| Southport,
CT |
Robert
Leverett |
| Dec
27, 2005 08:33 PST |
ENTS,
On Sunday, Monica and I drove down
to Southport, CT to visit her
brother Dennis and his wife Lori Ann. Southport is on Long
Island Sound
adjacent to Fairfield, CT. Luckily for me, Dennis and LA live
next to
the Pequot library. That, in and of itself, doesn't necessarily excite
me, but the large tuliptree growing on the grounds of the
library does.
But wait. There is more. Across
the street from Dennis's and LA’s
house is a small park with a large red maple and a large silver
maple.
Also, the next house down the street has a sizable European
beech. Was I
tempted to measure these 4 beauties? Do ducks quack? The stats
for the
Southport trees are as follows.
Species Height Circumference
Tuliptree 122.4 15.7
Red maple 90.5 12.5
Silver maple 88.5 15.4
E. beech 96.4 16.0
estimated
Although our stay was brief, I saw
enough of Southport to alert me
to the big tree possibilities in southern Connecticut - and it
is
apparent that there are many. Fairfield, Southport, and Westport
all
have great possibilities. So, future trips to visit Dennis and
LA must
include time to scout out the abundance of great trees on the
old
properties and in the parks of these old Connecticut towns.
On Saturday, I re-measured the big
tuliptree in Florence, MA, not
far from Monica's house. Its stats are impressive (120.6, 16.1).
Its
spread is 99 feet. No slouch there either. A second tuliptree on
a
street not far away produced a fine TT specimen at 118.7 in
height and
13.7 ft in girth.
After entering the Southport
tuliptree, I reran the tuliptree
numbers in my database for the Northeast. I now have 83
tuliptrees in
the database that have been measured for either conspicuous
height or
girth. The average height for the 83 trees is 124.3 ft and the
average
girth is 10.2 feet. Running the tuliptree numbers reminded me
that I had
fallen behind in tracking individual species over a large area.
To
remedy that neglect, I did a count from my database for several
prominent species for the Northeast. In the case of WP, WA, NRO,
and SM,
the focus has been much more on height than girth.
Species Avg Hgt Avg
Cir Count
WP 137.5 8.3 692
TT 124.3 10.2 83
WA 123.4 5.4 228
CW 107.7 10.1 167
SY 105.8 12.5 119
NRO 106.4 8.9 134
SVM 97.0 12.2 69
SM 108.1 6.3 126
WP=white pine, TT = tuliptree, WA =
white ash, CW = cottonwood,
SY=sycamore, NRO= northern red oak, SVM = silver maple, and SM =
sugar
maple.
If I can squeeze in more time for
southern CT and NY, the TT
averages will undoubtedly change. I suspect that the average
height will
go up by 3 to 5 feet as I measure more of the tall trees that I
can get
to in CT and NY. I see them from the interstate. They are in
belts
between the interstate and suburban lands that lay beyond. The
tulips
rise dramatically above all other species. They are
unchallenged. The
white pines are there, but none I saw were impressive. It isn't
white
pine country.
Bob
Robert T. Leverett
Cofounder, Eastern Native Tree Society
|
| Re:
Christmas and the day after |
dbhg-@comcast.net |
|
Dec
31, 2005 09:17 PST |
Dale,
I hear you buddy. We'll only dent the
possibilities, but by steadily adding significant sites, we will
be able to support our assertions about how rare or common a
range of site indices are. The more we look, the more that sites
with indices in the 130 range for latitudes above 40 degrees
show up as very exceptional. I was originally thinking the trend
might go the other way.
Bob
| |
-------------
Original message ----------------------
From: djluth-@pennswoods.net
Bob,
Nice ~15.7 tulip! I keep thinking of Matt Largess and
his requests to come out
his way when we start talking CT. I'm afraid I'll need
an infinite number of
life times to explore all the areas that need to be
looked at.
Dale
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