Crew plant 500 seedling larch trees

A Forest Service crew came to nature's aid at Camp Sherman on Thursday, June 14. They planted some 500 seedling larch trees on a Heritage Forest Demonstration plot at the Four Corners.

In a project initiated by Friends of the Metolius in 1998, the larch restoration plot had been designed to promote the natural regeneration of the larch species. Observation had suggested that many of the existing larch trees on the site were in an unhealthy condition, with foreshortened branches and mistletoe broom. Since the larch is a desirable tree in this ponderosa forest, it seemed worth favoring.

So the site had been heavily thinned and pruned, with logging machinery running across the forest. The result was an opening up to increased sunlight and the exposure of bare mineral soil, both conditions necessary for larch seeds to sprout and take hold.

Now, 10 years after the treatment, no little larch have been observed.

The site has become grassy, no longer ideal for larch regeneration.

Silviculturist Brian Tandy, of the Sisters Ranger District, speculated that the existing larch may not have thrown a seed crop in that decade anyway, larch being notoriously uneven in their production of viable cones.

Crew chief Dave Priest expects at least a 70-percent survival of this planting. Now that the seedlings are in the ground, a volunteer crew will place protective mats over the seedlings' space. The seedling stock came from the Medford nursery.