An investigation of the influence of harvesting practice on the development of blue-stain in Corsican pine logs

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In September 1991, at Thetford, East Anglia and at Inverness, north-east Scotland, a comparison was initiated between blue-stain development in Corsican pine logs from trees felled and processed by harvesting machine and similar logs from trees felled and trimmed out by chain-saw. Blue-stain was assessed in discs from batches of logs destructively sampled at 2-week intervals after felling. At the more southerly site of Thetford, stain was first observed after 4 weeks. The maximum recorded area was 10 per cent of the wood surface in a sample analysed after 10weeks. In contrast, stain never exceeded, 1.1 per cent of the wood surface at Inverness. Amounts of stain were significantly greater with machine-harvested logs than with chainsaw-harvested logs and were correlated with the amount of bark removed or loosened during harvesting. The use of spiked rollers resulted in more stain than did the use of rubber rollers. The fungi isolated from stained wood included Sphaeropsis sapinea, Potebniamyces coniferarum and Ceratocystis coerulescens . These are species adapted to the colonization of wood exposed through damage to the overlying bark