Eastern Native Tree Society Organization

ENTS Mission    The Eastern Native Tree Society (ENTS) is a cyberspace interest group devoted to the celebration of trees of the eastern North America through art, poetry, music, mythology, science, medicine, and wood crafts. ENTS is also intended as an archive for information on specific trees and stands of trees. ENTS will store data on accurately measured trees for historical documentation purposes, scientific research, and to resolve big tree disputes.

Welcome New Members  We just reached an ENTS membership total of 182 as of this morning. On behalf of Will, Lee, myself, and all the long time members, I'd like to welcome our newest members. We hope to hear from each of you. In ENTS, all are created equal in the eyes of the trees. Please feel completely free to ask questions, share your tree experiences, or contribute in any way you wish. We just hope you will contribute. We have a large silent majority, but that isn't be design. It does allow some of us loquacious types to ramble, but we'll pipe down when more of you joint the chorus. So, again, on behalf of all of us, welcome aboard the best all around tree list on the Internet. (Posted by co-founder Bob Leverett August 03, 2007)

What Can I Contribute? Newcomers, Novices, and Lurkers on the web (the last plays to strains of "Riders on the Storm" in my head). I would like to encourage you all to participate in the discussions on the ENTS list. You might ask yourself what you can contribute?  When I first joined the group it was after a tree climb by Will Blozan at Cook Forest where I met some of the people, but really did not talk to many of them. The group was smaller then and the list contained more trip reports of trips to various places. Some of the more prolific writers of that time are now involved in bigger projects and their number of reports has diminished. Will Blozan and Jess Riddle have been involved in the Tsuga Search Project, Bob Leverett is caught up in testing various gadgets and instrumentation and weird geometry of tree dendromorphometry. I contribute to these to a degree as well.

What the group needs from all of you are trip reports. Go visit a local park and write about the trip, the trees you find, and post it to the discussion list. A recent post by a member described three urban trees that were growing around buildings in his community. Anyone can do this, but please remember to ask permission before measuring  trees on private property We have people who are not biologists and foresters. I am a geologist. We have writers, photographers, and artists, we have meteorologists, pharmacists, and musicians. Everyone has a different viewpoint and that is what makes these posts interesting.

You do not need to measure anything to make the reports worthwhile. Simply documenting these areas is a step forward. If you want to measure you can measure tree girths. The instructions are on the website. You measure the circumference at breast-height at 4.5 feet by wrapping a tape around the tree. For $10 you can buy a 50 foot metal tape that should measure anything in the east... If you like to take photos, there are many free photo posting sites, such as weblinks http://www.weblinks.com  on line to host your pictures. Post them there and send the list a link to your albums. Or I can post some of the to the ENTS website with captions.  You can send works of poetry, iambic pentameter, music, art, philosophy or other tree related materials to expand our horizons. Look at our musings sections. I would like to develop a section on children's activities related to trees and the forest. Presently all I have are links to external sites. Someone could work on them. Remembrances of the past are always interesting and accounts of historical trees are always good. There are many thing each of can contribute without jumping immediately into super-measuring mode. I invite you to do so.  Start off by introducing yourself. We try to answer messages from new people or those who only post occasionally. If nobody answers post again. I was away for a few days and came back to over a hundred messages so it is easy for some to get lost. Post again if you don't get a reply to your first post. Join the discussions.

 

About the Eastern Native Tree Society

On March 14, 2010 the Eastern Native Tree Society and Western Native Tree Society switched from discussion lists on Google Groups to a new discussion list in a Bulletin Board format at: http://www.ents-bbs.org/index.php  Posts made since the inception of the BBS on March 14, 2010 will be sorted and archived on the BBS. Click on the link to go to the equivalent section on the new BBS. This website will continue to serve as a front end for the ENTS and WNTS groups. It will continue to serve as a repository of older posts, and will serve as the host site for special projects and features that are not well suited for a BBS format. Please visit the BBS for the latest information and trip reports.