Interesting to see all of the pitch on the cut surface - no wonder it is called pitch pine! Looks like the pitch on the cut surface is primarily in the sapwood? One of these days I hope to go to the pine barrens...it's an area that has always fascinated me. We have serpentine soils here on the west coast too, so it will be interesting to compare the pine barrens to the serpentine communities that I am more familiar with.
Robyn On Mon, Jan 4, 2010 at 11:18 AM, Barry Caselli <[email protected]>wrote: > ENTS, > Today I took a ride to the extreme northeast corner of Egg Harbor City, to > Clark's Landing, on the Mullica River. To go there you have to leave Egg > Harbor and go through a bit of Galloway Township before crossing back into > Egg Harbor. I passed by a county public works crew that was cutting up a > large Pitch Pine that had fallen over across the road in the high winds. > After about 45 minutes at Clark's Landing I drove back the way I had come. > I then decided to pull over on the side of the road and count the rings on > the cut tree. The cut is at about 20 feet up the trunk from the base. I took > out my tape measure and measured the diameter at that point, which was 19.75 > inches, and photographed the tape at the edge of the tree trunk. I then > started to count the rings, but found that within the last inch, closest to > the bark, the rings were so thin, and so close together, I would have needed > a magnifying glass. Further away from the bark they were very thin and very > close also, but not as bad as that. So I took some macro photos of the outer > part of the tree. I took notice of two very dark rings that were easy to see > and remember later. I took my pictures so that those two rings were visible > in the picture. I then counted from the center to those two rings. > So from the center to those two rings (including them) is 42, give or take > one ring. Then looking at the macro photo on my computer I counted the rings > from those two rings towards the bark, and I came up with 71, give or take a > couple. > Now for the photos. > The first one shows some of the trees behind the one that fell. Then you > can see the down tree trunk, and then part of the trunk showing the rings. > The two dark rings I used for reference or in the upper right corner of that > photo. I also show a view down the road. This is not in a state park, forest > or preserve. It's just a rural area. > All told, the ring count is aproximately 110 at aproximately 20 feet up > from the base. > Pitch Pines of this size are very common in the non-desert-like areas > throughout the Pine Barrens. > Here's a satellite view from Bing Maps. The tree was aproximately in the > middle of that view, on the north side of the road. * > http://tinyurl.com/ycrzzrj* > Barry > ** > > -- > 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]<entstrees%[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]
