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TOPIC: Backyard Bounty
http://groups.google.com/group/entstrees/browse_thread/thread/e3a1599884fd6535?hl=en
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== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Fri, Aug 29 2008 10:05 am
From: dbhguru@comcast.net
ENTS,
Behind my wife's house is a stretch of woods bordering a small
stream named Broad Brook. I often refer to the brook corridor by the
name "Monica's Woods". I sometimes differentiate between
the upper and lower sections of the Brook as in Upper Broad Brook,
Monica's Woods, and Lower Broad Brook. The entire area has a Rucker
Index of 115.0, which is highly respectible for New England woods
growing literally in one's backyard.
Yesterday, I remeasured one of Monica's tuliptrees that I named
after a forester friend by the name of Ehrhard Frost. I had last
measured the tree in 2006, when it was around 127 feet in height.
Well, I'm delighted to report that Ehrhard's tree is now 129.4 feet
tall and 6.8 feet around. Monica's white pine, a few feet away, is a
solid 132.0 feet tall. Upstream a huge doublestem white pine makes
it to 136.5 feet. Three tuliptrees in Monica's woods all measure
between 122 and 123.5 feet in height and are between 6.5 and 6.8
feet around. A total of four break the 120-foot threshold.
A second white pine in Monica's woods weighs in at just under 124
feet. That's six 120-footers all within about 150 feet of our back
door. Not bad for a backyard forest. In fact, all up and down the
brook corridor, white pines reach to between 120 and 125 feet, with
four exceeding 130. Hardwoods of over half a dozen species top 100
feet.
Broad Brook is a rather extraordinary forested corridor that
probably reflects what we could have expected from many streamside
forests in western Massachusetts in earlier times. However, as we
work our way up into Vermont and New Hampshire the averages drop by
10 to 15 feet and some species drop out. In New England, it appears
that western Massachusetts marks the upper limit of mixed forests
that have Rucker Indexes above 110. The loan exception, so far, is a
forest along the Connecticut River in Claremont, NH that has a RI of
116.0. The index is heavily influenced by a white pine that we have
measured with laser and clinometer to 166.1 feet. Were the white
pine stand more typical, the RI would be around 113.
The full accounting of the Rucker Index for Broad Brook follows.
Rucker
Height Index Report
Location
String:
Broadbrook,
Florence MA
Height
Species
Location
Circumference
136.5
WP
MA-Florence-Broadbrook-Upper
14.8
129.4
TT
MA-Florence-Broadbrook-Monica
6.8
120.0
HM
MA-Florence-Broadbrook-Monica
8.1
117.1
PNH
MA-Florence-Broadbrook-Upper
4.9
110.7
NRO
MA-Florence-Broadbrook-Monica
5.5
109.7
WO
MA-Florence-Broadbrook-Monica
6.9
107.4
SO
MA-Florence-Broadbrook-Monica
7.3
106.9
BB
MA-Florence-Broadbrook-Upper
6.3
106.5
SM
MA-Florence-Broadbrook-Monica
6.9
105.5
WA
MA-Florence-Broadbrook-Monica
4.5
115.0
Rucker Index
7.2
A search this fall should allow us to up the index by half a point
or so.
Bob
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