Annual Planting Record Durris Forest 1932-68
The record is courtesy of Forestry Commission Moray and Aberdeenshire Forest District.
The format of the Compartments Planted record appears to be on a proforma developed in the East Scotland Conservancy and certainly endured from 1932 to 1968 as in the attached PDF.
The national R1 Form must also have been compiled but with its focus on species of trees used , numbers and areas planted it was less useful at Conservancy, District and Forest level for compiling the Forest Record books which focussed more so on details of all the individual Compartments.
The Compartments Record proforma still gives a great insight into the annual planting programmes of Durris Forest from 1932 to 1968, the species used and the odd one is signed by the foresters Tom Allan, Willie Milne and G Gilbert. One set has the name S H A Paterson who was forester from 1946.
Note the details of the plant advice notes and in a few cases the originating forest nurseries where the planting stock was grown. Private nurseries will not have issued advice notes and their names were inserted instead but there does appear to be some Forestry Commission nurseries named such as Roseisle. All the supplying nurseries would have been named on the R1 form. The important seed identity number has been quoted in most cases and is usually shown in the format 28/43 which indicates collection in 1928 and is the 43rd lot registered that year by the Alice Holt national seed register which may have been published annually. In 1965 all the annual register lists from 1921 to 1956 were compiled into a book titled Seed Identification Numbers by The Forestry Commission as Research Branch Paper No 29.
The number 28/43 chosen from Compartment 3 in the 1932 planting is written up in the Seed Register as:
28/43; 1017lbs; Picea sitchenses; 1927; Canada (Queen Charlotte Islands, British Columbia); Canadian Government; 98.1 ; 86 + 3.
The serial number (indicating the year the seed received as a prefix) is followed by; quantity; species; crop year; origin; vendor; purity percent; germination and fresh seed percent.
Groups: Forestry Areas, Forestry Records, Booklets and Reports, Northeast Scotland