Overstory, shrub-layer, and herbllayer flora composition and abundance patterns in eleven forest sites were studied to evaluate species diversity and richness before implementing three types of harvest treatments. The sites were within the Wine Spring Creek Watershed and were classified as high elevation, dry, Quercus rubra-Rhododendron calendulaceum based on McNab and Browning’s Landscape Ecos...

The European chestnut, Castanea sativa Mill, covers a total area of 2.53 million hectares two million of which are chestnut forests, i.e. forests where chestnut is the dominant tree species, being the remaining 0.53 million hectares devoted to fruit production (20.9% of the total chestnut-growing area). Chestnut fruit production in Europe declined considerably during the XX century to the curre...

Studies were conducted to characterize the chestnut and its starch. Chemical composition of the chestnuts showed high level of starch. Moisture level in the raw nuts was around 50g/100g in wet basis and starch content, around 80g/100g in dry basis; other nut flour components were protein (5.58 g/100g), lipid (5.39 g/100g), crude fiber (2.34 g/100g) and ash (2.14 g/100g). Starch fraction was che...

The aim of this study was to identify the climatic signal contained in the earlywood vessel size of the ring-porous chestnut (Castanea sativa) and the physiological processes involved in the underlying mechanisms. In order to assign the encoded signal to a specific physiological process, bud phenology and vessel formation were monitored along an elevation transect and chronologies of the size o...