So a few weeks ago after passing the brink of mere passing
interest, and jumping into the fully involved, I spent a day out in
a
local state forest a few minutes up the road from me, looking
for.......big trees. At that time all I had was a d-tape and a
tendency to be looking up more than down. Found a few prospect
Hemlocks in the area I wandered for several hours, but not much
else.
Again, having gone beyond passing interest, I the next day ordered
my
range finder and clinometer and they arrived here this past week.
Now that work has slowed down, we're down to 4 day work
weeks,
picking the forecasted "worst" day of the week weather wise and
sitting it out. Today I had off. Armed with my new tools, a notepad,
pen and camera, I headed off about 10am this morning the mile up the
road and parked my car. After nearly 2 hours of wandering around in
temps in the low teens, I finally found the trees again. I had such
high hopes, but the trio of trees right next to each other didnt
measure up to much. The big one had a CBH of just under 9', and only
barely made it to 100', the other 2 slightly smaller, about 7.5' CBH
each and around 95'. I was thoroughly disappointed, and trudged back
to my car, stopping several times to photograph the forest around
me.
Later on this afternoon, I remembered the Sycamores I
looked at a
few weeks back as well, a roadside row of 11 trees, nearly all of
them
over 10' CBH, and several over 15 and 16' CBH. Unfortunately the
small
bit of roadside parking afforded to me last time was now just a
snowbank along the side of the road that my car would have never
made
it through. THEN it occurred to me, on the other end of the
mountain,
the forest boundary made it just about roadside, and several times
passing I had seen the tops of a big American Elm poking out from
the
tops of the tree line, this area with convenient parking in several
areas.
I parked my car here, and trudged off into the woods yet
again.
Made the 5 minute walk from the parking area along the base of the
mountain and located the Elm I had seen from the road. The roadside
view did not do it justice, at all. I immediately pulled out the d-
tape, found the midslope, and wrapped the tape around the tree.
12.9'
CBH!! This was exciting to say the least, this tree was much larger
than I had thought. This entire area is on a fairly steep grade,
running down to a floodplain/farm fields, and no more than a few
hundred yards away, the Connecticut river. I made my way up the hill
so I could get myself a view of this entire tree. That in itself was
no small feat, as the snow had all crusted over, so every footstep
was an effort to get my foot kicked into the snow to avoid having my
feet slide out from under me. Got my vantage point, did my
measurements, and this tree with little searching of the canopy for
a
high spot came out at 130.7' tall!
|
Correction from January 19, 2009
So I went back out this afternoon to where I found
"the" big Elm last
week to see if I could find a higher point and spend some
more time
measuring other trees in the area. Turns out.......I read
the damn
clinometer wrong. Wasnt familiar with the equipment
yet and made a
simple error to the tune of about 14.5' in height. D'oh.
There goes
that state height record. I did something along the lines of
reading
38* as 42* and bumped my numbers. Glad I remeasured it
though, learned
something in the process and had me double checking every
time.
|
Realizing that this tree BARELY topped all the other
trees around
it, I started getting rough measurements on a few standouts in the
immediate area. The first Sugar Maple I picked out just topped 120',
I
picked out a quick hickory, unsure of the exact species, forking,
very
lightly furrowed bark. With my Audobon field guide I either guess it
to be Mockernut or Pignut. That one measured out at 119.3', with a
CBH
of 8.5'! It could be taller, but I was running out of daylight, and
picked what I first deemed to be the highest point.
I will definitely be returning to this site, its just a
few minutes
from my house of all things. Not to mention there is bittersweet
draped from TONS of the trees out there, who knows, I may just find
some contenders for vine girth as well. ;) Will definitely get some
pictures on my next trip out there, left the camera in the car on
the
Elm adventure with the fact in mind the daylight was quickly
escaping
me. Happy tree hunting! :-)
(And for reference, this is in Deerfield, MA, along the banks of
the
Connecticut River.)
Jeff
http://groups.google.com/group/entstrees/browse_thread/thread/880de2e7ce3ccc90?hl=en
|