Tree stump

A tree stump (also Strunk, Stubben, Stumpen, Stuken, Stucken, Wurzelstock, southern German Knorz), forestry Stockholz or Erdstammblock, is the remnant of a tree that remains temporarily at the cutting site after tree felling and protrudes from the soil. A tree stump also remains after the breakage of a dead tree (tree corpse) or in the case of wind breakage.

A rootstock consists of:

• root wood: the entire underground part of the tree
• Stump wood, stem wood in the strict sense: the remaining above-ground part of the stem.

This root system has an inferior wood-economical use value and can be recovered only with difficulty. However, it is of ecological value.

A tree stump is part of the deadwood and forms a biotope, e.g. for certain rare insects or fungi such as the sticky bugle. On the other hand, it also forms entry ports for forest pests such as the root rot, which penetrates the roots via stumps and can infect the root system of surrounding trees in the soil.

In forestry, the tree stump usually remains standing. In the mountain forest, it helps to stabilize the slope in the meantime until the new stand grows. A rough estimate is one year of rotting time per ten centimetres of stump height. Problems are sometimes caused by tree stumps with attached root plates, which were torn out of the ground during a severe storm.

In gardening and landscaping, the stumps are often undesirable. For quick removal, they can be dug out, which is usually done with an excavator for older trees. For complete removal, a clearing blade, an attachment for excavators, or a stump grinder may also be used as part of rootstock clearing. Stump blasting is only carried out in exceptional cases, especially in terrain that is difficult to access. To promote faster rotting of a stump, grooves can be sawn into the surface to make it easier for wood-decomposing fungi and bacteria to colonize.

However, some trees, especially hardwoods, do not die after felling, but sprout new shoots. These shoots are called cane shoots. They can grow into a multi-stemmed tree, but can also grow into a single stem. This characteristic is used in coppice forestry to regenerate stands. Well-known examples are sweet chestnut, willow, hornbeam and ash.

Sometimes one can also observe that stumps overgrow without sprouting, or that tree stumps do not die even after many years, although no growth is noticeable. The root system of the remaining stump then receives nutrients from the neighbouring trees and can thus continue to live for some time.

In earlier times, the clearing of tree stumps was a difficult and time-consuming job that had to be done by hand because no suitable machines were yet available. Partly this work was left to poorer people, who were allowed to use the dug out stump as firewood as payment.