While beauty is in the eye of the beholder, some trees are generally considered beautiful for their fall color, pretty flowers, or interesting bark. You can select these species as your crop trees. Further, most people appreciate the beauty of open and park-like stands. CTR accelerates stand development, moving dense young stands towards older (appearing) park-like stands more rapidly.
Learn more:
When it comes to releasing trees for an aesthetic goal, you may appreciates the beauty of an open park-like stand of straight-stemmed white oaks. Or perhaps you prefer a forest of redbuds, with crooked trunks and stunning spring flowers.
CTR can enhance the visibility of aesthetically pleasing trees, removing less pleasing trees and focusing the spotlight on the stars of the show. Further, released trees will develop larger crowns and be more resistant to drought, which can enhance flowering and fall color.
You can enhance the variety of fall colors or spring flowers scattered across your property by releasing multiple species.
Tree leaves contain yellow and orange pigments all growing season, but they are masked by green chlorophyll. In the fall, when the chlorophyll breaks down, the yellow and orange pigments are revealed. The red pigments, called anthocyanins, are formed in the fall from sugars. Anthocyanins form best in leaves that are exposed to bright light.
Even though temperature and moisture can affect the timing of fall color in the Appalachians, daylength is the primary driver of leaf color change. Peak color typically occurs in late October through mid-November in the southern Appalachian Mountains.
All serviceberry species have beautiful white spring flowers that give flowering dogwood (the Virginia state flower) a run for the money. They are a good tree to encourage with CTR if you are interested in aesthetics and they produce edible fruit for wildlife and humans.
Sourwood is listed here as a flowering tree and as a fall color tree. Unlike the others, its flowers appear in midsummer. It has the added bonus of being very attractive to honeybees.
How crop tree release can help landowners promote the aesthetic value of their forests with Dr David Carter.
