Doug, The tree in images 3-5 doesn't look anything like White Oak. Did you accidentally send the wrong pictures?
--- On Thu, 12/10/09, doug bidlack <[email protected]> wrote: From: doug bidlack <[email protected]> Subject: [ENTS] White Oaks #1 To: [email protected] Date: Thursday, December 10, 2009, 8:40 PM ENTS, a while ago I mentioned that I've been running around collecting acorns from white oaks (Q. alba), bur oaks (Q. macrocarpa) and swamp white oaks (Q. bicolor) from all over eastern North America. I also said I was hoping to get a bunch of measurements and I'd report back some of my findings. Well, I had a great acorn collecting year but I didn't take nearly as many measurements as I would have liked. I was always very pressed for time and I had to get as much done with every minute of light that I had. I'll give a series of short posts on what I found with some pictures. I'll start with white oak since it is so common and widespread throughout most of the East. I've only visited trees from Maine to New Jersey to Arkansas and back up to Minnesota. So I haven't seen many of the big southeastern trees. Since I am planting the acorns of all these trees in southeastern Michigan I thought I'd show pictures of some of the bigger trees in Kensington Metropark before moving on to other parts of North America. Image #1 This is probably the largest white oak in Kensington Metropark by volume. It has a girth of 179" (14.9') and it is about 88' tall (shooting straight up with a laser). Image #2 This is a plaque next to the biggest white oak I've seen in Ontario. This tree is located within Bronte Creek Provincial Park near Burlington. Take a close look at the info presented here. Does the tree look like it is 1.8 times taller than it is wide? You'd think there might be a kind of aha moment when someone looked at this picture. It turns out the Canadians aren't any better at measuring than lots of folks in our country. Their measurements come to a girth of 193" (16.1'), a height of 175' (yikes!) and a crown spread of 96'. I came up with a girth of 251" (20.9'), a height of 81' and a crown spread of 93'. Hard to believe we measured the same tree! I believe the Canadians measure the girth at 1.5 meters or about 5" higher than us, but this still shouldn't result in a 4.8' difference in girth. Their height is more than double what I came up with! I used a laser to shoot straight up and I think it is fairly close. The crown spread is the only measurement where we were even a little bit close. Images #3-5 Three pictures of this beautiful tree. Image #6 My parent's next to the Wisconsin State champ, based on AF points, in Oconomowoc. My mom thought this was the most impressive white oak that she'd ever seen. I didn't measure this tree but they state that it is 198" (16.5') in girth, 96' tall and 69' in spread for 311 points. It was measured in 1996. Doug -- 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]
