Shin Forest — Fiag Forest
Maps courtesy of North Highland Forest District, Golspie and photographed by Norman Davidson.
This map shows the extent of the Glen Fiag acquisition the vast majority of which was never planted. The map does show the full range of planned compartments from 401 up to 432 but only those planted up to P68. One assumes the maps were changed to the Conservancy Office produced prints thereafter. There are a number of hand written notes on the map, some of which indicate the unplanted land outwith the forest fence was leased and was part of the Shinness Grazing excambium. Unfortunately the writer does not know the history of this. Other notes refer to the types, or provenances of the Lodgepole pine planted in Fiag Forest.
One note appears to read ‘7113/2 Quesnel (Central part)’ and the other ‘7951 Oregon’. These are world location seed identity numbers and refer to the origins of the seed from which the young planted trees were grown. The Quesnel (pronounced Quennel – I think) area is just south of Prince George in northern British Columbia. The other reference ‘7951’ is Oregon, USA and the first two numbers confirming this location. The seed from Oregon and Washington state coastal areas was generally known as South Coastal provenance which grew quite fast even in very wet peaty conditions but over time the tree stem form degenerated and became bent and twisted, even more so with snow and wind damage. Other provenances were ‘Southern Interior’ or ‘Interior’ and in the early days ‘Central’ was often used as a descriptor and featured very straight stems. Probably currently the most interesting provenances are the ‘North Coastal’ provenances from the Queen Charlotte Islands area and of course Alaskan provenance from the islands in South Alaska including around the town of Sitka!
Within the map compartments the tree species has been noted and in the case of the Lodgepole pine and Scots pine the seed identity numbers have been written in as well. Along with the map, the other permanent record which was religiously filled in at the time was the Planting Record or R1 which recorded each batch of young trees (plants) received from the nursery. Against each batch the nursery name, the seed origin number, the compartment numbers in which they were planted, the area in acres (or later hectares) were all noted down in species order and each species area totalled. In later years when home collection of tree seed was taking place it was critical to know the origin of the parent trees and the old R1 records were extensively searched.
The species naming convention on the maps for Lodgepole pine was PC (Pinus contorta -its Latin name) and in the case of this map suffixes have been added in some cases (C) to denote Coastal and (I) to denote Inland provenances. Unusually the seed identity numbers of the Scots and Lodgepole pine trees have also been noted on the compartments. Note that the Scots pine number begins with the year of collection (outside the brackets) and then within the brackets the initial 41 denoting somewhere in Scotland.
The species initially included quite large proportions of Scots pine as the southern had some good mineral soil slopes but further north the ground flattened off and the mineral soil was increasingly covered with deeper peat and Lodgepole pine was almost exclusively used. The writer believes that a large part of this area was burnt in the 1980s but perhaps someone can confirm?
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Groups: Caithness and Sutherland, Maps of Forest and Woodland Areas