Maple bush undergrowth mangement - a carpet of young maples 3-4" high

[ttowle3]

My maple bush undergrowth - a carpet of young maples 3-4" high. What is the right management model?
Should I remove them as there are millions of them. Not all of them can survive or there wont be room for a spider to crawl through.

[GeneralStark]

So what exactly is the problem? You should consider yourself lucky that you have such good regeneration in your sugar woods. The management model is to let them grow as they are your next generation of crop trees.

[unc23win]

I agree with General for now let them go you said yourself they won't all make it. I have some pretty thick saplings myself although they can be a pain to run lines through I believe only the strongest will survive so to speak so I leave them be. Having woods that is untouched by machines results in a high sapling population. From what I have heard some people start thinning them out when they get 4" or so in diameter, myself I have not done that at all. If they develop right then you will have a large number of taps in a small area, which is exactly what you want.

[RIVERWINDS]

They will eventually turn into leaders and followers and the followers will die off as they get stunted or suppressed. Our woodland owners association visited a maple grove a few years ago. Same situation, millions of seedlings coming up but not a one was making it more than five years. The property owner had a beautiful woodlot, just magnificent maples nearing 75 years old and straight as could be. But between those trees and the seedlings not a sapling could be found. There were a lot of factors, including high deer browse, causing the regeneration issue but it showed me that these millions of seedlings didn't stand a chance of making it.

Anyway, at this point there is no way to tell which ones are going to be the dominate/co dominate trees and which ones will become intermediate and/or suppressed. Even at the 3"-6" range it's still hard but you'll start to see it in the understory and how they compete for sunlight. In my part of the world typically the forests are even aged and it's incredible to see some trees 20"+ DBH and some only 8" and know they are relatively the same age when you core them. Sugarbush management is hard to do when you're still in seedling stage so I say let them grow and let nature sort things out for awhile.