(30) COPPICE

Coppice or Copse consists of self-sown or planted trees periodically cut before they attain the size of timber. This system of wood cropping was more extensively adopted thirty years ago than it is now, as the value of oak bark is much reduced owing to the introduction of foreign bark and other substance for tanning. One requisite for copse woods is that t hey should spring up freely from the cut root. Most of the broad-leaves trees and shrubs may be cultivated as coppice-wood; in soft, wet soils, birch, alder, and various willows are amongst the most useful trees, and in drier soils oak, chestnut, and ash are valuable for this mode of cultivation.






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