COMPARING WOOD QUALITY BETWEEN NATURALLY REGENERATED LONGLEAF, PLANTED LONGLEAF, AND PLANTED LOBLOLLY PINE

Longleaf pine (Pinus palustris) is a southern pine species that can produce high quality wood. Efforts to increase longleaf pine via planting have raised questions about wood properties of planted versus naturally regenerated material. This study compared wood and fiber quality of four species-regeneration combinations as follows: naturally regenerated longleaf pine, planted longleaf pine on forest cutover sites, planted longleaf pine on old agricultural field sites, and planted loblolly pine on forest cutover sites. We measured ring specific gravity (SG) and ultrasonic velocity (USV), and SG and moisture content of both the wood and bark from disks that we scaled to whole-tree values. We found significant differences between species and regeneration types for some measured properties; the main differences we found were on ring SG and USV in the corewood (juvenile wood). Generally, naturally regenerated longleaf pine produced the highest quality corewood followed by longleaf pine grown on cutover sites.