Jack, ENTS,
I will admit I am skeptic about white pine trees growing to 250 feet tall. By
that I mean I doubt the veracity of these claims and believe that they are most
likely exaggerations or measurement errors, but I will not rule out the small
possibility that some of the trees actually were that high. What I am
wondering is what you and other ENTS think about the processes that lead to
these great heights.
If you look at a ridgeline of an old growth forest that contains white pines,
you often see a general canopy top, and there are white pines sticking out as a
supracanopy tree above the general canopy top. These trees stick out maybe 30-
40 feet above the rest. Would these trees have stuck out 90 feet above the
canopy? Would they be growing with many other white pines that they were
forced to grow this high to get enough light? Would there be other giant trees
present of other species that push the general canopy height upward.
In general white pines are like paint brushes. There is a long trunk and the
live branches form a brush at the upper end of the trunk where it extends into
the canopy and above the canopy, with few live branches below. How far above
the canopy does a tree need to stick to obtain enough light? Like that always
have the actors cliché - what is there motivation for growing really tall once
they are a reasonable distance above the general canopy? On a structural side
of it, the tops that are sticking out are subject to wind damage much more so
than the branches within the overall canopy and therefore would break more
often. Essentially they are limited by wind damage to how high they can stick
up. Would the general canopy height be overall taller, perhaps populated by
other white pines in a near monoculture grove, so that they would provide each
other with protection from the wind?
I am trying to envision how these tall trees would look in relation to the rest
of the forest, why they would form that way, and how they would work in the
wind an weather.
Ed Frank
http://nature-web-network.blogspot.com/
http://primalforests.ning.com/
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?ref=profile&id=709156957
----- Original Message -----
From: JACK SOBON
To: [email protected]
Sent: Tuesday, January 05, 2010 5:21 PM
Subject: Re: [ENTS] White pine growth rates--something of interest about
growth possibilities
...Though the account of a 300 foot pine in Charlemont, Massachusetts may be
stretched, surely some of the other 250'+ accounts must be true. They had
accurate measuring devices then. Though they lacked the techno-gizmo's of
today, they were not primitive. There were surveyors, builders, and others
skilled in measuring then. When I measure old structures from the 1700's, they
are typically within a quarter inch on a sixty foot length. A modern steel
measuring tape can vary that much from winter to summer with thermal expansion.
Just because we don't have them today, doesn't mean there weren't 250 footers
then. Nowhere in New England are there now pines growing in an ideal spot
(like that I mentioned above) where they have been undisturbed for 400 years!
Jack Sobon
--
Eastern Native Tree Society http://www.nativetreesociety.org
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