5:34 AM on October 22, 2014 [3 favorites]

Oh, I've been wanting to do this. We live in a woodland setting and I've been wanting to try woven fences in some places and also...it just seems neat. I know 'willow' is what's done typically but the last time I was at the nursery I wasn't sure if it had to be some particular type of willow or what. We're in 5B with acid soil. If anyone has any ideas, I'm all ears. I don't know what is so appealing about it but something is. Pollarding too, but again, I'd be intimidated to know what to do it with. We are informal people and I don't think we can rock a British tea garden look.
posted by A Terrible Llama at 5:45 AM on October 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

Like this sort of thing is what I mean. Sorry if it's redundant to the main article; I skimmed it in my OMG COPPICING enthusiasm.

Christ I'm old.
posted by A Terrible Llama at 5:47 AM on October 22, 2014 [3 favorites]

A different approach to forestry was recently exhibited by the US Forest Service in the Great Smoky Mountains of Western North Carolina. After the hemlock woolly adelgid killed a bunch of our hemlock trees in the Joyce Kilmer-Slickrock Wilderness, the Forest Service blew up the trees to prevent them falling on people. Apparently there was some legal language preventing the use of chainsaws to fell the trees, so they used dynamite instead. Crews then used chainsaws to clear the fallen trees from hiking trails (which is permitted as trail maintenance.) The aftermath was pretty bad.

Joyce Kilmer-Slickrock is one of the largest stands of old-growth forest in the eastern US.
posted by workerant at 6:20 AM on October 22, 2014 [4 favorites]

Ok, I thought I was alone in my coppice/pollard/woven fence fixation. Also, I've found that dwarf crepe myrtles are good for pollard experimentation in zone 7. Thanks for this post.
posted by MidStream at 6:21 AM on October 22, 2014 [2 favorites]

Coppiced woodlands are beautiful to walk in but are as natural as a Weyerhaeuser tree farm.

Exactly. The way to restore a coppiced wood stand to natural is a two step process.

1) First winter, trim down all the coppiced trees.

2) Second winter, after they've sprouted branches, trim down all *but one* of the growing steams on each coppice. This is called "singling" the coppice.

3) Third winter, trim down all the new growth, but leave that now larger one stem you left before. For small coppices, there won't be any new growth. For very large or very over stood coppices, you may need a fourth winter of this.

4) Go away and stop screwing with it.

The single stems you left will very quickly become the sole trunk, thanks to apical dominance. Then, well, let nature take care of the wood and it will become a natural wood stand.

Option #2 is to go to Step 4 immediately, but then it will take quite a few decades more for the stand to start growing naturally. Indeed, there will probably be a phase where little grows until the coppiced trees die and rot, returning nutrition to the soil.

Coppicing old coppice stands will reduce the canopy density, but it doesn't restore it to a natural state, it restores it to the very open canopy of meadow that's growing saplings.
posted by eriko at 6:57 AM on October 22, 2014 [6 favorites]

We had a juvenile maple growing in our front yard that was pretty to look at, but would have been crowding the house in another 10-20 years. We decided to cut it down and I'm coppicing it with the intention of using the new growth for stickmaking. (Not a hobby or tradition that seems to have much traction in the U.S., so I figure maybe I can tap into a nice little niche market.) This is the second year (I think) of regrowth, and it looks like they'll be ready to harvest in another year or two.
posted by usonian at 7:12 AM on October 22, 2014 [4 favorites]

There is a house on the way to my office which coppices (what looks like) a hibiscus.

I'm not sure if they are doing it on purpose, or just trying to prevent the thing from growing into the power lines.

Either way, it looks like a mistake when they cut it, but then a few months later it has transformed into a wonderfully spherical, and healthy-looking plant.

Google street view has a historical record of it: 3/2011 & 6/2014
posted by tomierna at 7:28 AM on October 22, 2014 [4 favorites]

Don't forget coppicing's lesser known cousin, pollarding, which prevents grazing animals from eating the new shoots from a coppiced tree, and keeps the tree looking more 'tree-like'.
posted by leotrotsky at 8:40 AM on October 22, 2014 [2 favorites]

I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter’s dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.
posted by Mrs. Rattery at 9:05 AM on October 22, 2014 [3 favorites]

The aftermath was pretty bad.

How so, workerant? You linked to a picture of a blasted trunk and fallen logs. Left on their own, those dead trees would have... fallen, leaving some ripped-open trunks and some torn-out-of-the-ground rootballs, all with fallen logs lying about.

I'm failing to see the bad part of making sure dead trees don't block paths or kill people, by speeding up nature by a couple years.

(And, of course, what we see as a forest robbed of some trees most inhabitants in the forest see as a feeding bonanza - life springs from death.)
posted by IAmBroom at 9:38 AM on October 22, 2014 [2 favorites]

It's federal parkland, so I'd have preferred for the NPS to put up some signs on the trails into the area that say "So some trees in here got sick and died and might fall down on you. Be careful, or maybe turn around." In much the same way that most of the rim of the Grand Canyon has the occasional sign saying "Don't jump or fuck around near the edge" but no rail or fence.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 10:16 AM on October 22, 2014

Any time I hear "management" and "government agency" together, it usually equals some kind of eco-disaster or sell-out to lumber, cattle, or mining business.
posted by CrowGoat at 10:21 AM on October 22, 2014

Coppicing is also used in managing hedges both for the production of hazel poles used in hedge laying as well as a way to create a denser hedge when gaps start to appear.
posted by Ham Snadwich at 10:56 AM on October 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

It's federal parkland, so I'd have preferred for the NPS to put up some signs on the trails into the area that say "So some trees in here got sick and died and might fall down on you. Be careful, or maybe turn around."

Trails are sacrificial areas. Ecologically, the actual trails are basically dead. The reason for having them is that it lets people see the area and not do any more harm by staying on the trail. If you make the trail unsafe, people go around it -- and cause more harm.

If they only dropped those trees (which were going to die) that were near trails, then I don't have a problem with that. They had to clear the trail, because otherwise, people would go around them and, again, cause more harm to the landscape.

If they dropped all the affected trees, even ones nowhere near the trails, then there's an issue. But the points of trails is "You are welcome to walk here, please do, but don't leave the trail." They have to be maintained as safe corridors, or people will avoid the trails and completely destroy the landscape. So, if they kept those safe and open? I'm good with that. In the long run, it means our grandkids get to see the park too.
posted by eriko at 3:17 AM on October 23, 2014 [4 favorites]

A Terrible Llama: Willow/Hazel Hurdles is a search term that might help you for more information on growing & making these.
posted by Gordafarin at 5:25 AM on October 23, 2014 [2 favorites]

I thought this pretty amazing from the linked article:

"Coppicing extends the lifespan of trees dramatically. For example, ash (Fraxinus excelsior) trees typically live for 200 years, but coppiced ash stools can live for over a 1000 (1)."
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 8:17 AM on October 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

eriko: They had to clear the trail, because otherwise, people would go around them and, again, cause more harm to the landscape.

Exactly. Now let's put some data to that idea.

I used to live on the edge of a nature preserve, and I'd run the trails every day after work, rain or shine (but not snow - that's suicidal). Trees, of course, would fall, mostly during storms. It would take up to a week for the rangers to bring chainsaws and cut the path through the trees - bigger trunks would get half-cut, so you could at least climb over them. But in those very few days it took (on average) before the trunk was cut, walkers on those trails would have already killed a new path that looped around the biggest part.

If park rangers don't police dead trees, people invariably destroy more of the forest - people who actively respect the idea of "leave no mark", but are essentially forced to veer off the established trail by circumstances. And the best way to police dead trees is to control their fall in the first place.

No real substantial changes to the forest occurs as a result of this. It doesn't disrupt the termites, fungus, nematodes, carpenter ants, nor bacteria. At most, it might kill the occasional bird nest, but then there's no guarantee the tree wasn't going to kill that anyway, after the parents had invested a lot more energy. Pretty small effect.
posted by IAmBroom at 8:43 AM on October 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

The big benefit to coppicing over clearcutting is that you maintain an extensive root system that prevents erosion, allows for rapid regrowth over a relatively short period of time, and preserves a large part of the tree's biomass.
posted by Ham Snadwich at 9:48 AM on October 23, 2014 [1 favorite]