Written by Acorn Sales Company, manufacturing stamps and seals since 1964 · Reviewed by Holly R, VP of Sales and Marketing at Acorn Sales, against State Board of Foresters on 22 September 2026 · Updated 22 September 2026
Maryland requires every licensed forester to obtain a seal, and to put it on plans, maps, specifications and reports before issuing them. There is no permissive reading available. Md. Code Ann., Bus. Occ. & Prof. sec. 7-401(a): “Each licensed forester shall obtain a seal for use as required under sec. 7-402 of this subtitle.” Section 7-402: “Before a licensed forester issues to any person any plan, map, specification, or report, the licensed forester who prepared or approved the document shall endorse on the document the licensed forester’s: (1) name; (2) registration number; and (3) seal.” And the Board’s own regulation, COMAR 09.29.01.03A: “The seal shall be affixed on all plans, maps, reports and specifications prepared by the licensee.” Shall, three times over.
Now the part that should change what you do next. Section 7-401(b) says the seal shall “be of a design determined by the Board” and shall include the legend “Licensed Forester” and the name of the licensed forester who holds the seal. We went looking for the Board’s determination of that design and could not find it published anywhere. COMAR 09.29.01 does not reproduce a drawing. The Board’s law and regulations page, its original licensure page, its resources and newsletters page, its FAQ landing page and two sets of its business meeting minutes say nothing about the seal. So the two statutory elements are certain and the design is not. Write to the Board and ask for the determined design before anyone cuts artwork for you.
Maryland forester seal requirements at a glance
| Requirement | Maryland rule | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Seal required | Yes, mandatory. “Each licensed forester shall obtain a seal for use as required under sec. 7-402.” The regulation repeats it: the seal shall be affixed on all plans, maps, reports and specifications prepared by the licensee. No exemption appears for employed or government foresters. | Md. Code Ann., Bus. Occ. & Prof. 7-401(a); COMAR 09.29.01.03A |
| Required elements | The statute names two seal elements: the legend “Licensed Forester” and the name of the licensed forester who holds the seal, within “a design determined by the Board”. The registration number is required on the document by 7-402, not stated to be inside the seal. See the section below before you move it. | Md. Code Ann., Bus. Occ. & Prof. 7-401(b); Md. Code Ann., Bus. Occ. & Prof. 7-402 |
| Size and shape | Not published. Neither sec. 7-401, nor sec. 7-402, nor COMAR 09.29.01.03 states a size, a diameter or a shape. The design is delegated to the Board and we could not find the Board’s determination published. Do not accept an inferred Maryland dimension from any supplier. | Md. Code Ann., Bus. Occ. & Prof. 7-401(b)(1); COMAR 09.29.01.03 |
| Device allowed | Not addressed. No provision names or excludes an embosser, a rubber stamp, an ink stamp or an electronic seal. The operative verbs are “endorse on the document” and “affixed”, neither of which selects an instrument, and there is no reproduction test. | Md. Code Ann., Bus. Occ. & Prof. 7-402; COMAR 09.29.01.03A |
| Signature and date | No signature is required and no date is required. The statute asks for the licensee’s name, registration number and seal. It does not use the word signature anywhere in 7-402 and it prescribes no date line. That is unusual and worth knowing before you design a block. | Md. Code Ann., Bus. Occ. & Prof. 7-402 |
| What must be sealed | Verbatim: “any plan, map, specification, or report”, before it is issued to any person. The duty reaches the licensee “who prepared or approved the document”, so approval triggers it as well as authorship. | Md. Code Ann., Bus. Occ. & Prof. 7-402 |
| Electronic seal | Not addressed. No electronic or digital seal provision appears in title 7 or in COMAR 09.29.01, and no third party digital certificate is required. Nothing authorizes an electronic seal and nothing forbids one. | Md. Code Ann., Bus. Occ. & Prof. tit. 7; COMAR 09.29.01 |
| Renewal and lapse | A suspended, revoked or expired license may not be displayed in any public office or place of business in connection with the practice of forestry. The Board issues a new license to replace one destroyed or mutilated, on written request. No provision says what happens to the seal on lapse or on a name change. | COMAR 09.29.01.03B, .03C |
| Firm requirements | Not addressed in what we read. Sec. 7-301 licenses individuals and sec. 7-501 uses “a person”. We located no firm registration or firm seal provision in title 7 or COMAR 09.29.01, but we did not read every section of title 7. | Md. Code Ann., Bus. Occ. & Prof. 7-301, 7-501 |
| Regulator | State Board of Foresters, housed in the Division of Occupational and Professional Licensing at the Maryland Department of Labor, which styles it the Maryland Board of Foresters. Its statute is the Maryland Foresters Act. | Md. Code Ann., Bus. Occ. & Prof. 7-101, 7-601 |
Does Maryland require a forester to have a seal?
Yes, and Maryland says so three separate times. Md. Code Ann., Bus. Occ. & Prof. sec. 7-401(a): “Each licensed forester shall obtain a seal for use as required under sec. 7-402 of this subtitle.” Sec. 7-402 requires the licensee who prepared or approved a plan, map, specification or report to endorse on it their name, registration number and seal before issuing it. COMAR 09.29.01.03A: “The seal shall be affixed on all plans, maps, reports and specifications prepared by the licensee, pursuant to the requirements of Business Occupations and Professions Article, secs. 7-401 and 7-402, Annotated Code of Maryland.”
Three shalls, one of them in a section whose entire job is to require you to own the thing. There is no exemption for a forester employed by a company, a land trust or a government agency, and none for a forester who only approves rather than prepares. This is the clearest seal mandate among the eight states in this batch, and it is why a Maryland licensee should treat a seal as a cost of practice rather than an accessory.
The citation everyone gets wrong: it is not the Natural Resources Article
Before going further, a correction, because we have seen this one in our own earlier hub. The Maryland forester licensing law is in the Business Occupations and Professions Article, title 7, sections 7-101 through 7-601. Section 7-601 says so directly: “This title may be cited as the ‘Maryland Foresters Act’.” It is not in the Natural Resources Article.
There is a Maryland forestry credential in the Natural Resources Article, and that is exactly why the confusion happens. Md. Code Ann., Nat. Res. sec. 5-421 governs the Licensed Tree Expert, which is a different credential, administered by a different agency, the Department of Natural Resources. A Licensed Tree Expert is not a Licensed Forester, the two laws have nothing to do with each other, and a rule from one does not reach the other. If you are searching for your seal rule and you are in the Natural Resources Article, you are in the wrong statute.
What goes in the seal, and what goes beside it
This is the fine point that matters most when artwork is being drawn, so it gets its own section. Sec. 7-401(b) says the seal shall “(1) be of a design determined by the Board; and (2) include: (i) the legend ‘Licensed Forester’; and (ii) the name of the licensed forester who holds the seal”. So the two statutorily mandated contents of the seal are the legend and your name.
Sec. 7-402 is a different list. It requires three things endorsed on the document: your name, your registration number, and your seal. Read the two sections side by side and the registration number is a document element, not a stated seal element. The statute puts the number on the page; it does not say the number goes inside the circle.
We are flagging this rather than quietly resolving it, because resolving it requires the Board’s determined design, which we could not find. If the Board’s design puts the registration number inside the seal, then it belongs there. If it does not, a licensee who engraves the number into the seal has a die that may not match the determined design, and a licensee who leaves the number off the document entirely has failed 7-402 regardless. The safe working method until you have the design: put the number on the document, and ask the Board whether it also belongs in the seal.
The Board determines the design, and we could not find the determination
This is the honest center of the page. Sec. 7-401(b)(1) delegates the seal design to the Board. A delegation of that kind is normally followed by a published drawing, a specification or a sample, the way North Carolina publishes an authorized design for appraisers and California embeds a figure in its forester rule. We went looking for Maryland’s and did not find it.
Specifically, we checked COMAR 09.29.01 in full, which contains .01 Administrative Procedures of the Board, .02 Application for Licensing, .03 Procedures Governing Licensing, .04 Code of Professional Conduct, .05 Continuing Education and .06 Failure to Respond. The seal provision is at .03A and it reproduces no design. We checked the Board’s law and regulations page, its page on applying for an original license, its resources and newsletters page, its FAQ landing page, and its January 2023 and January 2021 business meeting minutes. None of them mentions the seal.
So here is where that leaves a buyer. The mandate is certain, the legend is certain, your name is certain, and the size, shape, border and layout are unknown to us. Before you order a Maryland forester seal, write to the State Board of Foresters and ask for the design it has determined under sec. 7-401(b)(1), and ask at the same time whether the registration number belongs inside it. Send us what they give you and we will cut to it. A supplier who quotes you a Maryland forester seal diameter without producing that determination is quoting you a house convention.
“Prepared or approved” is broader than it looks
Sec. 7-402 attaches the duty to “the licensed forester who prepared or approved the document”. Most states in this batch reach preparation, or preparation and supervision. Maryland reaches approval, which is a different relationship to the work.
If a staff forester drafts a management plan and a licensee reviews and approves it before it goes to the landowner, the approving licensee is within 7-402. The same goes for a senior forester signing off on a subordinate’s stand map. The trigger is also precise about timing: the endorsement happens before the licensed forester issues the document to any person, so it is not a formality that can be added after a plan has already gone out.
The limit runs the other way too. COMAR 09.29.01.04, the Code of Professional Conduct, was read in full and contains no provision about sealing documents the licensee did not prepare. Because 7-402 attaches the duty to the licensee who prepared or approved, sealing work you neither prepared nor approved falls outside what the statute authorizes, though we did not find an express prohibition saying so.
No signature requirement, which surprises people
Read 7-402 again and notice what is missing. The three items are name, registration number and seal. The word signature does not appear. Nor does a date requirement appear anywhere in title 7 or COMAR 09.29.01.
That sets Maryland apart from most professional marking rules, which pair a seal with a signature across it or beside it. Maryland asks for a printed or written name, a number and a seal. Nothing stops you signing as well, and most licensees do, but the statutory block is the three items. For a die that means a Maryland forester can, in principle, produce the entire required endorsement mechanically, with the seal supplying the legend and the name and a second impression or a typed line supplying the number.
The protected titles, and the one the Board gives you
Maryland’s title protection is unusually broad. Sec. 7-502 provides that unless authorized under the title to practice forestry, a person may not represent to the public, by use of a title “including ‘licensed forester’, ‘professional forester’, ‘registered professional forester’, or ‘registered forester’”, by description of services, methods, or procedures, or otherwise, that the person is authorized to practice forestry in the State. Sec. 7-301 requires licensure before practicing and sec. 7-501 bars unlicensed practice, attempted practice and offering to practice.
The display title comes from the Board’s own regulation. COMAR 09.29.01.03D: “A licensee may display the title ‘Maryland Licensed Forester’ any manner consistent with the practice of forestry.” Note that the statutory seal legend is the shorter phrase “Licensed Forester”. If you want “Maryland Licensed Forester” on letterhead, that is what .03D is for. What goes in the seal is what 7-401(b) says goes in the seal, within the design the Board determined.
What happens on lapse, and what the rules do not say
COMAR 09.29.01.03B provides that “a suspended, revoked or expired license may not be displayed in any public office or place of business by any licensee in connection with the practice of forestry”. COMAR 09.29.01.03C provides that the Board shall issue a new license to replace one destroyed or mutilated on written request.
Read .03C carefully, because it is about the license certificate, not the seal. The Board replaces the piece of paper it issued. It does not issue, supply, own or reclaim your seal, which is why sec. 7-401(a) puts the obtaining duty on you.
What no provision addresses is what happens to the seal itself when a license lapses, or when a licensee changes their name. Since the seal carries the licensee’s name, a name change implies a new seal, but no rule says so and we are not going to write one. Ask the Board when you ask about the design.
Choosing a device when Maryland names none
No provision in title 7 or COMAR 09.29.01 requires an embosser, requires an ink stamp, or excludes anything. The verbs are “endorse on the document” and “affixed”, and neither picks an instrument. There is no legibility or reproduction test of the kind some boards publish.
So the choice is practical and it turns on where your documents go. An embosser makes a raised uninked impression that reads beautifully on a signed original and frequently vanishes in a scan, a photocopy or a flat PDF export. An ink stamp reproduces in every copy, which matters for a forest stewardship plan that travels to a landowner, a county office and a program administrator in three different formats. A seal image is what goes into a PDF you assemble yourself. A licensee who works in both worlds commonly keeps an ink device and an image cut from the same artwork so the two read identically. What none of those choices can fix is artwork that does not match the Board’s determined design, which is why the design comes first.
Ordering a Maryland forester seal
Two steps, in this order. First, write to the State Board of Foresters and ask for the seal design it has determined under Bus. Occ. & Prof. sec. 7-401(b)(1), and ask whether the registration number belongs inside the seal or beside it on the document. Second, send us that design along with your name exactly as it appears on your license, your registration number, and the legend “Licensed Forester”. We proof the die before cutting so you can read every line at actual size.
From the forester range, the Forester Self Inking Rubber Stamp of Seal at $39.95 is the everyday ink device and the Forester Regular Rubber Stamp of Seal at $34.95 is the same impression on a hand stamp and pad. The Forester MaxLight Pre Inked Rubber Stamp of Seal at $46.95 holds fine lettering best, which matters when a legend curves around a small circle. On the embossing side the Forester Handheld Seal Embosser is $46.95, the Forester Desk Seal Embosser is $44.95, and the Forester Long Reach Desk Seal Embosser at $129.95 reaches into a bound plan. For electronic files the Forester eSeal Electronic Image Stamp of Seal is $20.00. Browse the forester stamps and seals collection, or contact us with the Board’s design once you have it. Acorn has been cutting professional seals since 1964, and matching a state determined design rather than substituting our own layout is the part of this job that matters.
Where the forest conservation rules fit, and where they do not
We checked outside the licensing title, because a marking duty can hide in a neighboring chapter. COMAR 08.19, the forest conservation rules, requires forest mitigation bank plans to be “prepared by a licensed Maryland forester, a licensed landscape architect, or a qualified professional”, and allows a declaration of intent to rest on a forest management plan “prepared by a forester licensed in Maryland”. Those provisions name who may prepare a document. They impose no separate seal requirement.
That does not reduce your obligation, though. If a forest mitigation bank plan or a forest management plan is a plan you prepared or approved and you issue it to a person, sec. 7-402 reaches it on its own terms, seal included. The forest conservation rules simply do not add a second, different marking duty on top.
What we read, what stays open, and what to ask the Board
Read in full: Md. Code Ann., Bus. Occ. & Prof. secs. 7-101, 7-301, 7-401, 7-402, 7-501, 7-502 and 7-601 on the Maryland General Assembly’s own site, and COMAR 09.29.01 sections .01 through .06, including the Code of Professional Conduct at .04.
Open, and worth one email to settle both: the Board’s determined seal design under sec. 7-401(b)(1), which fixes size, shape, border and layout and which we could not find published; and whether the registration number belongs inside the seal or only on the document beside it. Also unread: secs. 7-201 to 7-208 and the balance of subtitles 3 and 4, so a firm or entity provision could exist in a section we did not open. Nothing we read addressed a firm seal. This page is a research summary and not legal advice.
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Frequently asked questions
Does Maryland require a licensed forester to have a seal?
Yes. Md. Code Ann., Bus. Occ. & Prof. sec. 7-401(a) provides that each licensed forester shall obtain a seal, and sec. 7-402 requires the name, registration number and seal to be endorsed on any plan, map, specification or report before it is issued. COMAR 09.29.01.03A repeats the duty. There is no permissive reading.
What has to appear on a Maryland forester seal?
The statute names two seal elements: the legend “Licensed Forester” and the name of the licensed forester who holds the seal, within a design determined by the Board. The registration number is required on the document by sec. 7-402; the statute does not say it goes inside the seal.
How big does a Maryland forester seal have to be?
No size is published. Sections 7-401 and 7-402 and COMAR 09.29.01.03 state no diameter and no shape. The design is delegated to the Board and we could not find the Board’s determination published anywhere, so ask the Board for it before ordering rather than accepting a supplier’s house dimension.
Where do I get the Board’s determined seal design?
From the Board. We checked COMAR 09.29.01, the Board’s law and regulations page, its original licensure page, its resources and newsletters page, its FAQ landing page and two sets of business meeting minutes, and found no published design. Write to the State Board of Foresters and ask for the design determined under sec. 7-401(b)(1). Ask about the registration number in the same message.
Is the Maryland Foresters Act in the Natural Resources Article?
No. It is in the Business Occupations and Professions Article, title 7, sections 7-101 through 7-601. Md. Code Ann., Nat. Res. sec. 5-421 is the separate Licensed Tree Expert law, administered by the Department of Natural Resources. The two credentials are different and neither rule reaches the other.
Do I have to seal a document I only approved?
Yes. Sec. 7-402 attaches the duty to the licensed forester “who prepared or approved the document”. Approval triggers it as well as authorship, and the endorsement has to be on the document before it is issued to any person.
Does Maryland require a signature or a date with the seal?
Neither. Sec. 7-402 asks for the licensee’s name, registration number and seal, and the word signature does not appear in it. No dating requirement appears in title 7 or COMAR 09.29.01. Signing as well is common practice, not a rule.
Does Maryland accept an electronic seal for foresters?
Nothing is addressed. There is no electronic or digital seal provision in title 7 or COMAR 09.29.01 and no third party digital certificate requirement. Nothing authorizes an electronic seal and nothing forbids one, so ask the Board if you intend to issue plans as PDFs only.
