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Magazine article2024

Att lämna fröträd räcker inte för ryl, knärot och grönpyrola

Sundberg, Sebastian

Abstract

Here I present the results of a resurvey of some forest plants, Chimaphila umbellata, Goodyera repens, Pyrola chlorantha, Monotropa hypopitys and Lycopodium cf. complanatum in a 10-hectare pine-dominated forest stand on sand, in the central province of Uppland. I surveyed the stand prior to a cutting in 2017 and again in 2023/2024, 7 growing seasons after the cutting. The cutting was made by leaving approx. 100 mature seed pines per hectare, without ground tillage and taking extra care around marked sites of rare plants. All woody debris was removed rapidly from the stand after the cutting. At the time after the first survey, the Chimaphila umbellata-population was the largest known in Sweden with close to 16 200 shoots at 64 separate sub-sites.

The resurvey revealed a marked decline in 5 out of 6 species. C. umbellata and P. chlorantha showed moderate declines regarding the number of shoots (-20 to -33 %) but still a loss of a high proportion of the sub-sites (-66 to -70 %). In G. repens and M. hypopitys, the declines were more severe, with losses of 80-92 percent of the sub-sites and the number of shoots. The two sub-sites of L. complanatum subsp. complanatum vanished whereas L. zeilleri instead increased regarding the number of shoots (+327 %) at its sole site. So, even with the extra conservation care taken in this cutting, most of the monitored forest plant species declined so far. This calls for a continuous-cover or closeto-nature forestry that is even more careful in the future if these (and many other) groundliving species are to be maintained outside protected areas – a forestry that maintains a continuous tree cover and with lower harvests at a given time than in this example. The amount of tree retention may be decided by the species composition and the species you want to promote.

Published in

Svensk Botanisk Tidskrift
2024, volume: 118, number: 3, pages: 172-177

SLU Authors

Associated SLU-program

Biodiversity

UKÄ Subject classification

Botany
Ecology

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/140042