Jack,
Welcome aboard, my friend. Good to hear from you. Folks, Jack is a long time friend and tree measurer extraordinaire. Jack is a many talented fellow. He is a timber framer and architect. Jack is a one man encyclopedia on the building characteristics of woods. He is a consultant who has lectured in England, Australia, Japan, etc. He is the one who discovered the Long Fellow Pine in Cook Forest in 1997 and measured it accurately to about an inch. Jack is the author of a bible on timber framing. He is also a co-author of "Stalking the Forest Monarchs". His timber-framed house is a legend in the Windsor, MA area. There is not a straight line in it - all natural curves. To further Jack's story, Jack owns a transit and his use of it put truth into the tall tree numbers early on, when none of the rest of us knew what we were doing. We used the transit to originally confirm the Henry David Thoreau Pine as the first accurately measured pine over 150 feet in Massachusetts. We also used the transit to originally confirm the heights of Jake Swamp, Joe Norton, Saheda, and Tecumseh in Mohawk and the Bryant Pine on the Bryant Homestead. Jack, we look forward to many, many more posts from you. BTW, could I get you to tell the ENTS membership what your experience with white pine is as a building timber? Thanks in advance. Bob ----- Original Message ----- From: "JACK SOBON" <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Sunday, November 15, 2009 10:35:20 AM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern Subject: Re: [ENTS] A Large Tree article in 1849 Dear ENTS: This is my first foray into the ENTS cyber world as I have only recently got email, but talk of a 300 footer sure gets me going. Tim told me of this account years ago and I have been thinking of it ever since. There are other historical accounts of similar tall pine: 247' Meredith, NY History of the Lumber Industry in the State of New York 250' Timothy Dwights' Travels in New England and New York 240' Dartmouth, NH A Natural History of Trees 260' Lincoln, NH Forest Giants of the World Past and Present 262' Forest Giants... 264' NH. Forest Giants... Three hundred feet is not much taller than these historical record pines, especially considering that Charlemont currently has the tallest pines in New England-New York and may have had them in the past as well. The Charlemont account of 300' can't be a typo as 22 - 12' (average length) logs comes to 264 feet. Charlemont also has a combination of good bottom land soils and rugged typography adjacent to it. With its feet in rich soil, a pine growing in the bottom of a cove or next to a steep bank or cliff face could easily be a hundred feet taller to have its top up with nearby trees, protected from the wind. Also consider that these were much larger diameter trees (six to ten feet) and probably substantially older than anything growing today. Only a small percentage of the most fertile land is actually used to grow timber today, it being used mostly for farmland or developement. So, given the best sites, protection from the winds, and thousands of years of forest growth to raise the canopy height, this account is not so far fetched. Jack Sobon Windsor, MA -- 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] -- 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]
