LonelyThat's only part of the reason why they are metal. They encourage stand replacing wildfires- a big plus for the local environment. "Dry opens" do happen but are pretty uncommon and are usually a result of dryness rather than regular air temperature. Serotinous cones need high high temps to open. I'm a big fan of Jack pines mostly because they are the easiest stands to cruise or do my research plots in- besides red pine but they are a pretty similar habitat type here. Plus the wildlife that frequents them as well as the ground flora is pretty sick. Lots of sweet fern, reindeer lichen and lowbush blueberry. Plus pure stands look siiiiick. Love me some jackpine. They grow where nothing else wants to.
Sugar maple is an awesome species for industry. I'm just tired of it because it's all I work in. It's a pain in the ass to hack through when you have 50 seedlings per m^2 plots. It's incredibly competitive and shades out most other species. Turning a pretty diverse stand into a maple mono-culture. It's become very boring to me. It only is cool if it has some birds eye. It just destroys anything that is not it. Besides some spinulose WF or maiden hair there is hardly any ground flora. Theres too much of it, just feels like a pest
Sound like you know your shit. What sort of research do you do and what part of the continent? Would be very interested to hear. Around here our sugar maple forests are actually quite diverse with ground cover, although pure stands are very uncommon and they're rarely over 50-100 years in age. Typical maple stands here usually have a few lily sp. (like trout lily, blue bead, etc), a few Maianthemum sp., wild sarsaparilla, Trillum sp., ramps, more than a few fern sp., etc etc.