Trees of Peace, MTSF:  #74 and other news   Robert Leverett   Jun 20, 2005 07:04 PDT  Will, Jess, et al.:  On Sunday, I was by myself and decided to establish a circular plot with radius of 28 yards in the Trees of Peace and check on how long it would take to collect the data. I recorded the species, distance to tree, aspect of tree, height class, and circumference. I started at 12:25PM and stopped at 2:55PM before completing the plot. I'd swatted enough mosquitoes to fill my normal summer's quota. The little beggars got a pint of my blood. Anyway the arc I covered was from 55 to 270 degrees. So the area covered was 31% of an acre.     I documented 34 trees and organized them into circumference and height classes. A summary follows. I hope the format holds in the text alignments. All 22 white pines exceed 100 ft. One hemlock exceeds 100 feet, and no red maples or black birches do.     White Pine:      Ht/Cir        <75       75 -99.9    100-149.99     >=150            <5                                             3       5-6.99                                        6                  1       >=7                                            5                 7     Hemlock:      Ht/Cir        <75       75 -99.9    100-149.99     >=150            <5              3                 5              5-6.99                                      1             >=7                                                Red Maple:      Ht/Cir        <75       75 -99.9    100-149.99     >=150            <5                            1       5-6.99       >=7     Black Birch:      Ht/Cir        <75       75 -99.9    100-149.99     >=150            <5               1       5-6.99          1       >=7    The overwhelming dominance of the white pine is obvious. However, it is likely that any hemlock that reaches a circumference of 7 feet will also reach a height of 100 feet, but very little more. The same rule applied at Bullard Woods. Interesting.    I plan to complete the plot at my earliest opportunity, add TSI and LFI calculations, and get a GIS fix on the plot center    Naturally, I had to remeasure the Jake Swamp pine, which shows nice growth candles that appear to be 8 to 10 inches. At any rate, I got 166.9 feet which is very consistent with my last measurement and what I can see as new growth. Jake will make 167 by season's end.    I remeasured all the 150s in the Mast Pine area of the Trees of Peace and low and behold I had 5 instead of 4. YIPPEE. That is #74 and there is the possibility of another in the tightly packed group. Some of the Mohawk pines already show a foot of growth while others show about 6 inches. It will be interesting to see how long the growth continues. If it is like previous years, the growth will continue up through mid-July. Robert T. Leverett Cofounder, Eastern Native Tree Society   Home