Gold is flirting with new highs, silver is on the rebound, and prices of rare-earth minerals (loparite, anyone?) used in tech products are going through the roof in response to fears of shortages. But amid all the excitement about the stuff found underground, some investors are looking for long-term payoffs from assets above ground: trees.

The financial crisis and real estate slump hammered forest-product companies, with stocks of many firms losing more than half their value before bottoming in early 2009. While they've bounced back from their recession lows, some pros see more gains ahead. "They're very underfollowed, but valuable," says Russell Croft, a portfolio manager at Croft-Leominster Funds, which holds shares of PCH, +0.49% PCL, +200.00% and WY, +1.13% in its $334 million fund.

Of course, no one expects a quick turnaround in the housing market or the overall economy, so investors waiting for a big payoff might have to be patient. Indeed, in his latest quarterly letter, Jeremy Grantham, cofounder of the investment-management firm GMO, put a long time frame on his fondness for the forest: "On a seven-year horizon, GMO is enthusiastic only for forestry, which has, in so many ways, more certainty to it than most investments: The sun shines, the trees grow." At the same time, Stephen Atkinson, an analyst at BMO Capital Markets, notes that investors don't have to wait for at least one benefit of investing in timber: decent dividends. Potlatch, a Spokane, Wash.–based real estate investment trust, recently boasted a dividend yield of nearly 6%, while Plum Creek, another timber REIT, had a yield of more than 4%.

Some fund managers also like Federal Way, Wash.–based Weyerhaeuser, a forest-products giant that's changing its structure to a REIT. Croft expects the shift to attract a new class of investors, which in turn could boost the stock. Another plus: Weyerhaeuser, like other forestry companies, owns the mineral rights on its acreage and, through a joint venture with CVX, +0.12% plans to develop technology to convert forest products to low-carbon bio-fuels. In the meantime, waiting for those projects to pay off might not be such a bad thing. As Croft puts it, "The longer the tree grows, the more value it gains."