ENTS,
Well, as of late Saturday afternoon, I do believe I succeeded in
confirming a legitimate 1000-cube white pine here in old
Massachusetts.
The Grandfather tree in MSF and the Ice Glen pine in Ice Glen
both
probably fall just shy of 1000 cubes of trunk volume. Including
limbs
would push both over - or nearly so.
But back to Yo Mama. The Conway Graveyard has several large
white
pines growing among the grave sites that date back into the
1700s.
Heretofore, I had focused my attention on one in particular, a
single-stemmed pine that is 140.5 feet tall and 14.3 feet
around. A
second big tree is 11.6 feet around and 129.2 feet tall.
However, there
is a third tree that is conspicuously larger than the others. It
is a
multi-stemmed pine that I have named "Yo Mama" because
when I looked
around at all the other large, but not as large pines, I thought
to
myself, "Hey, pines, pay respect to Yo Mama."
Image of Yo Mama taken by John Knuerr.
Yo Mama is obviously the tree on the left.
Yo Mama is 15.6 feet in circumference at
breast height. At ground
height on the uphill side, she is a solid 16.7 feet around.
There is a
4-foot difference in height from uphill to downhill. Yo Mama has
three
large trunks with separate heights of 122.3, 121.6, and
approximately
115 feet. The split into 3 trunks starts at 10 feet and is
complete at
14.5 feet.
To do a thorough job of modeling Yo Mama, I
need help from
mathematician John Eichholz and there is a lot of work left for
us to
do. Each of the tree's main trunks subdivides into 2 trunks and
the
middle trunk has an offshoot which I didn't model. I think the
final
volume will likely be around 1,100 cubes, although I currently
have it
as 1,210. To get a first cut at the volume I used the
Dendrometer and
made adjustments. Using the raw data from the Dendrometer, I got
1,350,
but that is too much. Shape is a big factor with this tree.
However, I
did account for some ellipticality, but probably not enough.
The average crown spread for this behemoth is
70.7 feet. The long
spread is 73 feet. The limbs are large and add probably 5% more
volume
to the trunk structure. There is no question that the combined
trunk and
limb structure exceeds 1000 cubes.
Michele,
You live near Conway. Maybe we could meet at the Graveyard in
the near
future and you could give me a hand modeling Yo Mama. Any
possibility of
that? It is hard to do the job without help. We could make a
sketch of
the tree, numbering the trunks and limbs and then proceed to
carefully
measure each. It might take 2 or even 3 outings.
Well, if anyone wants to meet Yo Mama, that
can be arranged. No
question about it, Yo Mama is a big mama. Were I not prejudiced
against
open-grown, multi-stemmed pines, I would have paid more
attention to Yo
Mama. Oh well, better late than never.
Bob
Robert T. Leverett
Cofounder, Eastern Native Tree Society
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