| A unit of Lasting Forests
evolving since March 30, 1999 |
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A Total Forest Management Plan
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| Basic structure and function from USForest Service, 1946 |
Virginia Tech's Tree Identification website (see other sites at the end).
Definition: a tree is any self-supporting woody plant growing on the earth and which usually has a main trunk and which has a distinct and elevated head and many branches.
Indigenous species are those native to the area and ornamental are those that may be native or nursery-grown species with unique features such as flowers, fruits, and generally have a mature height of less that 40 feet.
Specimen trees are existing individual native or nursery grown species which have reached mature size, has unusual shape, or is valued for some physical or cultural unique quality.
The functions and services of trees, groups of trees, or forests:
Their functions or services to which dollar values can be attached are as follows. There are others such as contribution to large landscape beauty or as homes for beneficial insects, but these seem too difficult and of relative small contribution to decisions when the following are available and can be included in a computer model:
Because of these services it may be appropriate to regulate trees to preserve, protect and enhance a most valuable natural resource and to dissuade the unnecessary clearing and disturbing of land so as to preserve insofar as is practicable, the natural and existing growth.
The dendrology resources of Virginia Tech are available.
An atlas of about 80 species is available.
A tree quiz is available. Silvics on line is also available.
An atlas of climate and trees is available (USFS Delaware station).
The following references are for the best times for observing autumn leaf colors:
Americans are said to rake 200 million lawn bagfulls of leaves annually.
Herein I continue to collect notes on trees, trying to define mappable characteristics as they may be related to GIS processing. A major resource for this work is the USDA VEGSPEC and related files.
Reasonable categories for studying and compiling information on trees (adapted from Nair et al. 1984) are:
Identifying conifers can be difficult. An aid is provided.
Observation: a full-grown tree can, through evapotranspiration produce the same cooling effect as 10 room-size air conditioners operating 20 hours per day.
Working hypotheses of Giles are (1999):
Succession does not occur. Tree propagules continually invade the alpha unit. Some grow. The alpha unit changes in appearance. What is seen is the collection of survivors at some time, often compared to the standard average collection of survivors after some major disturbance such as bulldozing.
Specific gravity of tree wood (herein related to ease of forming cavities) is related to site, not just biomass. (It takes energy to build structure and resins so biomass and stress resistance(shear strength or tear strength or compression coefficients) and flammable substances need to be related in an index to biomass to understand the collections of trees present at some time.)
Trees are a function of their past condition, more so than any collection of factors that can be observed at the present time (e.g., nutrients, soil moisture).
Conditions at seed germination and briefly thereafter determine for native species whether the site is suitable for the species.
Butternut Notes: (from email - 2006)
Dr. Bergdahl was the first to find the canker in Vermont, near Snake Mountain, in the fall of 1983. Since then, it has killed half the butternuts in the state. The fungus, Sirococcus clavigignenti-juglandacearum, was described as a new species in 1979 and bears the earmarks of being recently introduced. But it has never been found outside North America.
Dutch elm disease and chestnut blight, also caused by fungi, were notorious, and much more conspicuous, because elms and chestnuts were abundant. Butternuts are little-known, however, and have always been sparsely distributed. But there is a growing effort to understand the disease. In mid-October, Dr. Bergdahl was among 40 scientists and foresters from the United States and Canada who met in Niagara Falls, Ontario, for the Butternut Canker Research Symposium.
Though many people have never heard of the butternut, the tree has a long and history of usefulness. Indians tapped it for syrup, used the bark for medicine and dye, and ate the hard-to-crack but tasty nuts raw or boiled them to produce a buttery vegetable oil. The Vikings of L’Anse aux Meadows gathered butternuts from points south and took them back to Newfoundland. Confederate soldiers used the husks to die their uniforms a golden brown (earning them the nickname butternuts). The rot-resistant wood, often called white walnut, is favored by some woodworkers. Butternuts are also important to wildlife: many mammals eat the nuts.
The tree is closely related to the black walnut, and their ranges overlap, but walnuts range farther south and butternuts farther north. Like walnuts, butternuts are intolerant of shade and their roots exude a poison known as juglone that kills competing trees.
Largest eastern hemlock discovered - March, 2007
The 400-year-old tree is being crowned a world record holder -- among eastern hemlocks -- in terms of wood volume, or overall mass. Note: not necessarily the oldest eastern hemlock, nor the tallest, perhaps not even the chubbiest. But yes, the woodiest overall. In terms of trunk volume the Leviathan is 1,583 cubic feet of pure Tsuga canadensis.
That, it appears, is 19 cubic feet more than North Carolina's champion, the previously measured Cheoah hemlock of Highlands, in southwestern N.C. Our worthy specimen stands 158 feet tall, and you can bet that it too is pleasingly plump. Tennessee's Leviathan, to give it a final dash of credit, is now not only the largest known eastern hemlock, but also the largest (by volume) evergreen conifer in the eastern United States.
Measurements by Jeff Blozan of Asheville, an arborist with a thirst for record-breaking native trees.
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This Web site is maintained by R. H.
Giles, Jr.
Last revision January 17, 2000.