Ed, There's one key possibility that we are forgetting. If White Pines might have been taller way back then, who's to say other species might not have been a lot taller back then also? So if White Pines stick up 30 to 40 feet above the general canopy now, maybe they did then also, but the general canopy was higher too.
--- On Tue, 1/5/10, Edward Frank <[email protected]> wrote: From: Edward Frank <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [ENTS] White pine growth rates--something of interest about growth possibilities To: [email protected] Date: Tuesday, January 5, 2010, 9:34 PM #yiv1820563730 DIV { MARGIN:0px;} 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 Send email to [email protected] Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/entstrees?hl=en To unsubscribe send email to [email protected]
