An ancient form of forest husbandry...?

Question

I'm looking for the name and a website (or wiki entry) on an ancient form of forestry. It entails cutting the tree down (but not completely) for use as wood source, but leaves enough trunk behind to grow saplings out of. The saplings are pruned until the strongest grows to become a new tree, and the process repeats. I remember reading about this being practiced in England, and it being a multi-generational form of sustainable forestry being practiced even in ancient times. It is still being practiced by a few people today.

Name, and reference site, please.

Answer 1

There were two basic techniques used.

Pollarding involves cutting some tree limbs back to the trunk each year to promote a very tight, dense canopy. The result is a clean trunk with a cluster of whips at its end. This was used to create a regular wood supply that was out of reach of deer. This is also often done to created a pleached garden allee. Pleaching is a practice of weaving or intertwining trees to form a webbed hedge. The allee is a walkway lined with pleached trees that passes through a garden usually terminating in a framed view.
http://www.englishcottagegardening.com/pleachng/pleach.htm
www.englishcottagegardening.com


Coppice is the other but cut low to the ground. The base is called the stool. This might be done to produce wood to weave hurdles, to make charcoal, or to lay a field hedge. Both methods are done on a 10-15 year pruning cycle.


http://books.google.com/books?id=IdlB5DVujigC&pg=PT138&lpg=PT138&dq=coppice+wood+management&source=web&ots=naaEHrAR0p&sig=m2K080IBmbd_E5Eoi6ersh2SsHE
http://www.wt-community.org.uk/content/page.asp?s=3&loc=page3
http://books.google.com/books?id=zck1AAAAMAAJ&pg=PA394&lpg=PA394&dq=coppice+wood+management&source=web&ots=gVKBI4qF6q&sig=gPWwfJXTL0ycPx4__UnxhRPrU1s
http://books.google.com/books?id=GmwszabumhkC&pg=PA81&lpg=PA81&dq=coppice+wood+management&source=web&ots=GMCawWOtFQ&sig=_kAp0nO4dw5-1Lqq3ra5vPrTwks
http://books.google.com/books?id=8PYsZ5VWBCEC&pg=PA288&lpg=PA288&dq=coppice+wood+management&source=web&ots=2ArbAO1FpD&sig=1g8PTRj3L9nFWZsnfOH23zAbfI4
http://www.kew.org/gowild/wildscience/charcoal.html
www.hedgelayer.freeserve.co.uk