Hello.

I am transiting thru Italy from Slovenia, and have noticed that for a larger part of the north there are these "forests" of trees that are obviously planned, planted and cut in a specific way to encourage growth.

I couldn't help but wonder – what is the purpose of these forests? Are they for wood industry, or simply aesthetic?

They seem rather.. sporadic.

Apologising in advance for these pictures, It is quite difficult to make a coherent photo while moving 130 km an hour.

Also, thank you in advance! 🙂

by Global_Ant_2056

8 comments

  1. I hope you don’t find this a dumb tourist question, I am genuinely dumbfounded

  2. They might be plantations to get paper later on? I have always wondered too!

  3. Not an expert, but try googling “selvicoltura” plus the name of the area where you noticed these forests.

  4. Very often they are poplars, used for the production of plywood/paper/chipboard

  5. E’ un patrimonio culturale italiano, quello che vedi sono le prove di antiche tangenti.

  8. When farmers (or people who don’t work as ones) don’t want to dedicate too much time and efforts on some fields or fields are not very suitable for other plantations (someone in comments said that they are usually planted nearby rivers and that tends to be true: fields could get flooded damaging other plantations I would add), then you’d plant poplars, they take about 20 years to grow properly and then you get about 20/30k € for every hectare, which is very good considering you don’t have to do anything if not sporadically cut the grass in the first years… As someone else said the destination then can be everything but construction beams (think of lamellar, not building site ones).

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