Glossary - P

p.year (planting year): The year a crop was planted, e.g. p 83 = planted in 1983. (‘p’ should always be written in lower case).
Pallet wood: Timber product, intermediate in quality between sawlog and chip/pulpwood. Normally 12 to 16 cm top diameter (but can be bigger) and two to three metres long. Used for making pallets. Called "bars" in England and Wales.
Palmate: Leaves that have lobes arranged like the fingers of a hand, e.g. horse chestnut.
Pedunculate: Describing fruits, which are borne on a stalk (a peduncle).
Pesticide: Chemical formulation for killing unwanted species. Includes herbicides, insecticides, and fungicides.
Phenology: The study of organisms as affected by climate, especially dates of seasonal phenomena such as migration or opening of flowers.
Photosynthesis: Chemical process carried out by green plants in the presence of light, which combines carbon dioxide from the atmosphere with hydrogen from water in the soil to form sugars as food for the growing plant. Oxygen is a by-product of the reaction.
Pinetum: A botanical collection of conifers, not just pines.
Pinnate: Term used of leaf completely subdivided into several leaflets ranged along either side of midrib, e.g. ash.
Pioneer: The first plants to colonise bare land.
Pit wood: Wood used in mining.
Pole length: Tree felled and debranched.
Pole stage: A plantation in the early stages of thinning.
Policies: Woodland around mansions in Scotland.
Pollarding: Lopping of the branches of a tree at head height or a little above to encourage shoots to arise above the reach of browsing animals.
Pollination: Carrying the pollen from the male parts of a flower, or from male flowers, to the female parts or to female flowers.
Processor: A machine that debranches a felled tree, and converts it to predetermined lengths. The tree is felled manually. See also Harvester.
Productive wood or forest: Wood or forest where timber production is a primary objective of management: can consist of introduced or native species, or a mixture.
Propagation: Regeneration of new plants by means other than seed, e.g. by rooting cuttings.
Provenance: Term referring to the variation in appearance of a species according to its geographical origin, e.g. coastal provenance of Lodgepole pine grows bushy and squat, inland provenance grows tall and straight.
Pruning (usually referred to as high pruning): Removal of branches usually on selected stems only, above the height of Brashing with the object of reducing the knots in the timber being formed.
Pulpwood, chipwood and woodwool: Small diameter material that is destined to be fragmented before manufacture into paper pulp, building board or packing material respectively.