A Case Study of Sugar Maple (Acer saccharum) as a Forest Seedling Bank Species

MARKS, P. L. AND S. GARDESCU (Section of Ecology & Systematics, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 148532701, USA). A case study of sugar maple (Acer saccharum) as a forest seeding bank species. J. Torrey Bot. Soc. 125:287-296. 1998.-To examine the existence and behavior of a seedling bank, seedlings of sugar maple were censused for 24 years in a mixed-hardwood forest in central New York State. Each year we measured the heights of all sugar maple seedlings (individually-marked) in permanent plots. The population of seedlings persisted through time, with little net upward growth, in the shade. This seedling bank was maintained both by recruitment of new seedlings and by low annual mortality, with some sugar maple seedlings surviving > 30 years at < 1 m height. In an experimental canopy gap, long-suppressed sugar maple seedlings responded with substantial height growth. Thus, sugar maple exhibited the three defining characteristics for a seedling bank: a narrow range of heights in the shade, persistence in the shade, and retention of the capacity to grow rapidly upward once light availability increased.