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TOPIC: Onondaga County Old Growth
http://groups.google.com/group/entstrees/browse_thread/thread/9c19b7bfecab38b5?hl=en 
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== 1 of 2 ==
Date: Wed, Oct 29 2008 5:06 pm
From: thomas howard

ENTS,

I just joined your organization. I've been a lover of trees all my life and have long been interested in old growth forests. ENTS is my favorite website and I've met several ENTS people. I live in North Syracuse, NY just north of Syracuse where I believe Jess Riddle goes to ESF. I'm especially interested in old growth forests here in central NY.

Onondaga Old Growth pdf  525 kb

North Syracuse contains 2 old growth oak groves that Robert Henry, the North Syracuse Village Historian (and ESF grad) and I have studied extensively. Old growth oak forests are quite rare in upstate NY and North Syracuse is fortunate to have 2 of them.

I know of 4 old growth forests in Onondaga County. The largest, Green Lakes State Park, has over 1000 acres of old growth dominated by Sugar Maple averaging 200-250 years old and with 1 section dominated by Tuliptree over 140' tall. I believe you are familiar with this forest and I was in the team with Bob Leverett, Bruce Kershner, Tom Diggins, and others when we explored it in 2002.

The largest of the North Syracuse oak groves at North Syracuse Junior High School on Taft Rd. just west of Rt. 11 is 6 acres of old growth dominated by White Oak, Red Oak, Black Oak, Red Maple over 100' tall, up to 4' dbh and 150-200 years old. Bob Leverett led a team that measured tree heights in both oak groves in Apr. 1998 (if I recall they included White Oak 102', Red Oak 103', Red Maple 103.9' in the grove at the junior high), and this is the grove featured in the 5/26/98 USA Today article on tree measurements. The grove is called the Wizard of Oz Memorial Oak Grove because the grove possibly inspired L. Frank Baum to create the Great Forest of Oz as he grew up near the grove and lived across the street from the grove's owner.

The other grove, about 1.5 acres, is at North Syracuse Cemetery. This grove is near and dear to my heart as I grew up on a street right by it - it is the first old growth forest I've ever seen. Oaks up to 200+ years old abound and the density of large trees is very high - 12 trees greater than 30" dbh in 1 acre. The grove's largest tree is a Black Oak (measured at 100.5' tall by Bob Leverett in 1998) and now 43.2" dbh. This grove is potentially threatened and may be sold for lumber.

The village of North Syracuse contains significant Black Gum and Sassafras. Black Gum to 20" dbh are found in both oak groves, and the Cemetery Oak Grove has an especially gnarly twisted old Black Gum about 19.6" dbh.

I noticed in Jess Riddle's post on Cicero Swamp that there are some impressive old Black Gums there.

The 4th old growth site, the Liverpool School Maple grove, is about 11 acres at Wetzel Rd. Elementary School next to Liverpool High School. This grove is dominated by Sugar Maple up to 4' dbh, over 100' tall, and over 200 years old - the largest tree is a Sugar Maple with lots of spiral grain, shaggy and balding bark, possibly over 110' tall, and over 4' dbh. Other large old trees are Red Maple, Beech, Basswood (in 2003 I counted 242 rings on the cross-section of a fallen Basswood log and this cross-section was over 40' above the tree's base), and Shagbark Hickory.

Oakwood Cemetery in Syracuse has many huge 200+year-old White, Red, and Black Oaks.

So even the crowded Syracuse area has some important trees. I think it would be good if some of the ENTS could take a look at them. Tree heights in the 2 oak groves and Liverpool School Maple Grove need to be updated (as neither Robert Henry nor I have a laser rangefinder).

Wizard of Oz Oak Grove leaflet pdf 2.5 MB

I wonder if Jess Riddle would be interested.

Sincerely,

Tom Howard

== 2 of 2 ==
Date: Wed, Oct 29 2008 6:04 pm
From: "Edward Frank"

Tom,

Welcome to ENTS. I look forward to hearing more from you and working with you to better document the old growth forests in New York. Some of those sites had descriptions of the Champion Trees website by the New York Old Growth Forest Association. The site is currently down, but portions of it can be viewed on an internet archive site at: http://web.archive.org/web/20051128071005/www.championtrees.org/oldgrowth/surveys/sites.htm I would love to get back to some of those sites with our more accurate measurement techniques. I don't have copies of the results of many of these earlier investigations and in any case a fresh look at the sites would still be worthwhile. You can't cover even a small site on a single trip and hope to find everything. I am told a version of this Champion Trees site will be back on-line in the near future. There is a meeting of ENTS at Mohawk Trails State Forest this coming weekend in Massachusetts. There is more info about it on the ENTS website under the heading events.

If you have more detailed descriptions of any of these sites, photographs, reports and the like, I would encourage you to post them to the list, and I can add them to our website.

Ed Frank

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TOPIC: Onondaga County Old Growth
http://groups.google.com/group/entstrees/t/9c19b7bfecab38b5?hl=en
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== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Wed, Nov 26 2008 5:34 pm
From: "Jess Riddle"


Hello Tom,

I've been surprised and pleased with the relative abundance of older
forests in the Syracuse area. Unfortunately, I've had very little
time to explore the area, so Green Lakes State Park is the only one of
the sites you mention that I've visited. There, the sugar maples on
the slopes south of Round Lake are impressively large, and species
like glade fern and goldies fern point to the richness of the soils.
On my brief trip through that area, I didn't see any signs of
intensive human disturbance, so that section may be old growth. Other
parts of the park certainly have large trees, but the gentle
topography and rich soils suggest they could have just developed
following land clearing in the early 1800's

Oakwood cemetery is definitely appropriately named with many large
oaks spread throughout. The founding date for the cemetery of 1859
has always lead me to believe that most of the large oaks started
growing at that time, and took advantage of the favorable conditions
provided by the cemetery to reach their current sizes. Some of the
oaks could be left from the forest that occupied the site prior to the
cemetery, but the cemetery was laid out by a prominent landscape
architect, so I assume most of the trees were planted.

The forests at two other Onondaga County sites have impressed with
their age. The small area of steep slopes around the falls in Pratts
Falls County Park support a forest of hemlock and sugar maple that
seems unlikely to ever have been cut.

Closer to the city of Syracuse, Clark Reservation State Park supports
an extensive area of older forest. Parts of the park were farmed, but
old hemlocks, sugar maples, and black maples occupy the slopes
associated with the karst topography in most of the park. The steep,
east facing talus slopes adjacent to the lake also support a pure
grove of white cedar with many tree likely between 200 and 300 years
old, although I have not seen cores from any.

Jess