Mount Tom Comes of Age State Reservation:   Champion Pitch Pine   Robert Leverett
  Apr 14, 2002 14:53 PDT 
Colby:

   Okay, old friend, out with the pencil. Burl-belly came through again.
Yep. There it was, a slender, but obviously tall, Pitch Pine. Its 5.0
foot circumference belies its 92.0 foot height! Yassir. Chalk up another
for the Burl-belly. The location is Mount Tom State Reservation. A
runner up measures 89.6 feet in height and a skinny 3.8 feet around. The
champ stands close to a 130.2-foot tall, 10.2-foot girth White Pine,
which becomes the 4th location in the Mt. Tom Reservation that I've
confirmed "Great Whites" to 130 feet in height.

    My next quest will be a Scarlet Oak. They are around, but are rather
small for the species.

    I am thrilled with the tall Pitch Pine. The pine barrens have them
commonly to 60 to 70 feet, but 92 is special.

Bob
Mount Tom Comes of Age   Robert Leverett
  Aug 31, 2002 14:55 PDT 
Colby:

     I spent 2.5 hours on Mount Tom State Reservation this afternoon. Two
hours were spent measuring just 4 trees and the remaining 0.5 hour was spent
on a about dozen. Today's mission started to be to find a champion silver
maple, but that didn't happen. I got sidetracked. I measured a beautiful
American beech 8.8 feet around and 100.4 feet tall. The beech becomes the
13th species to be confirmed to over 100 feet on the Mt Tom Reservation. In
terms of 100-footers, there should be at least one more species - silver
maple. But the current 13 is not too shabby.

    Another objective was to confirm the Reservation champion white pine. I
held slim hopes of a higher number, but got a 138.5 feet again. My prior
measurement, the day after Will and I crudely measured it was 138.45 feet
and this one was 138.47. I felt pretty smug about that. A red oak growing
near that beech measured 108.8 feet tall and 8.7 feet around. It was mighty,
mighty sweet. But the sweetest of all was a reconfirmation of the champion
red pine at 118.8 feet. No it hasn't grown that much. I had actually gotten
above 118 before, but couldn't confirm it the last time. Today that tree got
measured half a dozen times with heights varying between 118.4 and 119.4
feet. The 118.8 was the last measurement. The red pine confirmation and the
red oak raises the Rucker Site Index for Mount Tom to 115.12. Mount Tom
clearly rules the Valley sites. Colby, the attached Excel workbook updates
all the numbers. I've added a Mt Tom worksheet to the workbook.

    All the champion trees are not far from the Bray Brook corridor where
water is plentiful. The white oak is the lone exception. Get about 100
vertical feet above the stream contours and tree height drops dramatically.
Tree heights along the stream corridor clearly show the need for a steady
water supply. Elsewhere higher on the mountain side there are large red
oaks, but they top out at 80 to 90 feet. They are a little older than the
taller, more slender trees along the stream corridor.

    Where does the 115,.12 index fit in a historical context? Historically,
I believe the Mt Tom site index may have gone as high as 118. The more
intensive valley and river corridor searches have led me to raise my
expectation of the Connecticut River Valley in historical times. I believe a
few spots may have had indices as high as 123 versus the very best of the
mountains at 134. Thus, the differential between the Berkshires and the
Connecticut River Valley may not have been as great as I have thought, but
that's pure speculation. Today Mount Tom may be at 93.5% of the historical
valley best versus MTSF at 98.7% of the historical mountain best. The 93.5%
isn't bad. Folks in the Valley have more to crow about than I once believed.

    Another consequence of this analysis suggests that we have a more mature
valley forest than is popularly believed, at least in areas like state and
municipal parks and along river corridors that have been allowed to grow for
over 100 years. The effect is that we now have a forest of which we can
admire. We don't have to think wistfully back to another era, imagining the
people of earlier eras to be surrounding by large, charismatic trees, with
us having none. It is the other way around, at least back to around 1800.
Our ancestors cut the forest down. The only big trees left were the ones
lining city streets.

    In Chicopee, along the Connecticut River dikes, silver maples in peoples
yards commonly reach 3.0 to 3.5 feet in diameter. A few trees measure over
4.0 feet and an occasional maple makes it to 5. I can go to dozens of places
like that within the Connecticut Valley region. Yet the common perception is
that those trees are gone. Well, in subdivisions they are, but New England
towns still have an abundance of old, established neighborhoods. It is too
bad that the pace of modern living is robbing people even of an awareness of
a feature of the land that past generations revered.

Bob