Well the bog iron industry, and related charcoal industry, decimated the Pitch Pine forests before 1850. Before coal was readily available, the glass and paper industries ate up the Pitch Pine forests as well. I guess the forests have had much of the 20th century to grow back. Those few scattered trees in the park in Estell Manor, if my idea is correct, are around 90 years older than the rest of the trees in the park, which would make them the closest thing to old growth that I've seen. They say the entire Pine Barrens was cut over several times, but they used to say that about the Adirondacks too.
--- On Fri, 1/8/10, James Parton <[email protected]> wrote: From: James Parton <[email protected]> Subject: [ENTS] Re: Old growth in the NJ Pine Barrens? To: "ENTSTrees" <[email protected]> Date: Friday, January 8, 2010, 4:04 PM Barry, The 7+ft cbh Pitch Pine I have found are all second growth, probably not being much over 100 years at best. It depends on how much disturbance and logging has occurred in the barrens and of course on how fast, or slow the Pitch Pine there grows. JP On Jan 8, 6:55 pm, Barry Caselli <[email protected]> wrote: > ENTS, > On Tuesday I posted this, and got no response, even though I asked for input > on what I was saying. I thought that with the words "old growth" in the > subject line, I might get people to talk. > Anyway, here it is again: > > ENTS, > Today I was down in the Atlantic County Park at Estell Manor. I wanted to eat > my lunch, do some hiking, and re-visit my favorite Pitch Pine. > While there, I realized something. > But first you need some background info to understand. In 1917 a munitions > plant was built on the site for the war effort for WW I. On the history page > for this park, on the park website, you can see old photos. In a couple of > the old photos you can clealy see that some of the mature Pitch Pines from > the forest at that time were left there when the site was cleared for the > munitions plant and village. The plant was closed when the armistice was > signed in 1919. It was subsequently dismantled and abandoned. In the ensuing > 90 years the forest has grown up again, the Pine Barrens reclaiming the > area. But scattered around in the woods there are Pitch Pines that are larger > than the others. Some of these are along the dirt roads, which are old rail > beds from the munitions plant days. My favorite pine is one of these > trees. Several months ago it hit me that the biggest Pitch Pines in the park > may well be the ones that can be seen in the historic photos, trees > that were not cut when the site was cleared to build the munitions plant in > 1917. That would make the trees 90 years older than the rest of them, give or > take a couple years. > Today I realized something else, that we could call those older trees "old > growth", at least in a limited sense. What do you think? > I have posted about my favorite tree before, by the way. The CBH is 6'11". > Oh, and here is the web page I > mentioned:http://www.aclink.org/PARKS/mainpages/historic.asp > And the 3.5 minute video I shot of the tree is > here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=272KWC_O7qA > Barry
