Abstract:The productive capacity of the natural forests that dominated by Zenia insignis in North Guangdong limestone region was investigated, and compared to that of a 6-year-old artificial Zenia insignis forest. The results show that the biomass, stocking, increment, gross primary productivity of arbour layer and PAR energy use efficiency in the natural forest in natural Zenia insignis forest was 125.38t·hm-2, 86.35m3·hm-2,3.69t·hm-2,84284kJ·m-2·a-1 and 1.39%,respectively, suggesting that its biomass and productivity were lower than those of the evergreen broad leaf forest in humid region [1 ,2,10], but were higher than those of forest in subtropical semi-arid region [9]. The photosynthesis rates of Zenia insignis was higher, but the crown density and leaf area index of artificial forest was lower as compared to those of natural forest. So the gross productivity and solar energy utilization ratio of the artificial forest was low. All above indicate the higher productivity potential of the artificial forest.