So a little background I work for the Wisconsin DNR doing Forest regeneration monitoring, which looks at seedlings and saplings off different species and height. I also go into a bunch of different types of Silviculture systems. Well I’ve been noticing that there is always so much blackberries and raspberry as woody competition to any trees after a shelterwood or seed tree. I’ve seen places where new growth is able to compete and other almost no new tree growth and I can’t for the life of me figure out how that is happening. I’m thinking it of course has to do with moisture availability, light and topography like if it’s growing on a down or up slope but after that I just seem to be confused.

The second question I have was is if the new growth is getting out competed by the blackberry how are these seedlings and saplings ever able to grow into full size trees?