| DECEMBER NEWSLETTER Help us Match $5000 this Giving Tuesday! In August, we applied for a grant to develop a landowner decision-making tool for the Texas karst country. The tool will use a flowchart format to guide landowners to make more informed land management decisions that will help achieve long-lasting results over short-term fixes. The tool will consist of an app or a printed quick-start guide that can be downloaded. The guide will contain QR codes to supplemental links with information, research, consultants, and how-to videos. DONATE We look forward to starting work on this much-needed project. Our new sponsor, The Watershed Association, agreed to match up to $5000 of additional funding. If you’re as excited about this project as we are, click the link to donate! STICK CEDARS: To Lop or Not to Lop? Stick cedars are those young mountain cedars that come up either en masse or grow scattered beneath the trees. Many landowners believe these to be related to pioneer thickets. For this reason, it has become common practice to walk through a wooded area with loppers and whack all these young junipers. However, stick cedars are a normal component of Texas karst country forests, mottes, and woodlands. They will grow into amazing trees, not bushes. They are found in only wooded areas, not open rangelands. If you find one in a rangeland it’s because there’s an adjacent wooded area. Pioneer thickets of bushy, multi-stem, cedars, on the other hand, grow anywhere, including open rangelands. NORMAL STICK CEDARS GROWING INTO CANOPY TREES So how do you identify these young trees? Start with location. Are they adjacent to or inside a wooded area…or out in the opening? Then look at their trunks. If you see a straight young trunk extending to the top of the sapling, then it’s a stick cedar. STICK CEDAR DOG HAIR REGROWTH There are two categories of stick cedars to manage. The first is the regular undergrowth stick cedar. This type will grow scattered beneath a wooded area. These can be mostly left alone. But wherever a disturbance creates a hole in the canopy, such as the death of a large tree, ice storm damage, or “parking it up,” a surplus of stick cedars will often shoot up together to fill the void. Forest ecologists call this young dense growth ‘dog hair regrowth.’ Dog hair regrowth is nature’s way to address disturbance, but it can take a long time for trees that dense to grow into canopy trees. To expedite regeneration, I like to thin the sticks by 20-30% every few years to maintain a protective cover for the soil. I start removing sticks that are within 5-7 feet of a larger tree and remove sticks with poor forms, such as a forked trunk. But always watch out for plants that might be emerging underneath the sticks. To keep those protected from deer, keep the sticks in place since they are acting as living cages. PIONEER THICKET OF BUSHY CEDARS VISIT OUR WEBSITE |
Help us Match $5000 this Giving Tuesday!
In August, we applied for a grant to develop a landowner decision-making tool for the Texas karst country. The tool will use a flowchart format to guide landowners to make more informed land management decisions that will help achieve long-lasting results over short-term fixes. The tool will consist of an app or a printed quick-start guide that can be downloaded. The guide will contain QR codes to supplemental links with information, research, consultants, and how-to videos.
DONATE
We look forward to starting work on this much-needed project. Our new sponsor, The Watershed Association, agreed to match up to $5000 of additional funding. If you’re as excited about this project as we are, click the link to donate!
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STICK CEDARS: To Lop or Not to Lop?
Stick cedars are those young mountain cedars that come up either en masse or grow scattered beneath the trees. Many landowners believe these to be related to pioneer thickets. For this reason, it has become common practice to walk through a wooded area with loppers and whack all these young junipers.
However, stick cedars are a normal component of Texas karst country forests, mottes, and woodlands. They will grow into amazing trees, not bushes. They are found in only wooded areas, not open rangelands. If you find one in a rangeland it’s because there’s an adjacent wooded area. Pioneer thickets of bushy, multi-stem, cedars, on the other hand, grow anywhere, including open rangelands.
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NORMAL STICK CEDARS GROWING INTO CANOPY TREES | | |
So how do you identify these young trees? Start with location. Are they adjacent to or inside a wooded area…or out in the opening? Then look at their trunks. If you see a straight young trunk extending to the top of the sapling, then it’s a stick cedar.
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STICK CEDAR DOG HAIR REGROWTH | | |
There are two categories of stick cedars to manage. The first is the regular undergrowth stick cedar. This type will grow scattered beneath a wooded area. These can be mostly left alone. But wherever a disturbance creates a hole in the canopy, such as the death of a large tree, ice storm damage, or “parking it up,” a surplus of stick cedars will often shoot up together to fill the void. Forest ecologists call this young dense growth ‘dog hair regrowth.’
Dog hair regrowth is nature’s way to address disturbance, but it can take a long time for trees that dense to grow into canopy trees. To expedite regeneration, I like to thin the sticks by 20-30% every few years to maintain a protective cover for the soil. I start removing sticks that are within 5-7 feet of a larger tree and remove sticks with poor forms, such as a forked trunk. But always watch out for plants that might be emerging underneath the sticks. To keep those protected from deer, keep the sticks in place since they are acting as living cages.
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PIONEER THICKET OF BUSHY CEDARS | | |
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