Coppicing first attempt. Would welcome comment criticism.

[hornbeam_mad]

Hi everyone. After two years of research and a lot of indecision we finally started in our neglected hornbeam coppice woodland. There is still a way to go but feel we have made a dent. Ive hopefully linked the photo album correctly for anyone to.have a look so feel free to comment, good or bad.

https://picasaweb.google.com/112686954189410986427/CoppicingFirstAttempt

I look forward to reading your views.

[ncrawshaw]

Looks good to me. What a lovely piece of woodland, nice and clear under the trees too. Carry on the good work!

[The Barrowers]

Hello, Looks very nice and tidy.. Saw stuck in tree, that's how it goes sometimes. Good luck

[Stephen1]

Hi Hornbeam Mad,

Yes that looks pretty good to me - nice and tidy, sensible angles, no tears and cut at an appropriate height given the age of the stems. Hornbeam is one of the most reliable re-sprouters of our native trees - and that extends to pollarding or re-pollarding old trees too.

One of the most important aspects of coppicing is the size of the area you fell. Particularly with a tree that casts as much shade as hornbeam. Small patches that you might get away with amongst ash will not work with hornbeam. There just won't be enough light coming through the trees at an angle. It's true that hornbeam is a very shade tolerant tree but you make the decision to coppice presumably for one of two reasons - either because you want straight, fast grown stems for craft/greenwoodworking, or to promote the species of flora and fauna associated with coppicing (I suppose a third reason could just be firewood) For whichever reason though you need to make sure plenty of light gets in- either to allow sustained fast growth of the trees or to light and warm the woodland floor for conservation.

It is important to remember that at our lattitude even in June the sun isn't directly over head -even at noon - the sun is always lighting the woodland floor to a greater or lesser degree from the south. For most of the year the area of woodland floor immediately to the north of the southern edge of the area you have felled will get no direct sunlight. It can be very useful when recoppicing a wood that has been neglegetd for a long time to mark out where the shadow of the southern edge reaches on the woodland floor at various times of the growing season. The incident and reflected light reaching this shaded area offers very little energy for photosynthesis- almost all the frequencies (i.e. colours/wavelengths) of light that drive photosynthesis will have been filtered out. Also there is less intensity of light there than you might imagine - remember the iris ouf your eye dilates as you walk into shade and so we perceive a more even 'intensity' of light than is actualy the case. This can be very useful when choosing subsequent cant /coup sizes - particularly valuable for small woodland owners who if intending to coppice their woodland by cutting an area each year will inevitably have cant sizes much, much smaller than was traditionally the case - the problems of this can be ameliorated to some extend by careful choice of the shapes of each cant.

There will be folk who point out that even if you cut a single tree it resprouts and grows away quickly - even with just a tiny hole in the canopy. Well yes this is true but for a reason. Those old coppice stools (or maiden trees) have a large root system underground, the sap withing these roots contains a lot of sugar. It is using this sugar which for the first 3-4 years fuels the very rapid regrowth. After this though if the leaves on the coppice regrowth aren't producing plenty of sugar themselves and passing it back to the roots then the roots start to slowly die. Once the regrowth is having to rely on sunlight alone for its growth then if shaded this slows down very dramatically. A balance will be found over the next few years between tha amount of root that dies and the amount of sugar that is being produced (photosyntesis from the top growth) this has impacts on the stability of the tree in the future and how succesfully it may recoppice next time (even if the area around it is further opened once it is notticed the stool is suffering from a lack of light).

Stools that grow up in too little light (i.e. too many 'standard' trees or a 'cant' that was too small) take a very long time to callouse over the entire coppice cut - ideally you want a layer of new wood (growth ring) to be laid down over the whole stool continously as quickly as possible - light stressed stools often have stems growing attached to slowly decaying stools - which are less stable and often this also causes staining into the stems , which isn't ideal if you have greenwood working etc. in mind.

So to attempt to answer your question about how wel your coppicing has been carried out then I'd say I couldn't offer my arrogant oppinion unless you said what your intentions were for the coppice area, and how large an area did you coppice, what shape was the coppiced area, how tall are the surrounding trees and what aspect the area you felled had .

[Twybill]

For anyone who is contemplating this size of coppice work, don't forget that a chainsaw is not the only tool in existence.

On stems of this diameter hand tools are ideal and should whistle through the stems very quickly. The advantage is that bird song is not shut out and the exercise and satisfaction are much keener felt.

[hornbeam_mad]

Thankyou everyone for your feedback.

Stephen1, Wow, thats was very informative.

Ill make a few points about what we're doing.

The area is roughly a tenth of our 2 1/2 acre patch of trees, so about 1/4 acre.

We're coppicing for firewood and to do our bit for conservation in the High Weald AONB after a visit from one of their officers. (We also have a field which on their advice we would like to return to a meadow)

The cant in the process of being cut is at the SW tip of our woods and its a rounded triangle on reasonably level ground.

This cant when completed will only have one oak standard with an incredibly straight stem and roughly 10m3 of canopy well above the ground.

The boundary is a hedge/barrier of hawthorn, blackthorn (ouch!!!!!), maple and some smaller hornbeam. I have read that it is good to leave a shore for wind protection, so haven't decided what trees among this to leave standing.

Depending on how things go, I think another cant of similar proportions would be reasonable to cut in two to three years time.

At the moment it is still a work in progress. I manage to find quite alot of time as an agency worker so I am free to enjoy the woods and get on with it. I am very lucky that my parents own this fantastic area and they asked me to do it.

[Bellhurst]

We have 5 acres of shady, long-neglected, mainly hornbeam coppice (stems 2"-6") with 80 oak standards which tend to be clustered with big areas of pure coppice between. It's 'semi-natural ancient woodland' in the High Weald AONB. We plan to make 2 clearings in the coppice totalling 1 acre, both extending in from our southern edge which is an open field, to let in lots of sun amd warmth to encourage ground flora and butterflies, so we don't really want our cut stems to regrow! The cut wood will be seasoned eventually for logs. Fantastic advice about shading, Stephen1, but what's an 'appropriate' height and angle for cutting?

[Bellhurst]

In my post it was a bit of a throw-away remark about the cut stems. We do plan to coppice sustainably, so will cover the stools with brash to keep the deer off, and rotate the coupes over several years. We've been cutting about 10 cm (rough average) above the ground or stool at a comfortable angle to the horizontal, is that OK?