Suisgill Plantation — Helmsdale Forest
Courtesy of North Highland Forest District, Golspie.
This acquisition in the Strath of Kildonan took place in 1968 but the planting map is incomplete as neither the planting year or areas of the compartments have been annotated. However it is likely to have been planted around 1970. Note the change to the annotation of Lodgepole pine which is now written with suffixes to denote the variety actually planted. The species grows in a wide range of geographical areas in Western America from Alaska down to Washington – hence the suffixes (AL) and (SC) to denote Alaskan and South Coastal Lodgepole pine origins respectively the latter from Washington. Along with Skeena River and Inland varieties the various provenances showed quite different growth and nutrient requirement characteristics.
As usual with a national organisation there was a code and procedure convention for mapping of plantations some of which survive in the FC to this day. Acquisition boundaries were edged with a yellow ink ; compartment boundaries (rides) drawn in red ink; the extent of the planting in any year was given a light colour wash, outlined in green ink and the planting year written in green eg P.66; the compartment’s serial number and area in acres was written within the compartment sometimes within a small circle; the areas where different tree species were planted within each compartment were annotated with a species code eg SS (Sitka spruce), LP (Lodgepole pine) etc; different species areas in each compartment had to be separated by a dotted black line (in this case a solid black line which became standard); internal fences, streams and other land usually indicated by a solid black line. Map scale was usually 6 inches to the mile.
Note that the annual reporting year and the planting year coincided at this time in that they ran from 1st Oct to 30th Sep. This avoided having an artificial split in the totals for the planting season which ran from November through to May. The Planting Year (PY or just P) was fixed as the first summer following planting and thus trees planted in Nov 55 and May 56 were both annotated P56.
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Groups: Caithness and Sutherland, Maps of Forest and Woodland Areas