Abstract. Let K be a field and S = K[x 1 , . . . , x n ] be the polynomial ring in n variables over the field K. Let G be a forest with p connected components G 1 , . . . , G p and let I = I(G) be its edge ideal in S. Suppose that d i is the diameter of G i , 1 ≤ i ≤ p, and consider d = max {d i | 1 ≤ i ≤ p}. Morey has shown that for every t ≥ 1, the quantity max+ p − 1, p is a lower bound for depth(S/I t ). In this paper, we show that for every t ≥ 1, the mentioned quantity is also a lower bound for sdepth(S/I t ). By combining this inequality with Burch's inequality, we show that any sufficiently large powers of edge ideals of forests are Stanley. Finally, we state and prove a generalization of our main theorem.