Jenny, I'm not sure about the age of this one, that's something I've been wondering about myself. I think in some instances the bark characteristics could be the most telling... Of course one could take a core sample, but some good non-invasive heuristics for estimating age would be good to know. This tree just sort of unfolds upward through space - and from a distance you really can't tell that it's a single tree because the base is obscured by some smaller balsam firs mostly; it looks like a group of 3 or 4 white pines growing close together. I'm also a huge fan of eastern white pines. I live around a fairly large stand of them with CBH in the 150 - 300cm range, mostly tall and straight trees. But I do find the occasional one with pretty wild morphologies. I think this tree has a single stem / single pith. Be sure to check out my post from January 18th entitled "Big Eastern White Pine!" - that's probably the largest I've seen in New Brunswick, although it is properly considered 2 trees that have grown together. This particular forested area is one that I've known since I was quite young. It's probably only 20 - 30 acres in size but has been spared from logging for quite some time. It's relatively diverse with lots of maple (red, sugar...), birch (yellow, white, grey), red and white pine, red and white spruce, oak (I think pin or northern pin), and there's one rather steep hill that's dominated by eastern hemlock which is quite beautiful. There's also a huge diversity of mushrooms in the area - and I collect a few species in the summer, most notably the king bolete and the chanterelle.
Mike --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Eastern Native Tree Society http://www.nativetreesociety.org Send email to [email protected] Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/entstrees?hl=en To unsubscribe send email to [email protected] -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
