A commentary on “Eucalyptus obliqua seedling growth in organic vs. mineral soil horizons”

In a recent paper in this journal, Barry et al. (2015) reported on a pot-based trial comparing the growth of transplanted Eucalyptus obliqua seedlings in mineral vs. organic soils. Unfortunately in “Forestry Management Implications” (p. 11) they make claims regarding the appropriateness of fire as a regeneration tool in temperate Australian native wet eucalypt forests following harvesting. In doing so, they ignore and/or misinterpret the work of other researchers in this field. The authors' remarks in this regard are speculative and in no way supported by their experiment, since their experimental design was pot-based rather than field-based and could not therefore incorporate either fire or forest harvesting. We also note that their experiment was based on transplanted seedlings whereas both nature and forest managers regenerate such forests from seed.