Oak in mixtures and monocultures : results from the Snogeholm study area in southern Sweden

Abstract: Oak is a tree specie with fine, high valued wood and thereby timber of oak has higheconomical value. One drawback of growing oak is the expensive establishment cost dueto high seedlings price. Establishing and growing oak in mixed stands could be a solutionfor this problem. Another problem with oak management is a quality of oak trees as itcould be easily reduced due to e.g. crooks, epicormic branches, forks (double stems).Different mixtures will influence the possibilities to get oak trees with high quality. Thisstudy was carried out in the 16 years old plantations in Snogeholm study area in southernSweden. Oak is growing in monoculture and in mixture with different tree species in thisarea. The oak specie is Pedunculate oak (Quercus Robur) for all stands except onemonoculture plantation with Sessile oak (Quercus Petraea). There were studied 10different planting methods where oak was growing together with spruce in differentarrangements, beech, lime and birch. It was found that it worth to plant oaks in mixturewith conifers, the best solution is to plant oak in mixture with spruce in groups. Mixtureswill provide higher total volume than in monoculture and better crop oaks quality. Mixtureof oak with beech gave the lowest quality for oak.