how best to tackle this french oak woodland

[Paul in France]

I hope some of you guys out there can help me with some advice. I've never been involved with arb-stuff before now.

 

I've recently moved to this house in France and an "extra" that I hadn't necessarily looked for is 3 Ha of mainly oak woodland.

 

It's proving to be one of the most fantastic things I've done. Me and the missus are on our own and we are trying to do a number of things:

 

keep ourselves in firewood

maintain and improve the woodland

keep the pathways clear

tackle some very overgrown areas

 

We've surprised ourselves with how much wood we've managed to get out all hand cut with bow saws and hauled out by hand. We've shied away from buying lots of machinery on advice from this forum already. After all if we spend thousands on tractors trailers etc right from the start we may find we've committed ourselves too early. We may well be looking towards a decent chain saw and I think I may have found a qualified guy here who will train me in saw and tree safety and maintenance but I won't be getting to see him for a few weeks.

 

So my questions.

 

Hopefully I've managed to get the photos on successfully. You'll see we have some nice mature open woodland but in other places there's just masses of thin spindly stuff covered with thick lichen. I've been basically hacking as much of this down as possible and where there is a decent looking specimen leaving it to mature. I'm piling the cuttings in heaps out of the way to create habitat.

 

Do you think this is the right approach and is the lichen a sign of disease (they don't look very clever - but the whole area around here is exactly the same and I mean for miles and miles).

Also one of the pics is of new growth that is coming up all over and it is a spiny looking whip. Is this new oak or something else:confused1:

Sorry to have taken up so much space but in the past I've had invaluable responses on the forum and thanks in advance for anything you can come up with - particularly suggestions for improvement.

[Stephen Blair]

Pic 3 is what it should look

Like, pic 2 is regeneration, that needs cleaned out, the lichen is just lack of fresh air, thin it out and that will cure it, it's harmless and good for nature.

I would do whatever makes you the happiest, working with hand tools is hard but very pleasant for you and your wife to enjoy what you have,

Looks fantastic

[TimberCutterDartmoor]

Type of lichen determines pure or polluted air.

[highland dave]

I would leave areas of the understory untouched as they provide habitats for all sorts of wildlife. If you clear it all it may look neat and tidy but you'll lose the nightingales and whatever else likes scrubby thickets. Don't worry about lichens, they are a great indicator for clean air.

[normandylumberjack]

Well Paul, I am very impressed. What you have there is a very nice resource. It reminds me of the woodlands I have worked in whilst here in France, mostly state owned, and the more mature trees you have posted look to be doing well. The smaller regen stuff is a good place to start with your firewood and the possible introduction of short rotation coppice species into this area would give you a renewable firewood source. Sweet chestnut and ash should work and are cheap to purchase. The mature oaks could be managed on a continuous cover basis, allowing natural regeneration. Nice project!

[codlasher]

Truffles?

codlasher

[Gardenmac]

Nice project, If you haven't already sectionalise the wood in a simple plan (rough map will do) and mark what you aim to do.

 

Don't worry about the lichen its a clean air indicator and has established because of a lack of air flow in the wood.

They are often a sign that the wood through its natural regeneration and long time lack of management is choking itself as the trees all compete for space and light and some start to die back. If you don't like the moss and lichen they will start to die off when you start to open the wood up through management, cutting back pruning out.

Do you have any opportunity to create coppice?

[arbmark]

I would leave areas of the understory untouched as they provide habitats for all sorts of wildlife. If you clear it all it may look neat and tidy but you'll lose the nightingales and whatever else likes scrubby thickets. Don't worry about lichens, they are a great indicator for clean air.

 

Paul - a word of caution if I may. Just about the best thing for woodlands is for humans to stay out of them. The only thing that needs managing is your impact on the woodland. Woodlands are often island habitats and your decisions can cause big changes to the wildlif within.

 

If you think that lichens are disease then you need to do a lot of reading before you start to 'manage' the woodland. There is no such word as tidy in ecological terms. he overgrown areas have their own importance. Even the spindly specimens will sort themselves out over time, maybe bend over, crack, make bat roosts..etc etc,

 

but letting a bit of light in can be good for varying the habitat, akin to trees dying or falling over naturally making brief light opportunity for some species.

 

So given your need from the woodland, and it sounds like you want to give back which is great, I would thin out some of those and take the odd larger oak out as and when to create glades and stack the brushwood as you have. You could ring-bark a few trees to create standing deadwood

 

good luck with it, if you want some proper advice though dont ask a bunch of chainsaw happy rednecks like us lot!!!!! I'd tread softly if it were mine.

[face cord]

Beautiful oak woodland im jealous

 

 

Also one of the pics is of new growth that is coming up all over and it is a spiny looking whip

 

Hard to tell species ident from that pic but the red twig doesn't look like oak might be willow?

[woodyguy]

Paul,

having visited the amazing Oak forest to the North of the auvergne this summer, I know what you have there. In that they have the biggest oak forest in Europe and grow on a 200 year cutting cycle!!!

In the UK we have american oak mildew which weakened oaks and stops them regenerating within oak woods. In France the light is stronger and I was awe struck by just how densely the oak saplings grow. In the Auvergne they go through first with a bill hook at about 10 year old and cut 90% of them off at waist height. How they walk through and keep track of where they are I don't know as they are about 6 inches apart. Then again in 10 years they go through with a chain saw and cut to about a 2 metre spacing. Eventually after 100+ years they end up with large oaks perhaps 30-40 feet apart that then mature at 200 years.

 

As they have produced oak commercially for building since early 19th century and the whole massive forest is divided into 1km squares all of it managed like this, I suspect they know a thing or two about oak growing.