Anu Honkanen

Selection of Salix myrsinifolia clones for biomass forestry in Finland.

Honkanen A. (1994). Selection of Salix myrsinifolia clones for biomass forestry in Finland. Silva Fennica vol. 28 no. 3 article id 5532. https://doi.org/10.14214/sf.a9172

Abstract

For biomass forestry in the inland parts of Southern and Central Finland, the obvious choice of willow species is Salix myrsinifolia. However, selection of clones of indigenous species has not yet been completed and more research and selection is needed. In the Piipsanneva old peatland trial, indigenous species of willow, mostly clones of S. myrsinifolia and S. phylicifolia, were compared in terms of biomass production, coppicing, height growth and diameter distributions. In this trial, the mean annual biomass production was not particularly high; more important results were attained in the ranking of clones. The trial strengthens the hypothesis that, over the long-term, the biomass production of S. myrsinifolia is higher than that of S. phylicifolia. It was supposed that behind the highest yield there was a clone with uniform quality, one whose diameter distribution would be narrow and positively skewed. Comparisons of parameters of Weibull functions showed that the distributions of the best clones were wide, indicating that those clones use the whole growth space better than those with narrow distribution.

Keywords
biomass; selection; diameter distribution; short rotation forestry; fuelwood; production; clones; Salix phylicifolia; Salix myrsinifolia

Published in 1994

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