Seed Biology and Technology of <i>Quercus</i>

The genus Quercus, known as oak, includes world wide some 500 species with 58 of these species in the United States, making it this country's largest genus of native trees (Little 1979). Oak is therefore an im portant group of temperate-zone forest trees. In addition, oaks are significant components of many of the major forest types of the South (Burns 1983) and are the most commercially important hardwood genus. Red and white oaks together account for nearly half (46 percent) of the annual hardwood sawtimber harvested in the South (U.S. Department of Agriculture 1982). They also comprise about the same percentage of the sawtimber and growing stock occurring on com mercial forest lands. Although a majority of southern nurseries grow some oak seedlings (Monaghan 1984), both their production and customer demand are low. Some forest industries grow seedlings in their nurseries to reforest their own lands, but no widespread planting of oak seedlings occurs presently in the South. Natural regeneration, both from seeds and from sprouts, most often establishes stands. Recent successes in direct seeding (Johnson 1984; Johnson and Krinard 1985; Cunningham and Wittwer 1984; Francis and Johnson 1985) have stimulated interest in this very promising method of regeneration, which requires large amounts of acorns. Research on the seed problems of southern oaks was conducted from 1967 to 1983 at the Forestry Sciences Laboratory, Starkville, Mississippi. This paper summarizes in two parts the results of that research, incorporating both published and some unpublished results. Part I reviews current biological knowledge of acorns. Part II recommends handling and management techniques for acorns of southern white and red oaks.